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Lessons from China's history

Lessons from China's history
Wee Kek Koon draws parallels between current events and trends and episodes and attitudes in China’s past.
last updated:
9 September, 2024
Kim Yong-hyun attends a press conference in Washington on October 31, 2024. The now former South Korean defence minister attempted suicide while in custody over his role in a failed attempt to impose martial law in South Korea. Photo: EPA-EFE
South Korea

Reflections | Suicide in Korea is a big problem. In China, views were once very different

Events during one period in Chinese history indicate that for many, dying for honour was far more desirable than living a disgraced life.

Joe Biden

Reflections | Hunter Biden pardon, Chinese history give the lie to equality before the law

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History

Recap | Taylor Swift, Elon Musk and Salman Rushdie were foreshadowed in ancient China

History

Reflections | Like Musk for Trump, a benefactor aided rise of China’s first emperor

Political contributions are not new – 2,300 years ago a rich merchant helped the father of China’s first emperor gain power, and his son.

Elon Musk with US president-elect Donald Trump. Musk gave US$132 million to help Trump get elected and the Republicans win control of Congress. Political contributions nearly 2,300 years ago helped China’s first emperor assume power. Photo: Reuters/Pool
History

Reflections | China’s Great Wall, and the Malaysian state that wants its own

People from Kelantan in Malaysia go to Thailand for pleasure. Migrants enter the US from Mexico. Why leaders dream of walls to stop them.

Chinese history

Reflections | China has long kept a firm grip on news, with gossip harshly punished

The Yongzheng Emperor even put to death editors and writers linked to a report he had celebrated a festival that he had said he would not.

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Chinese overseas

Reflections | How my DNA test showed I’m less Chinese than I thought

Wee Kek Koon had always known he was ‘not quite Chinese’ in terms of genetics and ancestry but his recent DNA test results still floored him.

DNA testing kits can reveal unexpected insights into a person’s ancestry and genealogy. Photo: Shutterstock
History

Reflections | The wells where a Chinese scholar and emperor’s consort met their ends

In 1900 a scholar jumped in a Beijing well out of shame. A palace consort died in a Forbidden City well too. Was she ‘martyred’ or killed?

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Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)

Reflections | How ‘dragon bones’ shed a whole new light on China’s ancient history

With the news that dinosaur fossils were found in Hong Kong, here is how China’s oracle bones changed our understanding of the Shang dynasty.

Food and Drinks

Reflections | Only Hong Kong sex symbol Amy Yip should be offended over bubble tea

Accusations of cultural appropriation aimed at a Canadian brand’s boba tea don’t sit right in Asia, where ‘borrowing’ cuisines is normal.

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Actress Amy Yip on a film set.
Corruption in China

Reflections | When officials in drought-prone part of China committed huge fraud

In a case that shocked China 250 years ago, officials were punished for fraud involving donations in return for university places.

A culprit before a magistrate in 18th century China in an 1801 engraving for a British magazine. Photo: Getty Images
Crime

Reflections | Official corruption isn’t new, but first recorded case in China was unusual

Yangshe Fu, Chinese history’s first recorded corrupt official, was killed after accepting a nobleman’s daughter as a bribe in a court case.

Chinese culture

Reflections | My name isn’t weird, it reflects diversity that’s dying out in China

Chinese names were once pronounced according to a person’s local dialect. Thanks to standardisation and the pinyin system, this is changing.

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Religion in China

Reflections | Why China avoided the wars of religion that consumed other places

Different faiths have coexisted more or less peacefully throughout Chinese history, with foreign religions accepted and later on Sinicised.

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Buddhist art in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, in Gansu province, China. Different religions and belief systems have co-existed more or less peacefully throughout Chinese history. Photo: Getty Images
Paris 2024 Paralympic Games

Reflections | Paralympians need more appreciation. Ancient China offers a lesson

People with disabilities were celebrated for their achievements in China’s past. Paralympians today deserve to be better appreciated.

