Podcasts about British Chinese

Chinese takeaways are a national institution in the UK, and have also - for many years now - been the frontline where public understanding of MSG comes to a head. Angela Hui, whose book Takeaway has shone a light on life growing up behind the counter, and her mum, Jin Tian, spend a day with Lucy and Anna; showing them around their home town in South Wales, then Jin Tian's garden and home kitchen, while considering and dispelling the prevalent stereotypes around British Chinese takeaway food. Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter is out now in paperback, available from all good book shops. In To Be Delicious, Dr Anna Sulan Masing explores MSG - and more broadly umami - through the lens of East and South East Asian food heritage and diaspora food culture in the UK. From fritters to instant ramen, fermentation to takeaways, these five episodes open out the conversation around MSG and find a breadth of new ways for us to think about its usage within cooking, and its importance within cultural heritage. Credits: Hosted by @annasulan Produced by @dearlovelucy & @annasulan Original theme music by @midorijaeger Podcast artwork by @npl_illustration Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. The series is completely editorially independent and was made possible, along with Anna's wider research, by support from the European Committee for Umami and Ajinomoto. Anna's book, Chinese and Any Other Asian: Exploring East and South East Asian Identity in Britain is out now! Order here. 

"There's a huge gap between people who understand fashion and people who understand 3D. I want to close that gap and inspire the next generation." - Stephy FungA candid conversation with digital fashion artist Stephy Fung about her journey from graphic design to pioneering digital fashion. She discusses navigating her British-Chinese identity, the evolution of digital art through the NFT boom, and her mission to educate others in the digital fashion space. Stephy shares insights on building a personal brand in the digital age while maintaining authenticity, and explains how her background in graphic design laid the foundation for her success in 3D and digital fashion. Through her story, we see how embracing one's unique cultural perspective can lead to distinctive creative work that resonates globally.Key Takeaways:Cultural identity can be a powerful source of creative inspiration and differentiationTraditional design skills remain valuable even when transitioning to emerging creative fieldsPersonal branding is most effective when it comes from an authentic placeConsistency and resilience are crucial for building a following on social mediaThe future of digital fashion spans multiple platforms - from metaverse to augmented realityTeaching and giving back to the creative community can be as rewarding as creatingThe intersection of gaming, fashion, and technology presents exciting opportunitiesIt's important to adapt to new technologies while staying true to your core creative visionBuilding a personal brand requires showing both the work and the person behind itSuccess in emerging creative fields requires continuous learning and experimentation Mindful Creative: How to understand and deal with the highs and lows of creative life, career and business Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFcFree audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobookSigned books https://novemberuniverse.co.ukLux Coffee Co. https://luxcoffee.co.uk/ (Use: PODCAST for 15% off)November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)

Chinese people around the world are being targeted by a scam in which conmen posing as police, trick them into believing they are wanted for a crime back in China. Victims are threatened with extradition to China unless they hand over “bail” money. In the first of a two-part investigation into Chinese police impersonation scams, Elaine Chong speaks to Helen, a British Chinese woman who handed over her life savings. The gang convinced Helen they were genuine police by faking documents and creating the impression they were calling her from a police station.

Michael Zee is an author, cook and the creator of SymmetryBreakfast, which started as an Instagram account, before amassing over 670,000 followers and becoming one of the ‘most popular food books of 2016'. He is now based in Italy and known for his particular brand of British-Chinese fusion food. His third book, Zao Fan: Breakfast of China, is out now.  On the podcast he tells Lara about working in his father's restaurant, the joy of char siu bao and where to find the best Chinese food in Italy. 

Michael Zee is an author, cook and the creator of SymmetryBreakfast, which started as an Instagram account, before amassing over 670,000 followers and becoming one of the ‘most popular food books of 2016'. He is now based in Italy and known for his particular brand of British-Chinese fusion food. His third book, Zao Fan: Breakfast of China, is out now.  On the podcast he tells Lara about working in his father's restaurant, the joy of char siu bao and where to find the best Chinese food in Italy. 

Viv Yau had the pleasure of speaking with legendary artist, Keith Khan about whether South Asian and ESEA communities are interconnected, whether it's better to eat with chopsticks or your hands, how Shanghainese people dress so cool and of course, his upcoming show The Accountants, being shown at Factory International at Aviva Studios!  In partnership with Factory International, we have a limited amount of £3 tickets to attend the show across 4th, 5th, and 7th-11th of May 2024 at Aviva Studios, Manchester.  Discount code: ACTVIV3 Dates applicable: 4th, 5th, and 7th-11th of May 2024   2 tickets per transaction Booking fee applies  Location: Factory International at Avivia Studios, Manchester  Book here: https://bit.ly/FactoryInternationalTheAccountants    Follow Keith Khan: https://www.keithkhanassociates.com/  https://www.instagram.com/keithkhanlondon/  About The AccountantsExperience an electrifying encounter of cultures as China and India take centre stage in this awe-inspiring theatrical event from visionary artist Keith Khan, choreographed by Xiexin Dance Theatre and Terence Lewis Contemporary Dance Company. This dance extravaganza challenges our notions of identity and cultural dominance. Main characters Kash and Liam – voiced by the talented Josh Hart and actor and author Shobna Gulati – are of British-Chinese and British-Indian heritage. Delivered via texts and voice notes, their banter and soul-searching dialogues playfully debate which cultural superpower reigns supreme – from food to iconic landmarks and spiritual beliefs. This battle is enriched by a high-tech visual and acoustic feast crafted by the ARIA-nominated sound artist Somatic and the award-winning design studio idontloveyouanymore providing stunning immersive visuals, plus lighting design from the award-winning Simon Corder and dramaturgy by Jude Christian. Brought to you by Keith Khan, whose grand artistic creations have adorned events from the Notting Hill Carnival to the London 2012 Olympic Games, The Accountants invites you on a global journey right from your seat. Follow besean and slide into our DMs and keep the conversation going! https://www.instagram.com/besea.n/ Support the podcast by buying besean a coffee, 100% of the donations now go towards besean! http://bit.ly/Kofibesean Sign petitions: STAND WITH MYANMAR AND TAKE ACTION https://linktr.ee/meemalee ESEA HERITAGE MONTH: Sign the petition to support the launch of East & South East Asian Heritage Month in the UK https://www.change.org/ESEAHeritageMonth Credits: Jingle by John Clapper: https://www.instagram.com/john_clapper/

This week, Gilly explores art, philosophy and food with third generation British-Chinese photographer and Instagram superstar, Michael ZeeHis Symmetry Breakfast account featured his photographs of symmetrical breakfasts every day for 10 years and has 667k followers. In his latest book Zao Fan, Breakfast of China, it's with his anthropological eye that he looks beyond the dishes to place, people and home.Check Gilly's Substack for recipes and photography from Michael's book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Composer, conductor and bassoonist Leo Geyer, and The Southbank Centre's Gillian Moore, join Jeffrey Boakye and saxophonist Jess Gillam - standing in for Cerys Matthews - as they head from a famous Bach well-tempered classic, via Taiwan, to David Bowie's parting gesture. British-Chinese flautist Daniel Shao explains the intricacies of a traditional Taiwanese flute tune.Producer Jerome Weatherald Presented, with music direction, by Jeffrey Boakye and Jess GillamThe five tracks in this week's playlist:Well-Tempered Clavier: Prelude in C Major by Bach Bad Romance by Lady Gaga A Tayal Folk Song by Ming Flute Ensemble Symphony No.9 in D Major (1st movement) by Gustav Mahler Lazarus by David BowieOther music in this episode:Pull Up To The Bumper by Grace Jones In the Mood by Glenn Miller Ave Maria by Charles Gounod Don't Cry For Me Argentina by Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice Fugue No 24 in B Minor by Bach Symphony No.6: 'Pathétique' by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Happy Year of the Dragon, which in Mandarin is 'long' so it's going to be a looong year as a Chinese friend pointed out to me this week.In this episode, I (briefly) talk about my grandfather's time in Hong Kong as child, and the First Chinese Man in Britain (longer ago than I thought). I talk about the Opium Wars, drawing on two books I recommended previously and that I have reviewed on my Youtube channel, 'The Rise and Fall of the British Empire' by Lawrence James and 'Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World' by Niall Furgusson. I also recommend the Youtube channel 'Electric Shadows Cinema'. I also, also talk about the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997, and how those events eventually made it into a 007 film. Talking of James Bond, I also talk about three British-Chinese alumni of the long-running film franchise, plus our first Chinese members of the House of Lords and House of Commons.If you're wondering about the music at the top and tail of the episode, I recorded the street sounds on my way to work in Shenzhen one day.If you have an idea for the Alphabet of Britishness, please do not hesitate to message me. What could 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y' or 'Z' stand for? Not much time left now, so message me about any of these.Message me anytime on Instagram, or e-mail: AlbionNeverDies@gmail.comCheck out my https://www.youtube.com/britishcultureCheck out my Red Bubble shopSubscribe to my newsletter for update e-mails, random postcards, and stickers: https://youtube.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b3afdae99897eebbf8ca022c8&id=5165536616Support the show

On this week's secret show, X and Felicia only had 10 minutes to talk so X decided to bring up Chinese Takeaway in England. Yes we're poking fun a little but it's all in love for how both our cultures have ruined actual Chinese food. Email: Mailbag@UtahOutcasts.com Voicemail/Text: (347) 669-3377 Catch us LIVE each Saturday @ 8pm MT on Twitch! Our social medias: Instagram Facebook X's Twitter YouTube Discord Consider some Merch? Apple Podcasts Podbean PayPal

In the wake of revelations about Chinese spy activity in Westminster, Tom and Helen explore the recent history of British-Chinese relations, from Hong Kong, to espionage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today MPs from all parties are holding a debate on a controversial pregnancy testing drug used widely in the 1960s and 1970s. It's expected that MPs from all parties will speak, including former Prime Minister Theresa May. In May, the High Court rejected a claim for compensation saying it could not proceed because there was no new evidence linking the tests with foetal harm. Marie Lyon, Chairwoman of the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests and Hannah Bardell MP, Vice Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group On Hormone Pregnancy Testing, join Nuala McGovern. In the last in our series Rebuilding My Life, Nuala speaks to Wiz Wharton, author of Ghost Girl, Banana. Wiz was sectioned under the Mental Health Act 24 years ago, which led to a diagnosis of bipolar. She was forced to confront her demons and work out what needed to change, including owning her identity as a British-Chinese woman and learning how to stand up to the racism she had experienced all her life. Exclusive reporting from The Guardian this week shows that cricket umpires were paid three times more to officiate the men's Hundred this summer than the women's. It comes just days after the England and Wales Cricket Board announced that the women's teams will get the same match fees as the men's. Nuala speaks to journalist Raf Nicholson. One of the last surviving Bletchley Park codebreakers has died aged 99. Margaret Betts was just 19 when she was headhunted to work on the project. Nuala speaks to Tessa Dunlop, author of The Bletchley Girls, to find out a bit more about her. Dame Shirley Bassey will become the first female solo artist in British history to be honoured with a stamp series. Welsh music journalist Jude Rogers joins Nuala.

Jay Rayner hosts this week's culinary panel show from Billericay. Joining Jay are chef Sophie Wright, Catalonian food expert Rachel McCormack, British-Chinese chef Jeremy Pang, and award-winning food writer Melissa Thompson. The panel indulge in a variety of culinary conundrums, from suggestions for dishes you could make with marjoram, to the difference between hard and soft herbs, the panel are here to answer all of your food-based queries. They also answer by far the most important question of all - what ingredients go into making the ultimate fish finger sandwich? Later Co-Founder of Hoyles Honey, Richard Hoyles, gives us an insight into how bees produce honey and answers the question - do bees ever sleep? Producer: Bethany Hocken Assistant Producer: Rahnee Prescod Executive Producer: Hannah Newton A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4

Jay Rayner hosts this week's culinary panel show from The Food Museum in Stowmarket. Joining Jay are food historian Dr Annie Gray, Kurdish chef and food writer Melek Erdal, British-Chinese chef Jeremy Pang, and best-selling food writer and Masterchef champion Tim Anderson. The panel divulges in a variety of culinary conundrums. Whether it be the top tips for using up coconut oil, to the best no-mushroom veggie dishes, the panel assesses an array of food-based questions. Fitting with The Food Museum's grounds, which contain a flour-grinding watermill, the panel discuss the pros and cons of many types of bread, and addresses the all important question - is sourdough worth the hype? Sandwiched between the audience's questions, the director of The Food Museum, Jenny Cousins, gives us an insight into eating insects. A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4

Hi!! Today's episode is all about POP CULTURE NEWS!!!! My guest Colin and I discuss Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney's potential romance, the met gala,  the new wicked movie, British Chinese food and more!!! Follow Divideitwithgill IG: https://www.instagram.com/divideitwithgill/Follow Divideitwithgill Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@divideitwithgill

Coucou everyone! You may know this story....but do you know all the horrifying details? Come to 19th century Scotland with the girls to hear all about how William Burke and William Hare murdered 16 people and sold their corpses to an anatomy professor...they really were a pair of greedy, evil brutes. Then, hear about an ancient tradition called "burning the clavi," which will help you stay safe from the evil eye! Don't forget to follow us on Instagram :) Main topic sources: Burke and Hare wiki BURKE AND HARE: THE EDINBURGH KILLERS WHO SOLD THEIR VICTIM'S BODIES FOR DISSECTION The Story of Burke and Hare Minitopic sources: Burning the Clavie Recommendations: Kate's recommendation - "In the Land of the Moon" (2016) Cat's recommendation - British Chinese takeaway on TikTok Cover art and logo by Kate Walker Mixed and edited by Catherine Roehre Theme song by Lumehill Thank you all - ciao! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/europhile/support

Autumn + Ashley are all over the place, as usual, today with some tongue twisters, reminiscing on the days of talk television, TV show induced murder ?!, as well as new Tik Tok DRAMA. Would you go to your 20 year high school reunion? And have you seen Avatar 2? All of this PLUS discussing British Chinese food and it's social media takeover, (as well as getting to the bottom of why it's so fried and interestingly worded.) It's a wild ride. Let's go. "If I were a Fish" (Featuring Oliva Barton) by Corook: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRKkCnbe/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/justcallmepodcast/message

The girls dive right into the content on today's episode, beginning with what the algorithm has been pushing them lately. For Dena it's hair transplants in Turkey by way of @hanelaine and for Catalina it's the drama-filled world of Cake Tok, masterfully explained by @marketinginmiami. Next, they spotlight their content creator of the week, @madrison.humphreyy, who is making comedic gold from what seems to be an empty office park. The Met gala was this week and the girls share their relatively uninformed takes on the event despite the fact that Catalina HAS read all of Notes on Camp and wants the world to know. Dena has an important update on the after-dark side of the Fruit Roll-Up food trend, featuring a video by @kelseydarragh and Catalina's preferred fruity snack is the cocktail stylings of @danniwalsh123. Also on the topic of food trends, the ladies discuss a wave of videos discussing British Chinese takeout, from content creators like @charlyannec, @laurenkategriffiths, and @__mjmcm. For audio they highlight Biden by Bo Burnham (@dustyfromwisconsin), people who actually get the Wes Anderson trend right (@marta__sierra and @danclemt), their diverging views on the Fish song @hicorook and the @taylorswift April 29th trend. Finally, they close the episode chatting about @yoleendadong's video of one of Dena's top dislikes (outside clothes on beds) and @phoebeindc's parody of American's luggage in Europe    Check out all the videos we mention and more on our blog (2old4tiktok.com), Instagram (@2old4tiktokpod), and TikTok (@2old4tiktok_podcast).  

