Conversations: Blood-Sweat Horses and Empire, Ancient Greece and China w/ Lee Moore

This week Liv and Michaela sit down to talk with Lee Moore of the Chinese Literature Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chinese-literature-podcast/id1102235260 all about the time Ancient China may have met Ancient Greece. The conversations slowly descends into madness and talking about empire generally, as China is very outside of our wheelhouse of history. Lee has also recently published a book, China's Backstory: The History Beijing Doesn't Want You to Read, so search that out if you're interested! Pre-order Liv's Odyssey adaptation (!!!), The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby. Enter ourpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest! CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com grouptrip.

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• 2:15Speaker 04

  Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk About Myths, baby. We're back this week with another conversation episode and this time it's a little different because we're talking with Lee Moi of the Chinese Literature Podcast. Yes, Chinese literature and generally actually Chinese history in this one, which is not something we ever discussed because it is far outside of our realm of expertise and what we present to the show. However, this was very interesting to us and so we wanted to bring it to you all. See, Lee came to us and told us about an event that where the ancient Chinese possibly met the

• 2:54Speaker 04

  ancient Greeks in the second century BCE and that was way too interesting. So we had to pick it up and hear about it. So that's what this episode is about. It also just generally derails into talking about empire and colonization and stuff about China generally and and studying antiquities and you know, all those things. I was a little off my rocker while recording this episode. I was having a bad ADHD day. So I apologize in advance for all my cackling. Trust me, I can see it when it's coming up on the sound waves while editing and I cringe every time. So anyways, I'll let us get to the show and enjoy.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Conversations: Blood, Sweat, Horses, and Empire: Ancient Greece and China with Lee Moi.

• 4:14Liv Albert?

  I mean, we, I have to admit, like, the, the topic you sent us is so unique that I'm a little like, "Oh, God, what do I ask?" So I think I'm just gonna kind of let you introduce yourself, and we can kind of go from there, if you don't mind.

• 4:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, let's do it. So, I'm Lee Moore. I just wrote a book, China's Backstory: The History Beijing Doesn't Want You to Read. It's about the four China-related topics popping up in the news feeds of a lot of folks in America, Canada, the broader West, Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Chinese economy, and Hong Kong. And I do it in a very, a way that's meant to be friendly to the average reader. So like, people who don't normally pick up a book about China will pick it up. I have a section, a chapter in the Taiwan section called, "The Most Important Motherfucker in Taiwanese History", and it's about a 1670 sex scandal that, that changed the history of Taiwan,

• 5:08Speaker 05

  and it kind of is the reason that there is a possibility of World War III starting in, in Taiwan. The Xinjiang section has a drinking game where every time someone gets beheaded, you're asked to take a drink. So it's like, you know, trying to make things fun. Like, most people don't pick up China books, and there's a reason. It's because a lot of them are boring, and China's really scary for a lot of folks, you know.

• 5:31Liv Albert?

  Well, there's so much propaganda.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  There's so much propaganda on, on both sides, right?

• 5:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 05

  And, but it's even more than propaganda. I think it's like, uh, it's just really hard. Like, if you don't know the dynasties and all of that, like, the dates just kind of get really funky. So like-

• 5:49Liv Albert?

  Well, especially for a country that has been around, or like, an empire really has been around that long.

• 5:54Speaker 05

  It's a lot of history, right?

• 5:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah. They have to be one of the most, like, the longest contiguous, like, I don't know. Again, a culture in a way. I mean, that's, that's a weird phrasing, and I'm sure it's problematic in ways I don't intend. But like, it just, yeah, it never really occurred to me how long China has been. China.

• 6:11Speaker 05

  It's a, it's a claim that's often made when I was studying Chinese. They, they would say, you know, we're the longest continuously existing civilization. Of course, that is a problematic thing.

• 6:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, like, as soon as I said it, I realized it was problematic, but it does make sense that they would say it too.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. But it, you know, like, it's, it's just a lot to, to take on. So like, trying to make it fun is what I did. The, the thing that we were talking, so the, the way this comes to, to the ancient classical world is there's a bit in the Xinjiang section of my book. So the Xinjiang is this massive Alaska-sized chunk of land in the modern People's Republic of China. That's mostly half desert, half kind of Siberia step. That's in the northeast corner of China. So if you're looking at a map, it's just above Tibet.

• 7:04Liv Albert?

  So it's like, I'm gonna, this is gonna be, be me just trying to guess my, by geography skills. So it's like bordering like Russia and Mongolia?

• 7:12Speaker 05

  Bordering Russia, Mongolia, but also Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan.

• 7:16Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, right. So, so the former, basically the former Soviet Union and Mongolia. But even Afghanistan, it borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. So you can, you can drive from Xinjiang into Pakistan. There's a, there's a road there that is occasionally closed. But so it's just this massive amount of land. But it's also very underpopulated, you know, compared to the other, other parts of China. It's not Chinese in the traditional sense, like it's, it's not Han Chinese. So you go out there and you feel like you're in a different world and you've got, you know, a hundred years ago is, I think the population of Xinjiang was like 5% Han Chinese.

• 7:57Speaker 05

  It was mostly Turkic folks, so the Uighurs, but lots of Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, all of those guys are, are, are big there.

• 8:06Liv Albert?

  That's so interesting. Yeah, it's China's one of those countries. I think about this with with so many others where like there's parts that you just like, once you, you know, actually start to learn, it's like, oh, right, this is a completely different from what I would imagine because these countries are so big. I mean, China is like, I'm sure they have again, examples that I can't think of, but like, I think about this in relation to Canada all the time as somebody who's like from the West Coast, but I live in Toronto and like I it's cheaper for me to fly to the UK than for me to fly home and like our country was never meant to be one country like that's called colonization. It's not a practical country. And yeah, you know, China's an interesting case for that, too, where it's not quite as big, but like the it spans so much of the continent. That's just fascinating.

• 8:51Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so colonization is one of those things that you a lot of Chinese folks don't want to talk about, but China is a colonial power, right? Like they they colonized Tibet, they colonized Xinjiang. These are places that that didn't have much in terms of Chinese folks. And it has a long history of Chinese folks coming in there and taking over. And so the the particular moment.

• 9:14Liv Albert?

  Sorry, I I

• 9:15Speaker 05

  Go for it.

• 9:15Liv Albert?

  make comedy. I'm horrified. I just said relatable.

• 9:20Liv Albert?

  I know about that, too. It's happened elsewhere.

• 9:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, some I can think of some examples from history.

• 9:29Speaker 05

  But basically, so the Chinese start to colonize the region in one thirty eight B.C. They have you have the first Chinese explorations of Central Asia. And the they may have actually run into the Greeks. There may have been a battle where they fought with Greek folks. We don't know. There's still a lot of

• 9:53Speaker 05

  there's there's a lack of archaeological evidence, you know, it's not. So Soviet Soviet archaeology was really good, but these countries now are very poor and they're not super accessible. So we we don't know exactly what happened, but basically there is this war. So Chinese, a Chinese guy in one thirty eight is sent by Hamuddi, the the warrior emperor of the Han Dynasty out to try and make an alliance with his bitter enemies, the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu are you can think of them basically as like pre Mongolians. They live in in Mongolian lands.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  And he gets captured immediately by the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu know exactly what's up. He gets taken and they're like, you're trying to make an alliance against us so that we have to fight a two-front war. And he's kept in like open-air prisoner, you know, he's kept as a captive for about a decade. He takes a

• 10:52Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 10:53Speaker 05

  Right? A long time.

• 10:56Liv Albert?

  Nice, yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 05

  He takes his Xiongnu wife, he takes, he has Xiongnu kids, he's living there, you know, amongst the sheep herders of this part of what's now Mongolia. And eventually, they stop watching him very closely and he escapes. And he, he actually completes his mission. He goes to Central Asia and he meets a bunch of people. Some of them, we know who they are, some of them we don't. He meets the Yuan, the Kangju, the, uh, some others. He talks to people who tell him, you know, the Salucid Empire is over here. The Indians are over here and, and, you know, we, we kind of know some of these, who some of these people are, like the Salucids, those are called the Tiaoji.

• 11:42Speaker 05

  And it, you know, later on, that's gonna refer to, to parts of Iran and the Persian Gulf. And the, you know, his description, it sounds like the Salucid Empire. We're not 100% that that's actually the Salucids, but our best guess is, yeah.

• 11:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's really interesting.

• 12:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:01Liv Albert?

  So what is the evidence that, sorry, you're probably about to get to this, but like, what, what makes us think it was Greece? Or Greek, Greek colony, obviously.

• 12:09Speaker 05

  So

• 12:09Liv Albert?

  Sure they didn't go to the Greek mainland?

• 12:11Speaker 05

  I mean, so, no, they didn't go to the Greek mainland, but, uh, you know, Alexandria Escute is the last Alexandrian city that's established there. And it's established in Central Asia. We know the, you know, pretty much the, the place where it is, it's in Tajikistan, modern day Tajikistan, uh, the city of Kujan. And that's right there on the Sire Darya River, which the Greek is, uh, uh, hang on, sorry, let me look.

• 12:41Liv Albert?

  No, I love this. I'm also like not very good at Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic history, so I'm also just like, this is great, like.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  It's the curse of a classical scholar. We kind of forget things happen in the Hellenistic.

• 12:54Liv Albert?

  Like, oh my god, right, things happen after the

• 12:56Speaker 04

  Many things.

• 12:57Liv Albert?

  Century.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  So the name of the river in Greek is Gaxartes, so it's spelled G A X A R T E S. Does that make sense? Am I pronouncing that kind of close to right?

