"Despite pitched battles and ferocious skirmishing, it was a legume, not a legion, that claimed the life of the Taiping leader."
- Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller, Fortunate Sons: The 120 Chinese boys who came to America, went to school, and revolutionized an ancient civilization, p 81.
The above quote on the food poisoning and subsequent death of Hong Xiuquan perfectly represents the sense of absolute chance that I feel during the study of Chinese history. Hong, Hakka man, failed scholar, leader and instigator of the Taiping Rebellion and self-professed younger brother of Jesus Christ, is probably one of my favourite historical figures. My obsession with this fanatical man does not come with admiration or any shared values, but rather at the awe of how his inconsequentiality morphed, by complete coincidence, into his becoming the leader of the biggest civil war, like, ever.
History, in my opinion, is one of the very few academic fields where a scholar can write "by complete coincidence" in a piece of published writing and get away with it. Studying the history of China demands an open mind for just this type of odd discovery. I'll remember to do that when pouring over archival material and desperately digging for that one statistic, conducting an exercise in historiography to search for an article that contains just the right tone or abusing thesaurus.com for the perfect synonym of some distant cousin of "melancholy" with a hint of "schadenfraude".
Watch this space -- I'll have many more musings on chance's charming role in my finally-happening new career as a wannabe historian.
Try this if-then sequence:
ReplyDelete时间过得真快，一下就到期末考试了，现在已经在开始紧张的复习了，我必须要开始努力了，因为我如果不努力，成绩就上不去，我成绩上不去就会被家长骂，我被家长骂，就会失去信心，失去信心就会读不好书，读不好书就不能毕业，不能毕业就会找不到好工作，找不到好工作就赚不了钱，赚不了钱就会没钱纳税，没钱纳税，国家就难发工资给老师，老师领不到工资就会没心情教学，没心情教学，就会影响我们祖国的未来，影响了祖国的未来，中国就难以腾飞，中华民族就会退化成野蛮的民族。
中华民族成了野蛮的民族，美国就会怀疑我国有大规模杀伤性武器，我国有大规模杀伤性武器，美国就会向中国开战，第三次世界大战就会爆发，第三次世界大战爆发其中一方必定会实力不足，实力不足就会动用核武器，动用核武器就会破坏自然环境，自然环境被破坏，大气层就会破个大洞，大气层破个大洞地球温度就会上升，两极冰山就会融化，冰山融化，地球水位就会上升，地球水位上升，全人类就会被淹死。因为这关系到全人类的生命财产安全，所以我要在就剩下的几天里好好复习，考好成绩，不让悲剧发生！
But will add the quote to my TOK-history slides
ReplyDeleteThis is how you can teach the difference between correlation, causation, and coincidence :)
ReplyDelete