From being the little princeling in the kitchen during his culinary training to asserting his creative and commercial voice - Andrew's authority has not always been clearly exercised, reflecting the complexities with succession in family businesses. Considering all these complex succession hangovers, why was Andrew so adamant that his own new venture - A. Wong - should be launched on the site of his dad's previous restaurant? Why not a clean break and a new site? What has remained of his father's empire - the other businesses, the team, the network - and how has the family adapted to the new business? Or are there continuities in how decisions are made and dreams realised through all three generations of Andrew's family?Thanks for listening to our special miniseries. Normal service resumes with the next episode of XO Soused on Tuesday 2 May. Intro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.comXO Soused is a fortnightly audio newsletter. We'd be grateful if you can share XO Soused with your friends! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

Episode 2 goes inside Andrew's family as they battle to carve a space in London's hospitality sector . As Britain's Asian restaurant sector transformed in the lead up to the new millennium, so too did the ambitions of many a restaurateur -not least Andrew's father, who constantly cast about for new ideas and concepts. What kind of pressures, limits and opportunities did this present to the family? How did the teenage Andrew understand these forces as they impacted on his father in particular? What did it mean to have a family business in this patriarchal world, and where did it leave Andrew's mother and Andrew when his father passed away?Tomorrow: British Chinese cuisine - Wong family dynamics from 2008 - the presentIntro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.comXO Soused is a fortnightly audio newsletter. We'd be grateful if you can share XO Soused with your friends! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

Introducing a special three-episode mini series of XO Soused. One episode per generation, and one episode each day from Monday to Wednesday this week. Andrew's family have been involved in the Chinese catering trade in Britain for three generations. Every generation of Andrew's family had an ambition for their business. During the years that his grandfather owned these businesses, these ambitions were shaped by this powerful patriarch and his network in the midlands, and by the realities of baby boomer Britain and its effect on the Chinese cuisine on its shores.And along came Andrew's father with ambitions to start up in London, setting a course for Andrew's family that still defines their lives today. In this first special episode of this miniseries, Andrew and Mukta delve into these personal histories - into these sagas of competition and cooperation, of succession and discontinuity - of the 1970s and 1980s. Tomorrow: British Chinese cuisine - Wong family dynamics in the 1990s-2000sIntro and outro music: 遊子 [wanderer] by mafmadmaf.comXO Soused is a fortnightly audio newsletter. We'd be grateful if you can share XO Soused with your friends! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

Earth 2 Air lands again! Join New Earth Artistic Director Kumiko Mendl and Dr Lucienne Loh, historian and curator of the British Chinese exhibition at the British Library, as they open the new podcast season with the way in which the ambitions of New Earth Theatre and WORTH coalesce with the exhibition, and shared themes by both play and the exhibition.

Stephy Fung is a digital fashion artist, educator and content creator. Some of her previous clients and features include Xbox, Vogue Singapore, Gucci, Vice and Hypebeast. Originally a 3D designer, Stephy began exploring digital fashion as a creative hobby. Her work grew an audience when documenting her digital fashion journey via social media. Stephy's work mostly frames vibrant colours and balanced composition, paying homage to her Chinese heritage, as well as expressing her British Chinese identity. Through her work, Stephy hopes to fuse modern techniques/cuts with traditional Chinese elements. As well as to encourage more diversity within the 3D space.Links:@stephyfunghttps://linktr.ee/stephyfung@whatsfashiontechnologyhttps://linktr.ee/whatsfashiontechnologySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/what-even-is-fashion-technology-digital-fashion-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode, Natty and Nie are joined by British-Chinese cricket player Issy Wong. Issy shares how she came into her cricket career and the lifestyle she cultivated from this. Familial connection is a prevalent value with Issy; and throughout the episode we learn all about her Macanese heritage and hear captivating stories of her family and culture. We hear an extract from 13-year-old Issy, sharing her memories of watching live football with their family and how she connects through her support of the Liverpool Football Club. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Zi Lan Liao is one of the leading exponents of Chinese music. Her busy career on the international concert circuit has resulted in her being the most widely heard and best appreciated performer on the gu zheng worldwide. Her work includes Oscar-winning scores and modern fusion music – but her real passion is passing on her musical heritage to the British Chinese children of the Pagoda Arts Centre in Liverpool. In the late 1970s, Liao Zilan's musician father took the life-changing decision to become a cultural officer in Liverpool. Liao and the family relocated from Guangzhou – but Liao continued to play the guzheng, or Chinese harp. A globe-leading musician experimenting with fusing Chinese and Western styles, she has performed at the Royal Albert Hall, toured internationally and recorded music for Hollywood film scores – but she still helps local children to get hands-on with Chinese musical instruments. “To actually see young people playing Chinese music live is something new to them – all they can imagine is seeing this instrument on the television but not be able to have hands on it,” she says. “And so they really think it's amazing that Liverpool children can, if they want, they can come and learn it.”Presenter: Louise GreenwoodProducer: Elizabeth MearnsSound Editor: Terry WilsonSeries Producer: Elizabeth Mearns 

This week's episode features British-Chinese composer, Alex Ho. Alex was the winner of the Critic's Circle Young Artist Award 2021, is the recipient of the PRS Composers' fund 2023 and is a BBC Music Magazine Rising Star of 2022. He also happens to be a flippin' great guy!Seb and Verity met Alex back in November 2022, days ahead of the premier of his new work Carved in Gorton Stone, performed by the Manchester Camerata at Gorton Monastery. They discuss the premise of this piece and it's site specific nature - at one stage a UK monastery tour is mooted although not sure Alex is convinced….They talk about Tangram, the collaborative cross arts ensemble Alex co-founded and some of the influential relationships and new possibilities this has led to.Alex talks about Untold, his ‘Anti Opera' and how this work confronts the issues of racism towards East Asians communities, particularly in opera.They discuss getting a work/life balance, experimenting with found sounds, Alex's love of musical theatre and what a Yangquin is - 50 points if you already know!Read more about Alex on his website: https://www.alexhocomposer.com/Listen to Alex's Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/alexhocomposer/And find out more about Tangram here: https://www.tangramsound.com/You can follow Three In a Bar on Instagram @threeinabarpodhttps://www.instagram.com/threeinabarpod/We are on Twitter @threeinabarpod https://www.twitter.com/threeinabarpodAnything you'd like to share with us? Any guests you'd love to hear or anything you'd like us to do better? Drop us a line at hello@threeinabar.comSUPPORT THREE IN A BAR ON PATREONJoin our Members' Club for a bonus podcast feed plus many more rewards.Click here: https://www.patreon.com/threeinabar Click here to join the Members' Club on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this series of podcasts, the story of how a brutal policy of forced repatriation caused thousands of Chinese men to disappear from Liverpool at the end of World War II. This policy, orchestrated by the British government, would leave families traumatised and the community broken.In 1866, shipping group Alfred Holt & Company was founded in Liverpool. It quickly became one of the UK's biggest shipping merchants, building established trade routes between Liverpool, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Its major subsidiary, the Blue Funnel Line, carried cotton, tea and silk, and relied heavily on Chinese sailors.Over time, many of these seamen and traders settled in Liverpool, and on the eve of World War II the city was home to a thriving British-Chinese community of thousands. This harmony was short-lived as the end of the war saw a mass deportation of Chinese men.We speak to the children and grandchildren of those men whose childhoods were blighted by the loss of their fathers and the secrecy and misinformation around the policy. We also speak to Rana Mitter, an Oxford University historian specializing in modern China, about the role of Chinese sailors in the British Merchant Navy and what these family members faced on their return to China.Presenter: Jamie OwenProducers: Elizabeth Mearns, Mark AshendenSeries Producer: Simon Morris

More than 3000 kilometres, 131 days, two brothers and one epic journey along the Great Wall of China. British Chinese siblings - James and Thomas Lindesay - spent 6 months running and walking along the main west to east length of the wall - starting in the desert all the way to where the structure meets the sea - near North Korea. They've been literally following in their father's footsteps - William Lindesay who made the same journey in 1987.