• 13:12Liv Albert?

  Probably not, but like, like Gaxartes, maybe like, yeah, Kayla, what is that?

• 13:18Speaker 04

  Gaxartes, yeah, it's, um, oh, it's, um, uh, Gaxartes, it's the, uh, Yoda. Yeah, it's, it's the, it's the thing where, um, like Jason's name was Yason and it's the, it's the ancient Greek didn't have a sound for J. Didn't have that J sound and same in Latin, they never had the J sound, but it's sort of like in a, a Yoda, an I sound. So it's Gaxartes.

• 13:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Julius Caesar was, uh, Julius.

• 13:47Speaker 05

  Julius.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:49Liv Albert?

  Gaxar. No, okay, that's really interesting. That does sound, I don't know, that sounds like something out of, I mean, I, I just go straight to the, the myths that go far east, you know, like Jason and the Argonauts and what they start naming things when they go that far east is just interesting, so.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:05Liv Albert?

  But yeah, so this river in, yeah. Ignorant.

• 14:11Speaker 05

  Amongst, I'm amongst friends then.

• 14:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it's like, it's not unexpected on a podcast like this.

• 14:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:18Liv Albert?

  So this is in modern Tajikistan, you said?

• 14:21Speaker 05

  So the, the river itself, so the city is in modern Tajikistan, but it's, it's more of a kind of, uh, it, it, you know, the, the borders are completely fucked.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  There's, there's like bits of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and that should be as, but, and, and, uh, so it's, it's all like, if you go in and look at a, a map, it's all kind of a hot mess. So it's part of, uh, so Kujan or, or the, the city Alexandria Escute is at the very end, the very southwestern end of the Fergana Valley and the Fergana Valley is like a big deal back in Central Asia. It's just this flat area surrounded by mountains where lots of people live. And this is a place that the Chinese are going to come to again and again, but it's also a place that's, that's very much fought over by Central Asians. So Alexander three 29, he establishes this last city, uh, as he's trying to kind of construct a Central Asian empire.

• 15:17Liv Albert?

  And it goes so well.

• 15:18Speaker 05

  It goes so well.

• 15:19Liv Albert?

  He dies shortly after, I'm sure.

• 15:22Speaker 05

  Yes, uh, and, um,

• 15:25Speaker 05

  Things fall apart, but you know, that city, that Greek city lives on for about 200 or 300 years. We don't really know what happens to Alexandria Escute because, so I mean, we know it's there, established in 329. The last Greek text we have on it is 141 B.C. But we know that there were people writing in Greek in what is modern day Gujarat into the first century, like 100 AD, 150 AD, something like that. So like Greeks are there, like, or at least people writing in Greek are there. And you know, like, it's problematic to say they're Greeks.

• 16:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, it would be under Rome by then, but still, you're like, I mean, Rome, I don't even.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  It wouldn't be Rome. It would be like, yeah, it would be like.

• 16:14Liv Albert?

  Exactly. Not in terms of space, but like Greece wouldn't be Greece. Greece was under Rome by this point. So that's why, yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's so interesting.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  So you know, these Greeks writing, Greek speaking people are out there for a really long time. We don't really know what happened to them. What we do have is that, so the word in Sanskrit is yavana for Greek, and the word for it in Pali, which is, it's the big language in Buddhist studies. You know, it's like what a lot of Buddhists wrote in. That's yona. And these both derive from Ionia.

• 16:50Liv Albert?

  Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, that's so cool.

• 16:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. Just real quick about the yakartas. It's, it comes from like, it's Indo Iranian, so it comes from Sanskrit. And it's essentially just like a flowing, a streaming, a trickling sort of thing.

• 17:09Liv Albert?

  That's so fun.

• 17:11Speaker 05

  So we have, you know, we have this Alexandria Escute. It's established there on the, you said it was yasa?

• 17:22Speaker 04

  Yakartas.

• 17:24Speaker 05

  Yakartas, yakartas. This shows how much Greek I know.

• 17:32Liv Albert?

  It's a tough one.

• 17:34Speaker 05

  Uh, so the, the Yar Saktas, see even, even now I'm trying to give it a Chinese pronouncing.

• 17:43Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, the fun thing is.

• 17:43Liv Albert?

  That's what I do with everything that's not Greek, is I make it sound Greek.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  Ancient Greek was likely tonal, just as well.

• 17:49Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 17:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's, that's something that's kind of cool. And I love telling all my Chinese friends and then they're like, say something. I'm like, she, she, I say it wrong. I did the wrong tones. They're like, yeah. I'm like, okay, at least I know the tones.

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Oh, Yak Sartes.

• 18:07Speaker 05

  Yak Sartes. I'll try and get that. Sorry. By the, hopefully by the end of this recording, I'll be able to do it and y'all can just like take that and splice it in there.

• 18:15Liv Albert?

  You give us way too much credit. That's not happening, but I appreciate the thought.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Just do it in the Chinese.

• 18:22Liv Albert?

  But also like, we don't judge. Yeah. Yeah. You can speak Chinese. So I'm not, I'm certainly not judging. You're speaking of Greek.

• 18:30Speaker 05

  Um, so these Greeks are there for a while. They, they get there, you know, they established the city in three twenty nine. Um, and it disappears out of the Greek record in one forty one B.C. Chinese started exploring this region in one thirty eight B.C. And they're quickly going to get into this region. So we don't really know, uh, what happened. But the, the, so the, when the Chinese get out there, there are these people called the Yuan and they have a city called Ershu. And there has been some suggestion that the Yuan is coming from Yavanna. Uh, so it might actually be the Chinese pronunciation of the Sanskrit pronunciation of Ionia.

• 19:12Speaker 05

  And they have this city there that's right on a river, uh, just like Alexandria Escate, uh, Escute, uh, and they actually have a war. So the, they go to war with this group of people, uh, in, so, so the, the Chinese dude who Zhang Qian, who was kidnapped for 10 years. So he actually comes back to China in one twenty five B.C. And, uh, he was thought lost, you know, he was gone for 10 years.

• 19:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  And, uh, so he comes back and he brings this knowledge of Central Asia with him and he says,

• 19:51Speaker 05

  You know, they have all of this stuff, all of this nice stuff, including some horses that are way better than anything the Chinese have ever seen. They were, the Chinese words for them are heavenly horses, and then there's another kind that are called blood sweating horses. And they're called blood sweating horses because the Chinese see like red beads of sweat and they, they think it's, it's blood or something like that. Yeah. They've never seen horses like this. And Zhang Chen does a couple of missions and then he dies. And the, the emperor is like, I still want some of those horses. So he actually sends out some ambassadors, asks for the horses. He, he offers money to these Central Asian, the Yuan people.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  And they're like, the Yuan people say, these guys are from far away. They can't do anything to us. They had trouble crossing the Taklemakan Desert, which the Taklemakan Desert is really big. It's the size of Germany. Oh my gosh. It's the second largest Shiting Sand Desert. So when you think of desert like the Sahara, it's that kind of desert. Wow. And it's, it's right there. You have to go around it to get from, from the main part of China into Central Asia. And, and so it's really like quite difficult to cross. And so these Yuan people are like, you know, they, they're far away. They can't do anything. Let's just kill them.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  And so they just murder a lot of the, the Chinese ambassadors as they're, as they're returning home. It's not a smart move because the emperor goes, he's, he's pissed now. And he gets his brother-in-law, Li Guangli. He turns him into a general and says, go and smite them barbarians. And so he gives him 6,000 cavalry and a, tens of thousands of poorly trained young men, is what the text tells us, the Chinese text. And he sends them across this giant desert and says, go and attack these Yuan people and teach them a lesson for me. They don't make it across the desert. It's really hard to cross that desert. They're, they don't have that many troops.

• 21:57Speaker 05

  And when they get to these oasis cities, the oases are like, we don't give a fuck what you say. And they just close their doors. They don't give them food. So just like eventually these Chinese folks have to turn back. And he comes back to the edge of China, the general Li Guangli, and he sends a note to the emperor. He says, sorry, we tried really hard, but we couldn't do it. And we didn't even get there. The emperor is pissed. He says, anybody who crosses back into China from that army gets their head chopped off. And he, he, he wasn't a nice guy. If you couldn't tell.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  Say the least.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  Um, he, uh, he eventually, he thinks about it and he relents because he recognizes that, not that he's going to be a nice guy, but he, he, he recognizes that, you know, if he, if his army fails in Central Asia, then none of these Central Asian folks are going to respect him. So he eventually, so the, the first attack, the first attempt in what's called the War of the Blood Sweating Horses is in 104 B.C.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  Good name.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  I know, right?

• 23:11Speaker 04

  That's great.

• 23:12Speaker 05

  And then in, so the, the emperor basically doubles down on his bed. He gives Li Guangli 60,000 troops and 100,000 cattle, tens of thousands of camels, all kinds of stuff. And he gives, he basically empties out China's jails. And he says, you can use these guys as your, you know, these convicts as your, like to help you get across the desert and deal with logistics stuff. You know, it's this massive army crossing the desert. And this time.

