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Lessons from China's history

A man carries an AI-generated image of former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump carrying cats away from Haitian immigrants, a reference to falsehoods spread about Springfield, Ohio, during a campaign rally for Trump at the Tucson Music Hall in Tucson, Arizona, Sept. 12, 2024. (Rebecca Noble/AFP/Getty Images/TNS)
Chinese history

Reflections | China has long kept a firm grip on news, with gossip harshly punished

The Yongzheng Emperor even put to death editors and writers linked to a report he had celebrated a festival that he had said he would not.

Chinese overseas

Reflections | How my DNA test showed I’m less Chinese than I thought

History

Reflections | The wells where a Chinese scholar and emperor’s consort met their ends

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Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)

Reflections | How ‘dragon bones’ shed a whole new light on China’s ancient history

With the news that dinosaur fossils were found in Hong Kong, here is how China’s oracle bones changed our understanding of the Shang dynasty.

Oracle bone, The engraved characters are the earliest known examples of Chinese script. The bones originally used for divination also provide information about rulers, battles, folk religion and religious rites. China. Chinese. Shang dynasty c 1766 1122 BC. An yang, Honan. (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images) Photo: Getty Images
Food and Drinks

Reflections | Only Hong Kong sex symbol Amy Yip should be offended over bubble tea

Accusations of cultural appropriation aimed at a Canadian brand’s boba tea don’t sit right in Asia, where ‘borrowing’ cuisines is normal.

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Corruption in China

Reflections | When officials in drought-prone part of China committed huge fraud

In a case that shocked China 250 years ago, officials were punished for fraud involving donations in return for university places.

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Crime

Reflections | Official corruption isn’t new, but first recorded case in China was unusual

Yangshe Fu, Chinese history’s first recorded corrupt official, was killed after accepting a nobleman’s daughter as a bribe in a court case.

Former transport minister S. Iswaran (centre) and his lawyer at the High Court in Singapore on October 3, 2024. Photo: AP
Chinese culture

Reflections | My name isn’t weird, it reflects diversity that’s dying out in China

Chinese names were once pronounced according to a person’s local dialect. Thanks to standardisation and the pinyin system, this is changing.

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Religion in China

Reflections | Why China avoided the wars of religion that consumed other places

Different faiths have coexisted more or less peacefully throughout Chinese history, with foreign religions accepted and later on Sinicised.

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Paris 2024 Paralympic Games

Reflections | Paralympians need more appreciation. Ancient China offers a lesson

People with disabilities were celebrated for their achievements in China’s past. Paralympians today deserve to be better appreciated.

People with disabilities were celebrated for their achievements in China’s past. Paralympians such as those at the Paris Games deserve similar support. Photo: AFP
Mid-Autumn Festival

Reflections | Why Teochew mooncakes are reminders of a history of migration

Eating Teochew mooncakes at Mid-Autumn Festival is a reminder of the Teochew people’s history of migration from China to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

Teochew mooncakes. A popular Mid-Autumn Festival treat, they were brought to Hong Kong, along with other food items and their dialect, by Teochew (Chiu Chow) people from southeast China. Photo: Getty Images

Reflections | How ancient Chinese mukbang went wrong for elderly military leader

Mukbang (streaming oneself overeating) is a popular online trend, although people have been gorging to impress for at least 2,000 years

Central Asia

Reflections | Black Myth: Wukong video game the latest take on Journey to the West

The hit video game takes its premise from classic novel Journey to the West, which has had a profound influence on Chinese popular culture.

Reflections | May-December couples in Chinese history, Mr and Mrs Ho aren’t the first

From Mr and Mrs Ho, the Murdochs and Macrons to historical Chinese figures including Sun Yat-sen, artists and poets, large age gaps in relationships are not uncommon.

Like Mr and Mrs Ho, who made the news in Hong Kong recently, couples with a large age gap are common today, and have been throughout history, including ancient and modern China. Photo: YouTube/ @channelattack
Chinese culture

Reflections | After Olympics gender rows, how Chinese called people straddling sexes

The disputes over two boxers’ gender at the 2024 Olympics bring to mind a Chinese term that was once used to describe people with both female and male sexual characteristics.

Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting holds her gold medal for the women’s 57kg boxing category at the 2024 Paris Olympics, on August 10, 2024.
Chinese history

Reflections | When thousands of foreigners were murdered in ancient China slaughter

The slaughter of ‘Semu’ people in China after the 14th-century Ispah rebellion highlights the ‘us versus them’ mentality evident in recent UK riots linked to the Southport killings of three girls.