Henrietta Harrison discusses her Cundill Prize-shortlisted book on the interpreters who took on the dangerous task of communicating between the British empire and Qing China. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, she explores the extraordinary life stories of two key translators, and reveals how their work shaped the course of British-Chinese relations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last time we spoke, the British government was walking a tight rope between getting their tea fix and not being banned from trade with China. When Britain ended the East India company's monopoly over the China trade, they assumed they could not be implicated in the illegal opium trade and they were soon proved very very wrong. Britain had managed to fix their silver problem, but at the cost of draining China's silver and that tight rope they were walking, well they fell. China was becoming chaotic again, revolts were likely to be on the horizon. The Qing dynasty had had enough of the situation and began to crack down in the 1830's more and more so. Now China is sending one man who had proven he knew how to stop the opium trade and soon he would wage war on the illicit trade.   This episode is Lin Zexu vs big opium   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   Lin Zexu gave the strongest and swiftest voice of approval and he was no ordinary official. Lin Zexu was the son of a schoolteacher and proved to be a great student. He passed the brutal competitive examination in Beijing in 1811 at the age of 26 emerging top of his class. Working as a judge in the 1820's he earned a reputation for fairness and the nickname “Lin, Clear as heaven” or “Lin the Clear sky” which was a testament to his incorruptibility. Over the years of his work he earned great renown as a pragmatic administrator deeply versed in how to deal with water management and flood relief. He was a rare official who could be relied upon to put the welfare of the people ahead of his own gain. He was frankly, incorruptible and because of this, in 1838 he was Emperor Daoguangs favorite minister and reached a rank comparable to Deng Tingzhen in Canton while being 10 years younger than him. He was a beacon of honesty and virtue in a time when the Qing government was full of corruption. One and a million as they say.    Lin Zexu's primary concerns had always been domestic, he had no dealings with foreigners as that was exclusively a Canton issue. Foreign relations were very far from his mind and this shaped his way of thinking. His main concerns were with the Chinese, not the foreigners when tackling the problem of opium. Lin Zexu was quite conservative and his support for suppressing opium was based on his abiding faith in moral suasion. When Huang Juezi made his proposal it marked a turning point for Lin Zexu. He seized on the proposal almost like a religious crusade and immediately offered the Emperor a detailed action plan. He recommended the confiscation and destruction of opium pipes and other equipment for using the drug. Local moral campaigns, education campaigns to teach the evils of opium to the people and active suppression of opium dens and corrupt officials. He also recommended medical treatments to help addicts wean off opium. He described various elixirs used to combat opium addiction.   One thing of interest to me as my first degree is in neurobehavioral science, Lin Zexu talked about giving patients a mix of small amounts of opium combined with herbs that would make the patients sick. This idea has been used in the field of addiction and can be effective. The Idea is based on operant conditioning, by linking to the act of taking opium with a negative stimulus you might get the patient to be more and more reluctant to take the drug. I will attest this in practice is a hit or miss depending on the drug or action. Anyways Lin Zexu's action plan was quite formidable and was hitting the issue at the source at multiple angles.    After sending his action plan to the Emperor, Lin Zexu took the initiative to test it out in his provinces of Hunan and Hubei. In august of 1838 he launched the campaign first setting out to hospitals to treat addicts. Then he jailed dealers, issued proclamations condemning the use of the drug and ordered local officials to round up and destroy whatever opium or opium using equipment they could find. Reports began to pour into Beijing about the success of Lin Zexu's plan. Tens of thousands of pipes were and ounces of opium were confiscated. Mind you 10 thousands ounces of opium was around 10 chests worth, during a time when 30,000 chests were coming into China annually. The pipes and opium were burnt publicly, which was a crucial element to the plan as they needed to prove to the public they indeed were destroying the substance, otherwise the public would assume they were taking it for themselves! Lin Zexu's reports to the Emperor were increasingly triumphant and their tone pressed the urgency to unleash the action plan outside Hunan and Hubei. In September of 1838 Lin Zexu declared opium to be the largest problem the Qing dynasty was facing. “Before opium was widespread, those who smoked it only harmed themselves. The punishments of canning and exile were enough to keep them in line. But when its evil influence has penetrated into the whole country, the effect is tremendous. Laws should be put into rigid enforcement. If left in a lax state, then after a few decades, there will be no soldier in this Central Empire to fight against invaders, nor money to bear the military expenses. I have the fear, that if the evil be suffered to grow at this critical moment there may be no more chance for remedy”.    In October of 1838, the Daoguang Emperor was leaning heavily towards initiating the suppression campaign while some of his officials still believed he might legalize opium. Those same officials were feeding Charles Elliot stories that at any moment the substance would be legalized and this influenced his actions. Then on November the 8th a Manchu official named Qishan who was the governor general of Zhili province reported the largest drug bust in the history of the Qing empire to that point. The confiscated opium was found in Tianjin, not too far away from Beijing. Qishan stated the opium had come from Canton through the Cantonese traders who managed to ship it north through various means. The major drug bust indicated to the Qing court, perhaps they needed to perform the same action in Canton. Emperor Daoguang then made the decision to summon Lin Zexu to Beijing in December of 1838. After the meeting, Emperor Daoguang tasked Lin Zexu with a mission to obliterate the opium trade in Canton. Lin Zexu would travel south as an imperial commissioner, holding the power to act on behalf of the Emperor, answerable to no other local officials. He would have command over all naval forces at Canton and Deng Tingzhen would give him support. Thus in early January of 1839, while Charles Elliot expected legalization of opium to be declared at any moment, Lin Zexu made his way to end the illicit trade once and for all.   Charles Elliot was being fed false information about the ongoing court battle over the opium question in China and he worried about his lack of authority over the British subjects in Canton. If the opium smugglers provoked a crisis under his watch, he was placed in quite a predicament. The British traders and Chinese did not actually know what Elliot's authority was and on many occasions tried to pry the information out of him. The English newspapers for example repeatedly asked him to clarify what his authorization was, but he refused to ever answer.  Elliots became increasingly concerned with British sailors getting into fights with local chinese and organized a naval police force to deal with the issue. Yet when he began doing this he was scolded by Palmerston for overstepping his authority. “You have no power of your own authority to make any such regulations. The establishment of a system of police at Whampoa within the dominions of the Emperor of China was in violation of the absolute right of sovereignty enjoyed by independent states”.    By the early winter of 1839 it seemed governor general Deng Tingzhen's ongoing efforts to crackdown on the Chinese opium smugglers was working. As noted by William Jardine “Not a broker to be seen, nor an Opium pipe; they have all vanished. The authorities are seizing smokers, dealers and shopkeepers innumerable. We must hope for better times and brisker deliveries”. Up to this point Deng Tingzhen limited his actions towards the Chinese and did not target any foreigners. Occasional shots were fired between government boats and foreign smuggling vessels, but nothing had gotten out of hand. Then on December 3rd, a small drug bust was performed and 2 Chinese workers were caught smuggling opium for a British merchant. In response to the incident, Deng Tingzhen decided to make an official statement to the foreign community. On december 12 a small force of Qing soldiers went to the gates of the foreign factories and hammered a wooden cross on the gate indicating they were about to execute a convicted Chinese opium dealer. The site of the execution was to be in front of the foreign factories, obviously Deng Tingzheng was sending a message to the foreigners, that they were responsible for the man's execution.    Its hard to know who acted out first. Elliot was at Whampoa and did not witness the event to come and those involved on the British side said they had no involvement. Its been theorized British sailors may have perpetuated it, regardless some foreigners decided that the execution in front of their homes was too distrubed and began to tear down the gallows being erected. The local Chinese soldiers did nothing to resist, some even began to help tear it down. A crowd of Chinese formed to watch the event and its remained peaceful, until some rowdy British began shoving their way through the crowd. These British hit several Chinese with sticks and some threw rocks, as you can imagine soon fights began and a full riot burst. Several thousand Chinese came and began pelting the foreigner with rocks prompting the Chinese soldiers to intervene and escort the foreigners back into the factories. In the end the gallow was torn down, but the convicted Chinese smuggler was executed elsewhere.    Palmerston demanded to know what had occurred, he was furious the British subjects had the audacity to get involved in Chinese affairs. “On what grounds did the traders imagine themselves entitled to interfere with the arrangements made by the Chinese officers of justice for carrying into effect, in a chinese town, the orders of their superior authorities”. Elliot was quite shaken by the situation. He knew he had to do something to thwart any further incident, but he had no real authority to do anything. He wrote back to Palmerston “that the danger and shame of the opium trade had reached a point where it was falling by rapid degrees into the hands of more and more desperate men”. Elliot then decided to take firm action, on december 18 he issued a proclamation ordering all British vessels carrying opium to depart the inner waters of Canton immediately. He had no authority to confiscate their cargoes, nor to arrest them and thus he fell back on the authority of the Qing government. If any British vessels refused, he would personally turn them over to the Chinese “Her Majesty's Government will in no way interpose if the Chinese Government shall think fit to seize and confiscate the same”. Simultaneously he wrote the governor of Canton pledging his support for the campaign against opium.    The opium traders were all very very pissed off. The superintendent, Elliot was supposed to protect them! James Matheson complained to the British press “that Elliot had adopted the novel course of assisting the Qing government in this, against his own countrymen! It appears to be the intention of Captain Elliot to offer himself as a kind of chief of the chinese preventive service”. Another execution of a convicted chinese opium smuggler took place in february of 1839, this time it was done much faster and with a large guard. William Jardine left Canton in late January of 1839, leaving Matheson to watch over the business. Enroute to Canton was Lin Zexu who was being counseled by many Qing officials. Qishan warned Lin Zexu not to start a war against the foreigners. Another official Gong Zizhen who was prolifically anti opium, advised that if Lin should try to shut off the source of opium directly at Canton, then both the foreign and Chinese dealers might start a revolt and China might not have sufficient military power to control them both. He recommended a gradual approach, first take action to reduce imports and only against the Chinese merchants and consumers while simultaneously increasing the military defenses at canton. He argued that China's existing naval forces could not possibly match the British and that efforts should be made to increase coastal and inland defenses. With all that being complete, in time they would be able to shut off the foreign merchants completely. Enroute to Canton, Lin Zexu visited Bao Shichen a official who had written since the 1820's on the subject of shutting down foreign trade to prevent the drain of silver from china. Bao Shichen told him “to clear a muddy stream you must purify the source. To put a law into effect you must first create order within”. Lin Zexu took this to mean he should first begin arresting all the government officials who had violated the ban on opium. Then he must completely shut off the flow of foreign opium imports coming into Canton. Bao Shichen would later state that Lin Zexu misunderstood him completely and that shutting down foreign trade was too dangerous.    In March of 1839, Canton was anxious about Lin Zexu's arrival. Everyone knew the great powers invested upon him, but nobody knew how he would use them. He arrived on March 10th and immediately struck hard. He began with mass arrests of the known Chinese smugglers and put up proclamations announcing his mission was to destroy the opium trade in its entirety. He ordered marchants to abandon the trade and for users to hand over their pipes to be smashed. Thousands of pounds of opium and tens of thousands of pipes were confiscated. In 3 months after his arrival, he would arrest 5 times the amount of people that Deng Tingzhen had done in his 2 year reign. As things were going along successfully with the Chinese affairs, Lin Zexu then decided to address the foreign merchants. On march 18 he issued an edict ordering the British merchants to surrender all of their opium to him and gave them 3 days to comply. The Hong merchants as the traditional mediators between the foreigners and the Qing government bore the heaviest blame and Lin Zexu began interrogating them all. Many were brought before him on their knees under threat of execution if they should lie.    The foreign merchants initially made no efforts toward surrendering their opium, they all wanted to see how far Lin Zexu would actually go. Lin Zexu was not accustomed to being disobeyed and quickly lost his patience. By March 19 he announced that no foreign merchants would be allowed to leave the Canton factories until they gave up their opium and signed papers stating they would never trade the drug again in China under penalty of death. Boom. If they continued to defy him after the 3 day, he would execute Houqua and other Hong merchants on the morning of March 22. The Hong merchants all panicked and pleaded with the British merchants to help. The British caved in someone and agreed to hand over 1000 chests of opium on the morning of march 22. Word came that the amount of chests would not be enough and thus the British simply held back.    Houqua and some other Hong merchants were paraded around the Canton square with iron collars and chains. Lin Zexu threatened to execute them if British merchants did not hand over the opium, but the deadline had passed and many were suspicious if Lin Zexu was bluffing. One person who did not think Lin Zexu was bluffing was Elliot who was in Macao when he heard of the situation. Elliot feared the British merchants would all be put on trial and executed. Elliot resolved to save them by standing up to the imperial commissioner, but also while trying to appease him. Elliot wrote to Palmerston “to save the merchants a firm tone and attitude was all that he needed to efuse the unjust and menacing disposition of the Imperial commissioner, but that he would also appease him by using his best efforts for fulfilling the reasonable purpose of the Qing government”.    Elliot arrived at the Canton factories at sundown of March 24 in a rowboat in full captain's uniform with a cocked hat and his sword in hand. He proclaimed to the merchants “given the imminent hazard of life and property and the dark and violent natures of Lin Zexu's threats, they should begin immediate preparations to evacuate the Canton factories. If Lin Zexu refused to grant them passage from Canton to Macao within 3 days, Elliot would conclude that the Chinese intended to hold them hostage. So long as their proceedings were moderate, defensible and just I will remain with you to my last gulp!”. That night Lin Zexu ordered all the Chinese staff in the factories to leave. The cooks, linguists, porters, servants and such all packed up and left. Then Lin Zexu shut off all supplies from entering the factories and surrounded them with soldiers. The foreign factories had become a prison for roughly 350 people, not all of whom were British. There were Americans, Parsis, some Dutch alongside the British. Lin Zexu was careful to order all guards to not provoke nor molest the foreigners, he wanted everything to be peaceful. Nobody was going to starve however, provisions were plentiful in the factories, however the merchants found cooking for themselves disastrous. One report came from the Americans who said Robert Frobes attempt at ham and eggs came out a hard black mass approximating the sole of a shoe.    Elliot was terrified they were all going to starve or be executed. Elliot resolved that they had to cooperate with Lin Zexu and hand over all the opium for if they didn't, he feared they would all be executed. In the name of her majesty, Elliot ordered everyone to surrender the opium to him and in return he would sign a promissory note guaranteeing that the British government would pay them its fair market value. The offer seemed too good to be true to the merchants. The Qing authorities could at any moment seize all the opium by force and with it their tremendous losses. James Matheson said “our surrender is the most fortunate thing that could have happened”. Throughout the afternoon on march 27th, the merchants brought Elliot statements of the amount of opium under the control of their firms and he in turn signed notes of guarantee payments by the British government. All told the amount was 20, 283 chests with a market value of roughly 10 million dollars. There was one glaring problem with this solution, Elliot had absolutely no authority to do it.   Elliots decision would turn out to be the crux of many events to come. Elliot had no authority nor any instructions to do what he did. It seems in hindsight it was a rash decision made in panic. From Elliots point of view he had to immediately save the lives of the British subjects and the overall trade relations between Britain and China. After making the choice he wrote to Palmerston “I am without doubt, that the safety of a great mass of human life hung upon my determination”. All the merchants who went along with it knew full well Elliots did not have the authority to purchase 10 million dollars worth of opium on behalf of the Crown, but because he had been so ambiguous in the past about his authority, they could all play coy that they went along with it believing he did have the authority. The signed document would give them a strong case against the British government for compensation if and when it came to that. Facing the choice of having their contraband seized by Elliot or Lin Zexu, it was a no brainer they had better chances dealing with their own government to get reimbursement. Both Elliot and the traders assumed there would be a compensation of sorts and with it the termination of the Indian Chinese opium trade for good. They had no idea how events in Britain would unfold as a result of all of this.    And so Elliot wrote to Lin Zexu informing him he would be surrendering all of the opium, which would be the single largest seizure of opium recorded in Chinese history up to that point. Lin Zexu wrote to the emperor on april 12 1839 after the seizure detailing how enormous the success was. He got them to seize all the opium in a short time and they made little conflict over it, hell no military force was really necessary “naturally they were cowed into submission”. Lin Zexu recommended they show benevolence towards the foreigners, to forgive them of their past crimes and send them a large gift of livestock, since he imagined they were starving and they no longer had their trade to support them. Yet Lin Zexu did not immediately release them, Elliot was livid! Lin Zexu told Elliot they could only be granted to leave once ¾'s of the opium had been collected a process that would take weeks, possibly months. Elliot sent a secret dispatch to Palmerston begging him for a naval fleet “it appear to me, my lord, that the response to all these unjust violences should be made in the form of a swift and heavy blow, prefaced by one word of written communication”. Elliot further argued for naval blockade of Canton and the Yangtze River, the capture of Chusan island all followed up by a northern expedition to demand the “disgrace and punishment” of Lin Zexu and Deng Tingzhen. Emperor Daoguang should be forced to apologize for the “indignities heaped upon the Queen and to pay an indemnity to satisfy British losses. The Qing government must be made to understand its obligations to the rest of the world.    It would take 6 weeks for all the opium to be collected and the Qing officials expected the opium to be sold off to reimburse the countless Chinese traders that had lost out. Emperor Daoguang however ordered Lin Zexu to destroy it all, and that is just what he did. I would like to mention at this time, I covered what is to come, the first Opium war on my personal channel, its a 45 minute or so documentary so please check it out it would mean a lot to me. But what I also want to let you know is there was a British/Chinese movie made on the Opium war called…the Opium War haha, which came out in 1997. I won't sugar coat it, not a amazing film by any measure, but the scene where Lin Zexu destroys the opium is quite impressive and does more merit to the story then me narrating it, so check it out if you would like! Over the course of 3 weeks in June, Lin Zexu destroyed the opium at a specially built site near the Tiger's Mouth. An american missionary named Elijah Bridgeman witnessed it and there are artist renditions of the event. In rectangular pools around 7 feet deep the opium balls were crushed and tossed in. Chinese workers would stir the thick opium filled water into a froth then cover it all with lime and salt for a few days before casting it out to sea.   Lord Palmerston learnt of the confiscated opium from the traders themselves before Elliots letter arrived. The letter that informed Palmerston was from James Matheson who was launching a campaign to make the government pay up. Suddenly petitions from all the merchants poured into Palmerstons office. A bunch of drug dealers were shaking down the British government to pay for their lost drugs. There was another major problem, since march of 1839 all trade with China had halted and there was no way to tell when it would open back up. Ships full of cotton textiles were stuck at Macao and tea shipments were stuck in Whampoa. All the non opium traders were petitioning Britain to do something and fast. Collectively the domestic manufacturers of goods that went to Canton held significant political power, much greater than the opium claimants. They demanded “prompt, vigorous and decided measures to reopen Canton and put the regular China trade on a more secure and permanent basis”. What they wanted was a treaty, done via force if necessary.   William Jardine arrived in Britain in September right as the news from Canton was spilling in and began a lobbying campaign. For the british government the talk of the opium trade was embarrassing and they wished to make the entire matter disappear as quickly as possible. However the amount of money owed to the opium traders was enormous and the Treasury of England was in no state to compensate them. Palmerston was in a terrible situation and he brought the issue of China to a cabinet meeting at Windsor castle on October 1 of 1839. He was being bombarded by business lobbyists demanding action, Elliots letter pleading for help and the English press. Britain was involved in a war in the Ottoman Empire against Russia, with a dispute between Maine and New Brunswick and an invasion of Afghanistan thus all the ministers did not want to distract themselves too much with the China problem. Palmerston offered a quick solution, he tossed in front of the cabinet several maps of the Chinese coast and explained how a small British squadron could blockade China's crucial ports and rivers to force the Qing government into submission. The plan was almost identical to a plan formulated by James Matheson in 1836 after Napiers death. The Prime minister Lord Melbourne was not so much concerned with the military aspect of the plan, but how were they going to pay the 10 million to the opium merchants, they had no financial resources to spare. They did not want to take on anymore government debt, the debt was already high after the Napoleonic wars. Also it was going to look terrible bad that the British government was paying off drug dealers. Then the solution came, the brand new secretary at war, Thomas Macaulay made a suggestion to Palmerston, a rather out of the box idea. Why not make China pay for it all.   Palmerston put forward Macaulay's idea and the cabinet agreed boom. The matter was settled, a naval squadron, not too large would be dispatched to obtain reparation from China for Lin Zexu's taking of Elliot and the other British subjects hostage. On may 21st of 1839, Lin Zexu finally allowed the foreigners to leave Canton and Elliot ordered all British subjects to abandon the factories and go to macao. Despite this more tense events would follow.    In early July there was a drunken melee in Hong Kong harbor. The comprador of the British ship Carnatic was arrested and the sailors of the Carnatic demanded his return, but the Chinese refused. Thus 30 sailors on July 12th from the Carnatic and Mangalore, both ships owned by Jardine Matheson & Co went ashore and to the village of Jianshazui on the Kowloon Peninsula. They all proceed to get drunk off Samshu, a fortified rice wine and vandalized the local temple and beat to death a man named Lin Weixi. Elliot was livid when he heard the news, he was trying to bide time in the hopes Britain was sending reinforcements. He immediately tried to rush to Jianshazui to bribe the family of the victim, but the bribery was to no avail. When Lin Zexu heard of the affair he demanded that the culprits be handed over for Chinese justice. At this time Lin Zexu he had just received new regulations from the Emperor that formully mandated the death sentence for opium users in China and for the first time also for foreigners who sold opium.The British assumed it was a death sentence to give the men up. Lin also put up postings that if any Chinese killed a foreigner unjustly they would be executed. Instead of giving up the men, Elliot called for a court of inquiry and charged 5 British sailors with riot and assault, but brought no murder or manslaughter chrages. Lin Zexu accused the British of denying China's sovereignty by issuing a court of their own.   Elliot then invited Lin Zexu to send government officials to observe a new trial for the said sailors, but Lin Zexu refused and promulgated an edict that forbade anyone from giving food or water to all the British citizens in China under penalty of death. The situation was growing more and more tense and Lin Zexu tossed Elliot a rope. On August 17 he ordered Elliot to hand over the murderer without specifiyng the perpetrators identity. Thus the idea was that Elliot could simply send whomever he wanted and the matter could be settled. From Elliots point of view however, to handover any British citizen would cause an uproar back home and he refused to do so.     On August 24, an English passenger aboard a boat near Hong Kong was attacked at night. The Chinese stripped the man naked, cut off his ear and stuffed it in his mouth. Rumors began to spread that Lin Zexu was amassing thousands of soldiers to invade Macao. Then the Portuguese governor general of Macao, Don Adraio Accacio a Silveira Pinto told Elliot he had been ordered by the Chinese to expel the British from the colony. He also told Elliot that the Chinese were secretly forming a military force to seize all the British in Macao. That very same day 2 ships belonging to Jardine Matheson & Co arrived to Macao, the Harriet towing the Black Joke. Living up to its name, the Black Joke was covered in blood all over her decks and her crew was missing. The crew of the Harriet reported that unidentified Chinese had boarded the Black Joke as it passed the island of Lantao and massacred the entire crew except for a single sailor they had rescued. Governor Pinto was so alarmed by this development he simply ordered the British to leave immediately.   Elliot finally took action. Elliot ordered all the British women and children to depart aboard some merchant ships and sail to Hong Kong Island. With no more hostages at stake Elliot now felt free to make a counterattack if necessary, but for now he would bide his time hoping that Britain was sending a squadron. His hopes were raised when a warship from India arrived, the Volage which held 26 cannons, she also brought with her news that another warship, the Hyacinth and 18 gunner was on its way shortly. Thus Elliot and all the men boarded the ships and sailed to the Kowloon peninsula and set up a flotilla just above Hong Kong island.   Lin Zexu got a report of the exodus of Macao and felt he had finally won and wrote to Emperor Daoguang “no doubt they have on their ships a certain stock of dried provisions; but they will very soon find themselves without the heavy, greasy meat dishes for which they have such a passion”. On September 1 the Emperor sent Lin Zexu a letter asking if the rumors were true that the barbarians had purchased female children and used them in diabolical rites. Lin Zexu replied that the foreigners employed Chinese adults as plantation workers and miners and a few children, but he did not believe that any black magic was involved in their employment. The Emperor also asked if the confiscated opium contained human flesh which he theorized might explain the illicit drugs preternatural addictive powers. Lin had heard these ridiculous rumors before, but he could not contradict the Emperor as it amounted to Lese Majeste, so he replied that the opium may have contained flesh of crows that second handedly eat human flesh.   After dealing with the Emperor letters which said a lot about the perspective of Beijing on the matter, Lin went to Macao to thank the Portuguese governor for his help. Then Lin Zezu learnt of the British flotilla at Hong Kong. Lin Zexu began to issue orders forbidding the supply of food or water to British ships under the penalty of death. Again the Chinese staff were removed and Chinese war junks began to surround the kowloon peninsula and Hong Kong harbor. Signs were raised stating that the wells and streams had been poisoned.   Elliot tried one last ditch effort at diplomacy and took 3 ships, the 14 gun cutter Louisa, the 6 gun schooner Pearl and the 18 gun Volage to Kowloon to demand provisions. They soon ran into 3 anchored Chinese war junks who were blocking them from landing. Elliot sent an interpreter to demand they be allowed food and water. The Chinese captains refused to comply and Elliot said if they did not comply by 2pm that day he would be forced to bombard them. 2pm came with no indication of provisions being sent and no response from the Chinese. So Captain Henry Smith of the Volage fired on the nearest Chinese war junk and the first shot of the First Opium War had been made.   According to Adam Elmslie a young superintendent clerk was witnessed the event Henry Smith ordered the volley and “The Junks then triced up their Boarding nettings, and came into action with us at half pistol shot; our guns were well served with grape and round shot; the first shot we gave them they opened a tremendous and well directed fire upon us, from all their Guns (each Junk had 10 Guns, and they brought all these over on the side which we engaged them on) ... The Junk's fire, Thank God! was not enough depressed, or ... none would have lived to tell the Story.—19 of their Guns we received in [the] mainsail,—the first Broadside I can assure you was not pleasant.”   Thus the outdated cannons aboard the Chinese war junks were aimed too high completely missed all the British ships. The ships continued to exchange fire and the shore batteries opened fire to support the war junks. By 4:30pm the British had used up almost all their ammunition and made a getaway with the war junks in quik pursuit. Adam Elmslie had this to say when the fire fight recommenced.  “The junks immediately made sail after the Louisa and at 4:45 [pm] they came up with the English vessels. We hove the vessel in stays on their starboard Beam, and the 'Pearl' on the larboard [portside] Bow of the van Junk, and gave them three such Broadsides that it made every Rope in the vessel grin again.—We loaded with Grape the fourth time, and gave them gun for gun.—The shrieking on board was dreadful, but it did not frighten me; this is the very first day I ever shed human blood, and I hope it will be the last”. During the second engagement the Chinese war junks retreated to their previous positions and the 3 British ships returned to the flotilla causing a stalemate. The captains of the Chinese war junks sent word to Lin Zexu of a great naval victory over the British claiming to have sunk a number of enemy ships and inflicting 50 casualties. The truth was there were no British casualties and no ships sunk however, in fact the Chinese had 2 killed and 6 wounded. Captain Henry of the Volage bagged Elliot to let him attack the Chinese war junks near Hong Kong harbor certain of victory, but Elliot refused fearing the outbreak of a wider battle and wanting the foreign ministers approval first before escalating things anymore. Despite the reported victory of the Chinese war junks, food and water was sent to the British ships. Lin Zexu was facing a personal and painful problem, an excruciating hernia. Chinese doctors were trying to help him to no avail, so Lin Zexu visited the office of one Dr. Peter Parker, no not spiderman, this was a Yale educated missionary. Parker fitted Lin Zexu with a truss that helped with the pain. After this Lin Zexu began reviewing the military situation at hand, at this time he wrote a poem about the battle of Kowloon “A vast display of Imperial might had shaken all the foreign tribes/And if they now confess their guilt we shall not be too hard on them.”. The Chinese began to war game while at Hong Kong the Hyacinth arrived to reinforce Elliots Flotilla. Lin Zexu continued to demand the surrender of the sailors who killed Lin Weixi, but as time went on the anger caused by the event had dissipated. Then a sailor allegedly drown from one of Jardine Mathesons & Co's ships and the Chinese volunteered to let that dead sailor be identified as the murderer, case closed.  Yet trade between Britain and China did not resume and Lin Zexu kept demanding all those who wished to trade in China sign the contract promising not to deal opium under penalty of death. Elliot told the traders not to sign the waivers and to simply sit tight for the time being as he waited for a British fleet. Some of the traders undercut his orders however and went ahead and signed the waiver and thus were allowed to trade legal cargo. One of these traders was Captain Warner of the British cargo ship Thomas Coutts and Lin Zexu was so impressed by the man he asked him to take a letter back to Britain for Queen Victoria. The letter was a remarkably frank document that explained the situation in Canton. It described all the evils of the opium trade and how it was hurting China and the response the Qing government was making to the opium crisis. It also stipulated how they could amend the situation to get rid of the opium menace and resume legal trade. Captain Warner alleges he made good on the promise to bring the letter, first to Lord Palmerston, but his office refused to receive the letter, and there is little evidence Queen Victoria read the letter in question. The Times of London did publish the letter however, it seems Captain Warner must have simply given it to them in the end. When Lin Zexu found out another British warship had joined the Flotilla he took action. He suddenly proclaimed the corpse of the drowned sailor was no longer sufficient for the murder of Lin Weixi and renewed his demands for the murders to be handed over. Failure to comply would result in the expulsion of the entire British colony. In the fall of 1839, 38 British trading vessels and 28 trading companies aboard them remained in Hong Kong harbor. Elliot begged the governor of Macao to let them come back, but he refused fearing the Portuguese would be dragged into what looked like an impending war. Then on October 20th, Elliot received a letter from Palmerston informing him that early next summer, 16 British warships with 4000 men were enroute to rescue the flotilla and to sit tight. However in the meantime more captains were signing the waiver and at the end of October Lin Zexu ordered all British ships to leave within 3 days time. Elliot set sail aboard the Volage with Hyacinth backing him up, for the Bogue as the British called it, it is also known as the Humen, it is a narrow strait in the Pearl River Delta. When Elliots ships reached Chuanbi near the mouth of the river on November 2nd, they came face to face with a Chinese fleet consisting of 15 war junks and 14 fire ships commanded by an old and revered Admiral named Guan Tianpei. Elliots ships came to a halt when he ran into Guan's fleet and they began to exchange a series of messages trying to ferret out the intentions of the other. Guan threatened to seize either ship if it was holding the murderer of Lin Weixi “All I want is the murderous barbarian who killed Lin Weixi. As soon as a time is named when he will be given up, my ships will return into the Bogue. Otherwise, by no means whatsoever shall I accede”. Elliot failed to persuade Guan that he was no threat and the admiral fleet began to maneuver into a position to attack the 2 British Warships. As this was occurring, the Royal Saxon arrived on the scene on its way to Canton. Elliot was anxious to not allow another Captain to sign the opium waiver and fired a warning shot across the Royal Saxon's bows to prevent the ship from entering the river. Guan proceeded to anchor hit ships in between the British warships and the Royal Saxon. Captain Smith pleaded with Elliot to allow him to attack before it was too late and Elliot gave in. The 2 British warships closed in and began to fire their broadsides. The stationary guns aboard the Chinese war junks could not be aimed effectively and fired right over the British masts. One lucky British volley hit a war junks magazines causing it to explode tremendously and sink. This caused the Chinese captains to panic as the Volage continued to score hits at point blank range. 3 more junks were hit and sunk and some of the crews aboard other ships literally jumped overboard. The entire Chinese fleet baegan to scatter and flee, all except for one ship, Admiral Guan's which suicidally stayed to return fire. Guan's ship posed a minimal threat and Elliot impressed by the old Admiral's courage, ordered Smith to stop the barrage and allow the damaged flagship of Admiral Guan to sail off. The Chinese fleet had 1 junk exploded, 3 sunk, countless damaged and the Volage sustained light damage to its sails while Hyacinth's mast received a hit from a 12 pound cannon ball. 15 Chinese sailors were dead with 1 British wounded. The battle of Chuanbi was over and the way to Canton was now open. News of the sea battle reached England and the government remained in denial about the cause of the conflict IE: the opium trade. A group of lobbyists led by William Jardine began to pelt the British press to save the opium trade while simultaneously demanding the British government reimburse the opium merchants. Parliament began to debate how to go about the situation and there emerged an anti-war camp and a war camp. One anti war advocate, Sir William Ewart Gladstone said   “Does he [Macaulay] know that the opium smuggled intoChina comes exclusively from British ports, that is, from Bengal and through Bombay? That we require no preventive service to put down this illegal traffic? We have only to stop the sailing of the smuggling vessels…it is a matter of certainty that if we stopped the exportation of opium from Bengal and broke up the depot at Lintin [near Canton] and checked the cultivation of it in Malwa [an Indian province] and put a moral stigma on it, we should greatly cripple if not extinguish the trade in it. They [the Chinese government] gave you notice to abandon your contraband trade. When they found you would not do so they had the right to drive you from their coasts on account of your obstinacy in persisting with this infamous and atrocious traffic…justice, in my opinion, is with them [the Chinese]; and whilst they, the Pagans, the semi-civilized barbarians have it on their side, we, the enlightened and civilized Christians, are pursuing objects at variance both with justice and with religion…a war more unjust in its origin, a war calculated in its progress to cover this country with a permanent disgrace, I do not know and I have not read of. Now, under the auspices of the noble Lord [Macaulay], that flag is become a pirate flag, to protect an infamous traffic.” Palmerston blamed the purchasers of the opium and not the sellers and that the effect of halting the opium exports to China would just drive Turkey and Persia to sell it instead. “I wonderwhat the House would have said to me if I had come down to it with a large naval estimate for a number of revenue cruisers…for the purpose of preserving the morals of the Chinese people, who were disposed to buy what other people were disposed to sell them?”   After 3 days to debate the house of commons voted on April 9th of 1840 271 vs 262 to proceed for war. On 20 February 1840 Palmerston sent 2 letters, 1 to Elliot and 1 to Emperor Doaguang. The letter to the Emperor informed the Qing dynasty that Britain had already sent  a military expeditionary force to the Chinese coast. These measures of hostility on the part of Great Britain against China are not only justified, but even rendered absolutely necessary, by the outrages which have been committed by the Chinese Authorities against British officers and Subjects, and these hostilities will not cease, until a satisfactory arrangement shall have been made by the Chinese Government. Palmerston's letter to Elliot instructed him to set up a blockade of the Pearl River and forward the letter from Palmerston to Emperor Daoguang. After that Elliot was to capture the Chusan Islands, blockade the mouth of the Yangtze River, start negotiations with the Qing officials. Palmerston also issued a list of objectives that the British government wanted accomplished, with said objectives being Demand to be treated with the respect due to a royal envoy by the Qing authorities. Secure the right of the British superintendent to administer justice to British subjects in China. Seek recompense for destroyed British property. Gain most favoured trading status with the Chinese government. Request the right for foreigners to safely inhabit and own private property in China. Ensure that, if contraband is seized in accordance with Chinese law, no harm comes to the person(s) of British subjects carrying illicit goods in China. End the system by which British merchants are restricted to trading solely in Canton. Ask that the cities of Canton, Amoy, Shanghai, Ningpo, and the province of northern Formosa be freely opened to trade from all foreign powers. Secure island(s) along the Chinese coast that can be easily defended and provisioned, or exchange captured islands for favourable trading terms. It was left to Elliot as to how these objectives would be fulfilled, but noted that while negotiation would be a preferable outcome, he did not trust that diplomacy would succeed, writing; To sum up in a few words the result of this Instruction, you will see, from what I have stated, that the British Government demands from that of China satisfaction for the past and security for the future; and does not choose to trust to negotiation for obtaining either of these things; but has sent out a Naval and Military Force with orders to begin at once to take the Measures necessary for attaining the object in view.   And so because of a drug cartel, run by some ruthless characters like Jardine & Matheson, Britain choose to go to war with the Qing Dynasty and begun a century of humiliation for China. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The incorruptible Lin Zexu was the perfect man for the job of putting an end to the opium problem. However the nefarious opium dealers would not go down without a fight and in the end this all would result in the first opium war. Buckle up it's about to get messy.   

