Is anti-Manchu sentiment still a thing in China's modern post-1980s society? Growing up, as Nanyang diaspora, we were regaled with tales of our great-grandfathers receiving news of the Qing's fall and mass cutting of their queues in Chinatown… not to mention Sun Yat-sen had massive amounts of support from our communities here.
It's only around in niche circles of people who are really into history. For the average person, their impression of the Qing Dynasty (and therefore manchu people) is very positive, because there are so many fluffy romantic TV shows set in the Qing Dynasty. Most people are not that aware of the fuckery that was going on at the end of the Qing Dynasty, because it's not covered in history class a lot.
Now the meme term "the Qing Dynasty's ended, you know" is often used whenever someone is saying shockingly backwards stuff on the internet. Like commenting underneath news that an actress's revenge porn was leaked that "her life is over now". And Qing Dynasty is associated with having ancient, insanely conservative values, but the general impression is, "By all of Dynastic China was like that though."
All of these history posts are fascinating to me. It all sounds so epic. When things are good, it's a golden age of prosperity and technology. When it's bad, it's horrific massacres and "the most corrupt man in all of human history."
Would it be fair to group the dynasties, very crudely, into "good" and "bad?" basically:
Good: Han, Tang, Ming, Song
Bad: Qin, Jin, Yuan, Qing
Or alternatively it seems like an alternation of native Han rulers who ruled peacefully, and foreign occupiers who ruled horrifically
Foreign occupiers have good rule sometimes too, like Yang Jian in the Sui Dynasty. He just had the same curse as Qin Shihuang and had the world's shittiest son XD Also, if there were bad Dynasties, Song would 200% be one of them.
Lol how could I have forgotten that
Yanxi and Huanzhu Gege really did a number on popular consciousness then! The diaspora impression really is quite different…
Don't forget The Legend of Zhen Huan, a show so popular that most Chinese women my age can recite entire episodes from memory :P
Is anti-Manchu sentiment still a thing in China's modern post-1980s society? Growing up, as Nanyang diaspora, we were regaled with tales of our great-grandfathers receiving news of the Qing's fall and mass cutting of their queues in Chinatown… not to mention Sun Yat-sen had massive amounts of support from our communities here.
It's only around in niche circles of people who are really into history. For the average person, their impression of the Qing Dynasty (and therefore manchu people) is very positive, because there are so many fluffy romantic TV shows set in the Qing Dynasty. Most people are not that aware of the fuckery that was going on at the end of the Qing Dynasty, because it's not covered in history class a lot.
Now the meme term "the Qing Dynasty's ended, you know" is often used whenever someone is saying shockingly backwards stuff on the internet. Like commenting underneath news that an actress's revenge porn was leaked that "her life is over now". And Qing Dynasty is associated with having ancient, insanely conservative values, but the general impression is, "By all of Dynastic China was like that though."
All of these history posts are fascinating to me. It all sounds so epic. When things are good, it's a golden age of prosperity and technology. When it's bad, it's horrific massacres and "the most corrupt man in all of human history."
Would it be fair to group the dynasties, very crudely, into "good" and "bad?" basically:
Good: Han, Tang, Ming, Song
Bad: Qin, Jin, Yuan, Qing
Or alternatively it seems like an alternation of native Han rulers who ruled peacefully, and foreign occupiers who ruled horrifically
Foreign occupiers have good rule sometimes too, like Yang Jian in the Sui Dynasty. He just had the same curse as Qin Shihuang and had the world's shittiest son XD Also, if there were bad Dynasties, Song would 200% be one of them.