• 23:45Speaker 05

  This time, when they cross the desert, most towns open up. These oasis cities are like, "Ooh, this is a big army. We're gonna, we're gonna feed them and open our gates." And one doesn't, Lun Tai, and they get destroyed. Their leader gets his head cut off. And anyways, they, they, so Li Guangli, General Li Guangli, reaches the city of Ershur, and he immediately diverts the river from, away from the city so that they can't have any water. That's how they, they get their water. And the Yuan people are like, "Woo, we really fucked up. This is bad, this is bad." So they come up with a solution, which is basically cut off their own king's head,

• 24:30Speaker 05

  send it out alongside a bunch of those blood sweating horses. And that, that resolves everything. Li Guangli is able to go back to his emperor and say, "Look, I did what you wanted, I got it." And things are hunky dory after that. You know, it's this massive amount of money is spent. I think in the first, that 104 B.C. attempt, 15 to 20% of his troops come back, if I remember.

• 25:02Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 25:03Speaker 05

  So it's like this massive loss of life.

• 25:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 05

  And yeah, that's, that's the beginning of Chinese colonization of Central Asia. You have Zhang Qian, who is an explorer, and then you have this military expedition. And then about 50 or so years later, you're gonna have settler colonialists coming into, to modern day, what is modern day Xinjiang and settling along there. So the Chinese have actually been in this region for a really long time, over 2,000 years. But their occupation of that region has been very limited. It's only been for short bits of time. But it's interesting to think that this might be the only time when Chinese armies met Greek armies on the field.

• 26:05Liv Albert?

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• 26:49Liv Albert?

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• 28:43Liv Albert?

  That's so interesting. Also, I can't stop thinking about all of the parallels that story has with Greek myths in these really just straight interesting ways. Like, obviously, all of this stuff is happening after the Greek myths have well been developed. But, you know, I don't know if you've thought of any of this, Michaela, but like, the blood-sweating horses makes me think of Diomedes's horses, which is one of Heracles's labors, because they're man-eating horses. So they're meant to be terrifying in a somewhat similar way. And there's similarly, like, another of Heracles's labors involves diverting a river. And then, oh, and just like wanting that type of godly horse is like straight out of Greek myths, too.

• 29:27Liv Albert?

  It's just fascinating the way those things. I think it's just like connecting the ways that ancient peoples talk about things like that. But I just love seeing those parallels in like real stories from centuries later, even.

• 29:41Speaker 05

  And we don't know, you know, we have no evidence. So we're not certain that these are Greeks. But if they were, and they're manning the walls there, like, those kinds of mythologies would have been on their mind when this is happening, you know, like.

• 29:54Liv Albert?

  And especially one like Heracles, because that's the mythos that we know traveled the farthest and was like spread well into other areas, right? Even if like under different names and things, whether or not, wherever it originated from, but like.

• 30:07Speaker 05

  I should mention that along the, so like we have

• 30:12Speaker 05

  images or statues of Athena in Xinjiang. And so like in modern day, uh, modern, the People's Republic of China in Xinjiang. There, there are statues that have been discovered of Athena. We have cave paintings that look really, really Greek. You know, this is the, the Silk Road. So Buddhism is coming in with kind of like going through Central Asia. And, and these Greeks are, are around at the time, these kinds of, uh, this stuff is, is being, this information, these religions are, are pulsing through Central Asia. So that, that kind of connection is probably there. It's hard to, to tell, but it's probably there.

• 30:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:52Liv Albert?

  That's so interesting.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's okay. I was just looking up the city because there's so many Alexandrias.

• 30:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  It, it's like a whole thing. So I was like curious about this city itself. And I just did like cursory Google search, hello Wikipedia.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  And so it was interesting because I'm seeing like, um, a Roman writer, Curtius is saying that it, it kept sort of like Greek culture even present within this city until like 30 BCE. So I'm like, I'm trying to situate my brain in like time right now. So this sort of like interaction happened around, you said 127, wasn't it?

• 31:32Speaker 05

  So Zhang Qian first goes out there in 138 B.C. But the War of the Blood Sweating Horses, he comes back, sorry. He comes back in 125 B.C. And then the War of the Blood Sweating Horses is 104 B.C. and then 102 B.C.

• 31:47Speaker 04

  Okay. So then, and then they, um, and then China kind of like leaves, but then they come back and start doing more colonizing of, of Central Asia.

• 31:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  You said 50 years later.

• 31:57Speaker 05

  About 50 years later. It's, the sources are not super great and they don't, they're not colonizing.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  Timing's always difficult.

• 32:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. They're not colonizing the, they don't really, so at this point, they're not coming that far out. There are occasions, so later on, China's greatest poet, Li Bai, who's born around the year 700 AD. He was actually born in modern day Kyrgyzstan, and he probably wasn't Chinese. And there, so there are Chinese colonies deeper into Central Asia than, like even farther than modern day China extends. But at the very least, like the Chinese colonizing that region 50 years later, probably didn't make it to, to, to Zhejiang. But they're out there, you know, they're, they're trading.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  There's an awareness of each other. So I'm curious, like, if there is any indication, and maybe this is not a great question, but I don't know. But like, if there's any indication of something that seems Greek-esque coming into China? And if there's like that cultural sort of like trading and between each other? And I don't like, that may be something that it's easier for like someone who is trained in classics to see. But I'm curious if we see anything Greek-like then, moving in.

• 33:15Speaker 05

  Buddhism, I'd say, is the most prominent example. You have lots of artistry that's coming in, that's clearly has something to do with Greece. The, the, the faces, the faces look kind of, I mean, they, they look not Indic, but they look, and certainly not Chinese. And the Chinese are very aware that they're, they, these people look really different. That would I say, I think, be the, the clearest example.

• 33:42Liv Albert?

  Interesting. That's really interesting. Yeah.

• 33:44Speaker 05

  Can, can I take a look really quickly? I think I have a better answer. Um, yeah, so, uh, Michaela, just to answer your question. So I was looking up where I, that statue of Athena was. So there were tons of, um, there were, there was Athena and some other Greek gods who were on tablets in the Silk Road city of Nia, um, which is kind of on the eastern end of the Taklamakan Desert there. So it's, it's something that probably did go farther into, into China, but we, we just, you know, have evidence of it.

• 34:20Liv Albert?

  That's I just, these are such, these are connections you never think about. Like you just, because the, the fields of study even are just so separated.

• 34:28Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 34:29Liv Albert?

  Like, but this is, you have fascinating timing because the, the next thing I was going to ask is, so I, a few months ago, spoke to Owen Rees, uh, who's written, are, are you familiar with his work at all?

• 34:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I, I haven't read his book, but I, I saw the blow.

• 34:44Liv Albert?

  No, you know what I'm talking about?

• 34:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know.

• 34:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah. So yeah, this, the far edges of the known, or of the known world now, the farthest of the empire, something like that. Anyway, that was terrible, but it was a great book, or I haven't read it. I'm going to edit this to see what it sounds like.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  Listen, I listened to the podcast y'all did with him, so that's, yeah.

• 35:00Liv Albert?

  Oh, great. Yeah. I know. And Owen is great. And I just know it's good because I, I know Owen's work. But one of the things, I don't pretend I've read every book, but people come on, that's why they come on the show to explain it to me. But Owen was talking about this moment, and of course I'm going to misremember, but if you listen, that's going to be very helpful. Cause there's this moment where it seems like China might very nearly touch base with Rome. And then maybe gives up at the last minute. Is that what I'm kind of remembering?

• 35:28Speaker 04

  This is, this is, this is a thing I have heard about for years and the, the, the short Michaela remembering, because just classic student is like, they sent him, they heard about some great empire.

• 35:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And then they went looking.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  They sent like an ambassador being like, go find them. And he gets to like, I think it's the Red Sea or something. And he's all like, how much farther till I can get there? And they're like, oh, this long. And he went, nah. And went, just goes back.

• 35:54Liv Albert?

  And like the border of the empire was like just over the way.

• 35:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I'm like, that's, yeah, the base, but I, it's a story.

• 36:03Liv Albert?

  What do you know about this?

• 36:05Speaker 05

  So in 166 A.D., there was a guy from the country that, that we think is Rome, it's Daqing, who came to China and he, he was like, oh, you know, I'm, I'm from China, or excuse me, I'm from Rome. Can I be an ambassador? And, uh, the Chinese said, or the Chinese said yes. And he presented them with a bunch of stuff. That he said was from Rome. Looking at it, it looks more like he was from Southeast Asia and he was just lying.

• 36:37Liv Albert?

  For him.

• 36:37Speaker 05

  Right? Because I mean, you know, like you can make a lot of money in this kind of trade. And so it makes sense to pretend like you're coming from some far away mythical semi mythical place like Rome. Whoever heard of that?

• 36:49Liv Albert?

  Well, and no one's checking ID. Like you can say whatever you want.

• 36:52Speaker 05

  I mean, I'm sure he like looked funny and looked funny to the Chinese. So they would assume, yes, this is a, you know, far away place. And you know, this is a kind of thing that you see throughout Chinese history, like people claiming to come from some far away place when we're not actually sure. We think they might just be bullshitting them, which is, you know, happens.

• 37:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And again, good for him. But so did they send someone then looking at all or?

• 37:23Speaker 05

  I don't know of that. But I'm, I'm not as necessarily like I could have totally missed it. We don't have that much in terms of like Roman money, Roman coinage. Really doesn't appear in China until it's Byzantine. It's not, it's not like classical, what you think of when you think of like Rome, Rome.

• 37:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. That's quite interesting. I mean, yeah, and it's, it's one of those things where like, these are the types of connections that, I mean, I just want to kind of hammer it home for the listeners too, who don't know the background of it. But like these types of connections are so hard to figure out because it completely depends on what type of, you know, evidence you're looking at. And it's like, if it's text, then okay, we can know that they wrote it, but we don't know how true it is. And like what would be the material culture that survives from something like that? Like you'd have like a coin is a really good example of like evidential, like material culture, like a physical piece of evidence. But otherwise, yeah, you're working with what they wrote down or what random, you know, tiniest maybe fraction of a piece of evidence and speculating.