Last time we spoke, the Qing dynasty had enjoyed the first half of the 18th century with relative ease and prosperity, however the end half and emergence of the 19th century would not be so fruitful. The White Lotus Rebellion of 1794-1804 took root during one of the most corrupt ridden times in Chinese history. One of China's most corrupt figures and one of the richest men in history, Heshen was executed by the new Jiaqing Emperor. Then the Jiaqing Emperor had to quell the White Lotus menace which cost the empire a possible 100 million taels of silver. Despite being successful, the White Lotus rebellion would spread a seed of destruction for the Qing dynasty that would grow overtime and bloom into multiple revolts and rebellions. Now we look to another aspect of China during the early 19th century, its struggle against the looming threat of western greed.    This episode is the A West meets East story   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   #11 The West meets East failure   Now while the last podcast highlighted the corruption of Heshen and his long lasting effect on the Qing dynasty during the late half of the 18th century, I intentionally avoided speaking about something. That something was the envoys sent by Britain to China to open up trade relations. The rationale was that I wanted to highlight why the White Lotus came to be and the British envoy stories would have derailed it, but in actuality, the corruption, White Lotus rebellion and British envoys all simultaneously play a very important role in the downfall of the Qing Dynasty. So let us go back in time a bit to begin what is quite honestly the emergence of one of the largest drug cartel stories of all time.    Lord George Macartney was a well seasoned diplomat with an extensive resume and a reputation for getting things done. He had that classic story of being raised in poverty, but rising to the top. He began his career as a barrister in England before entering the foreign service. He was no aristocrat, came from no significant family, thus earned his way through merit. His skills and intellect eventually landed him the appointment as an envoy to the Qing Dynasty to establish a British embassy in China. Up to this point in his life, everything he did was a success, but China would prove to be a hard nut to crack. In 1764 Macartney was knighted at the young age of 27 and sent as an envoy to russia. It was a rather scandalous rumor that he was sent as the envoy not merely for his skills and intellect, but because of his good looks as it was believed it would sway the Empress, Catherine the Great to the interests of Britain. After 3 years in Russia, Sir Macartney returned with the Empress's good affection, symbolized in a gem-studded snuff box. This bolstered Macartney into the social circles of the elites and by 1767 he was elected to Parliament and soon appointed the Chief Secretary of Ireland. After some years of service within the United Kingdom, Macartney sought out more adventure and took up a post as governor of the Caribbean Islands in the West Indies. He was soon awarded with the title of Bron and in 1780 received the appointment as governor of Madras India. He worked that office 6 years and became a viscount. Then in 1793 he sailed for one of the most illusive and exotic lands, that of China.   Viscount Macartney was given a simple orders from George III: establish a British embassy in the capital and get permission for British ships to dock at ports besides Canton. Now you might be asking, whats the problem with Canton? Nothing, except for foreign barbarians it was the only port of access for all of China at this time. For those who have never heard of this, the Canton System which began in 1757 was a trade system of the Qing dynasty. The Qianlong Emperor faced numerous problems when he inherited the empire, one being the threat of foreign trade. While trade obviously is a beneficial thing, it can sometimes cause harm, as such the Qing dynasty had some worries about trade with foreign lands. For one thing, the intrusion of missionaries had caused some pretty brutal conflicts in China. After this Emperor Qianlong ordered his court to make some changes to foreign trade to thus stop more conflicts from occurring. He bottled necked all foreign trade to go through Canton and they were to deal exclusively with a group known as the Cohong merchants. The Cohong were granted a monopoly over the foreign trade, but were also the primary representative link between the Qing government and the outside world. There were strings attached of course, the Cohong merchants were to take on full responsibility for any foreign persons connected with a foreign ship that did trade. The Cohong were of course expected to pay taxes to the Qing government for all the trade being done, but by far and large they were able to control how they would levy such taxes. A perfect recipe for corruption.    A event occured known as the Flint Affair, a situation in which a Englishman named James Flint serving the East India Company was repeatedly warned to remain in Canton, but in 1755 he went against the Qing administrative warnings and tried to establish trade in some ports in Zhejiang. He was caught and deported to Macau where he was imprisoned for a few years. The situation prompted Emperor Qianlong to enact 5 measures against the foreign barbarians who wished to trade. 1) Trade by foreign barbarians in Canton is prohibited during the winter. 2) Foreign barbarians coming to the city must reside in the foreign factories under the supervision and control of the Cohong. 3) Chinese citizens are barred from borrowing capital from foreign barbarians and from employment by them. 4) Chinese citizens must not attempt to gain information on the current market situation from foreign barbarians 5) Inbound foreign barbarian vessels must anchor in the Whampoa Roads and await inspection by the authorities   Trade with China was beginning to really boom, but it was being frustrated into the bottleneck of Canton. The British were very eager to open up more trade with China and Macartney had instructions to offer something to the Chinese to open up trade. He could offer to end the importation of opium from British held India, something that was officially illegal in the Qing dynasty, but in reality the Qing could not stop the illicit smuggling of it into China.    On the morning of september 26, 1792 the HMS Lion a 64 gun ship of the line, cast off for China. When Macarney landed on the coast of China, all of his retinue and baggage were transferred to Chinese junks by the order of Emperor Qianlong before he was allowed to travel up the Bei He River enroute for Peking. His ship had a large sign tacked to its mast by the Qing officials with large black letters reading “tribute from the red barbarians”. Remember at this time in history, China was basically the pinnacle of civilization at least from its viewpoint. China had felt superior to the rest of the world for quite some time. Gunpowder, paper currency, eyeglasses and the printing press all were developed in China long before the west had acquired such things. As such the emperor of China did not receive ambassadors per say, as exchanging emissaries would denote equal rank amongst nations, for which China had no equal. Those who did come as emissaries were treated as tribute bearers and identified as foreign barbarians. From the perspective of the Chinese, foreign barbarians did not come to negotiate or make dealings, they came as subjects to pay homage and tribute.    Macartney believed he was bringing gifts from one sovereign nation to another, but the Qing considered him to be a vassal paying tribute. The gifts he brought were the best of British technology: telescopes, brass howitzers, globes, clocks, musical instruments and an entire hot air balloon complete with a balloonist. That one always puzzled me by the way, did that mean the balloonist was just going to be some sort of lifetime servant? In all Macartney brought over 600 gifts for Emperor Qianlong and this all required an astonishing 99 wagons, 40 wheelbarrows drawn by over 200 horses and 3000 people. Macartney was instructed to display the gifts at the Emperor's summer palace before he would be given any chance at seeing Emperor Qianlong. The Qing court apparently were not that impressed with most of the gifts, though they did admire the wood pottery and were particularly interested when Macartney ignited sulfur matches. Unfortunately the hot air balloon never got a chance to take off. The viceroy of Pechili told Macartney that he would not be meeting the emperor in his palace, but in a yurt outside the Imperial hunting lodge in Rehe of the tartary lands. They would pass through the great wall and Macartney was astonished by it stating it to be “the most stupendous work of human hands, probably greater in extent than all of the other forts in the world put together. Its construction was a sign of not only a very powerful empire, but a very wise and virtuous nation”. They traveled into Manchuria until they reached the Emperor's summer quarters on september 8th. The journey had nearly taken a year since they departed England in 1792 and the success or failure of the embassy would be decided in the matter of just mere days. They stopped a mile from the imperial summer residence to make themselves presentable.    Macartney had prepared a colorful and grandiose outfit for the occasion as described by his valet “A suite of spotted mulberry velvet, with a diamond star, and his ribbon, over which he wore the full habit of the order of the Bath, with the hat and the plume of feathers, which form a part of it”. So try to imagine a man dressed up like a peacock, certainly it was going to leave an impression, which is what he wanted. The entourage formed a makeshift parade formation with as much British pomp that could be mustered. The British soldiers and cavalry led the way on foot followed by servants, musicians, scientists and other gentry. The parade arrived at 10am to their designated quarters, with no one at all to greet them. Macartney was bewildered, he had expected this famed Manchu man named Heshen to meet them. However Heshen was nowhere to be found, Macartney deduced he must be delayed for some reason and so they all simply waited. 6 hours passed by as they all stood there in formation waiting with no sign of an imperial official, thus they lost heart and went into the assigned residence to eat. In the end Macartney was forced to go find Heshen himself, quite an uncomfortable start to the venture. Over the course of several days the mountain of British gifts were exchanged. They presented things such as rugs to the Emperors representatives and in turn were given luxurious fabrics such as silk, jade, porcelain, lacquerware and large quantities of the finest tea, oh tea will play quite a role in all of this rest assured. The British tried to awe them with the products of their science, but soon were realizing something was not right.    You see this entire process was confused. For the British they were trying to impress the Chinese to gain the ability to negotiate for more advantageous policies in the future, IE: gain the approval to open a permanent embassy in the capital. But for the Chinese the situation was literally just trade, they were trading goods they assumed the British would want to take home and sell. Nations like Vietnam and Korea would regularly come to pay tribute to the emperor for his approval which legitimized their governments. They came and performed the famous “kow tow” before the Emperor. For those who don't know the “kow tow” is a ritual of 9 kneeling bows to the ground in 3 sets of 3 in the direction of the emperor. The envoys from places like Vietnam or Korea did this readily as their nations were official tributaries to China and thus the Emperor was the overarching figure for their nations as well as their own emperors. But when Macartney showed up he knew nothing of this entire process. Initially Macartney did not even realize he was supposed to prostrate himself before emperor and when this was explained to him he was unwilling to do it. Because despite the great admiration he had for the Qing Empire, he thought he was an envoy between 2 equal and sovereign nations, he assumed the King of England was on equal footing with Emperor Qianlong. Macartney had never done anything like the kow tow for his own king why should he for a foreign king?   So Macartney expected what he considered a mere ceremony to be waved off and submitted a request for that to be so, which he alleged later he received approval for. But when he arrived at Jehol, Heshen denied ever seeing this request and insisted Macartney must perform the kow two before the emperor. Qing officials at the scene assured Macartney that it was just “a mere exterior and unmeaning ceremony” urging him on. Things began to get messy, Macartney said he would kow tow readily if a Qing official would do the same before a portrait he had brought of King George III. No Qing official would do it, so Macartney tried to compromise, what if he simply bent the knee and head once before Emperor Qianlong. To Mccartneys relief the proposal was accepted. A few more days went by, then on September 14th he was informed he could meet the emperor.   Macartney got into his peacock suit and his entourage marched behind Macartney who was carried on a litter until they made it to the Emperor's ceremonial tent. Macartney entered, carrying a jeweled encrusted golden box containing a letter from King George III. In his own account, Macartney stated he knelt on one knee as agreed and presented the emperor the box and the emperor did not seem in the slightest to have made any commotion about the ritual not being performed. Macartney said “Emperor Qianlong's eyes were full and clear and his countenance was open, despite the dark and gloomy demeanor we had expected to find”. Do not forget as I mentioned in the previous episode, at this point in time the Emperor was its pretty safe to say, very senile. The letter from George III was translated into Chinese carefully by European missionaries who made sure to take out any potentially offensive references, like for example anything about chrisianity. The letter spoke about how Emperor Qianlong “should live and rule for 10s of thousands of years and the word China was elevated one line above the rest of the text whenever it appeared and the name of the emperor was elevated 3 lines above the rest. The letters translation thus had been done in such a way it really did not conform to the letter between 2 equals anymore. Meanwhile while Emperor Qianlong read this, Macartney was simply awed by the tent they were in. In his words “the tapestries, carpets and rich draperies and lanterns were disposed with such harmony, the colors so artfully varied. It was as if he was inside a painting. The commanding feature of the ceremony was the calm dignity that sober pomp of asiatic greatness, which European refinements have not yet attained”. Macartney also went on to mention that he was also not the only envoy present in the tent. There were 6 Muslim enovys from tributary states near the Caspian sea an a Hindu envoy from Burma and they had allow performed the kow tow.    Emperor Qianlong asked Heshen if any of the English could speak Chinese and the son of British diplomat George Staunton stepped forward. The 12 year old boy named George stepped towards the throne and according to his diary “I spoke some Chinese words to him and thanked him for the presents”. Emperor Qianlong was apparently charmed by this and took a purse from his own waist to give to him as a token of his esteem. That little boy became the first Englishman after James Flint to cross the wall of language between Britain and China and it would shape his life after. After the meeting, Macartney and his entourage were allowed to stay in Jehol for a few days and were fortunate enough to partake in the emperor's birthday banquet. On September 21st, disaster struck when a member of Macartney's entourage died, a gunner named Reid. It was the day before their departure date and apparently Reid had eaten 40 apples for breakfast, which I have to say is one of the most bizarre rationales for a death I've ever heard. Regardless, the Qing assumed off the bat the man died of some contagious disease and urged them all to leave with haste.    Meanwhile in Peking, the Balloonist/scientist Mr Dinwiddie had been busy prepared all the scientific instruments for demonstrations awaiting Emperor Qianlong's return from Jehol at the end of september. He had begun filling a grand hall of the imperial palace outside the city of Beijing with globes, clocks, telescopes, the air pump for the balloon and such. He had signed a contract basically stating he could never return home and would be stuck as a foreigner in a small part of Beijing. Regardless he got everything ready for the emperor's visit. When the emperor came on October the 1st he showed no particular emotion as he toured the hall according to Dinwiddie. Upon looking through a telescope for roughly 2 minutes the emperor alleged stated “it was good enough to amuse children” and simply left. Heshen and other Qing officials came to see the wonders and showed a bit more interest. Unfortunately the hot air balloon demonstration was to be the grand finale in the course of a few days but never came to fruition, because all of a sudden on October the 6th the Emperor ordered all the British to leave. Everything was hastily packed up and every man by October 7th was being pushed out as the embassy mission was sent away from Peking. Once on the road out of Peking it dawned upon them all the embassy mission was a failure. As one British servant put it “we entered Peking like paupers; we remained in it like prisoners; and we quitted it like vagrants”.    Macartney had no idea how much he had offended the emperor with his negotiations. Back on september 10th, 4 days before they met the Emperor, Qianlong was always fuming mad about the English ambassadors dragging of the feet about the kow tow. In fact at that time Emperor Qianlong simply told his officials he would keep the promise to have the meetings, but as far as he was concerned they best be gone afterwards. Qianlong prior had planned to have them stay a long time to enjoy the sights of Jehol but “given the presumption and self important display by the English ambassador, they should be sent from Jehol immediately after the banquet, given 2 days to get to Peking to pack up their belongs and go. When foreigners who come seeking audience with me are sincere and submissive then I always treat them with kindness. But if they come in arrogance they get nothing”. On October 3rd, just a few days before they were ordered out, Macartney received the official response to King George III's letter, unfortunately it was in Chinese and he was unable to translate it for some time. It stated that the request for the British ambassador to remain at the capital was not consistent with the customs of the empire and therefore could not be allowed. And here is the kicker in regards to trade and the gifts he said “I accepted the gifts not because I wanted them, but merely, as tokens of your own affectionate regard for me. In truth the greatness and splendor of the Chinese empire have spread its fame far and wide, and as foreign nations, from a thousand parts of the world, crowd hither over mountains and seas, to pay us their homage and bring us the rarest and most precious offerings, what is it that we can want here? Strange and costly objects do not interest me. We possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your countries manufactures”. Oomphf there was a second little part after that went “we have never needed trade with foreign countries to give us anything we lacked. Tea, porcelain and silk are essential needs for countries like England that do not have such things and out of grace the dynasty had long permitted foreign merchants to come to Canton to purchase these goods. To satisfy your needs and to allow you to benefit from our surplus. England is but one of many countries that comes to trade in Canton and if we were to give Britain special treatment, then we would have to give it to all the others as well”.   Macartney was furious and wrote extensively enroute back home. “Can they be ignorant, that a couple of English frigates would be an overmatch for the whole naval force of their empire, that in half a summer they could totally destroy the navigation of their coasts and reduce the inhabitants of the maritime provinces, who subsist chiefly on fish, to absolute famine? We could destroy the Tiger's mouth forts guarding the river passage to Canton with just half a dozen boardsides and annihilate the Canton trade that employs millions of Chinese”. Yet despite all his military bravado talk, if Britain were at this time to make any aggression against China it would immediately result in them shutting down their trade. If that was allowed to happen both the economies of Britain and British held India would suffer tremendous economic damage. Thus Macartney knew the best course of action was to be patient and try try and try again.   So the Macartney mission ended in embarrassment. Macartney would tell those back in Britain “The empire of China is an old crazy first-rate man of war, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant offers has contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past; and to overawe their neighbors, merely by her bulk and appearance. She may perhaps not sink outright, she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed in pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom”. Very dark and ominous words indeed. Prior to Macartney's report those had this perception of China to be the model of stable and virtuous government. But Macartney ranted that “the tyranny of a handful of Tartars over more than 300 millions of Chinese. And those Chinese subjects would not suffer the odium of a foreign yoke for much longer. A revolution was coming”. Macartney would elaborate further on what he believed to be the socio-political situation in China. “I often perceived the ground to be hollow under a vast superstructure and in trees of the most stately and flourishing appearance I discovered symptoms of speedy decay. The huge population of Han Chinese were just recovering blows that had stunned them they are awaking from the political stupor they had been thrown into by the Tartar impression, and begin to feel their native energie revive. A slight collision might elicit fire from the flint, and spread the flames of revolt from one extremity of China to the other. I should not be surprised if its dislocation or dismemberment were to take place before my own dissolution”. Please take note this is all coming from a bitterly anger man who, yes traveled the country for months, but he had not seen the interior of China. He could not speak or read the language and knew nothing of the culture. And yet he was almost 100% prophetic in what would occur.    Now as I went into with the past episode, the Qianlong Emperor was very old and going senile. When Macartney met with him, Qianlong had just turned 82 and had ruled for over 58 years an incredible reign. And despite the show the emperor had put on about never needing western trade, in reality he was deeply fascinated by western inventions. He cherished his collection of 70 British clocks and wrote poems about them and about western telescopes. Likewise he kept multiple western art pieces and employed many westerners in his court. Above all else he understood the value of China's foreign trade at Canton, because a significant portion of the tariff income fed his imperial household. The canton trade was also a primary source of silver import of which China was the largest importer of silver since the 1600s. Foreigners came and were forced to trade with silver if they wanted tea or porcelain. Tea, Tea is the crucial component of this story.   In 1664 King Charles II received 2 lbs of black, strange smelling leaves from China. Less than half a century later, tea became Britain's beverage of choice with an annual consumption of 12 million pounds per year. By 1785, Britain was importing 15 million lbs of tea per year from China. The people of Britain were literally addicted China's tea, which might I add is a mild stimulant. More so the British government became economically dependent on tea and the Exchequer levied a 100 percent import tax upon it whoa. Although China purchased some British goods like clocks, it was nothing compared to the British need for tea. Between 1710 to 1759 the imbalance of trade was enormous, literally draining Britain of its silver, because that was after all the only form of payment China accepted. During this time, Britain paid 26 million in silver to China, but sold only 9 million in goods.    Now lets talk a bit more about how this trade was being down in Canton. It was the East India Company who was given a monopoly over the tea trade in China. I mentioned the Cohong or sometimes called simply Hong merchants. They were directly in charge of the Canton trade, holding a monopoly over it. All western trade had to come through them, if you were a foreign ship, your cargo had to be guaranteed by a Hong merchant before it could sail up river to port Canton. Only a Hong merchant could rent you a warehouse or arrange for you any and all purchases for tea, silk and such. Personal relationships were thus key and having a friendship with any Hong merchant was immensely valuable. Hong merchants were accountable for the conduct of all foreing personnel. If some foreigner got drunk and beat up a local, the Hong merchant was held responsible, and this did in fact happen often. The Hong merchants were a small group, typically no more than a dozen any given time. As you can imagine with such a small group controlling the full trade between China and western nations, the opportunities for both sides merchants to become abundantly rich was enormous. However there was a ton of risk for the Hong since they took all the risk. Regardless the Hong merchants were some of the richest men in China, but they also went bankrupt regularly. Why was this, well because of their access to capital it made them primary targets for other government officials to squeeze.    You see despite their monopoly on the trade, the Hong merchants were almost always in a precarious situation. Their appointment and finance was done via the Hoppo. Also the social status of merchants within traditional confucianism was very low and the Hong merchants were at the mercy of other Qing officials. This led the Hong merchants to be forced to pay numerous bribes to said officials. More often than naught to get an appointment as a Hong came with a literal downpayment for the officials who got you the job! The Hong merchants were squeezed left right and center by countless officials in a pecking system built upon corruption and greed.    The senior superintendent of foreign trade at Canton was a Imperial customs commissioner known to the westerners as the “hoppo”. The hoppo reported directly to the board of revenue in Beijing and it was the Hoppo who was responsible for ensuring a proper flow of tariff income back to Beijing. The position of Hoppo was one of the greatest opportunities to get filthy rich.   Before the White Lotus rebellion the Qing silver surplus was a whopping 70 million taels, but over the course of the war it is estimated the Qing treasury would pay something like 100 million taels in silver. Then came another disaster.    The Napoleonic wars had a tremendous impact on the world, not limited to just the war itself. As the war grinding on, Britain was pressed for funds to finance its war against France and this led them to squeeze the East India Company harder. The British government began raising its tax on the company's tea in 1795, then again in 1802 where it reached 50%, then again in 1806 to a whopping 96% and by 1819 it would be 100%. The growing British tax on the company's tea led it to become a possible 1/10th of Britain's national revenue. As you can imagine with those numbers, the importance of maintaining the trade with Canton became a matter of national interest.    While the Qing dynasty spent millions of taels mobilizing armies to quell the white lotus rebellion, the British likewise spent millions during its war against france. Britain would spend around 12 times more than its previous 22 year war with France and ran up a monstrous national debt. By the time Napoleon was defeated, Britain had doubled the size of the royal navy and it was the most powerful maritime force in the world. Britain acquired more territories to expand its enormous empire. By 1820 the British Empire would control roughly a quarter of the world's population, almost rivaling China. The emperor of China, Jiaqing was forced to slash the budgets of things such as the military after the internal rebellion was over. In expectation for an era of peace for the empire, the emperor effectively had to mortgage the future improvement of China's military to simply stabilize the country.   Now Britain's tea fix needed to be met, but its silver was depleted. The Napoleonic war and the American revolution had drained Britain of its silver reserve, how was Britain going to get the tea? The British needed to find something the Chinese were willing to pay for in silver and the British would find what that in Opium. The British were not the first importers of Opium into China. Arab merchants had been selling opium cultivated in what is modern day turkey since the middle ages. It was primarily used for medicinal purposes, such as being used as a constipation drug to stop diarrhea, quite a useful thing to have to fight off dysentery which reeks its ugly head during times of conflict. In 1659 the East India Company began to export it in limited quantities from Bengal India. The East India Company had a monopoly over the trade with India and tried to prevent the business of opium importing to China since it was illegal and could interfere with the company's legitimate trade. However to get tea required silver and when the silver began to dry up the East India Company's tolerance for the illicit business began to loosen.    In 1782 the East India Company turned its eyes away and allowed the export of 3450 chests of opium. Each chest for reference weighed around 170 lbs, about the size of a small footlocker. 2 ships carried the illegal cargo and enroute 1 of them was captured by the French with the other arrived in Macao. The Chinese merchants refused to purchase the illegal contraband until the price was dropped to 210$ per chest. To break even the British needed to sell a chest at around 500$, it was a complete disaster. The British merchants ended up dumping most of their cargo at a loss in Malaysia for a price of around 340$. There were no eager buyers for opium in China in 1782 and this showcases the lack of users or better said addicts. Nonetheless the Qing government made a decree in 1799 condemning the illicit trade “foreigners obviously derive the most solid profits and advantages, but that our countrymen should pursue this destructive and ensnaring vice is indeed odious and deplorable”. The East India Company proclaimed it was forbidding British ships to carry the illicit cargo, because remember they had to make sure the Canton market remained open to britain. Yet this did not stop the East India company from selling opium within India to independent British and Indian merchants who in turn might smuggle the drugs into China. Its not the East India company after all and the company could see no other way to acquire silver to buy the tea Britain needed.    In 1773 opium earned the company 39,000 pounds, in 1793 opium earned them 250,000 pounds. The idea was working and the trade imbalance was soon shifting. By 1806 to 1809 China would pay out 7 million in silver for opium. During the first 2 decades of the 19th century opium addiction grew in China at a slow pace. The East India Company kept the price of the illicit substance artificially high, which meant only the upper class in China could afford it. The East India Company was doing its best not to antagonize the Qing government, IE: not rubbing their nose in the illicit trade, thus it did not increase imports and lower prices. Around 5000 chests were being sold per year and this stabilized the trade imbalance between Britain and China, no longer was Britain simply losing its silver to China, nor was China being depleted dry.    Then a technological innovation in Britain completely shattered the equilibrium. The invention of the steam engine in the previous century resulted in the mechanized production of cotton. Soon England had flooded the market with mass produced textiles and the surplus of this found its way to a very eager Indian market. Those merchants paid for the product in cash, but how do you think they got the cash? Bingo opium cultivation and with it the need to sell more of it. So as a result more and more opium began to flood into China, but it still had to go through the bottleneck of Canton.    Problems began to occur which affected the Canton trade. The Napoleonic wars began to send ripples throughout the world and one place that was affected was Macao in 1808. The British in Canton heard rumors that France was sending troops to occupy Macao. The British wanted to preemptively respond and sent a naval fleet under Rear Admiral William Drury in September of 1808. Drury sent a letter informing the Portuguese governor at Macao that he intended to occupy the city to which the governor refused him and began to appeal to the Chinese governor general for protection. On september 21st Drury landing 300 marines who quickly seized the shore batteries at Macao with no resistance being made by the Portuguese. However the Chinese governor general ordered a shutdown of the British trade in Canton, uh oh. The East India company had to pull full cargo ships out immediately and abandon their factory in Canton. Drury in response brought an additional 700 marines from India to occupy Macao. The Chinese governor general warned Drury if they did not withdraw, the fleet and all British residents in Macao would be cut off from food supplies. Drury panicked, he had not intended to start a war, nor were his orders remotely authorized to do so!   When Emperor Jiaqing got news of the British invasion of Macao he was furious to say the least. Emperor Jiaqing issued an edict to the governor general in Canton “such a brutal eruption at Macao indicates an affrontery without limit. To invoke such a pretext is to freely insult the Chinese Empire. It is important in any case to raise considerable troops, attack the foreigners, and exterminate them. In this way, they will understand that the seas of China are forbidden to them!”. So the governor general ordered 8000 troops at Canton to man the coastal forts in the vicinity in preparation for war. Drury got the news of this and knew the Canton trade could be shut off for good stating “it would exclude the English forever, from the most advantageous monopoly it possesses in the Universe”. So Admiral Drury backed down, refusing to risk war with China. Drury took the marines out, but left some ships in the hope trade in Canton would soon be restored. And thus 6 days later the Qing governor general restored trade in Canton, phew crisis averted.   Another rather unusual conflict occured when a British christian missionary named Thomas Manning attempted to enter into China by land. Manning had tried asking the Hoppo for permission to visit Beijing as a scientist envoy but it was refused as the Emperor had plenty of western scientists at his disposal. The frustrated Manning then began to climb aboard East India company ships going around Vietnam, to see if he could find a way to sneak into China via Vietnam roads. This did not pan out so he struck out at another place to get into China, Tibet. Manning went to Tibet pretending to be a Buddhist lama from India and would you believe it he got an audience with the Dalai Lama on december 17 of 1811. He climbed hundreds of steps and met with the Dalai Lama whom he described “His face was, I thought, poetically and effectively beautiful. He was of a gay and cheerful disposition; his beautiful mouth perpetually unbending into a graceful smile, which illuminated his whole countenance. Sometimes, particularly when he had looked at me, his smile almost approached a gentle laugh”. After meeting the Dalai Lama, Manning hoped to be granted permission to make the 1500 mile journey to Beijing, but this would not occur. In the holy city of Lhasa he was apprehended by the local Qing officials and quasi imprisoned until Emperor Jiaqing could be informed and send orders as to what to do. Orders finally came in February of 1812 to deport Manning and raise border security in response to this incursion.    Then in 1813 problems reeked their ugly head yet again for British-Chinese relations. The Emperor had reduced the number of Hong merchants that the British were allowed to do business with. The larger issue at hand was the War of 1812 which brought with it conflict between Britain and American ships around the waters of Canton. At this time the Americans were second only to the British in the size of their commerce in Canton. The US lacked cruisers to convoy their merchant ships and thus began arming the merchants ships into privateers. The US ships also tried to simply avoid the British by not landing at the same time intervals, but all of this would not avoid conflict. In march of 1814 the British frigate Doris captured a 300 ton American privateer, the USS Hunter and took her to Macao as a prize. 2 months later the Doris hunted down the USS Russel up the Pearl River near the Whampia anchorage just a few miles shy of Whampoa city. They fired upon another while another US ships the Sphynx was boarded and captured. More raids continued from both sides and the conflict greatly angered the Chinese authorities. Eventually the Qing governor general cut off supplies and suspended trade with both nations demanding they behave themselves.    The British merchants in Canton complained they had nothing to do with the Royal Navy, but the Chinese authorities would not hear it. Some minor conflicts occured in Canton and the British felt they had been wronged. The East India Company began to demand the British government send an embassy to remedy the entire situation. So Britain answered the plea and sent another embassy mission in 1816. Lord William Pitt Amherst, Earl Amherst of Arracan was born in 1773 in Bath. His father was General William Amherst and his uncle was Field Marshall Sir Jeffrey Amherst who had a distinguished military career including being the governor general of British north America after defeating Nouvelle France in 1760. Little Williams mother died and the widowed father would take care of William and his sister for awhile until in 1781 when he also died. William would end up living with his uncle in the Amherst estate in Montreal where I happen to live near. William would eventually go to oxford and became an accomplished linguist learning several languages. Eventually he landed a job as ambassador to Sicily and by the end of the Napleonic wars he was made a Privy Councillor. He proved to be able enough and was soon sent as Ambassador with Plenipotentiary to negotiate with the Qing Dynasty in 1816.    The China Amherst encountered in 1816 was very different compared to the one Lord Macrtney had visited. The Emperor was Jiaqing, the dynasty had quelled the White Lotus Rebellion, quite a few smaller revolts and had a real problem with pirates along the coast. Emperor Jiaqing had a loose hold over the empire and was not about to let some foreign power further threaten it.    Amherst was a bit of an odd choice to lead the mission. He was considered a dull, but well mannered man who was not very talented in public speaking. Neither brilliant nor particularly handsome, just hailed from an excellent family. Amherst brought with him 2 familiar faces, the former little boy who had courageously spoken to Emperor Qianlong, George Staunton, who was now an adult. George had been working for the East India Company in Canton and had mastered the Chinese language and learnt much of its culture. The second ws Thomas Manning after his great Tibet adventure. Amherst's departure would be 6 months after the Duke of Wellington's victory at Waterloo in June of 1815. Thus Amherst would be coming to China to inform them that the nearly continuous warfare between Britain and France for the past 22 years had finally come to an end. Amherst was instructed to make it clear to the Chinese that Great Britain was now the unrivaled dominant military power in Europe. The Amherst mission also was to remedy the Canton situation, but the perspective from Britain was quite off. They thought Emperor Jiaqing knew relatively not much about the ongoings in places like Canton, and if they simply came and complained about mistreatment that he would just offhand discipline the officials in Canton and place the British in a better position.The Emperor however was hardly oblivious to the ongoings in Canton, in fact he was paying a ton of attention to it. The Emperor had ordered investigation into the Canton situation over the past few years Emperor Jiaqing was particularly taking an interest into George Staunton who he viewed as a potential trouble maker in China, because the man had vast knowledge now of the language and culture and might induce more westerners to do the same. For certain the emperor was not pleased at all to find out Thomas Manning was coming as he had deported him and it was to be presumed Manning should never step foot back in China ever again. So the entourage was already doomed to fail.   As the entourage made their way, Amherst reported that the Qing dynasty seemed to have declined significantly compared to what Macartney had reported long ago. The entourage had learnt of the White Lotus rebellion and how suppressing it nearly bankrupt the Qing government. The entourage became rather bold and instead of waiting at the island of Chusan, Amherst ships, accompanied by 2 East India Company surveying vessels divided themselves into task forces and went to work dropping the embassy team off  at the White River. Soon some of the vessels began to explore the river networks going as far north to where the Great Wall meets the coast of Manchuria, sailed around the Liaodong Peninsula and parts of the Yalu river, very bold moves. They also took notes of the villages, populations and geology of their ventures. They particularly noted down the lack of military installations.    Both the Amherst mission and the Qing court intended to use the Macartney mission as a precedent, but neither communicated how they should go about it. What really loomed over the entire affair was the issue of the Kow Tow. Now Amherst was coming into this with less radical requests than Macartney. They were not asking for a permanent ambassador at the capital, nor the opening of new ports. They just wanted some kind of provision for direct communication between the East India Company staff in Canton and a high ranking official in Beijing in order to circumvent the troubles they had been having with the Hoppo and governor general of canton. They also wanted to be allowed to do business with others aside from the Hong merchants. Officials from Beijing met with Amherst as soon as the British ships anchored at the mouth of the white river in early august. They escorted him along the way, but also asked him to Kowtow in front of a piece of yellow silk that represented the emperor. They wanted to see that the man understood how to do the kowtow. Amherst was given instructions from the British government simply to do what he thinks best in the situation of the kow towing issue, but to make sure the mission was a success. Thus the first time he was asked to do it he refused and stated that since Macartney did not kow tow why should he. The Qing officials were confused and said as far as they knew Macartney did kow tow to the emperor in 1793. Then they reminded Amherst the Emperor Jiaqing was present in 1793 and would have seen it occur, best he kow tow as well. George Staunton told Amherst they were mistaken and that he never saw Macartney kow tow. As you can imagine it was now a case of Emperor Jiaqing's word against Staunton, a man the emperor did not like. Amherst was in a bad situation, so he simply stated he would do the kow tow when the time came, but stressed he would do it on one knee and not two. He tried to compromise by offering to kiss the emperors hand which utterly disgusted the Qing officials. The highest ranking Qing official escorting the foreigners was Heshitai, brother in law to Emperor Jaiqing. He told Amherst he had to bow on both knees or he would be expelled from the capital without audience.   The entourage made it just a mile outside Beijing where crowds of spectators began assembling on the sides of the roads to see their approach. They made their way to the eastern gate at night and the massive walls astounded them. They road in springless wooden carts, a quite uncomfortable ride at that. Amherst was told his audience would take place immediately and in fact he was actually late for it. Amherst panicked he was not ready, he was fatigued and unkept, his baggage had not even arrived yet which held his coronation robes for the occasion. He did not even have the letter from the prince regent to be given to the Emperor! Heshitai told him he had to go now, but Amherst refused. Amherst demanded they be given time to clean up, gather their baggage and rest. Heshitai eventually got another Qing official to grab hold of Amherst and dragged him to see the emperor.    It is here we get many conflicting stories about what goes down. In a classical one it is said, the Qing officials grab Amherst in the middle of the night when he is disoriented and try to force him to kow tow in a private room, hoping the half asleep man would just do it. Apparently Staunton grabs Amherst by the elbow before he can do the deed and they suddenly leave the place before seeing the emperor. A lot of unanswered questions to be sure. In another story the try to get Amherst to go see the emperor, but he simply refuses and him and his entourage basically fight their way out of their lodgings and leave on the evening of November 13. Regardless what is important to know is the British entourage and Emperor Jiaqing have no idea whats going on at all, they are both at the mercy of reports from the middle men, IE:  the escort officials like Heshitai.   During the slow journey back south to Canton, one of their ships, the Alceste had bombarded a Chinese fort guarding the Tiger's Mouth river entrance to Canton! Dozens of shots were fired and it is said 47 Chinese soldiers were killed. The Alceste had returned from surveying the Pearl river when the captain Murray Maxwell requested permission to sail up to the Whampoa anchorage so it could make repairs on the ship before picking up Amherst's entourage on their way back. Maxwell alleges he was taunted by the Qing representative to the governor general who told him that Amherst had been sent away from the capital without an audience. Murray Maxwell was thus denied permission to go to the Whampoa anchorage and was forced to wait on an outlying island. After a week of waiting, Maxwell had had it and decided to force up the river without permission. As soon as the Alceste began sailing it was confronted by a Chinese fleet and soon a fire fight. The Alceste began blasting away the Chinese coastal defenses, working her way up the river channel to get to Whampoa anchorage.    Both the British entourage and Emperor Jiaqing were mystified as to what happened. The Emperor sent his personal doctor to see to Amherst whom he had assumed must be very sick for missing the meeting only to find out the man was perfectly healthy. After some investigation the Emperor realized the entire debacle was the fault of the escorting officials, above all Heshitai! It turns out the Emperor had been lied to by the escorting officials and fed false reports. The British blamed the emperor for the entire misadventure. The Emperor was livid by everything, but there was a saving grace to the embarrassment on his nation's part, the embarrassment of the Alceste ordeal. When the Alceste made it to Whampoa the governor generals welcomed the ship as if nothing had ever happened. The Emperor sent conciliatory edicts and gifts for the King of England. The Emperor also sent a letter to the king, but he had written it before his investigation of all the matters and thus wrote that he blamed Amherst for the entire ordeal.   The mission was a catastrophe. Trade would continue unaffected, but now both nations had been humiliated. Now the Chinese would look with more suspicion at the British and the British hopes for extending trade outside the canton system were dashed. As quite a fitting end to the entire ordeal, the Alceste which was carrying Amherst and his retinue back to England slammed into a rock and sank. England's response to the Amherst mission was disappointment. The entire situation aided one group of people in Britain, those who sought to abolish the East India Company's monopoly over the China trade. One major critic of the Amherst mission was Napoleon Bonaparte exiled on Saint Helena in 1817. He thought it was ridiculous that such an ordeal came about because the British fretted over kow towing. But he ended his statements with this “It would be the worst thing you have done for a number of years, to go to war with an immense empire like China, what might happen if the dragon, as it were, should be awakened? You would doubtless, at first, succeed…but you would teach them their own strength. They would be compelled to adopt measures to defend themselves against you; they would consider, and say, ‘we must try to make ourselves equal to this nation. Why should we suffer a people, so far away, to do as they please to us? We must build ships, we must put guns into them, we must render ourselves equal to them.' They would get artificers, and ship builders, from France, and America, and even from London; they would build a fleet,and, in the course of time, defeat you.”    I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The attempts at opening up more trade with China were disastrous and embarrassing for Britain. She needed her tea fix, but her silver reserves were depleted and thus the East India Company began to deal in opium. How could this possibly all go wrong?

