2026

Wanrong — The Last Empress of China, Part I From the Glory of the Gūwalgiya Clan to the Forbidden City by Satoe  |  還暦散歩 (Kanreki Sanpo) — Late Qing Dynasty Series I. The Glory of the Gūwalgiya Clan A Family Among the Eight Banners The Gūwalgiya clan — the family into which Wanrong was born — was a distinguished Manchu family that had earned its place among the Eight Banners through military service during the Qing conquest of China. The…

Late Qing Dynasty Series  |  The Prince Su Family Prince Su Shanqi A Qing Prince, a Japanese Samurai’s Son, and the Dream That Outlasted an Empire In 1900, as allied Western forces threatened to shell the Forbidden City, a single Japanese man talked them out of it — in Chinese. His name was Kawashima Naniwa, and he was the son of a former samurai from a small Japanese castle town called Matsumoto. A year later, that same man became the…

The Fengshan Ritual: China’s Supreme Ceremony of Heaven and Earth Only the Son of Heaven Could Perform It — From the First Emperor to the Song Dynasty A Hierarchy of the Sacred: Who Could Worship What To a reader shaped by Christianity or other Western religious traditions, this may seem deeply strange. In those traditions, prayer is available to everyone — the poorest farmer and the most powerful king kneel before the same God, and no earthly rank determines one’s…

Late Qing Dynasty Series The Tongzhi Emperor 同治帝 (Tóngzhì Dì) Named “Joint Rule,” yet kept outside. The Tongzhi Emperor’s defiance and tragedy. Reigned 1861–1875 (13 years) · Born 1856 · Died 1875, age 19 “Tongzhi” means “joint rule.” Yet the emperor who bore that name was kept outside that circle for his entire life. Empress Dowager Cixi eagerly adopted the era name “Tongzhi” because she interpreted it to mean joint rule by the two Empress Dowagers — herself and Empress…

LATE QING DYNASTY SERIES February 12, 1912: The Day Two Thousand Years of Imperial China Came to an End Empress Dowager Longyu, Yuan Shikai, and the Last Act of the Qing Dynasty On February 12, 1912, a six-year-old boy named Puyi signed away the throne his family had held for nearly three centuries. With that act, more than two thousand years of continuous imperial rule in China — a system that traced its origins to the First Emperor of Qin…

The Guangxu Emperor: The Emperor Who Said He Didn’t Need Power Imprisoned by Cixi, possibly poisoned — yet Guangxu never broke. He launched 103 days of reform to save China. The emperor who chose mission over power.The Guangxu Emperor and the 103-Day Revolution That Failed Late Qing Dynasty Series * * * “If it would save the country, I do not need to hold power.” No emperor in Chinese history was supposed to say this. Princes fought and bled for…

A Merchant Sees Gold in Human Form In 267 BCE, in the bustling city of Handan—capital of the Zhao state in ancient China—a wealthy merchant named Lü Buwei encountered what would become history’s most audacious investment opportunity. To understand the brilliance of his gamble, you need to know the context. China during the Warring States period (475-221 BCE) was fractured into seven major kingdoms locked in a brutal competition for supremacy. Think of it as ancient China’s version of Game…

“Buy low, sell high” — this fundamental principle of commerce remains unchanged throughout history. But around 2,300 years ago during China’s Warring States period, one man took this concept far beyond basic trading to deploy sophisticated market manipulation techniques that made him fabulously wealthy. His name was Lü Buwei (呂不韋, Lǚ Bù Wéi). He wasn’t just a merchant. He was a pioneer of “scarcity marketing” — a strategy still used by the diamond industry today — and ultimately rose to…