• 38:29Liv Albert?

  Oh, interesting. And also, I want to know all the answers.

• 38:31Speaker 04

  And and yeah, material culture is a little difficult in the sense too, that like, things can move over great distance.

• 38:38Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 38:38Speaker 04

  Very easily.

• 38:39Liv Albert?

  Coins are the best example.

• 38:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, without being like, without there being direct contact, because it can literally just be like this guy being like, I got this from a guy who got it from a guy who interacted with these people in this area that there's a great sea, you know? And so like, that that itself, like, there doesn't need to be direct contact for things to be moving along. And I think for me, the more, when I think of like, oh, there might be more direct contact is when I see sort of like, um, I mean, like, if I, if I see like a gymnasium in a city, I'm like, the Greeks were there.

• 39:17Liv Albert?

  So easy, or like a theater, you're like, okay.

• 39:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're like, you see a very Roman or Greek theater, you're like, ah, they were there. So like, more like cultural touchstones, I think.

• 39:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  I mean, there's just so much moving around through this period. So, uh, you know, there's, uh, Jews going through Central Asia into China. Um, and so we have, this is much later, but we have, uh, we know that there were Jews there until like recently, uh, until, I mean, there's, there are still Jews living in in China today who came more than a thousand years ago. So like, we know that this kind of cultural exchange is happening. Um, uh, and and when I say recently, I mean, like today, uh, the, the, so two years ago, I think, the, uh, one of the like, leading Jewish figures in, uh,

• 40:11Speaker 05

  uh, the, the main, the, the last place where they had a synagogue in

• 40:16Liv Albert?

  Wow, in China.

• 40:17Speaker 05

  She was, she was kidnapped and, and, uh, kept in.

• 40:20Liv Albert?

  Holy shit.

• 40:21Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah, it's very, very real. You have, um, uh, you know, lots of Jewish writing, uh, turning up along the Silk Road and all this stuff. But it's something that like, you know, the, the difference between 2,000 years ago or 1,000 years ago and today, it's not that far apart, you know, these, these things, they, the history matters.

• 40:41Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, God, history matters. Like, so.

• 40:46Speaker 05

  I'm pitching to the choir, right?

• 40:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Truly. I mean, there's always a good, there's always more opportunity to talk about it. No, it's it's such like, yeah, it's it's the history of this stuff matters so much, especially when it comes to the history of colonization and imperialism and and I mean, I don't know lately, for absolutely no reason, I've just been thinking a lot about fallen empires and like what that looks like, you know, when an empire starts to crumble.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  So can I can I I'll just jump in. So my Chinese history knowledge is very um bad. That being said,

• 41:23Liv Albert?

  Guarantee you know more than me.

• 41:25Speaker 04

  Well, and so

• 41:27Speaker 05

  Better than my Greek pronunciation.

• 41:29Speaker 04

  That's so fair. You should see my Chinese pronunciation. I love to. So so this is kind of a thing. So I grew up in a part of town that is, and I'm going to go up in Vancouver. So we have a very um high population of Chinese and Korean and other South Asian peoples. Um, and so most of my friends are Chinese or Korean and Taiwanese, et cetera, um, not really Japanese. So, but I was like so much so that they they were like, oh, she's one of the white kids. And what they meant by that was she's not Asian because of First Nations. So I always joke with them. I'm like, well, if you go back far enough, we're related. And they're like,

• 42:07Speaker 04

  then you're Mongolian. That's another problem. I'm like, stop. We're not getting into this. But we've talked a lot about um Chinese history and stuff and not well. To be fair, um, and me and my best friend are starting a book club together where we both we pick books on the same topic and then talk about it. And so our first topic is going to be Empress. I'm going to say this so wrong. Empress Cici, is it?

• 42:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:34Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, because I'm just fascinated also in sort of like the past, the amount of change that has happened in China in the past, like a hundred and twenty five years, something like that with like things coming in. It's like because this was kind of goes on lives topic about like empire and empire falling. The change that happened within China that I'm aware of modernly was so drastic when sort of like the empire fell. Quotation marks. It was like so much so that like, yes, very, and, and that like, there was even like, super like, removal of like, culture, like, you're not allowed to do these specific X, Y, Z things that tries to like, push down on traditional like, myth and understanding and religion and beliefs.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  And yeah, and I don't know where I'm going with this, but like, this is like, just sort of on the culture, uh, empire falling thing. It's interesting to, I think, that sometimes in the West, we kind of see that idea of that continuous empire, because, like, back to like, four thousand years ago, whenever, when the Chinese quote-unquote empire started, that it really didn't really fall until hundred years ago. Where am I going with this?

• 43:44Speaker 05

  I think I see, I think I see a connection, like, uh, you know, during the Cultural Revolution, China, they, they destroyed their, their, uh, a lot of cultural, like, it's hard to say they destroyed their culture, because I don't even know what that means. But they, they destroyed, uh, like, they, they vilified Chinese culture. Anything that was ancient was regarded as feudal and therefore vile. And it, it's something like, in the nineteen eighties, I'm just reading a book who, by Orville Shaw, who's now the head of the Asia Society, but back then was just, he somehow got into China in nineteen seventy-five and, uh, was a factory worker for really, like, for, for a couple of years, like, just one of these weird things, but he's, he's there.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  War a wild time.

• 44:28Speaker 05

  He's there in China in the nineteen eighties, and he's talking about like, how, uh, the CCP basically vilified Chinese culture and Chinese history so much that, today, like, kids only want to do stuff that is Western, that they perceive as having value, because the, the Chinese culture was destroyed by the CCP. And it, it, it's not like in a kind of, like, uh, oh, the CCP is bad, they did this. It's like, that, the CCP set out as their objective, like, to, to destroy these older, older elements. Now, that has changed, like, the CCP has become kind of the guardian of Chinese culture. Or at least they, they see themselves as that way, and it's, it's because they're pushing this nationalism.

• 45:10Speaker 05

  But this, this, this is a, you know, a drastic turn from, from where they were in nineteen seventy. They were, they were just. Destroying Confucius. And I mean that literally, like they destroyed the the Confucian temples and things like that.

• 45:24Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's interesting and horrifying. And I, sorry, this made me think too, because I, I don't know, I just, we're, we're deep in this conversation now and Greece has kind of fluttered away. And that's fine.

• 45:34Speaker 05

  We can get there, we can get back.

• 45:35Liv Albert?

  No, and great. But I, I mean, you mentioned a, a name earlier that I, I just, I don't even know if I'm asking a question. I just feel the need to mention it. But I know you mentioned the Uighurs earlier because they were generally in the area. And the only thing heartbreaking that I know about them is that China is genocided or genociding.

• 45:53Speaker 04

  So.

• 45:54Speaker 05

  So the Uighurs are fascinating because, and this is kind of one of the things that the book points out is even just because you're a victim, doesn't mean you're the good guy, right? Or it doesn't mean you're, you're, it, it, just because you're a victim, doesn't mean you're, you're completely honest and completely truthful. So today, you know, the, the Uighurs are experiencing probably a genocide. It, it, it's more of a Muslim genocide. They're targeting all Muslims in Xinjiang, not just Uighurs, but Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, others in, in that, in that region. And the Uighurs are trying to claim that they're indigenous to Xinjiang. What's crazy is that the Chinese, the Han Chinese colonized Xinjiang about a thousand years before the Uighurs ever got there.

• 46:38Speaker 05

  So the Uighurs start their existence. We, we have their first kind of like, understanding of their existence from Chinese texts, starting in the 600s. And they're in Mongolia. They're like a thousand miles away from Xinjiang. They're in middle of Mongolia. We know exactly where they are because they have these, these big stones that they've carved their ancient Turkish ruins into. And so we, we know where they are. We know where their capital city was. You can still visit it today. It's in the middle, it's dead center of Mongolia. They, basically, they are kind of like one of these Turkic speaking groups that's there on the edges of the Chinese empire. They're growing in importance. They establish an empire, a Uighur empire in 744 A.D.

• 47:26Speaker 05

  And then almost immediately, they they become very wealthy by basically instead of so most Turkic groups and most of these these non-Chinese groups that lived in north of China, they would come into China and they would raid and rape and pillage and just do all of that stuff that you kind of like pirates of the step.

• 47:44Liv Albert?

  I mean, every I feel like both sides.

• 47:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:49Liv Albert?

  Every side.

• 47:51Speaker 05

  But they so the the way these groups all did this is basically like the step to to like if you're on horseback, Chinese armies can only chase you so far before they run out of food. So if you just don't have stuff, if you just, you know, all of your stuff can be packed on a horse, you can run really far to the point where it's just not cost effective for the Chinese to come after you. So that's what they these other groups would do. The Uighurs actually make an alliance. They save Tang China. So Tang China is in seven, the 750s, a guy who's probably Persian, Turkish, his name is An Lushan, just to bring it back to Greece a little bit. So Roxanne, the name is is the Persian word of the wife

• 48:33Speaker 05

  that Alexander, the last wife Alexander marries. That's the same like Lushan, An Lushan, the Lushan there is the same Persian word. So this is these worlds are connected. So An Lushan, he rebels, he tears the Tang Empire apart. Tang, the Tang is like the cultural apex of Chinese-ness, and it just rips it apart, and it never really recovers. Anyways, the Uighurs, the Uighurs, they become big by basically saying, hey, we'll help you, you know, we'll be your cavalry, we'll be your get it done force. And so they save, they save the Tang Empire. And then they get rich, and then they completely collapse in 839,

• 49:14Speaker 05

  840, and they, some of them go into China and disappear, some of them go to Xinjiang, and they form an empire there. So they don't get to Xinjiang until like the 850s. A thousand years after China has already started colonizing the region and they they are colonialist too when they arrive they come in on horseback. There are groups there who are already there they take them over. Uh, and they have the small weaker kingdom that last for a little bit. Um, they get colonized as well while they're out there. Um, but eventually they are kind of saved and destroyed by uh, Genghis Khan. So the Uighurs have this close relationship with the Mongols, the. The first person to write Mongolian is actually a Uighur. Uh, Uighur comes up with the, the script, it's based off of.

