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Well, Allie and I have stopped arguing....
You see, the next thing in the book just seemed ridiculous to me, and she wasn't explaining anything other than to say "This is when I met him" and "But I NEED her!"
"You don't need a Chinese wizard in 1810 New York. There were hardly any Chinese at all in North America at that time!"
"He's a wizard. He's on the run, and he had to save his family by getting them out of China. He teaches me about kudzu root."
Well...I don't want to give away too much, but of course he could get to America -- or London first, in this case -- in this book, and even if he's not a major player in this story, he might figure in. So I went poking around in some research, and lo and behold, China was beginning a horrifying famine in 1810 -- one that, over two, two-year periods, would kill 45 million people.
Yes, you read that correctly. So "Li Sung" (I think all practitioners except Allie's family use pseudonyms, and Esme's real name is not Esme!) has ample reason to be where he is right now.
Then there is the woman who is a cat.
"She may be the transformation teacher, but you don't learn anything about transformation in this book!"
"But she teaches me how to be a spy!'
"And her name can't be Abigail Brown, she must have become a practitioner in self-defense. She doesn't look like an Abigail."
"Her name is XXX."
"So she is Russian, or named for a Russian?"
"No, that's not her real name, either -- "
So now I am reading about Moldavia, and having Kira tell me she's left it all behind, ignore it -- but we all know your past marks you and can bite you when you aren't watching for it. So...I expect more progress on the book this week, now that I know what Allie is trying to tell me.
After the biscuits with teeth, why should anything surprise me?
"You don't need a Chinese wizard in 1810 New York. There were hardly any Chinese at all in North America at that time!"
"He's a wizard. He's on the run, and he had to save his family by getting them out of China. He teaches me about kudzu root."
Well...I don't want to give away too much, but of course he could get to America -- or London first, in this case -- in this book, and even if he's not a major player in this story, he might figure in. So I went poking around in some research, and lo and behold, China was beginning a horrifying famine in 1810 -- one that, over two, two-year periods, would kill 45 million people.
Yes, you read that correctly. So "Li Sung" (I think all practitioners except Allie's family use pseudonyms, and Esme's real name is not Esme!) has ample reason to be where he is right now.
Then there is the woman who is a cat.
"She may be the transformation teacher, but you don't learn anything about transformation in this book!"
"But she teaches me how to be a spy!'
"And her name can't be Abigail Brown, she must have become a practitioner in self-defense. She doesn't look like an Abigail."
"Her name is XXX."
"So she is Russian, or named for a Russian?"
"No, that's not her real name, either -- "
So now I am reading about Moldavia, and having Kira tell me she's left it all behind, ignore it -- but we all know your past marks you and can bite you when you aren't watching for it. So...I expect more progress on the book this week, now that I know what Allie is trying to tell me.
After the biscuits with teeth, why should anything surprise me?
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It's an interesting time period in Chinese history. All the prequel to the opium wars with the smuggling and attempts to control the same. Hm... not sure how much anti-Manchu sentiment was in the offing (it's often portrayed that way, but while I can think of a lot of early Qing and late Qing examples, nothing from right around then is springing to mind).
Are there practitioners that focus on ships and such? (I'm thinking that many of the Chinese who were turning up in odd corners were involved with trade. Which might not work for you character, but maybe a friend?) 'Cause darn, shipping was crazy hazardous, and profitable, and it kind of seems natural that there would be...
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I don't want to turn the book into a history lesson, because history will change at some parts. After all -- if there are people with the skill to pop back and forth between continents (which is what it looks like to non-practitioners) why do the wars happen, etc. etc..
Of course, greed is the usual reason a war starts, followed by hate/misunderstanding and fear -- of what you attack, or something at your back that drives you on. So the War of 1812 is coming, because certain greedy men want that war. But some things change. Same with trade, the industrial revolution -- practitioners are not a dime a dozen, so they cannot replace large areas of commerce. But what they do, they do well.
Any particular book spring to mind that would be useful about the shipping? (In English -- my French is rusty and Chinese non-existent!)
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However... that's got to be pretty incomplete. There may have been a lot of Confucian contempt for trade, and some official policies against it (other than the oft-discussed tribute trade), but it was still happening - and there was a lot of money in it, to make sure it kept happening. And the trade and business networks that exist now among overseas Chinese families probably aren't altogether a recent invention. I know that among the various shipping communities, there were definitely people of Chinese decent, not to mention a lot of people of Indian subcontinental decent who spoke Chinese and the like. (These people were invaluable to Europeans when they were first trying to get access to Chinese markets.) I know that there were a lot of ethnic Chinese who were spreading into other parts of Asia and often assuming a pretty economically dominant role, especially in trade, through the Qing dynasty.
