OK, here comes the heavy artillery…
Well, MoQ… I respect you for being honest but I have to tell you that the story of yours is full of flaws (I don’t know how your friend could have said this). Here’s how it goes:
During the Ming Dynasty, the Confucianist System of scholars began to stagnate. China always had a head start in the fields of technology and science compared to the rest of the world but during the Ming Dynasty, Chinese civilisation began to decline. This was due to the fact that the Ming Emperors relied only on their eunuchs and secret service to rule the country. The Ming Dynasty became the Dark Age of China’s history.
The eunuchs and spies not only harrassed the Ming citizens, they slaughtered many people from ethnic minorities too. In the year 1583, the head of the Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria was murdered by Ming officials. The son of this leader, Nurhachi, swore to avenge his father’s death and began to unite all Manchurian tribes, forming them into eight divisions and began his war against the Ming empire. The Ming Emperor Wanli was an opium-addict and refused to spent money on strenghtening the army. Nurhachi then conquered the whole North-Eastern part of China outside the Great Wall and divided the Han-Chinese citizens of this region into eight divisions.
After the death of Wanli, his son Chongcheng became emperor. Emperor Chongcheng wanted to defeat the Manchurians but he too was reluctant to spend his own money. Instead, he laid heavy taxes and let his soldiers plunder the Ming citizens to gather money for the army. Soon, rebellions broke out in every corner of the empire. The rebel armies chose the peasant Li Zhicheng as their leader and began to fight their way to Beijing. Meanwhile, the Manchurian Khan Nurhachi died and his son Abachai came to power. Abachai succesfully subdued the Mongolian tribes and divided them into 8 divisions too. Abachai then proclaimed himself Emperor of the Qing, with the 24 divisions (Manchurian, Han and Mongolian) as his empire.
Abachai was satisfied with his realm and wanted to make peace with the Ming if the Ming Empire would recognise him as Emperor of the Qing. Emperor Chongcheng was an arrogant man and refused to except a barbarian emperor. The war continued, Abachai attacked relentlessly but was defeated by Ming General Yuan Chonghuan. Yuan Chonghuan was a patriotic man, wise enough to see that the Ming could not afford a war against the Qing AND the rebels. Yuan decided to make peace with Abachai. When Chongcheng became aware of this, he got furious and had Yuan executed. Chongcheng has now killed the only man who could have saved him.
The rebel army under the leadership of Li Zhicheng defeated the Ming troops and entered Beijing. Emperor Chongcheng, afraid that his daughters would be raped by the rebels, killed two of his daughters and cut off the arm of Princess Changping (who later became a nun). Chongcheng then committed suicide (by hanging) on Coal Hill.
Rebel king Li Zhicheng, on the other hand, became quite a tyrant himself by letting his troops plunder the citizens of Beijing. He abducted the wife of Ming general Wu Sangui who guarded the gates of the Great Wall. Wu Sangui knew that his troop were no match for Li Zhicheng’s army and he turned to the Manchurians for help.
Qing Emperor Abachai has died by now and his 6-year-old son Shunzhi became emperor. But in fact it was his uncle Dorgun the Prince-Regent who was the actual ruler. Wu Sangui surrendered to the Qing and opened the gates of the Great Wall for the Manchurian invasion. Dorgun’s army defeated Li Zhicheng and the Qing succesfully conquers Northern China. Meanwhile in the South, Prince Fu of the Ming dynasty proclaimed himself Emperor in Nanjing (The beginning of the Southern Ming Period). Prince Fu was a real idiot, his first act as an emperor was to let his officials search for aphrodysiac serums, his second act was to gather 5000 beautiful maiden to sleep with him. “Denieing the Emperor of sex is death by beheading of the girls’ whole family including the dogs, pigs, relatives, distant relatives etc. any one connected to her family in any way will be arrested and beheaded.” Prince Fu’s reign, of course, didn’t last long. The Qing troops conquered Nanjing and Prince Fu was killed. The citizens of South China were at first happy that the Manchurians saved them from the tyranny of Prince Fu, but when the male population was forced to wear their hair in a tail (Manchu style) they got enraged and began to attack Qing soldiers. Dorgun then ordered his troops to kill all inhabitants of the two cities Yangzhou and Jiading as an act of vengeance. In this infamous “Massacre of Yangzhou & Jiading” many Han-Chinese were slaughtered by the Manchurians (THIS WAS REALLY AN HORRIBLE ACT OF THE QING).