• 50:01Speaker 05

  It's based off of Sogdian, which is connected to Aramaic. So you have this surprising connection like Aramaic becomes Sog- Aramaic writing, Aramaic script becomes Sogdian, becomes. Uighur becomes Mongolian. So like the traditional Mongolian script is actually loosely has this connection to, to Aramaic, the language that, that you know, Jesus spoke.

• 50:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  I was getting French Canadian vibes.

• 50:26Liv Albert?

  From Aramaic.

• 50:27Speaker 04

  No, no, no, from Uighurs.

• 50:29Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, very, yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Well, I'm like, still, I'm still. I'm allowed to.

• 50:35Liv Albert?

  Colonizers who were colonized.

• 50:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that's a bummer.

• 50:39Speaker 04

  But not as bad.

• 50:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  You know, the, the, they're not, they are victims, but they're.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 05

  They're also victimizing, right? Like, no one, no one's innocent. No one's innocent.

• 50:50Liv Albert?

  Well, yeah, and that's a thousand years ago too. So it doesn't really change anything about the people getting victimized today.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  That's right, yeah. And that I, cause I do remember when I first started hearing about it, I, I always heard not just the Uighurs, but the Muslim Uighurs. And so I think that's interesting, cause is this, okay, now, uh, we're so, but I'm so interested.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  Cause you were talking also about the last synagogue in China. And the, the woman being um, kidnapped. Is this, is there a, is this? A thing against like, I don't wanna say like Western religions, but sort of.

• 51:21Speaker 05

  Non-Chinese religions, yeah, absolutely.

• 51:23Speaker 04

  So with, this is like. Oh, okay.

• 51:25Speaker 05

  It's a thing, yeah.

• 51:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 05

  And what's crazy is, what's crazy is the, the current Chinese government perceives Buddhism to be a Chinese religion, even though we know.

• 51:34Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 51:35Speaker 05

  Like, it started in India, right? Like, it, it's totally arbitrary, but Islam, yeah.

• 51:40Speaker 04

  Thing happening with Christianity, though.

• 51:42Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 51:43Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Okay, so it's, oh, wow.

• 51:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, it started with Christianity, actually, like, it was, yeah, yeah. Um, so she is there in

• 51:54Speaker 05

  Jiajiang in Fujian, uh, probably, I forget the exact dates, like, in the nineties, early two thousands, he's there, Xi Jinping, and, uh, a ton of crosses, uh, go up on these churches. He really doesn't like it. So, uh, uh, um, Jiajiang, there's a city called Wenzhou that's referred to as China's Jerusalem, um, just because it has so many churches, which doesn't really make much sense, because there's not actually that many churches in Jerusalem, but whatever.

• 52:21Speaker 05

  But, but, uh, um, those all get torn down as he, as he takes power in the, the twenty, late twenty teens, early twenty twenties. Those are, those are destroyed. Um, uh, uh, you know, there's, there's, there's many more Muslims in China than there are Christians. Uh, and so I think there are more Muslims in China than there are in Saudi Arabia, if I remember correctly.

• 52:42Liv Albert?

  Well, based on China's geography, again, like, that's what colonization does, like, that's what happens when you take over such a large amount of space.

• 52:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:51Liv Albert?

  Ah, sorry.

• 52:54Liv Albert?

  Colonization makes me wanna scream.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  And China's like, it's the third biggest country, and I think that's something that gets forgotten, is just how massive of a country it is. I know. I love looking at, just like, a map of the world, and I'm like, America, you're small, what are you doing? That's, it's fine, it's fine that you're small, buddies. It's okay. But like, because that's sort of, and that's the thing, when you have, um, that much space that isn't super northern and not covered in ice all the time, you know? There's lots of space for people to live, and there's, I'm also assuming that there is a lot of geographical variance that causes division, and that creates insular communities that kind of grow up and have different cultures and ideas.

• 53:36Liv Albert?

  Again, looking at you, Canada.

• 53:39Speaker 04

  Look, yeah.

• 53:41Liv Albert?

  Like honestly, though, like I grew up in the, like, it's just, but there's the, I just mean the amount of land.

• 53:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, yeah, because I think always think that's wild is to think about is, um, there are more language groups in British Columbia than there is in Europe, I think. And, but that's not true for the rest of the country. And that's only because of the division of the, uh, the Baki Mountains. It's why indigenous people in British Columbia are so vastly different from, um, not vastly different, but very different from, uh, over the mountains. Cause there is a more, it's, you know, it's easier to walk across a plane than it is to go up, uh, the Baki Mountains, such new mountains.

• 54:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 54:18Speaker 04

  Um, but yeah, so. Oh, where was I?

• 54:22Liv Albert?

  No, but think of China having such similar things, right? Because we think about it in relation to, to our own country, but it's such similar issues. You know, this nature of this, like, the amount of space and the way that that makes cultures naturally different. And then trying to squish them all into one is always going to, you know, end up with someone getting squished.

• 54:44Speaker 05

  So it took from, from, so China has a base in Lanzhou in the, I think, eighteen twenties. So this is the Qing Empire. Um, they have taken over Xinjiang by this point. They took over Xinjiang in seventeen fifty-eight, uh, and it has been Chinese ever since then, but they have lots of rebellions. Uh, particularly coming from Uzbekistan, the Fergana Valley that I was talking about. Um, they have a rebellion in the eighteen twenties, I think. And from their most westerly base, their most westerly kind of logistical hub, it takes them six months to get an army from there to the other end of China. To the, as far east, uh, excuse me, as far west as you can go. So to Kashgar, which is right there. It's the city kind of on the border with, uh, Kyrgyzstan.

• 55:29Speaker 05

  Um, so it's, it's just this, there's, and you know, like I said, you had to cross a desert. Uh, there's lots of mountains in the way, and just like in Canada, it's not easy to move troops across mountains. So there is that kind of geographical diversity that y'all are talking about, but it's also the history of empires, right? Like a lot of the Muslims came into China. As conquerors, right? The, the, the, the head of finance, the head of China's finance in the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongol Dynasty that ruled over China for a hundred years. His name was Ahmed, right? He was a Muslim guy from Central Asia. The Muslims during that period when Kublai Khan ruled China, the Muslims were, were in charge of the money. Like the Mongols chose Central Asian Muslims and they said, you know, you're, you're going to be in charge of the money.

• 56:14Speaker 05

  They didn't put Han Chinese officials in charge of the money. They chose these, these Muslim bureaucrats to, to be in charge. And, and when that collapsed, they were like, what are we going to do? And so that's why even, you know, I've been to villages on the border of Vietnam where you have half Muslim, half Chinese villages and they're divided and it's very tense. These people just wound up there as kind of the orphans of empire.

• 56:43Liv Albert?

  Orphans of empire is a great term and it brings me right back to-

• 56:47Speaker 05

  Good book title too, right?

• 56:48Liv Albert?

  It is, yeah. It, it brings me back to the, one of the other things that my conversation with Owen Rees, like that I will never let go of now is that there is evidence of Greek colonies in Ukraine that lasted longer than the rest of Greece because they were so far away from Greece.

• 57:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:08Liv Albert?

  And that's, it's just one of these things that I think we don't think about enough. We think, I mean, I mean, unless you're in, in these worlds of like researching this level of history, it's so hard to get access to that because otherwise you're just imagining these places as like singular entities, like existing in this vacuum, you know? And, but it's so much more interesting to be like, look at all of this overlap of these ancient peoples.

• 57:32Speaker 05

  And I mean, you have those Greek colonies lasting in India until 100 AD or something, right? It's, it's just-

• 57:37Liv Albert?

  See, another great example.

• 57:39Speaker 05

  So weird how these kinds of things kind of, they can, they can kind of hold their own and, and it doesn't fit into the, the history of the nation state that we think of, oh, you know, China, exactly the same for the past couple of thousand years, we're just going to project that immediately back. No, it didn't, didn't work like that.

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• 59:27Liv Albert?

  Well, I actually, this is real quick, Nerdy, and then you're gonna go in, Michaela, because I have to tell you that there is evidence of this in Canada that I only recently learned about, which is that, Michaela, mostly, did you know this? But also you, Lee, there is an island off the coast of Newfoundland that is French.

• 59:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:43Liv Albert?

  I didn't know that.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  You have to use your passport to go there and you use Euros.

• 59:46Liv Albert?

  It's tiny, and it's like, right?

• 59:48Speaker 04

  I know. Jack talks about it all the time and I'm just like, okay.

• 59:51Speaker 05

  My dad really wants to go there. I don't know.

• 59:53Liv Albert?

  Really?

• 59:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:54Liv Albert?

  See, and I was like, that's an evidence of, of like, an orphan of empire that's like, sorry, what? And you know, like...

• 1:00:01Speaker 04

  It's beautiful. I'm like, I want to go there just for the like novelty of being like, well, time to put my Canadian dollars aside and pick up my euros and be like, hello.