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Chinese history

Reflections | ‘Putrid beef’ smell: when an ancient Chinese voyager tried durian

Fifteenth-century Chinese voyager Ma Huan did not like the smell but loved the taste of the durian he ate in Sumatra. Today, the fruit is loved across Southeast Asia, Malaysia’s cultivars especially.

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Religion

Reflections | He said he was Jesus’ brother. His Taiping Rebellion doomed Qing dynasty

New religious movements are common. Followers of a Malaysian ‘Teacher’ worship a ‘Creator’. China’s Qing dynasty never got over its brutal military suppression of such a movement, the Taiping Rebellion.

A drawing of Hong Xiuquan, a Hakka Chinese who led the Taiping Rebellion against China’s Qing dynasty. Its brutal suppression by imperial troops left 20 to 30 million people dead. Photo: Getty Images
Food and agriculture

Reflections | How, in China, chillis were the poor man’s salt before becoming prized

The world has got used to eating spicy food – witness Denmark’s recall of too-spicy instant noodles. To think that centuries ago chillis were unknown to most Chinese, used instead of salt by ethnic-minority cooks.

Asian cinema

Reflections | Grandma movie gets me thinking about mine, and the ones who ruled China

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, a film portraying a young man’s relationship with his grandmother, gets Wee Kek Koon thinking of his own, and of China’s grandmother rulers.

Legacy of war in Asia

Reflections | Mass slaughter long predates Israel-Gaza war; look at Chinese history

Israeli forces show a cruel disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in their pursuit of Hamas fighters. Non-combatants are often slaughtered in war, as China’s history shows. Is it bloodlust?

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Palestinian boys walk past destroyed buildings in Gaza. Israeli forces have shown a cruel disregard for civilian life there in pursuit of Hamas. Targeting non-combatants is nothing new, as recent Chinese history shows. Photo: AFP
Gender

Reflections | Off with his beard, off with her head: old China’s skewed domestic abuse laws

China had laws against domestic violence in the second century BC, but the punishments for men and women abusers were far from equal, a state of affairs that continued into the 20th century.

This frame grab taken from hotel security camera video and aired by CNN appears to show Sean “Diddy” Combs attacking singer Cassie in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016. China had laws against domestic violence over 2,000 years ago, but they favoured the man. Photo: CNN via AP
Social media

Reflections | Amid plague of ads on social media, China’s first advertising recalled

Adverts are turning me off social media. They’ve been around a long time. A fake ad was recorded 2,700 years ago in China, and ads there 1,000 years ago were as sophisticated as some we see today.

Singapore

Reflections | Singapore gets a new prime minister, who doesn’t have an emperor to placate

When Lawrence Wong becomes Singapore prime minister his government will wield the real power. In imperial China, absolute monarchs appointed prime ministers but hesitated to share power with them.

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Religion

Reflections | As Hong Kong chases Muslim Mideast money, memories of China’s oldest mosque

An hour by high-speed train from Hong Kong, in Guangzhou, is the Huaisheng Mosque, which probably dates from the 10th century, some three centuries after Muslims began settling in the city.

The lighthouse-style minaret of the historic Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou, China. Photo: Shutterstock
Chinese history

Reflections | 3 Body Problem recalls one of Chinese history’s worst traitors

(Spoiler alert) A character in Netflix’s 3 Body Problem brings to mind a Chinese military leader who has been vilified as a traitor for nearly 400 years for allowing Manchu troops to overrun China.

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(From left) Yu Guming and Zine Tseng in a still from Netflix’s 3 Body Problem. The series brings to mind Wu Sangui, who is considered one of the worst traitors in Chinese history. Photo: Ed Miller/Netflix
Tourism

Reflections | The pitfalls of travelling on passports issued by Malaysia and Singapore

Passports issued by Singapore and Malaysia don’t separate first and last names, confusing airline computers and online apps. Why the constant demands to state a surname when none is defined?

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Food and Drinks

Reflections | Move over, soba. After oodles of udon on a trip to Japan, I’m a convert

Soba and soumen wheat noodles are my preferred Japanese varieties, but after eating udon on a visit to Kagawa in Shikoku, especially the local Sanuki udon, I was won over by their chewiness.

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Lessons from China's history
Wee Kek Koon draws parallels between current events and trends and episodes and attitudes in China’s past.
last updated:
9 September, 2024
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