Meg is the co-founder of ADAY, a sustainable capsule clothing brand named by Fast Company as one of the World's Most Innovative Companies. She is also one of Goldman Sachs' 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, having started her career with Goldman as an Investment Banker before joining Poshmark as one of their first 50 employees as a Senior Product Manager. She is Oxford educated with an MBA from Stanford University. Meg is also a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athlete and a business coach for athletes and gyms. Moreover, Meg identifies as queer, British-Chinese and a digital nomad. She is also an angel investor and mentor to many communities and individuals advancing AAPI, LGBTQ+, and third culture interests. This episode was edited by Michelle Hsieh. ___________________________ L I S T E N E R S U R V E Y: Let us know your thoughts on the podcast here P A R T N E R S mentioned in this episode: - Aurate: Get 20% off your first purchase with code abg at auratenewyork.com/abg - European Wax Center: Get your first wax FREE at your local European Wax Center - Green Chef: Get $130 off and free shipping with code abg130 at greenchef.com/abg130 - Ritual: Get 10% off your first 3 months at ritual.com/ABG - The Jordan Harbinger Show: Search "The Jordan Harbinger Show" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, or go to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe - ZocDoc: Get the app for FREE at zocdoc.com/ABG S H O U T O U T ! - Give a shoutout on the podcast here. S U B S C R I B E T O U S ! - @asianbossgirl on Apple Podcasts / Spotify / YouTube / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook - More about us at asianbossgirl.com E – M A I L U S ! - hello@asianbossgirl.com S U P P O R T U S ! - merch: asianbossgirl.myshopify.com - donation: anchor.fm/asianbossgirl/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all want to experience freedom, joy, confidence. Many of us also want to keep it simple. When you bring all those desires together, along with burning desire to carve your own path, you meet a woman named Meg He - a clothing brand innovator, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athlete and a queer, British-Chinese digital nomad. She's here keeping it real simple about living her life uncloseted. About Meg Meg He is the co-founder and co-CEO of Aday, a sustainable capsule clothing brand designed for outfit repeating, so you can do more with less. Aday sources innovative super fabrics and partners only with factories who put people + planet first. Aday has been named one of the Fast Company's World's Most Innovative Companies and Meg has been named one of Goldman Sachs' 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, Forbes 30 under 30 and Gaingels 100. She's also a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athlete and World medallist. Connect With Meg https://www.meghe.com/ (Website) https://www.facebook.com/thisisaday/ (Facebook) https://www.instagram.com/meg.he/?hl=en (Instagram) https://twitter.com/meghe (Twitter) https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghe (LinkedIn) You can also listen to the podcast on… https://apple.co/2RBmUxZ ()https://bit.ly/2UxP9zN ()   https://spoti.fi/2JpvCfg ()https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/rick-clemons/the-coming-out-lounge ()   http://tun.in/pjtKR ()https://bit.ly/30kT4kL ()   https://bit.ly/2FVH55j ()  

