the buddhists were selling indulgences? indulgences *specifically* about getting dead relatives time off non-eternal hells? incredible convergent evolution there
I read a number of Judge Bao stories for a college class (at an American university), which was the first time I was exposed to Chinese literature other than religious texts. I mostly remember that Judge Bao evaluated evidence and considered who had the motive to commit the crime, and then usually he would have his bailiff arrest the suspect and then matter-of-factly torture them to make them confess because that's just how it was done.
Some of these details seem like particularly good fodder for a fantasy novel:
"Another Confucian skeptic argument: “guys, I don’t think propitiating the earth does anything. We’re scattered across the earth and we take valuable things from the earth, like lice are scattered across our bodies and take our blood. But if a bunch of lice got together and performed rituals to keep us from punishing them for stealing our blood, we wouldn’t notice. They’re too small and we don’t speak Lice. So therefore the Earth doesn’t notice our rituals either."
I'm envisioning D&D-style clerics making this argument against D&D-style druids.
This is also a great detail:
"Plays in the Jin Dynasty were often very horny. One play includes a long sequence where the protagonist plays the zither. Because "zither-string" was slang for the labia minora, it was maybe about fingering women. It definitely said that he was so good at playing the zither that it moved the woman's clitoris."
One question: you say "About 7.5% of Spanish silver wound up in China." Do we know what the Spanish got in return for all this silver? Many people assume Europe got wealthy via colonialism but a lot of European colonialism was based on acquiring precious metals, other luxuries, and general half-baked economic thinking. OTOH if they took the silver and gold they plundered from the New World and traded it to the Ottomans or the Chinese for stuff that would strengthen them on a lasting basis, that would make sense. Does anyone know about this?
nitpick: "the Russian word for China, "Kitaia"" - actually just "Kitai"
the buddhists were selling indulgences? indulgences *specifically* about getting dead relatives time off non-eternal hells? incredible convergent evolution there
I read a number of Judge Bao stories for a college class (at an American university), which was the first time I was exposed to Chinese literature other than religious texts. I mostly remember that Judge Bao evaluated evidence and considered who had the motive to commit the crime, and then usually he would have his bailiff arrest the suspect and then matter-of-factly torture them to make them confess because that's just how it was done.
> The first Sui emperor placed his own son under house arrest for building an illegally expensive palace.
Was it house arrest in the illegally expensive palace?
> might get notions ideas
Typo, duplicate words
Some of these details seem like particularly good fodder for a fantasy novel:
"Another Confucian skeptic argument: “guys, I don’t think propitiating the earth does anything. We’re scattered across the earth and we take valuable things from the earth, like lice are scattered across our bodies and take our blood. But if a bunch of lice got together and performed rituals to keep us from punishing them for stealing our blood, we wouldn’t notice. They’re too small and we don’t speak Lice. So therefore the Earth doesn’t notice our rituals either."
I'm envisioning D&D-style clerics making this argument against D&D-style druids.
This is also a great detail:
"Plays in the Jin Dynasty were often very horny. One play includes a long sequence where the protagonist plays the zither. Because "zither-string" was slang for the labia minora, it was maybe about fingering women. It definitely said that he was so good at playing the zither that it moved the woman's clitoris."
One question: you say "About 7.5% of Spanish silver wound up in China." Do we know what the Spanish got in return for all this silver? Many people assume Europe got wealthy via colonialism but a lot of European colonialism was based on acquiring precious metals, other luxuries, and general half-baked economic thinking. OTOH if they took the silver and gold they plundered from the New World and traded it to the Ottomans or the Chinese for stuff that would strengthen them on a lasting basis, that would make sense. Does anyone know about this?