A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

This illustrated history of Chinese emperors is rather hectic and hard to follow if you’re as ignorant of Chinese history as I am, as it’s a 180 page book which begins with the invention of fire and concludes with the Qing Dynasty. Nevertheless, it’s an entertaining introduction to a vast history.

Rather than attempting a summary, I will simply excerpt some of my favorite bits:

In particular, he [Shennong] is remembered for tasting hundreds of wild herbs in order to find remedies to treat his people’s illnesses. In the process, he suffered from poisoning, even to the extent of being poisoned 70 times on a particular day. Eventually, he tasted a lethal wild herb which tore his intestines apart, and it became known as duanchangcao*

*Herb that tears the intestines apart.

…

It may be said that the Qin Dynasty was destroyed by eunuch intervention.

This two-panel comic sequence should give you an idea of the “1000 years of history in 15 minutes” flavor of the book:

Panel 1: Emperor Gaozong (peeking into temple to meet Wu Zetian): “Dear, come back to the palace with me.”

Panel 2: Wu Zetian (with sheaf of papers): “I’ve drafted the 12 Guiding Principles for administrative, military, economic, social, and cultural affairs.”

Emperor Gaozong (holding hand over eyes): “I’m weak in health and have contracted an eye disease. You may decide any good policies.”

I note that there is a companion book, Infamous Chinese Emperors, which I sadly don’t own.

Compiled and Illustrated by Tian Hengyu. View on Amazon: Great Chinese Emperors - Tales of Wise and Benevolent Rule

A completely charming introduction to Chinese food culture, cooking theory, history, and folklore, thoroughly illustrated and told partly in comic book form.

I can’t guarantee the accuracy of the entire thing, but the material that I did recognize didn’t contradict what I already knew (except for the part that said that in America, tofu is sometimes used to make wedding cakes, which is probably true for some couple somewhere on cake wrecks), and the illustrations certainly have that meticulously researched look.

It begins with the discovery of cooking, when unhappy Early Men, often subject to stomach aches, find a burned goat after a forest fire: “Indeed, it smells good and it’s easy to chew, too.” The ensuing whirlwind tour of Chinese foodways touches on Confucius’s ten perfections of Chinese cuisine (like many key terms, these are helpfully shown in hanzi as well as English), banquet etiquette, superstitions and songs about chopsticks, regional cuisine, which foods should not be eaten together, and a great many anecdotes in comic book form about the origin of various foods, including one in which the ubiquitous Zhuge Liang improves his soldiers’ morale via a meat dumpling shaped like an enemy’s head. (There’s another story in which a guy shapes dough into the form of a tyrannical minister and fries it.)

Many of the food origin stories follow this pattern: Political problem; new dish invented; new dish cures ailing person, improves morale, or is used to metaphorically illuminate the political situation; political problem solved!

Yi Yin once carried his cooking utensils and used cooking methods and flavorings to persuade King Cheng Tang to take up leadership of the state and successfully overthrow the corrupt Xia Dynasty.

Comic book Yi Yin, magisterial: “Every food item has unique qualities. You are only the king of a small state. You can’t possibly sample all of the delicacies of this great land. You have to take control of all China, and become the emperor to possess everything.

A tremendously entertaining read in its own right, but also an excellent springboard for further study of Chinese food culture.

Check it out on Amazon: Origins Of Chinese Food Culture

I first learned many of the legends and historical incidents of India by reading Amar Chitra Katha comics, so this graphic novel struck me as the perfect introduction to Romance of the Three Kingdoms when I saw it in Taiwan.

It is now several years and reading attempts later. Now that I’ve also seen Red Cliff, I think that is a better introduction. This is no knock on the book, which is a truly valiant effort to condense an enormous text into a single and slim graphic novel. Amar Chitra Katha’s Mahabharata was something like forty issues long, and probably would have been much more confusing if I wasn’t already familiar with Indian names and had additional exposure to the story via the Doordarshan miniseries (which is about 100 episodes long.)

Though there are many entertaining moments, I am still completely confused and forget who most of the bazillion characters are, except for the ones who were also in Red Cliff. I’m sure eventually I’ll become sufficiently familiar with Chinese names that this will be less of a problem for me, but it did not help that not only did everyone have their regular names, they also had courtesy names. It reminded me of when I was reading Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles for the first time, and I went through the entire book thinking that “Sir Walter Scott” and “Buccleuch” were two different people rather than the singular Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch.

On the positive side, the graphic novel has lots of decapitations (including one of a very startled-looking horse—poor horse!), done in a cartoony style with people shouting “Die!” This is something which I never fail to enjoy.

A few more highlights:

-Cao Cao claiming that he wasn’t trying to assassinate anyone, he was just giving him a sword!

-The caption “Zhuge Liang made his dazzling appearance.”

-Zhuge Liang’s totally awesome stratagem with the arrows and the straw bales.

-Huang Gai getting himself beat up for the greater good. I am certain John Woo will film this in a very slashy and fetishistic manner in Red Cliff 2, and I for one can’t wait.

-Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang writing “fire” on their palms. (Zhou Yu comes across really differently here than he does in the movie!)

-The chapter title “Zhou Yu Exasperated To Death.”

-Guan Yu playing chess while undergoing surgery.

-The hilariously large-assed illustration of Guan Yu on page 105 – even worse since he’s being decapitated at the time. It’s his tragic death scene, and I could look at were his enormous, globular ass cheeks.

-Zhuge Liang winning a battle after his own death.

View Red Cliff on Amazon: BATTLE OF RED CLIFF PART 1 & PART 2 ENGLISH SUBTITLES - 2 DVDS