(And I have Uighur friends whose families were involved with trade along the silk road for centuries. Which is kind of making a resurgence as China become economically dominant in Central Asia, but that's another story.)
I haven't seen much written about the trading families prior to the last 150 years. Though this:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=A04Y6rYnlikC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Chinese+trade+families&ots=95Rk5oQi0Q&sig=MTDALg9Y07a49Ff7ZK_5XBx40Fc#v=onepage&q=Chinese%20trade%20families&f=false
Seems to address one region and one time period, and probably at least gives a feel for the possibilities. Oh, and here's another one that looks interesting:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=t3x-HixYwa0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Chinese+trade+families&ots=FHdnuGcNsO&sig=1k4upc5s-dMm0Zy5aqxJPzve94w#v=onepage&q=Chinese%20trade%20families&f=false
Not of direct relevance, but just because it's a favorite book, Abu Lughod's "Before European Hegemony" talks a lot about the emerging world economy prior to the black plague... which discusses some similar regional dynamics.
* I did my undergrad in Chinese language and literature - yeah, before Microsoft, or biochem, or neurobio. My education is kind of weird.
** Are you familiar with the systems of transliteration? Ch'ing (in Wade-Giles) is the same as Qing (in pinyin). I tend to use pinyin when writing, but you can't study guwen in an English context without learning both.
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I have heard of pinyin, and have made the Ch/Q substitution in my head before, but if I knew there was a system involved, it is lost in the shuffle feature.
** Are you familiar with the systems of transliteration? Ch'ing (in Wade-Giles) is the same as Qing (in pinyin). I tend to use pinyin when writing, but you can't study guwen in an English context without learning both.
These books look great, especially Jennifer's, just to get the feel of how the China trade was going on. Some family somewhere had to be getting materials out of China (including the Silk Road) and to the west. There was too much money to be made -- and China is a country with something like 15% of the land good for crops. That's a lot of income to be made up in other ways.
I suspect the people this man is running from were doing something to keep the nobility controlling the magic users. That would fit with their culture -- just as there would be people quietly trying to buck the system, and fleeing when nothing else would serve.
I just have to keep writing -- it's easy to think "one more research book" but I need to finish this story, before Allie gives up and won't tell me any more. That 1812 book has to turn up tonight....
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It's not even really a question of getting it right or wrong. There isn't just one way of transliterating Chinese into roman characters. Peking and Beijing can be pronounced the same way. For that matter, there isn't just one way of pronouncing Chinese words, there being a lot of different dialects - and what we call Mandarin is actually a pretty modern creation, though it's strongly based on North-Eastern and especially Beijing speech. (And make no mistake - Mandarin and Cantonese are probably further apart than Italian and French. The written languages are *supposed* to be the same, though they aren't, entirely, either. Before I moved to Cleveland, Shifu would take me to the Four Family Association dinner every year, and we'd both sit there trying to puzzle out what they were saying, both of us speaking Mandarin and only understanding a little Cantonese. She, of course, is a native mandarin speaker, but I used to hang out with the then mostly Cantonese students in the Chinese student association.)
*wry* I try to look at it all as an exercise in non-attachment.
Keep in mind that European concepts of nobility don't really map to China.
The traditional explanations tend to describe it as an ebb and flow - families would work their butts off, accumulate money, manage to get a few members through the imperial examinations, get position, get property... and then over several generations piss it all away, rinse and repeat. The same description was often applied to dynasties - the founders would be very charismatic effective leaders of a rebellion, would set the country to rights, and some number of their successors would be as well. But after enough generations they'd either get caught up in internal politicking, become absorbed in other activities, or otherwise become ineffective and not do the important business of keeping the country running, things would get generally more and more chaotic... and eventually there would be another rebellion.
Of course, that's a simple model with a lot of philosophical biases. And it's not like the basic rule that them that has, gets was circumvented. But throughout all of this, anyone with both the money to educate a son and a bright and hardworking son could aspire to have their kid pass the examinations and get a governmental position, which was a path to power and influence, so a lot of resources were funneled in to that. Meanwhile, once they passed the exams, at least at first, they were usually sent off somewhere else, without much in the way of influence or backup, and often ended up having to rely on the local people with money and power to get anything done. (If you've ever seen Chinese Ghost Story, that's the position the male lead is in setting out - brand spanking new tax collector - yeah, way to make friends and influence people - not!)