When we've talked about intersectionality in the past, we've often talked about it with regard to race and gender, or gender and gender identity - but never quite like this. Our guest today is a queer British Chinese woman who also is a Brazilian Jujitsu competitor, an entrepreneur who raised over $10 million in venture capital financing, and the co-founder of an intentional, beautifully designed clothing company called ADAY.   If we were totally into perfectly performative scheduling, we might have had Meg on the show just as May turned into June, where we moved from AANHPI History month to LGBTQ Pride month, but we aren't - because these stories are needed and valid all year round.     What to listen for:  The importance of intentionality - and how ADAY leans into sustainable fashion and away from the capitalistic chase that so many fast fashion companies perpetuate right now Why it's not always something new, but a new way to say or discuss something, that resonates with people How jiu-jitsu has helped Meg get more comfortable with being uncomfortable  The main messages Meg has been using her voice to speak out against, when it comes to her many intersectional identities Fertility as it relates to the queer couple experience   About Meg, from Meg: I'm Meg, the co-founder and co-CEO of Aday, a sustainable capsule clothing brand, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athlete and a business coach for athletes and gyms. I'm queer, British-Chinese and a digital nomad. Some of my Personal beliefs are as follows: Don't be bored: do things that make your heart beat faster by figuring out what you're really optimizing for. The intersection of what matters to you, what you're great at and what you love is a beautiful space. Be your best self: know what inspires you to create your best work, find flow and through introspection, learn how to create and re-create an environment to best enable you to do this. Remember to teach: investing in those around you is one of the most valuable things you can do. It takes patience and kindness, two things I work on every day.  