• 1:00:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's crazy. It's like the much more exciting sibling of Point Roberts. You know, okay, I love that everyone here knows Point Roberts.

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Liv Albert?

  Anyone else?

• 1:00:23Speaker 05

  I saw it on the plane coming back.

• 1:00:25Liv Albert?

  Ah, there you go, Steve. I want, I remember I was on a ferry once when I discovered that I was just on my maps and I was like, what the fuck is this? Why is, why is there a little bit of America here? Oh, I know the COVID issues.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, the movement issues got really, because the issue is that um, there, the schools the kids go to are not in Point Roberts, they're on.

• 1:00:45Liv Albert?

  Everything's in Canada, yeah.

• 1:00:47Speaker 04

  Not in Canada, it's in the United States, just under the border. So the rule, what we had set up was that they, their school bus could go like up and over the border every day. And then all the issues started, started in the past like year and a bit. And now there's, there's a lot of tension. There's a lot of tension where it's like, I, we don't know if we want to let you be crossing our borders. And I'm like, they're eight year olds.

• 1:01:14Speaker 05

  Do those kids have to carry passports when they're on the bus?

• 1:01:17Speaker 04

  I don't think so. No, because.

• 1:01:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's probably why it's that special.

• 1:01:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like, it's, it's this weird, uh, this, it's really interesting that the discussions that are happening specifically here because of sort of like this really close tie that we have with.

• 1:01:30Liv Albert?

  Has been like.

• 1:01:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. And the, the, the, the border towns in Amerika I know have been hit really hard because they're like, but we're friends. And then suddenly Candace was like, but we don't know if we can trust you. And not necessarily you, but the royal you. And it is such, but anyways, um, back to China.

• 1:01:52Liv Albert?

  No, but Empire, yeah, it's just, again, like, I think it's fun to make these connections to this, these orphans of Empire, these like bizarre little things where it's like this reminder that modern borders and like modern Empire generally is, is a, it's just nonsense in the form of like rich people controlling everything else. Like, that's all it is. It's, it doesn't make any, you know, logical sense in the grand scheme of humanity, I don't think.

• 1:02:19Speaker 05

  In the book, I talk about Xinjiang, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as really these remnants of empire. And you think of Hong Kong, so Hong Kong obviously has this British imperial past. But what I talk about, so that's totally there.

• 1:02:34Speaker 05

  It's totally, you know, that that happened. But I talk about actually how the region around Hong Kong, so Guangdong, is 127 million people. It's the largest province in modern China.

• 1:02:46Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:02:47Speaker 05

  2,000 years ago, it wasn't part of China.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:02:49Speaker 05

  They invaded and they they actually like colonized that. And they took three regions, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Zhaoji. Zhaoji becomes Vietnam. Guangdong and Guangxi become Chinese. But there's no reason that they had to. Like, these accidents of empire are just that, they're accidents.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, so about a year ago, I went to, um, my best friend's currently working in China because that's where she could get work. She is Chinese, she's from, uh, oh shit, Brittany, I'm so sorry. Juliet's from Shanghai. Brittany's from Beijing. There we go. But she was living in Shenzhen. So I went to go visit her for various other reasons. And we were hanging out. It was great. People were very nice to me. Honestly, I'm like, that was my first trip to China. And I was like, dude, can I just like, like, there's some benefits that I loved there that of just like, the ease of transportation. I didn't like that all my money was on my phone. I was really bothered by that. I was like, give me cash. And she's like, we don't do that.

• 1:03:54Speaker 04

  And I'm like, give me cash.

• 1:03:59Speaker 04

  But we, um, you know, Shenzhen's like right beside Hong Kong. Like, I was kind of describing, this is a really bad description, but excuse me. I was like, Shenzhen is like the Burnaby of of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is Vancouver, Shenzhen's Burnaby. And one day, we were like, okay, let's go to Hong Kong. We took the train, you know, 15 minute train. And then on the other side, it was like, okay, now we have to go through customs. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? And so we did that. It was such a weird experience because I'm like, but this is still China. And she went, yes, but you must go through customs. I'm like, okay. She showed me her page on her passport.

• 1:04:39Speaker 04

  That's just like all the Hong Kong stamps coming in and out of Shenzhen and Hong Kong. And then when I was on there, I tried to pay for things with the the phone and they were like, oh, you can only do that if you're mainland Chinese. And at that point, I hadn't been bringing my wallet anywhere because I didn't need it in China. And I was like, I have no money on me. Brittany's like, well, I will be paying for everything. And I ended up getting a panic attack in Hong Kong because there was too many cars and too many people. And I was like, we need to leave. Like, I see Shenzhen, it's right there. But in that process, Brittany was telling me about how when her dad was young, and he's always amazed when he would come to visit her in Shenzhen, because when he was young, Shenzhen was like, just a tiny

• 1:05:23Speaker 04

  little town. Yeah, nothing.

• 1:05:25Speaker 05

  Rice paddies.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. And he's, he comes there now, and he's like, there's all these towers. It's like this, it's a giant city. And I think that's really interesting, because it's just like, I don't know, like, I don't know anymore of the history of Shenzhen, but.

• 1:05:41Speaker 05

  So Shenzhen is interesting, because the, so it was just rice paddies in nineteen seventy nine, nineteen eighty, when it was kind of essentially imagined out of thin air. I mean, it had been like a thing. There had been farms there, but but it wasn't a city. Part of the reason, though, it wasn't a city was artificial. The CCP actually kept it underdeveloped intentionally because people were running from Guangdong in and trying to escape into Hong Kong.

• 1:06:10Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:06:10Speaker 05

  And so they, that then actually, you know, having no city there made it easier to monitor that. I actually had a professor, a friend, whose whose father was was from Guangdong, and he actually fled to Hong Kong in the nineteen seventies. He had to drink his own urine and swim across the border and stuff. It is, you know, like, and that happened to lots of people. And so they were trying to prevent, you know, prevent people from crossing the border there. And one of the ways they did that is just keeping, like, not allowing a city to build up there. But you're right, like, it goes, you know, it's rice paddies. It's just rice paddies in nineteen seventy nine. And then now it's one of the, you know, it has a stock market.

• 1:06:48Speaker 04

  It's massive. It has the the gold exchange is there. Yeah. And that was fun to walk around. I'm like, how much is this? And they were like, this much. I'm like, goodbye.

• 1:06:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  But

• 1:07:01Liv Albert?

  Whoa, interesting.

• 1:07:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, because I think when I think of that, when I think of China, because I think what happens in the West to people who are, and I mean, education on China is not super available out here. Like, I'm constantly trying to find like just a good book that can give me like the basics of Chinese history that I can like bounce off onto other things and I can never find something easily. Um, and in the West.

• 1:07:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I have a great option here.

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, because it's, I think what happens is we get this idea of China and it's very like, very eastern and like northern and central is sort of the idea. And I think that's like the, where the origin of like the Han Dynasty was, like it was more like northeastern-y, I could be very wrong, but like, I think just like Beijing, Shanghai area. Does that make sense?

• 1:07:49Speaker 05

  No, they were more central.

• 1:07:51Speaker 04

  Damn. But it, it becomes almost like a monolith in the West.

• 1:07:57Speaker 05

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  This idea of China, when it's like, that's not the case. Um, even like, like I, I grew up with a lot of Chinese friends, the difference between like my Kanto and Mando friends.

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  So different.

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  Is vast, very different. And then let's not even talk about my Taiwanese friends. That's a whole other, like, I'm just like, I'm on her side. I don't know what, I'm just, I'm on her, I'm First Nations, I'm on her side. And actually, all my other friends are also on her side as well.

• 1:08:27Speaker 05

  Um, so it's totally outside of like, uh, Mediterranean Greek stuff, but like,

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Speaker 05

  You think about China as being, uh, so like people talk about China as not being an imperial power, but Taiwan is actually this awesome case to show how imperial it is. It was actually a ruled over, I mean, in this, in, in the year 1600, it was a hundred thousand Aboriginal people. There were almost no Chinese people there. Uh, the Dutch come in 1624, they establish a colony, they bring in Chinese across the water, just like, so just like the Dutch did and, and other European colonists did in North America, uh, where they, they brought in African slaves. You know, the Dutch in Taiwan bring Chinese folks who are familiar with intensive agriculture. They, uh, have this long tradition.

• 1:09:10Speaker 05

  of intensive agriculture and they develop it as an agricultural economy and slowly they're pushing the Aboriginal folk up deeper into the mountains and on to less and less desirable land, at least less and less desirable for for an agricultural empire. And then the Chinese take over and continue that same thing. So there's there's this kind of interesting question of like how imperial China is and it's very imperial, it's very colonial.

• 1:09:38Liv Albert?

  I would assume, yeah. I think it's such an interesting, like, I just think the propaganda is so interesting. And I say this as somebody who like admittedly minimal, you know, knowledge of China, except for I just know that I am like aware of everything that is said about them and the US. And I'm always kind of like, okay, you know, who's what's actually happening here? Because these are two countries that like propagandize about each other. And I that it fully translates into Canada too, but it is coming from the States. I mean, even like at every level, it is originating from, I think, America's relationship with China and then how we have to adapt. Because like, it's just fascinating to just see these two, you know, America is loves to be afraid of China

• 1:10:22Liv Albert?

  because of communism, quote unquote, right? Whereas like, I mean, maybe I'm not, I'm crazy for saying this, but to me, it looks from the outside like China is one of the most capitalist countries that just happens to have the word communist in their name, you know, in these and it just seems it's fascinating just the ways that these both countries, I imagine that China's doing similar things about the States in terms of like how they initiate the propaganda about the other one. And I just find it interesting to kind of, I don't know, try to pay attention, even if I don't, like, I'm not, you know, believing either side inherently, but it's so interesting to see the ways that that they interact with each other, I guess, because these are these two empires of now and like what that looks like, I guess.