People with disabilities were celebrated for their achievements in China’s past. Paralympians such as those at the Paris Games deserve similar support. Photo: AFP
Mid-Autumn Festival

Reflections | Why Teochew mooncakes are reminders of a history of migration

Eating Teochew mooncakes at Mid-Autumn Festival is a reminder of the Teochew people’s history of migration from China to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

Reflections | How ancient Chinese mukbang went wrong for elderly military leader

Mukbang (streaming oneself overeating) is a popular online trend, although people have been gorging to impress for at least 2,000 years

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Central Asia

Reflections | Black Myth: Wukong video game the latest take on Journey to the West

The hit video game takes its premise from classic novel Journey to the West, which has had a profound influence on Chinese popular culture.

The story of the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, from Journey to the West, dates back 500 years. Illustration: Shutterstock

Reflections | May-December couples in Chinese history, Mr and Mrs Ho aren’t the first

From Mr and Mrs Ho, the Murdochs and Macrons to historical Chinese figures including Sun Yat-sen, artists and poets, large age gaps in relationships are not uncommon.

Chinese culture

Reflections | After Olympics gender rows, how Chinese called people straddling sexes

The disputes over two boxers’ gender at the 2024 Olympics bring to mind a Chinese term that was once used to describe people with both female and male sexual characteristics.

Chinese history

Reflections | When thousands of foreigners were murdered in ancient China slaughter

The slaughter of ‘Semu’ people in China after the 14th-century Ispah rebellion highlights the ‘us versus them’ mentality evident in recent UK riots linked to the Southport killings of three girls.

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A protester holds a sign during a counter-demonstration against an anti-immigration protest in Oxford, England on August 7, 2024. Photo: AFP
Chinese history

Reflections | ‘Putrid beef’ smell: when an ancient Chinese voyager tried durian

Fifteenth-century Chinese voyager Ma Huan did not like the smell but loved the taste of the durian he ate in Sumatra. Today, the fruit is loved across Southeast Asia, Malaysia’s cultivars especially.

Malaysia is renowned for its durian, a unique and strongly flavored fruit known as the “King of Fruits.” Durian is native to Southeast Asia and is highly prized for its rich, creamy, and sometimes pungent taste. PHOTO: Getty Images
Religion

Reflections | He said he was Jesus’ brother. His Taiping Rebellion doomed Qing dynasty

New religious movements are common. Followers of a Malaysian ‘Teacher’ worship a ‘Creator’. China’s Qing dynasty never got over its brutal military suppression of such a movement, the Taiping Rebellion.

Food and agriculture

Reflections | How, in China, chillis were the poor man’s salt before becoming prized

The world has got used to eating spicy food – witness Denmark’s recall of too-spicy instant noodles. To think that centuries ago chillis were unknown to most Chinese, used instead of salt by ethnic-minority cooks.

Asian cinema

Reflections | Grandma movie gets me thinking about mine, and the ones who ruled China

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, a film portraying a young man’s relationship with his grandmother, gets Wee Kek Koon thinking of his own, and of China’s grandmother rulers.

Usha Seamkhum (left) and Putthipong Assaratanakul in a still from How to Make Millions before Grandma Dies.
Legacy of war in Asia

Reflections | Mass slaughter long predates Israel-Gaza war; look at Chinese history

Israeli forces show a cruel disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in their pursuit of Hamas fighters. Non-combatants are often slaughtered in war, as China’s history shows. Is it bloodlust?

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Palestinian boys walk past destroyed buildings in Gaza. Israeli forces have shown a cruel disregard for civilian life there in pursuit of Hamas. Targeting non-combatants is nothing new, as recent Chinese history shows. Photo: AFP
Gender

Reflections | Off with his beard, off with her head: old China’s skewed domestic abuse laws

China had laws against domestic violence in the second century BC, but the punishments for men and women abusers were far from equal, a state of affairs that continued into the 20th century.

Social media

Reflections | Amid plague of ads on social media, China’s first advertising recalled

Adverts are turning me off social media. They’ve been around a long time. A fake ad was recorded 2,700 years ago in China, and ads there 1,000 years ago were as sophisticated as some we see today.

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