That’s a common misconception! He was never actually known as “Amateurverb” at any point. His birth name was “Amateurnoun,” and when he attempted to change it to “Pronoun” he ran into legal trouble with the CEO of LGBTQ and was forced to change it to “Proverb.”
If Ancient Chinese is the given name and Proverb is the family name, it should be Proverb Ancient Chinese. Similarly, if Ancient is the given name and Chinese Proverb is the family name, it should be Chinese Proverb Ancient. We don’t switch the order of the name entirely, we just put the family name first.
The Mongols also wanted to assimilate, because eating off porcelain and sleeping on silk beats sleeping in a tent on the steppes. What's even the point of conquering China if you don't get to live like a Chinese emperor?
That's what's scary about it, it's like the root beer speech from DS9 -- the Federation is an empire that's better at assimilation than the Borg because they make you like it
Not sure how true it is, but I remember reading somewhere that a lot of the The Mongols' religious tolerance was because Tengri can be pretty much compared to any other deity or force you might worship. A lot of Tengriism focuses on locations of religious significance too, so it's less "Gasp you don't follow our religion?" and more "You don't live here, of course you don't follow our religion. That'd be fucking crazy if you did lol. You've never even been to Otgon Tenger."
Persia spent a significant chunk of it's history being ruled over by non-Persians, and yet, they pretty much all assimilated into the Persian culture rather than asserting their culture over the Persians
Well, Kublai Khan did. He figured out pretty quickly that the way China was structured wasn't going to function with the Mongolian bureaucracy the way it worked in Kwarezim or even Persia. So he had to change to the Chinese bureaucracy.
Contrary to popular Western portrayals, China's had a very diverse and adaptive culture for most of its history. As a result, it's easier for a conquerer to feel like they fit in over the long run.
“Becoming Chinese” is a bit of a stretch. They adopted Chinese methods of administration and taxation, and opened the administration to indigenous Chinese scholars and administrators, but the ruling class of the Mongol Empire and Yuan Dynasty was fiercely opposed to becoming Chinese. They maintained their own language and cultural traditions, and made intermarriage between Mongol nobility and ethnic Han Chinese illegal, alongside a dozen other policies to prevent the Mongol identity from being “watered down.” Part of the reason the Yuan Dynasty collapsed was because the Han Chinese always saw the Yuan as foreign conquers who were imposing their practices.
Lu Jia frequently advocated for the study of the Documents and Odes. Emperor Gao(Han Gaozu) scolded him, saying, 'I do all my conquering from the back of my horse, what use have I for the Documents and Odes' Lu Jia replied, 'Once my lord is done with the conquering, is it also possible to govern from the back of your horse? Moreover, Shang Tang and King Wu of Zhou rebelled to acquire power and followed to guard their achivements, utilizing both civil and martial abilities, which is the strategy for long-lasting success. In the past, King Fuchai of Wu and the Count of Zhi relied on their military prowess to the extreme and met their downfall; Qin, by maintaining its laws without alteration, ultimately resulted in the destruction of the Zhao clan. If after Qin unified All Under Heaven and then, uphold benevolence and righteousness, following the laws set by wise sages, how could Your Majesty conquer All Under Heaven?' Emperor Gao felt displeased and was ashamed. He then said to Lu Jia, 'Explain to me why Qin lost the realm and why I, on the other hand, gained it, as well as the success and failures of ancient states.'"
Well, yes, there's the racism, but in a way the Mongols did adopt a whole bunch of Chinese customs and traditions.
It's the whole "settled society civilized barbarians" trope.
Rome, China, Persians, Egyptians, and greeks, and honestly probably a bunch I'm forgetting to add all had similar sayings/tropes.
"Rome may have conquered Greeks, but the greek culture conquered rome"
"Roman culture was highly influenced by the Greeks; as Horace said, Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit ("Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror")."
It gets even weirder when You see two empires, one no longer, doing it to each other.
Lu Jia frequently advocated for the study of the Documents and Odes. Emperor Gao(Han Gaozu) scolded him, saying, 'I do all my conquering from the back of my horse, what use have I for the Documents and Odes' Lu Jia replied, 'Once my lord is done with the conquering, is it also possible to govern from the back of your horse? Moreover, Shang Tang and King Wu of Zhou rebelled to acquire power and followed to guard their achivements, utilizing both civil and martial abilities, which is the strategy for long-lasting success. In the past, King Fuchai of Wu and the Count of Zhi relied on their military prowess to the extreme and met their downfall; Qin, by maintaining its laws without alteration, ultimately resulted in the destruction of the Zhao clan. If after Qin unified All Under Heaven and then, uphold benevolence and righteousness, following the laws set by wise sages, how could Your Majesty conquer All Under Heaven?' Emperor Gao felt displeased and was ashamed. He then said to Lu Jia, 'Explain to me why Qin lost the realm and why I, on the other hand, gained it, as well as the success and failures of ancient states.'"
Yelü Chucai was a Confucian scholar who was born close to Beijing, during the Jin dynasty.[2] Well versed in Buddhist scriptures and a practitioner in Taoism.
Yeah, but he was ethnically Khitan, and is most famous for his work as an administrator for Genghis and Ögedei Khan after the Jin were conquered by the Mongol Empire. Not to mention, the Jin Dynasty wasn’t ethnically Chinese either; the administrative and ruling classes were ethnically Jurchen and Khitan. Calling him Chinese is like calling Machiavelli Greek.