• 1:11:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, they do mirror each other in some ways. I would say though that so like China looks much more capitalistic than it is. Um, you know, that the, the, when you, when you go there on the street, it feels like entrepreneurial and capitalistic and you can buy anything. Um, but the, the heights of the economy are still to a certain degree controlled by the government. So the state owned enterprises are, are, are these big things. You're interacting with them constantly, but you wouldn't just, just kind of like going on the street. You wouldn't necessarily know that, oh, this is, this is actually owned by the government. So it's, I think, uh, you know, lots of folks think that it's super capitalistic and it is in some ways, like the, one of the ways China has done so well

• 1:11:46Speaker 05

  is by letting, letting markets do their thing. But in, in other ways, they're kind of holding them back much more than, you know, even when I first went to China than I realized. And, and I mean, it's also confusing because in the past 15, 20 years, things have gotten less capitalistic. So, you know, the 1980s is just this kind of like freewheeling neoliberal capitalism. You know, some, some people have compared Deng Xiaoping, the, the, the guy who essentially made China in the 1980s, the, the guy after Mao, they've compared him to, uh, Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, uh, as this kind of neoliberal icon. He, he certainly, the, I think that's, I think that might be a little bit of a stretch, but there's something

• 1:12:31Speaker 05

  there. But like in the decades, the past two decades, things have really kind of, uh, gone back, not, not to like they were in Mao's era or anything like that, but it is not like the 1980s or the 1990s.

• 1:12:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah. No, that's so interesting. And I guess when I say capitalist, I don't mean, like, I don't mean, this is not to, like, I feel like there's this idea that capitalism equals freedom, and I don't mean that because I don't believe that that's true. Um, but just in the way that like money rules everything is more what I, I guess, and that's obviously a broad generalization of capitalism, but also like pretty accurate. Um, so it's just, yeah, it's interesting to, but I didn't know how much it had changed. I mean, I was obsessed with like, 20th century history when I was in high school. And so I learned whatever then, and I feel like I've forgotten everything. This is generally interesting. I love that this is turned from like when China maybe interacted with Greece to like generally imperialism and Chinese history. I think it's fascinating, so thank you.

• 1:13:31Speaker 05

  But this podcast are good for.

• 1:13:33Liv Albert?

  No, exactly. And it's, I love when conversations do end up like, you know, going other places. And like, I'm always down to talk about the horrors of imperialism. So.

• 1:13:43Speaker 04

  And I think it's interesting to see though, how like, like, um, not history repeats itself. Cause I kind of, kind of hate that phrase actually, but like how themes stay present. And especially in an environment of imperialism, when that's what you're doing like this is, you know, it's sort of like imperial or empires or anything like that. Why does propaganda appear so much in it? Because it's an incredibly effective tool. And it's, so you'll see it over and over again.

• 1:14:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah, the pattern recognition makes it all a lot harder, I think is the biggest issue.

• 1:14:16Speaker 04

  Fair, fair, fair, but.

• 1:14:17Liv Albert?

  It's like, yeah, but history doesn't repeat, but pattern recognition is real.

• 1:14:22Speaker 04

  But I don't know, I think a history repeating itself, I'm always like, well, or like we learn from history. I'm like, history has shown us, we do not.

• 1:14:32Speaker 04

  But I, I just, I think, oh, my brain just died, you know, when it just like, it's just like the dial, dial up sound goes through your brain and you're like, yeah. Where am I?

• 1:14:43Liv Albert?

  This is great because I'm not having one of those days, but I often am. So I love when we're on different schedules of functioning brains. No, but yeah, that's, it's, it generally like, I mean, learning this history is beneficial in whatever way, you know? Yes, history is, we're not going to learn from it completely, but did you?

• 1:15:02Speaker 04

  I had to remember, um, I, um, I had to remember. So, um, I remember.

• 1:15:08Speaker 05

  It's working fine, checks out.

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  Something, there we go.

• 1:15:12Speaker 04

  A year ago, I saw there was like an exhibit happening. I think it was in Beijing and it was like an entire Greco-Roman exhibit happening in a museum in China.

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  And I remember telling Brittany, because she goes to Beijing a lot, back to Beijing to visit her family. I was like, you need to go see this. And she's like, oh, I'd love to look it up. She's like, it's already all sold out. And it was there for like six, seven months. And I was like, how did that sell out that fast? But I, I just, I'm curious if there's like, if there is an interest for.

• 1:15:43Speaker 04

  Ancient history in China that is in some way connected to

• 1:15:50Speaker 04

  or that has sort of like, if there was like a reverence, I guess, in more, that's more now happening.

• 1:15:57Liv Albert?

  Similar to ours, you mean like Western, like a reverence for like Western?

• 1:16:00Speaker 04

  Almost like that. Not necessarily with Guei Simo, but sort of a looking to the ancient past with a positive mindset. That's almost glorifying things, not just in the West, but in also Chinese history as well, Eastern history as well. If that is that on the rise, because you were saying how sort of in the eighties, seventies, eighties, there was like sort of a vilifying of it. But now there's more of a pushing towards like, this is Chinese, this is modern, or this is our past. Is that happening?

• 1:16:30Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely. So two, two answers to your question. So China is now actually experiencing a kind of blooming of classical Greek and Roman studies, like the New York Times just did.

• 1:16:42Liv Albert?

  I thought someone is.

• 1:16:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Speaker 05

  Um, but the Chinese just, or excuse me, the New York Times just did a story on it on March 8th, I think.

• 1:16:53Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:16:53Speaker 05

  Looking at it. Yeah. So, yeah, March 8th, how China learned to love the classics. So people are really engaging with Greek and Roman sources in China. So there is this kind of, I mean, it's, I don't, I don't want to say it's like this huge, everybody's, you know, learning Latin or anything like that. But it's, you know, more than you would expect. Chinese folks are engaging with classical sources, Greek and Roman classical sources. To answer your other question, Michaela, Chinese history is kind of the religion of China in some, in some ways. I mean, it's one of the things that I've seen and other people have observed. So there is, you know, that thing in the 1980s where people are like, you know, screw the, screw Chinese history. It's all crap. That's gone.

• 1:17:39Speaker 05

  And there, there are two real threads to that. One, it's just like, since forever, China has been in love with its own history. Maybe more so than other places. Of course, everybody's in love with their own history, but in China, I think they, they're next level on it. I don't have any, you know, Any metric to back that up, but just like my feeling and other folks feeling, you know, Chinese folks, I think, would would probably agree to that. The love of Chinese history is is kind of a religion. But also, to bring it back to a sort of imperial propaganda, you know, like the so after 1989, communism was judged to be really a dead ideology.

• 1:18:21Speaker 05

  Like, they couldn't depend on that anymore with after Ti and the the leaders who took control, Jiang Zemin and others, in the early 1990s, decided, we have to find some other ideology that works. What are we going to do? And it became nationalism. And so there has been a push to create, to to take advantage of that love of Chinese history and turn it to a kind of regime legitimizing thing, to the point where, you know, Uighurs in far western China are being told that they're Chinese and like being taught, like, this is classical Chinese culture and you're Chinese because you're a citizen of China, even though, you know, Uighur culture is totally different from from Chinese culture. And it's much more, I mean, Uighurs are essentially Uzbeks.

• 1:19:06Speaker 05

  They're they're pretty much the same people. But but they're being taught that, you know, this is your history. This is your language. This is your culture. So the the the kind of real, I don't know, I don't want to say genuine because that is such a problematic word, but when I meet Chinese folks, they really oftentimes do love talking about Chinese history. So that's there and that's happening. But then there's also this kind of political propagandizing element to it.

• 1:19:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. Is there a period they they specifically, or that maybe the regime specifically is like, that's the one, like, that's the the ideal, the top?

• 1:19:42Speaker 05

  The older, the better, because it makes things look like things have always been this way. And also, like, your your sources are worse as you get older, so you can kind of project whatever you want on it. I'm sure that there's never, y'all have never discussed anything like that.

• 1:19:59Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, no.

• 1:20:01Speaker 04

  That really links for me, though, with the Western's love of antiquity. Because it's, so it's so old that it's like, boom, like, that's, we've been like this. And but that never, you know, accounts for like, how gay ancient Greece was.

• 1:20:18Speaker 04

  But not that. I'm like, what it is like, I don't, there's the expectation. Not that one. I'm like, okay. There's something legitimizing, yeah, there's something legitimizing about it being a far past.

• 1:20:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. No, that's so true. That's such, that's so like, spot on connecting it to the way we do the same damn thing with the classics.

• 1:20:41Speaker 05

  So China has, China has a record of, like, the earliest written records in Chinese.

• 1:20:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Speaker 05

  Three thousand five hundred years ago.