Former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd is a long time scholar of China. In his new book, The Avoidable War, he argues that it is cultural misunderstanding and historical grievance which make Chinese-US relations so volatile. Rana Mitter asks him how he sees China's current positioning of itself on the world stage. We hear why it is that the ideas of Hegel and not Kant resonate in Chinese politics. And, in the spirit of better understanding the rich artistic traditions and cultural history of China, we hear from three researchers about the latest thinking on Hong Kong ink art, representations of sleep, Chinese identity and contemporary classical music and insomnia from the cultural revolution to the present day. Kevin Rudd is President and CEO of Asia Society and a former Prime Minister of Australia. He is a leading international authority on China and began his career as a China scholar, serving as an Australian diplomat in Beijing before entering Australian politics. His latest book is The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China. Alexander Ho is a British-Chinese composer based at the Royal College of Music in London. His work has been commissioned or performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Radio 3 and the Royal Opera House. Ros Holmes is a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on ideas about sleep and the art and visual culture of twentieth century and contemporary China. Malcolm McNeill is Director of Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art at SOAS, University of London. He is a specialist in Chinese paining and he has worked for museums in the UK and Taiwan. Producer: Ruth Watts

Amy and Karlie spoke to Georgina aka https://www.instagram.com/chop_stick_n_poke/ about her parents, working as a tattoo artist, then they started veering off into korean and Chinese TV dramas, Speaking Chinglish and Asian uncles lubing Georgie up. Georgina Leung is a British Chinese tattoo artist and illustrator. Spending her formative years in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, Georgina later went on to study Illustration at the Edinburgh College of Art, and is now based in London. Follow besean and slide into our DMs and keep the conversation going! https://www.instagram.com/besea.n/ https://twitter.com/besea_n Support the podcast by buying besean a coffee, 100% of the donations now go towards besean! http://bit.ly/Kofibesean Sign petitions: STAND WITH MYANMAR AND TAKE ACTION https://linktr.ee/meemalee ESEA HERITAGE MONTH: Sign the petition to support the launch of East & South East Asian Heritage Month in the UK https://www.change.org/ESEAHeritageMonth We've reached 30,000 signatures! Sign the petition for media outlets to stop depicting ESEA people in Coronavirus related media: https://www.change.org/p/bbc-stop-depicting-east-asians-in-coronavirus-related-media

Christine Lee, a British-Chinese lawyer, who set up the British Chinese Project aimed at promoting engagement, understanding and cooperation between the Chinese community and wider UK society, has been accused of being a spy for Beijing by Britain's spy agent MI5. But just a couple of years ago in 2019, she was given a “Point of Light” award by then prime minister Theresa May in recognition of her work in promoting Sino-British relations and her charity work for the local community. What has led to the dramatic change? As anti-Chinese sentiment is on the rise in Western countries, how may it back fire at the entire society? Join host Tu Yun, former Director of Economic and Business Policy for the Mayor of London John Ross, writer and columnist Einar Tangen, and Professor Wan Xiaohong, Associate Dean of the School of Politics and Public Administration, South China Normal University, for insights into the dilemma of the Chinese diaspora in Western societies today.

British-Chinese textile designer Elaine Yan Ling Ng is on the line with Suzy Annetta to discuss her early career, the difficulty of defining her practise and the establishment of her Hong Kong-based studio The Fabrick Lab.The Design Dialogues is presented in partnership with House of Madison.

Claribel & Kat discuss mentorship programs, both formal and informal! Then they chat with Maisie Chan about her experience publishing her debut Middle Grade and the differences between the UK and US publishing market. ABOUT MAISIE: Maisie Chan is a British Chinese children's author from Birmingham. She loves dim sum, yoga and travelling. She has written early readers for Hachette and Big Cat Collins, and has a collection of myths and legends out with Scholastic. She is the author of Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths (U.K.) also known as Danny Chung Sums It Up (U.S.), and the Tiger Warrior chapter book series (M Chan). She runs Bubble Tea Writers Network to support and encourage writers of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) descent in the U.K. She has a dog called Miko, who has very big eyes and wakes up too early. She has a large old school hip hop collection. She lives in Glasgow with her family. • FOLLOW MAISIE: website | Twitter | Instagram Buy Danny Chung Sums It Up (US) Buy Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths (UK) MENTIONS: • DVMentor • DVDebut • WNDB Mentorship • Author Mentor Match • PitchWars • When Night Breaks by Janella Angeles • FOLLOW CLARIBEL: Twitter | Instagram | Youtube | TikTok • www.claribelortega.com • Check out all of Claribel's books • PRE-ORDER Witchlings (Feb 2022, Scholastic) • FOLLOW KAT: Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok • www.katchowrites.com • PRE-ORDER Once Upon a K-Prom (May 2022, Disney) • Check out Kat's Books • FOLLOW WRITE OR DIE: Twitter | Instagram • Write or Die Episodes • Join our WorDie community! • Learn more about Write or Die --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/writeordiepodcast/support

Jasmin Kent Rodgman, the British/Malaysian artist and composer, joins Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones and British/Chinese artist Aowen Jin as they select and discuss the latest five tracks to be added to the weekly playlist, where each track has a musical connection with the previous one. Cerys Matthews and Jeffrey Boakye pick up where they left off last time, with Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber's classic earworm Despacito. So where will their journey take us from there? Presenters Cerys Matthews and Jeffrey Boakye Producer Jerome Weatherald The five tracks added to this week's playlist: Tu Vuò' Fà' l'Americano by Sophia Loren and Paolo Bacilieri Heebie Jeebies by Louis Armstrong Ha Ha Lili by San Dingding Nessun Dorma! by Giacomo Puccini, sung by Luciano Pavarotti I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles sung by Doris Day and Jack Smith Other music in this episode: God Walked Down by The Allergies The Other Bank by Janet Kent Rodgman Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee feat Justin Bieber Tu Vuò' Fà' l'Americano sung by Jude Law, Matt Damon and Rosario Fiorello Life on Mars by David Bowie Shotgun by George Ezra I Fought the Law by The Clash Are You Lonesome Tonight? by Elvis Presley Violaine by Cocteau Twins Sequenza III for Female Voice by Luciano Berio Shawnee Stomp Dance from First Nation Sacred Songs Adiemus by Karl Jenkins Puirt a beul, Scottish Mouth Music, by the Quadriga Consort Nessun Dorma! sung by Gwyn Hughes Jones I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles sung by Vera Lynn

On this episode of Nature Bantz we're talking to British-Chinese multimedia journalist and budding author, Lu-Hai Liang. We chatted about hiking in Beijing (Lu-Hai lived there for six years), as well as nature connection and technology, and how virtual reality and gaming can inspire exploration and help you to appreciate nature.Due to the pandemic, we're still recording lo-fi for Season 3 so please excuse any background noise as we are working from the comfort and safety of our own homes. You may hear the odd barking dog, clinking cup of tea or birds twittering away. You can follow us on all the socials @gojauntlyYou can follow Hana Sutch over at @sutchfun on TwitterEmail us with guest suggestions: hi@gojauntly.comTo find the links from the episode please go to www.gojauntly.com/naturebantzDon't forget to subscribe and leave us a 5 star rating and a review if you like what you hear.LinksLu-Hai Liang Twitter https://twitter.com/LuHai_LiangLu-Hai Liang Blog https://theluhai.com/Credits:Hana Sutch (Host & Exec Producer), Lu-Hai Liang (Guest), Shane Henderson (Co-Host), Liam Owen (Editor & Design), Sage Fitzpatrick (Producer), Leslie Quarcoopome (Music) and everyone at Go Jauntly and the team at Liz Earle Beauty Co for their support.

Award-winning author Rowan Jacobsen on why so much of what we think we know about truffles is wrong. Plus, a pioneer of sourdough baking in Athens and a Hong Kong restaurant specialising in British-Chinese cooking.

Maise Chan is a British Chinese author, born in Birmingham and now living in Glasgow. She runs the Bubble Tea Writers Network, a support group that she set up to encourage writers of East and South-East Asian descent. She also founded the Glasgow Children's Writers Network and is a mentor for Leila Rasheed's Megaphone Writer Development project.Tiger Warriors is a new series from Maisie. It is likely to appeal to readers who enjoy action-led page-turning narratives (and is pitched by the publisher as likely to appeal to Beast Quest readers). Maisie has a keen interest in Chinese myth and legend, and has previously written titles on this subject in education series.  She draws on this mythological pool for Tiger Warriors, and especially the animals of the Chinese zodiac.I caught up with Maise to find out more.

Le Fil is a Huddersfield-born, British-Chinese multidisciplinary pop singer-songwriter and artist. As part of genderqueer collective Sink The Pink, he has performed around the world, including touring with Spice Girl Melanie C. Le Fil spreads his androgynous vision through collaborations with many global brands such as Toyota and Smirnoff, and has written articles for The Guardian, Attitude Magazine and Wallpaper*. His word of the day is SCULPTURE. CONNECT WITH LE FIL: I: @iamlefil T: @iamLeFil #AnthemsPride is a collection of 30 original manifestos, speeches, stories, poems and rallying cries written and voiced by exceptional LGBTQIA+ contributors and allies. It was created and executive produced by Hana Walker-Brown with producers Bea Duncan, Jaja Muhammad and production assistant Rory Boyle. This episode was sound designed by Ben Williams. The artwork is by Mars West.

Jabez Lam came to the UK from Hong Kong as a student, and has worked for the Hackney Chinese Community Services since 1976. In this episode, Jabez discusses how his early view of politics was shaped by his childhood, and how his discovery and exploration of socialism came about as a young adult and new arrival to London. Informed by his experience the trio discuss the history of British Chinese anti-racist organising and the situation in Hong Kong through the lens of émigrés to the UK.

Dr Yan Wang Preston is a British-Chinese artist interested in the connections between landscape, ecology, identity and migration. She has specialised in conducting long-term projects that are demanding both physically and intellectually. For example, she photographed the entire 6,211km Yangtze River in China at precise 100km intervals for her Mother River project. Yan has published two photo books, 'Mother River' and ‘Forest' with Hatje Cantz. She holds a PhD in Photography and lectures at the University of Huddersfield. "When I came [to the UK], I realised in the last 16 years - it's a gradual realisation of my own unconscious bias, of trying to be perfect. Trying to be this woman who puts on dinner at the right time, for everyone. But also who appears beautiful, intelligent, all those things. And only a few years ago, actually through the exposure of feminism movements here [in the UK]. I have began to ask myself why? Why do I want to be perfect? Is it because men want me to be like this? Or is this from my own standards? And where did this standards come from? So actually, from quite a few years back, my New Year's resolution to myself has stayed the same. Try not to be perfect."

This episode is it's all about community both local and overseas. Starting off with a few words of empowerment and addressing the recent asian hate crimes which have taken place in the US. My guest on this episode is founder of British Chinese Biz, Faith Chow! A very big contributor to the BESEA community not just through the directory of local Chinese owned businesses based in Britain, but through their community building and representation advocating activities. Bi weekly community zoom calls, promotions and giveaways to give exposure to local businesses and also raising awareness of worthy causes within our community. Faith not only runs this but also her illustrations business, Ever Sincerely. She talks about how she does all of these things, the pillars that form the foundations of BCB and what it's bigger community goal is.It can't be ignored that there's been an ever increasing amount of anti asian sentiment, thus my underlying statement of anti asian hate as was stated in my #stopasianhate episode is now more than ever, every asian voice matters and it's time we use it to bring justice back into our community. Whether it's raising awareness, supporting our local businesses or calling out for ally ship, we cannot be the silent model minority society has painted us as any more. I talk about two fundraisers i was a part of where in total over $15k was raised to support US organisations Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Asian American Policy Planning Council who are helping the victims in Atlanta and also driving community initiatives such as bystander intervention. I did a community awareness video as part of DJ Mish's Twitch raid train stream event and an auction on Clubhouse as part of the Sleep Deprived Crew 4 day fund raising event all for #stopasianhateAsian recommendation: Faith's asian recommendation is none other than Britains very own East Asian super star Gemma Chan of Cray Rich Asians and Humans. She's done a huge amount for the community and continues to shine with everything she does.British Chinese Biz: https://www.instagram.com/britishchinesebiz/Ever Sincerely: https://www.instagram.com/eversincerely/Contacts:Crazy Brit Asian Contact Instagram: @crazybritasian https://www.instagram.com/crazybritasian/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crazybritasian/Email: crazybritasian@gmail.com--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crazybritasian/message

Spill The Cha with @lajohnla on Episode 29!⁣ ⁣ We're huge fans of John, his personality and content so it was such a treat to have him on the podcast. Expect a big range of topics and some belly laughs

Listen now | A view from Delhi. Andrew is in New Delhi for this double-length episode, and oof, is he working through some stuff! How does a British Chinese chef contend with the parameters of Chinese food in India? Subscribe at andrewwongandmuktadas.substack.com

Since all of us have been blessed to grow up in a British Chinese community through our church, we thought we'd invite our youth pastor, Rev. Ollie Knight.⁣ ⁣ As a "gwei lo" (aka. white guy) who has been immersed in Chinese culture since his teenage years, we thought it'd be interesting to hear about his experiences!⁣ ⁣ We talk about:⁣