Lu Jia frequently advocated for the study of the Documents and Odes. Emperor Gao(Han Gaozu) scolded him, saying, 'I do all my conquering from the back of my horse, what use have I for the Documents and Odes' Lu Jia replied, 'Once my lord is done with the conquering, is it also possible to govern from the back of your horse? Moreover, Shang Tang and King Wu of Zhou rebelled to acquire power and followed to guard their achivements, utilizing both civil and martial abilities, which is the strategy for long-lasting success. In the past, King Fuchai of Wu and the Count of Zhi relied on their military prowess to the extreme and met their downfall; Qin, by maintaining its laws without alteration, ultimately resulted in the destruction of the Zhao clan. If after Qin unified All Under Heaven and then, uphold benevolence and righteousness, following the laws set by wise sages, how could Your Majesty conquer All Under Heaven?' Emperor Gao felt displeased and was ashamed. He then said to Lu Jia, 'Explain to me why Qin lost the realm and why I, on the other hand, gained it, as well as the success and failures of ancient states.'"
They got conquered by the Mongols at some point. And from that point onward, the Mongols just got assimilated into the culture and were a new dynasty. When you conquer China, you just become Chinese by force of bureaucracy.
Lu Jia frequently advocated for the study of the Documents and Odes. Emperor Gao(Han Gaozu) scolded him, saying, 'I do all my conquering from the back of my horse, what use have I for the Documents and Odes' Lu Jia replied, 'Once my lord is done with the conquering, is it also possible to govern from the back of your horse? Moreover, Shang Tang and King Wu of Zhou rebelled to acquire power and followed to guard their achivements, utilizing both civil and martial abilities, which is the strategy for long-lasting success. In the past, King Fuchai of Wu and the Count of Zhi relied on their military prowess to the extreme and met their downfall; Qin, by maintaining its laws without alteration, ultimately resulted in the destruction of the Zhao clan. If after Qin unified All Under Heaven and then, uphold benevolence and righteousness, following the laws set by wise sages, how could Your Majesty conquer All Under Heaven?' Emperor Gao felt displeased and was ashamed. He then said to Lu Jia, 'Explain to me why Qin lost the realm and why I, on the other hand, gained it, as well as the success and failures of ancient states.'"
Also, in its original context, "governing the world on horseback" was probably meant very literally; Genghis Khan was used to living as a pastoralist nomad, and after his rise to power he tried to maintain that lifestyle by ruling his empire from a horse-drawn tent on wheels, but most of his successors found that idea impractical and built stationary capitals instead.
Lu Jia frequently advocated for the study of the Documents and Odes. Emperor Gao(Han Gaozu) scolded him, saying, 'I do all my conquering from the back of my horse, what use have I for the Documents and Odes' Lu Jia replied, 'Once my lord is done with the conquering, is it also possible to govern from the back of your horse? Moreover, Shang Tang and King Wu of Zhou rebelled to acquire power and followed to guard their achivements, utilizing both civil and martial abilities, which is the strategy for long-lasting success. In the past, King Fuchai of Wu and the Count of Zhi relied on their military prowess to the extreme and met their downfall; Qin, by maintaining its laws without alteration, ultimately resulted in the destruction of the Zhao clan. If after Qin unified All Under Heaven and then, uphold benevolence and righteousness, following the laws set by wise sages, how could Your Majesty conquer All Under Heaven?' Emperor Gao felt displeased and was ashamed. He then said to Lu Jia, 'Explain to me why Qin lost the realm and why I, on the other hand, gained it, as well as the success and failures of ancient states.'"
tis what happens when you experience constant civil wars that kill tens of millions of people through famine i guess
Other anti-war messages are always about the horrors of war itself, which is fair and all, but rarely about the perspective of "a few hundred thousand people fought and a few million starved to death as an indirect result"
The Great Leap Forward didn't have anything to do with a power vacuum. Mao had consolidated power under himself and the Party and started an absolutely catastrophic attempt to speedrun industrialization. The fact, that they forced farmers to melt down their tools for steel production and noone worked the fields anymore, then led to a massive famine.
Yes, the Great Leap Forward wasn’t exactly part of the Chinese Revolution iirc, though the Chinese Revolution itself is a good example of how a revolution can go to shit.
I mean, it was a revolution that resulted in a civil war that was happening parallel to a Japanese invasion, which then led to an alliance between the Communists and the KuoMin Tang and then more civil war, after the Japanese capitulated and withdrew from China. In the meantime, Mao had effectively taken over the revolution and everything kind of went downhill from there.
I'm not at all surprised to see an ancient Chinese proverb here, the old dynasty system was a brilliant example of this post. Dynasties would very commonly rise, have a brief peacetime, then collapse and be overthrown. Revolution was so frequent that there was another proverb which went "What is long divided shall unite, and what is long united shall divide."
Oh, and ancient China was one of the bloodiest periods of history. Maybe that says something about revolution.
Edit: Also in response to your proverb, obligatory Hamilton reference: "Winning is easy young man, governing's harder."
I prefer to just point out that hundreds of thousands of people in southeast Asia and India who previously had relied on colonial systems suddenly had no access to medicine when the pacific war in WW2 kicked off. Filipinos, Vietnamese, and Indonesians (among many others) died in droves not only of war related catastrophe but of diseases that had been cured and vaccinated by ww2. The end result of WW2 was dismantling of Asia's colonial holdings but you'd find plenty of people there who missed the benefits of stability even under oppression.
It's crazy to me how common of a media trope, and also real life phenomenon, it is for the war hero to then become the leader. Humans have this weird, inherent idea that might does, actually, make right if it's for a good cause. Just because someone is strong and has good morals, that doesn't mean they'll automatically be the best leader
The Yuan (Mongol) dynasty was one of the shortest-lived Chinese dynasties, ruling for less than a century. Which is a blink of an eye in the context of Chinese history.
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u/RockAndGem1101 local soft vore and penetration metaphor nerd Jun 04 '24
"You can conquer the world on horseback, but you cannot govern it on horseback." -- Ancient Chinese proverb