• 1:20:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:50Speaker 05

  But there's this weird thing where today Chinese folks insist that they have 5,000 years of history. I had a Japanese friend who was studying Chinese and he told me this. He's like, when I was young, you know, the Chinese, when I was in middle school, the Chinese said, we have 3,000 years of civilization. And then when I got to high school, the Chinese said, we have 4,000 years of civilization. And then when I got to college, they said, we have 5,000 years of civilization. And I just think it's, the Chinese are such an incredible people because in just 10 years, they can grow 2,000 years of Chinese history. And of course, like, it's that kind of legitimizing of it just being old. And, you know, like, what is history anyways? Like, I mean, are these kind of artifacts that, that, I guess you could say they're Chinese, but,

• 1:21:36Speaker 05

  you know, there's, there's no Chinese writing at the time. Could you call those Chinese civilization? Like, you know, to a certain degree, it's just a redneck pissing contest, right?

• 1:21:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:44Speaker 05

  You know, who has the longer history? But on the other end, like, China does have a really long history and it's.

• 1:21:53Speaker 05

  You know, as problematic as the word kind of continuous civilization is, there's something to it, right?

• 1:22:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:02Speaker 05

  You know, we can read stuff.

• 1:22:02Liv Albert?

  You can say that in a more impressive way, I think. Like, I think of it as just thinking like, oh, how long China's been around? Like, just as a statement of fact, it's interesting because, yeah, I mean, they don't, it's funny that they do add on these like extra 2,000 years because like, no, you guys are like a really old civilization. Like, that's pretty cool for you. You don't have to, like, tack on some fake ones. Like, you're there.

• 1:22:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, or it's like the, when you hear of, like, Chinese tourists in Europe and they're like, this is a 400-year-old building and they're like, oh, it's new. And it's like, like, just sort of that vibe of like, 400, 500, 600, even 1,000 is young for them. And it's like, yeah.

• 1:22:44Liv Albert?

  As a North American, I went to UK.

• 1:22:46Speaker 04

  This is 25 years old.

• 1:22:48Liv Albert?

  Everything's so old. Oh, my God, it's stunning. Walking around like, nothing's so old.

• 1:22:54Speaker 04

  I'm gonna be so honest, that's me if I go to Montreal. I'm like, wow.

• 1:22:57Liv Albert?

  No, but Montreal, and like, Montreal is the Canadian example of that. You're not wrong. And there's areas of Toronto that are similar, but Montreal is absolutely like.

• 1:23:06Speaker 04

  But that's the colonial mindset versus.

• 1:23:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah, because it was the first European settlement.

• 1:23:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, truly.

• 1:23:13Liv Albert?

  So it's like, it is the oldest if you look at it that way, but only because we conceptualize it in the form of like, what buildings looked like? That's when something means it's old, you know?

• 1:23:23Speaker 04

  Now I'm excited to go back to China at the end of this year.

• 1:23:28Speaker 05

  It's interesting. So like China's, so China is really, has this long history.

• 1:23:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:32Speaker 05

  But also, like, if you only conceptualize it in terms of buildings, there's not actually that much old stuff there. So Xi'an.

• 1:23:38Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:39Speaker 05

  Michaela, did you go there when you were there? Like, the Terracotta Warriors and?

• 1:23:44Speaker 04

  No, I was, I was only in, um.

• 1:23:46Speaker 05

  On the east side.

• 1:23:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was only in, well, yeah. Shenzhen. Wait, the Taekwondo Warriors aren't in Shenzhen, are they?

• 1:23:52Speaker 05

  No, no, no. That's in the center of China, in the old capital.

• 1:23:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was only in Shenzhen.

• 1:23:58Speaker 05

  You know, like, the only building there, so this, this building, excuse me, the city has 2,000 years of history, but the only buildings that we have that are really old are from 600, 700 AD. And there's just two of them, the, the big Goose, Goose Pagoda and the, the little Goose Pagoda. You go there and you see these giant imperial walls. And you think like, this is, this is the imperial walls from 2,000 years ago, but no, it's like, those walls are like four, five, 600 years old. So, so there's, you know, there's this kind of gap in between, like, the, the history, like, the stuff that we have records of and we know existed and we have archaeological evidence for it. And then, like, the stuff that you see, the buildings that you see, oftentimes they're as old as, like, the stuff that you see in Europe or

• 1:24:44Speaker 05

  not North America, because it's so, so recent. But, I mean, there's some stuff that's 400 years old here in North America. So, like, the, the gap between history as a record and what's visible is, is, is, is really stark in China. And it's something that you can overlook when you go there. It's like, you assume that this is a couple of thousand years old, but it's not.

• 1:25:09Speaker 05

  I once went to a

• 1:25:10Speaker 04

  That's really interesting, yeah.

• 1:25:11Speaker 05

  I once went to a part of the Great Wall and, uh, it's at the very end of the Great Wall and we were, like, hanging out there. And then I realized that right across the, the street, there was another end of the Great Wall that someone else, I mean, so people, two, two competing, so it's the area about where the Great Wall ended. But two competing entrepreneurs had built fake Great Walls and were, like, selling tickets to both of them. And you're just like, this is so fake.

• 1:25:39Speaker 04

  But god, that's delightful. It happens in, like, Greece all the time as well, especially if you're a tourist, you're like, whoa, what is this? Like, I just think of, like, just like, or like, little, little things, like, Kombaloi, where they're like, this one is the most important one, it's some generic Kombaloi. And you're just like, I'm like, I know, but it's why, it's like, all my Chinese friends are like, you can't go to China without us because you're gonna get scammed. And I'm like, yeah, well, you know what? That's life. I don't know. Or worse, my, my roommate's mom, who's known me since I was six years old. She's fun, really fun fact about her. She was the original, the her, she was the one who recorded the like the, the station announcements for the original Shanghai. Metro station. Metro station. Metro train.

• 1:26:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, Juliette, when Juliette told me that, I was like, dude, do you know how many people like have heard your mom's voice? And it's like associated her voice with like their home station and whatnot. And she was like, I never thought of that way. I'm like, yeah, but she, when I first told her I was going to Shenzhen to visit Brittany, she was like, you're gonna have your kidney stolen. I went, what are you talking about Christine? Come on, no. And then I told her Brittany moved to Shanghai and she went, we have to go to Shanghai. Shanghai's the best. Shanghai has the best food, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, you sound like you're from Shanghai right now, Christine. And also they probably do have amazing food because China's food is just great. I can't explain to them that I have celiac disease, but I don't care when I'm there. I'm like, I don't, I'll die.

• 1:27:06Speaker 04

  Real Chinese food, yes.

• 1:27:09Speaker 05

  Is her mom's voice still used in the Shanghai subway?

• 1:27:12Speaker 04

  Not anymore. No, but originally, yeah, there was. That's so cool, though. I know she, Juliette told me, she was like, yeah, this. And I'm like, why are you, what are you talking about? That's nothing. What are you? That's amazing. Honestly, my parents worked at like a tourist attraction when I was a kid and I love telling that story. Butterfly Gardens, anyone?

• 1:27:35Speaker 04

  Where? Where's that? Here? Yeah, obviously. Oh, Victoria, right. I'm sorry. Yeah. At least you know that I'm not from and don't like. Hey.

• 1:27:48Speaker 04

  My job. It's my job. Okay. I don't live in Vancouver, anyway. This has been utterly delightful and has devolved in ways I do love, but I'm also going to wrap it up for us today.

• 1:27:59Liv Albert?

  Thank you, Lee. This has been so much fun. Can you remind everyone again, like, the book title, where they can get it, anything else you want to share?

• 1:28:06Speaker 05

  Sure. It's China's backstory, the history of Beijing doesn't want you to read. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it from my publisher, Unsung Voices Books. And I'm also the host of the Chinese Literature Podcast, a little podcast that we do on Chinese literature.

• 1:28:23Liv Albert?

  That's so exciting. That's very cool. Yeah, I guess that's what you want to share. Sorry, my brain is now tripping out. This is where the tail end of things. ADHD is a bitch. Well, again, thank you. Thank you so much. This has been really interesting. And we're always a little wary about going too far beyond the Mediterranean, because you don't know how the conversation's going to go. But this was delightful, and I learned a lot about China. So thank you so much.

• 1:28:47Speaker 05

  I hope I stuck within the boundaries of where I could go.

• 1:28:51Liv Albert?

  Oh, gosh, absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, we got enough in about Greece, which means then we can just talk about what other, other...

• 1:28:58Liv Albert?

  There's no rules here.

• 1:29:02Speaker 05

  Liv Michaela, thanks so much for having me on the show.

• 1:29:05Liv Albert?

  Thank you.

• 1:29:06Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:29:19Speaker 04

  Let's talk about Myth's Baby is written and produced by the one and only Liv Albert. Michaela Pahanga wishes the Hermes to all your Olympians. The producer doing things, this and that, reading, knitting, video games, but also work, work, work, work, so much work, and thesis writing. Anyways, select music by Luke Chaos. Thank you, Mr. Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, a collection of creators that all strive to bring you accurate and reliable information on the ancient world. These include the wonderful friends at Movies We Dig, the partial historian Sweet Better, and so much more. Get ad-free episodes and more by subscription to the Oracle Edition on Patreon at patreon.com/MythsBaby, or via the link in the episode's description. Are you a scholar, academic, or an expert

• 1:30:04Speaker 04

  in something from antiquity, from Greece to Rome to Egypt to anywhere in the Near East? We would love to have you on the show as a conversation guest. Go to mythsbaby.com/contact and fill out our podcast guest form. We want to hear from you, so please do reach out. Talk to you all next week. Bye bye.

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

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• 1:32:03Liv Albert?

  The much awaited sequel Game of Thieves comes out December 8th. In this sequel, Julia and Alaric must overcome centuries of conflict to work together, or the turbulent riptides of rebellion and the demons of their past will tear them apart.

• 1:32:16Speaker 04

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• 1:32:30Liv Albert?

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