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Women are better at negotiating and looking ahead, it seems. But now so many play male politics, and that's not getting much done on the long-term needs front.
Have you found a good place to keep up your Mandarin? That's a gift you should not let slip! I knew that the many Chinese dialects are very different, and that the entire country doesn't have a language, in a sense (I sometimes think it's one reason they learn English, it's something they can agree to dislike but use.) I did not realize that Mandarin was that new, in the sense of being a major dialect. Would it have been called just the northeast dialect, centuries ago? And Beijing was a small area, wasn't it? But became powerful, and so the language became powerful? (English all over again.)
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Then you have other levels of social organization. The aforementioned Four Families Association - which is only one of many such - has been around for almost a thousand years. When the government functioned well, they were basically a nice little civic organization. (They've adapted well to democracy - and piss them off, and you will have the letter writing campaign from hell on your ass.) When the government wasn't functioning, they'd step in and try to keep things running as best they could. And one of the things they've traditionally supported was martial arts education - which is why they helped Hong Shifu, my master, come to the country.
There are a lot of places practitioners could fit into this - and probably they'd be in more than one of them. Taoist magicians, and practitioners of folk religion are an obvious one. There was a high degree of syncretism between Taoist and Buddhist (and other) practices during the Ming Dynasty - and families of philosophically oriented practitioner-scholars would probably use what worked, I would guess. (And there's a lot of tie in with martial practice, too.) But there were also a lot of folk practitioners and demon hunters and wandering mystic-performers and folks around. (Not to mention this whole class of poor scholars and failed scholars and the other have nots from the examination system.)
It's also worth keeping in mind that the Manchus - who founded the Qing dynasty - were pretty unusual. Most non-Han groups who invaded and took over China founded a dynasty, assimilated, and were never heard from again. The Manchus both worked hard to remain ethnically (and I seem to recall ritually) distinct and enforced measures on the Han as well. So if you're looking for people in power trying to control and not trusting Chinese magic users, that would be an interesting place to look. (The Qing spent a lot of time trying to keep a lid on the monasteries, and the martial arts underworld - a lot of whom tended to hang out with the order I'm a member of, ne'er do wells as we have been - not to mention other random scholars and philosophers and popular leaders who really wanted the Manchus out.)
Okay, this is ridiculously long, even for me. Fun to reminisce about my mis-spent youth and blow of my proposal a little more, though...
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Different book, there. Is there a book in English that would be useful for understanding the martial arts philosophy? Because I think it would have been behind a lot of what he used to shape his life. And why he would still try to help dragons by talking to the different groups, acting as a go-between, etc. I think he was more with the Japanese during the Shogunate, but he would have learned a couple of the Chinese dialects, in theory.
I figure he kept the religion of dragons, but he is familiar with human religions. The ones that convert or try to use their philosophy to keep others oppressed (like I believe Confucianism was once used by the nobles of one dynasty? That may be fiction, I got that suggestion from someones' novel and plan to check it out) would have annoyed him. Some of it, like certain tenets of Buddhism and pure Christianity, he would respect. (Even Islam -- he'd see it as something that stopped the tribes from trying to kill each other. The more radial forms would be just another place religion went wrong....) Of course he's part human, and his curiosity about humans has kept him interested.
We could have an excellent talk over sushi and sweet potato sake, if you were in my neighborhood. In the meantime, we got LJ!
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It' s one of the things I love the most about history. Humans have tried almost everything, somewhere, once -- for good or ill. If we'd only keep that in mind, and learn from it, what a race we would be!
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http://books.google.com/books?id=dFEhjgM2j3cC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=oriental+medicine+history+1810&source=bl&ots=qKHaUu6ao8&sig=9N4pYzRPA-j0Me9vwejPbWMNo20&hl=en&ei=Qi0_TZf-OYLLgQfp2aXPAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
Perhaps worth skimming pages 41 to 43? (p43 ends with a mention of 1810)
Re: tiny bit
I wish more people realized that part of modern China's strength is its ability to recognize when something works, and then find a way to incorporate it into society. Did you read the bit about children doing eye exercises, and the attention to proper lighting in schools?
Preventative medicine. I just found out that something I've been using OTC has gluten. I have calls in on the Rxs, sigh....