When Emperor Kangxi (son of emperor Shunzhi) came to power, he was ashamed of the horrible deeds committed by his ancestors during the “Massacre of Yangzhou & Jiading”. Kangxi swore to repay this debt and in his 60-year-long reign he brought prosperity and peace in China for both Han and Manchurians. The reign of emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong (a period of 150 years) was considered the Third Golden Age of China. It wasn’t untill the 19th century that the Qing Empire began to decline and Western Imperialist Forces came to China.
Now then, the Manchurians never had the tradition of marrying their mother or sister after their father’s death. This was a tradition of the Huns 2000 years ago (The Huns didn’t marry their own mother though, just the concubines of his father). The Qing never held human sacrifices and their emperors never had 5000 concubines. The concubines were carefully selected from the original 24 divisions, so most of these concubines were Manchurian and some were Han or Mongolian. The population of these 24 divisions were not big so they couldn’t have selected 5000 concubines (EACH YEAR? IMPOSSIBLE!).
Macao was colonised during the Ming dynasty, not the Qing dynasty. The Qing did lose Taiwan to the Japanese for a while but please remember that during the Ming Dynasty Taiwan was already taken from the Ming by the Dutch (Formosa was the Dutch name for Taiwan). After the fall of the Ming and the establishment of the Qing dynasty, emperor Kangxi managed to conquer Taiwan again. If it was not for the Manchurians, Taiwan would have been a Dutch colony for centuries!
In the 19th century the Manchurians have totally mixed with the Han-Chinese. The Qing government had corrupted and the Chinese fleet was outdated. The British brought opium to China and many Chinese got addicted. The Qing government was outraged and the Opium War broke out. With their modern fleet the Brits defeated the Chinese with ease and the Qing government was forced to sign the treaty in which they gave Hongkong to England for 99 years. By then, Japan had modernised during the Meiji Period and attacked China with their new fleet. China lost the Sino-Japanese War and for a short while Taiwan was taken over by the Japanese.
So you see, the Qing never did GAVE AWAY Hongkong and Taiwan to foreigners, China had stayed behind with the rest of the world and now everybody were going to take advantage of them. It was not just the Qing’s fault. It was China on the whole.
Emperor Pu Yi was a tragic figure. He became emperor when he was just a child of 4. When he grew up it was already to late to change China’s fate. During that time, China has suffered many defeats against the West, because of this many Chinese lost their faith in their own culture and tried to absorb Western culture. Pu Yi was a good example, he wanted to modernise China and began to learn English and even got himself a English name. But it was of no use. Please note that about 50% of the Qing emperors became monarch in childhood, while all Ming emperors came to power at an adult age. Strangely enough it was the Qing Dynasty that had so many good monarch while almost all Ming rulers were tyrants or idiots.
I am not pro-Manchu, I am just anti-Ming here. The Qing Dynasty was just a much better period than the Ming. Some parts of China were indeed colonised during the Qing but they still had enough land left. The Qing empire was 3 times bigger than the Ming empire. If the West had faced the pathetic little Ming empire instead of the Qing Dynasty, then surely China would have been divided like a cake by the Western powers and the Chinese would have become a second Jewish people.
Wow, I am tired now after writing this post… BYE!
-All under Heaven belongs to the inhabitants of the lands under Heaven. The Mandate of Heaven will go to the One virtuous enough to deserve it.-
The Six Strategies of Taigong
