EARLY EPISODE: The Taiping Rebellion Part 1: Jesus Christ's Little Brother
Part 1/4
A man fails a civil service exam, loses his goddamn mind, and leads China into the deadliest civil war in human history.
Sources:
Johnathan Spence. God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan.
Stephen Platt. Autumn in the heavenly kingdom
Jian Youwen. The Taiping Revolutionary Movement
Comments (25)
The fact that famines were a regular and repeating occurrence in China for centuries up until the Communist take over kind of speaks volumes to the interests and effectiveness of the Chinese Communists. Yes, the Great Leap Forward produced a terrible famine, and that was a result of bad policies from the CCP, but after that? People were getting fed regularly, and the management of food resources hasn't failed since. It turns out that Communism actually prevents famine.
Wait, you'd get your results back in a month or less? When I took the bar exam, it took twice that.
I kinda get where Hong is coming from considering I only went moderately less insane than he did after failing the NREMT paramedic exam for the 3rd time.
If I failed the NREMT P I absolutely would have created a death cult.
Love you guys, you're awesome. Just one very important point: the concept and implementation of the civil service exam comes straight out of Confucianism. Confucius himself supposedly came up with the whole thing. Which makes the exam about 2500 years old.
Genuinely not the worst idea, particularly when you're coming out of a feudal state which has never even considered meritocratic institutions.
LMAO, I’m going to need you guys to cover The Cultural Revolution to balance out this, the Unit 731 episode and the eventual one on the Great Leap Forward. At least that will have some comedy in it when you guys cover teenage school children cult worshipping Mao holding the nation hostage and even take up arms and killing other factions.
This is Chinese history bitch we clown in this motherfucker
Wait radicalized zelot becomes a racist?.
Olafo doesn’t understand that Xenophobia was very much in vogue in the 19th century. In many Asian countries the penalty for being a foreigner is death. White people tried to force countries like Japan and Korea to trade and were met with death. The Dutch captured Chinese fisherman near Formosa and threatened to execute them unless the Ming traded with them.
It's a young adult fantasy book, but the Poppy Wars talks about the civil service exam through the eyes of an orphaned poor girl who busts ass to pass it and go to a military academy. The author clearly draws on a lot of Chinese history for the plot points of the novel.
Ancient China exported Confucianism and the Imperial Civil Service exam to Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and possibly Mongolia. Hence why everybody’s obsession with exams and education in general. Leading to school 6 days a week, and then you going to tutoring/cram school after school until 10pm.
*Boots up Victoria 3* Guess I’m gonna try playing as these guys.
The Taiping were the only true Christians and everyone else is committing heresy.
They're one among many reinventions of Arianism
Man this guy is reminding me of every cult leader but maybe of Roman von Ungern-Sternberg the most, but replace not understand Buddhism but being really into it with not understanding Christianity but being really into it. Props for managing to be the one guy in China that missionaries didn't want to baptise though.
That's 张献忠 who definitely deserves a series for also trash talking everything
Listen, I love Nate and Tom, very professional. BUT, I also love Liam and, of course Nick (wherever the Army has taken him off to). I do miss the random verbal aggressive abuse of Liam or the randomm burping from Nick oh and his go-to "oh fuck/shit"
Subscribe to Well There’s Your Problem.
This is going to be an instant classic of a series.
As an EMT the digression about Fire departments absolutely tracks
Oh no.
Oh man they just constantly nail the not so mainstream topics I want to hear about! King Phillips war and now this is fantastic!
I'm loving the nate and Irish Tom content it's so good
ohhhh hell yesss this series is gonna be great