Its episode 5 of Ur Welcome America presents GIRLS ALOUD: OFF THE RECORD! Join us on an incredibly problematic diplomatic trip to China where SOME of the girls don’t do a great job for British / Chinese relations. We also head up to Newcastle for a roast that I’m still thinking about #twoyorkshirepuddingsWatch the original episodes on YouTube & listen every week via the Ur Welcome America podcast feed.UR WELCOME!Let us know your thoughts;Insta: @urwelcomeamericaTwitter: @urwelcomeUSA

What stories are hidden in everyday objects and why is telling these stories so important? In this episode we speak with Dr Denise Kwan, an artist, writer, and art lecturer whose project ‘Object-Stories of British Chinese Women' tells the journeys of diasporic Chinese women in the UK through their everyday objects. The project invited women to present an object of personal significance to explore how questions of belonging and identity are entangled in the most everyday of things. Participants talked about their lives through everyday objects and drawing on these stories as inspiration, the women attended art workshops to explore ways of visualising the significance of their possessions. Between their speech and the artwork, we are presented with a peephole into the multiple lives of their objects. These are their object-stories of British Chinese women. Denise is in conversation with Tiffany Leung, community producer for the Manchester Museum's China Culture Gallery, due to open in 2022. Developed in close collaboration with The University of Manchester's Manchester China Institute and local communities, the Lee Kai Hung Chinese Culture Gallery will be dedicated to building understanding and empathy; exploring the rich cultural heritage and historic links between Manchester and China. Season 2: Episode 1 Transcript ----- Manchester Museum is on a mission to become the most imaginative, caring and inclusive museum in the world, and in this podcast we will share open and honest conversations with special guests, which will inform, entertain and inspire. Through these conversations we hope to reframe what it means for museums to care, and explore how we can build understanding, empathy and love for our world and each other. Find out more about the Manchester Museum: Website Twitter Instagram ----- Original music courtesy of Move 78: Instagram Spotify iTunes

Welcome to season three’s interview episode! This season I’m speaking to the wonderful Michelle Chai. I’ve been following Michelle in some form or another since my early blogging days and have loved seeing her blog and online presence evolve. Whether she’s writing about her experience being British Chinese, sharing petite joys or selling hand-poured candles on etsy, she does it all with poise and keen awareness. In our discussion we talk about writing, creativity and coping with 2020 life. Grab a cuppa, sit back and enjoy.  Find full show-notes and links at bluejayofhappiness.com/podcast

I am so happy to have Viv Yau as my first guest.  A fellow BBC who has her own pod called 'But where are you from' - go and check it out. In this episode, we talk about our lives working in the chippy including who's Dad's curry sauce was the best (my Dad's - OBVS), why we started our podcast, racism and the petition that she has created to stop British media from depicting East and South East Asians with the coronavirus. If you haven't already, please sign the petition!  Google 'Change org asian images' and it's the first link that comes up in Google.

Episode 51 travels back to the late-1980s to look closely at Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988), a film that uses stop-motion, practical effects, prosthetics, make-up and bluescreen to complete its fantasy story of netherworlds, outsiderdom and life after death. Joining Chris and Alex is special guest Jingan Young, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and academic who is the editor of ‘Foreign Goods’ (the first collection of British Chinese plays published in the UK) and a regular contributor to The Guardian and Hong Kong Free Press, who has also recently completed a PhD in Film Studies at King’s College London. Listen as they discuss the tonally abrasive qualities of Tim Burton’s film and its shifts into haunted house horror; narratives of conquest, and how this connects to Beetlejuice’s take on white privilege and U.S. national identity; Michael Keaton’s performance and the figure of the trickster; the racialised use of music and questions of neo-minstrelsy; and how the film’s satirical-political edge gives the animated fantasy a bit of extra bite.

My guest in this episode is Frit Sarita Tam - she's an adventure filmmaker and photographer, rock climber, hiker, paddle boarder and more! Frit's introduction to the outdoors was by no means gentle - a 50km, 16 hour charity hike on the South Downs Way with no previous hiking experience. But it sparked a fascination with spending time outside and since then, she's consciously taken baby-steps (as she calls them) towards a more outdoorsy career and life. Those small moves forward have led her to taking up micro adventures after work, new outdoor hobbies, filming a documentary about a paddle boarding record and working for the Bear Grylls Survival Academy. Frit is a British Chinese lesbian and she's also passionate about trying to help other people in marginalised groups feel that the outdoors is for them too. I hope you enjoy this episode and Frit's story. Listen out for her tips for an outdoorsy life and don't forget that at the end of the podcast there's the relaxing minute of sounds from nature, recorded by some of you! The Outdoors Fix is a podcast produced and hosted by Liv Bolton @liv_outsideuk It is proudly supported by Ellis Brigham Mountain Sports – stores nationwide and online offering everything you need to equip you for the best outdoors experience. The post Frit Sarita Tam: How a charity walk led to an outdoorsy life and career appeared first on The Outdoors Fix.

It's episode 28 of The Dunk Knows Best podcast! In today's episode Dunk asks if we should stop building airports to save the planet and should leap year proposals be sacked on the head? There's news about a secret stash in The Don's mash plus Prince Harry makes the podcast again after he's singled out for another coshing from the British tabloids. Dunk was angry to hear that a British-Chinese lady has been racially abused in London in relation to the coronavirus and did you know people are that thick that they've stopped drinking Corona beer because they fear it could be contaminated. Finally, were relatives right to call the police on their 9-year old nephew who stole their wallet and there's a 'belly laughing' tale about a mum who left her kids behind on the school run. Well, Dunk didn't think it was funny but there ya go! This is an exclusive episode which has been recorded for Patrons i.e. those who support the podcast. For instant access, please show some love by becoming a DKB Supporter or DKB Legend at http://www.dkbpodcast.com. Upon doing so you will get access to bonus episodes every Thursday and Friday and every episode throughout the week will be pushed to you completely ad-free!

The holiday season can be a lot of things: joyful, connective, fun. It can also be downright isolating and lonely, especially for those who struggle with mental illness. Our most recent guest, British-Chinese comedy writer Amanda Rosenberg, knows this struggle all too well. In this episode, Amanda discusses her book, That’s Mental: Painfully Funny Things That Drive Me Crazy, and uses her dark humor and cutting wit to delve into her personal experience with depression, suicide attempts, Bipolar 2, and the decision to go off her medication while simultaneously pregnant with her child AND writing this very book. Throughout, Amanda shows us how to have the tough conversations about mental health that we as a society so badly need to have. Basically, she’s Wonder Woman. Can't you tell? 

British Chinese YPG Volunteer Huang Lei talk about Battle of Manbij against ISIS, and the most intense firefight he found himself took part on the streets of Manbij. This is his story... Please support my podcast on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/silknsteel Intro and Outro: Kobani by Mansour Izadpanah  in Kurdish Sorani language   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ahsfdqmUL8  intermission music: NUARİN GERİLLA   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGeGIKOTlAU 

The career of Hollywood superstar Samuel L Jackson was recently revealed to have made him the highest-grossing actor of all time. He joins Samira to discuss the new Marvel superhero film, Captain Marvel; in which he reprises the role of Nick Fury... This time around he's playing a Nick Fury who is twenty years younger than before, as the film is set in the 90s. He reveals how he de-aged himself for the part and also talks to Samira about The Oscars, why he chooses “popcorn” films to star in, and which of the 120 films in which he's appeared is his favourite.Amy Ng's new play, Under the Umbrella, opens tonight at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. The story is about Wei, a Chinese PhD student researching human fertility, enjoying life with her English flatmate in the city. But family pressure to return home and get married grows intense. Her grandmother survived famine, her mother the Cultural Revolution and the one-child policy, so while this is a highly entertaining comedy, it's a dark one, exploring the dilemmas and traumas of three generations of contemporary Chinese women. There are ghosts, too. Samira Ahmed talks to Amy Ng and unpacks the issues.There's a new classical music station available on your DAB radio. Scala Radio launched on Monday with a morning show hosted by Simon Mayo. It's being pitched as a rival to Classic FM and BBC Radio 3. The Sunday Times' radio critic Gillian Reynolds has been listening to it for us and will let us know whether she thinks it'll be a serious rival.Presenter, Samira Ahmed Producer, Oliver Jones

British Chinese YPG Volunteer Huang Lei had been fighting ISIS in Northern Syria for 3 and 1/2 years. This is his story, part 2...

I interviewed British Chinese YPG Volunteer Huang Lei who had been fighting ISIS in Northern Syria on and off for three and half years. This is his story Part 1

From Shore to Shore is a play written by British playwright Mary Cooper in collaboration with M W Sun based on real migration stories from Chinese communities throughout the UK that will tour nationally to Chinese restaurants and Chinese community centres rather than theatres. For this episode, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the play’s director, David Tse, and veteran British Chinese actor Ozzie Yue, who leads the cast, about the play, the process of collecting stories, their own family connections with Chinese migrant stories and also how opportunities have changed for British Chinese actors over the last few decades. From Shore to Shore, directed by David K S Tse for On the Wire and starring Ozzie Yue, will open at the Yang Sing Restaurant in Manchester from 9 to 16 March and will then tour until 6 April, with performances in Liverpool, Lancaster, Morecambe, Newcastle upon Tyne and Birmingham.

May-Lan Tan is a British Chinese writer based in Berlin. Having studied fine art at Goldsmiths, she now works as a ghostwriter. Her collection, Things To Make and Break, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and is one of Alex's favourite reads of 2018. For further discussion about Things to Make and Break, check out episode 24 with Sharlene Teo. MAY-LAN'S BOOK CHOICES: Why the Tree Loves the Axe by Jim Lewis Coin Locker Babies by Ryū Murakami The Notebook by Ágota Kristóf You can follow May-Lan Tan on twitter @amanlyant If you haven't already, please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, the editor of ThePolemicist.net, and Daniel Lazare, a journalist and author of “The Frozen Republic,” “The Velvet Coup,” and “America's Undeclared War.”The battle between the FBI and the House Intelligence Committee continued to worsen yesterday, as FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the FBI has “grave concerns” about the release of the Nunes memo because of material omissions of fact. Meanwhile, Congressman Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee and the actual author of the Nunes memo, announced his retirement.Today the hosts continue the weekly series “Criminal Injustice,” highlighting the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News (PLN), join the show.The United States is facing a crisis of epic proportions in opioid addiction. The problem is so severe that the lifespan of the average American has actually declined for the past two years. That’s all because of opioid deaths, and West Virginia has been particularly hard hit. Brian and John speak with Travis Boothe, an organizer with the Morgantown Tenants Union.President Trump has signed an Executive Order that will keep the military prison at Guantanamo Bay open indefinitely. The President also said in his State of the Union address earlier this week that he wants to start sending more prisoners to Guantanamo, a reversal of the Obama Administration’s policy of winding down the population there. Jeremy Varon, a professor at the New School in New York and an anti-Guantanamo activist, joins the show.Lifetime doping bans against 28 Russian athletes were overturned on Thursday, throwing the International Olympic Committee’s policy on Russian doping into chaos. The decision means that the athletes’ clean 2014 test results will be reinstated, and they may all seek in the Winter Games next week in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Alan Moore, a specialist in sports governance and the host of the Capital FM Sports show based in Moscow, joins Brian and John.British Prime Minister Theresa May is in China this week, working on a trade deal with Beijing that offers Britain as what she calls “a reliable, competitive base in Europe.” Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said British-Chinese relations were in “a golden era.” Jude Woodward, London mayor Ken Livingstone's advisor on culture and creative industries and the author of the new book “The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War?,” joins the show.A federal judge yesterday dismissed all charges against Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, who had been accused of a variety of crimes related to corruption. Menendez already had gone on trial, which ended in a hung jury. A judge subsequently threw out seven of the 18 charges. The Menendez case was a test of anti-bribery laws in the wake of a 2016 decision which narrowed their scope. Brian and John speak with Sputnik news analyst Walter Smolarek.

Lewis Hou, a scientist and science educator, was born in Liverpool and now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. In this episode he talks to us about the role of food in a British/Chinese household and shares his personal childhood memories with us. This episode was produced by Emma-Jane Harrington and Ciarán Earls Interviewer was Grace Murray-Cavanagh Transcriber was Emma-Jane Harrington To read a transcript of this podcast go to http://www.mecopp.org.uk/resources-food_for_thought_.php?section_id=410 Food for Thought is brought to you by MECOPP and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund Intro / outro music: Bensound.com Transition music: Artofescapism - Watching from Red Hill Pinniped - The Burning of the Pipers Hut Photo (Liverpool China Town): By SomeDriftwood (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Action Movie Anatomy hosts Ben Bateman and Andrew Ghai break down The Foreigner! Follow the show at @AMAPodcast and the hosts @BenBatemanMedia & @AndrewGhai!  The Foreigner is a 2017 action thriller film directed by Martin Campbell and written by David Marconi, based on the 1992 novel The Chinaman by Stephen Leather. The British-Chinese co-production stars Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Michael McElhatton, Liu Tao, Charlie Murphy, Orla Brady and Katie Leung, and follows a businessman who seeks revenge for the death of his daughter. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

It's a story of loot, revenge and devastated beauty that looms over British-Chinese relations. Chris Bowlby uncovers the fate of the imperial summer palace in Beijing.

It's 25 years since the Tianamen Square Massacre in Beijing that saw hundreds killed and many more detained. One award-winning British-Chinese writer and film-maker Xiaolu Guo was a teenager at the time. Decades earlier during the Cultural Revolution her fisherman father had spent more than ten years in correctional labour camps for painting a picture that had angered the authorities. What should the role of the artist or writer be in China today?

British-Chinese journalist Xinran is the author of "China Witness: Voices From A Silent Generation". Her research is based on years of interviews with Chinese people of the last two generations. Older people were not used to being asked their opinions on anything and tended to be quite suspicious at first. Despite having lived through extreme hardship, many still share a nostalgia for the days of Mao.The younger generation knew nothing of the Cultural Revolution or of the sacrifices and efforts made by their parents.. (Originally aired Deceber 2009)

British-Chinese journalist Xinran is the author of "China Witness: Voices From A Silent Generation". Her research is based on years of interviews with Chinese people of the last two generations. Older people were not used to being asked their opinions on anything and tended to be quite suspicious at first. Despite having lived through extreme hardship, many still share a nostalgia for the days of Mao.The younger generation knew nothing of the Cultural Revolution or of the sacrifices and efforts made by their parents.. (Originally aired Deceber 2009)

Melvyn Bragg discusses the Opium Wars, a series of conflicts in the 19th Century which had a profound effect on British Chinese relations for generations. Thomas De Quincey describes the pleasures of opium like this: “Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle and mighty opium”. The Chinese had banned opium in its various forms several times, citing concern for public morals, but private British traders continued to smuggle large quantities of opium into China from India. In this way, the opium trade became a way of balancing a trade deficit brought about by Britain's own addiction...to Indian tea.The Chinese protested against the flouting of the ban, even writing to Queen Victoria. But the British continued to trade, leading to a crackdown by Lin Tse-Hsu, a man appointed to be China's Opium Drugs Czar. He confiscated opium from the British traders and destroyed it. The British military response was severe, leading to the Nanking Treaty which opened up several of China's ports to foreign trade and gave Britain Hong Kong. The peace didn't last long and a Second Opium War followed. The Chinese fared little better in this conflict, which ended with another humiliating treaty.So what were the main causes of the Opium Wars? What were the consequences for the Qing dynasty? And how did the punitive treaties affect future relations with Britain?With Yangwen Zheng, Lecturer in Modern Chinese History at the University of Manchester; Lars Laamann, Research Fellow in Chinese History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London; Xun Zhou, Research Fellow in History at SOAS, University of London

Melvyn Bragg discusses the Opium Wars, a series of conflicts in the 19th Century which had a profound effect on British Chinese relations for generations. Thomas De Quincey describes the pleasures of opium like this: “Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle and mighty opium”. The Chinese had banned opium in its various forms several times, citing concern for public morals, but private British traders continued to smuggle large quantities of opium into China from India. In this way, the opium trade became a way of balancing a trade deficit brought about by Britain's own addiction...to Indian tea.The Chinese protested against the flouting of the ban, even writing to Queen Victoria. But the British continued to trade, leading to a crackdown by Lin Tse-Hsu, a man appointed to be China's Opium Drugs Czar. He confiscated opium from the British traders and destroyed it. The British military response was severe, leading to the Nanking Treaty which opened up several of China's ports to foreign trade and gave Britain Hong Kong. The peace didn't last long and a Second Opium War followed. The Chinese fared little better in this conflict, which ended with another humiliating treaty.So what were the main causes of the Opium Wars? What were the consequences for the Qing dynasty? And how did the punitive treaties affect future relations with Britain?With Yangwen Zheng, Lecturer in Modern Chinese History at the University of Manchester; Lars Laamann, Research Fellow in Chinese History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London; Xun Zhou, Research Fellow in History at SOAS, University of London