The Master of Demon Gorge: A Chinese History Podcast

The story of the "Thousand-Character Essay," composed in the early 6th century with 1,000 distinct Chinese characters, never repeating a single one. And it rhymes.Support the show

The recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom brings to mind a fascinating moment in Chinese history.In the early-20th century, during the final years of empire, the Qing Dynasty attempted to transform itself into a constitutional monarchy not unlike the model in the UK, in Japan, and in a number of other countries. With the advantage of hindsight, we know that the effort was doomed to fail, and maybe it never had much chance of success. But what might have been...Support the show

Zhang Xueliang, known as "the Young Marshal," lived one of the most interesting lives of 20th century China. After inheriting Manchuria from his father in his 20s, the young warlord went on to play in a pivotal role in the Xi'an Incident of December 1936. The event, for better or worse, would forever alter the course of Chinese and hence world history. And Zhang would pay for it with the next half century of his life...Support the show

Historian Michael McCormick has nominated 536 A.D. as the worst year in history to be alive. It was a "year without a summer," and around the globe strange weather phenomena led to crop failures and famines.Around the globe, including in China. What do the Chinese records from the time say about the strange and terrible events that, modern science has shown, were the results of volcanic activities?Support the show

In the previous episode we looked at how climate change in the Roman Empire paralleled climate change in Han Dynasty China and contributed to the rise and fall of both empires.Today, let's examine how pandemic diseases in both ends of Eurasia also coincided to help to bring down both empires. In Rome, the Antonine Plague came in the second century, the Plague of Cyprian in the third, and Plague of Justinian in the sixth. Meanwhile in China, the late-second century pandemic coinciding with the Antonine Plague gave rise to the Yellow Turban Rebellion, which kicked off the age of chaos known as Three Kingdoms...Support the show

In his book, "The Fate of Rome," Prof. Kyle Harper argues that much of the history of the Roman Empire can be attributed to climate: the period known as the "Roman Climate Optimum," around 200 B.C. to 150 A.D., neatly encapsulates the rise of the Roman Republic through its transition into Empire until the beginning of its decline during the age of the Antonines.The Han Dynasty in China follows almost exactly the same timeline from its founding in 202 B.C. to its final collapse in 220 A.D. If climate was a leading cause of Rome's rise to imperium as well as its eventually humbling, and if many of the causal factors of climate change are global, then can it be that similar patterns of climate change led to the rise and fall of the Han Dynasty?To answer this question, we turn to Prof. Zhu Kezhen and his seminal 1972 paper...Support the show

Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov, Marshal of the Soviet Union, is chiefly remembered in Russia as the iron-willed commander who successfully defended Stalingrad against Nazi assault during WWII.What has been largely forgotten is that Chuikov learned to speak Chinese and spent years in China. Before Stalingrad, he served as a military advisor to none other than Chiang Kai-shek...Support the show

The tea plant, Camellia sinensis, originated in borderlands of southwestern China and what is now Burma. For many centuries, though, people didn't consume tea the way we do it today.Drawing on work by Prof. Miranda Brown, this is the story of Lu Yu, the Tang Dynasty comic actor and author who taught the Chinese literati, and later the whole world, how to drink tea.Support the show

Ni Kuang, the hyper-prolific leading light of Hong Kong science fiction, died in early July.This is his improbable legend, from his beginnings as a boy communist in Mainland China to his days as a refugee smuggling himself across the border to his ultimate success and achievements in Hong Kong.It's almost as improbable as the adventures he invented for his protagonists.Support the show

Henri Cernuschi, an Italian revolutionary who became a French banker, came to collect East Asian and particularly Chinese artifacts later in life.Today, a walk through the Cernuschi Museum in Paris is amounts to a stroll through Chinese history.Support the show