Podcasts about kowtow

Why Should Donald Trump Have to Kowtow to . . . Staff?? (Hour 1) full 1654 Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:08:00 +0000 B6oHd1hMTRkDBwF3aplQaNLvC9NkNKrE news Richmond's Morning News news Why Should Donald Trump Have to Kowtow to . . . Staff?? (Hour 1) On Richmond's Morning News our team discusses the top stories of the day from around the world, nationally, in Virginia, and right here in the Richmond area.  Listen to news you can use, newsmakers, and analysis of what's happening every weekday from 5:30 to 10:00 AM on NewsRadio 1140 WRVA and 96.1 FM!   2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. News False https://player.amperwavepodc

The brave 7th graders who came forward to share the story of what happened in their classroom are under attack. But here's the good news – they're not backing down, and neither are we. Burien wins legal battle against King County over homeless camps. Democrats in Washington state creep closer to supermajorities.

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 1214, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Passion 1: Devotion to a cause, or in another way, "To Phil and Judie: I could not have written the clue without you". a dedication. 2: Mais oui and toujours, it's French for "love", mon.... amour. 3: We are obsessed, perhaps even crazed, about this suffix, from the Greek for "excessive desire". mania. 4: Zest is a 4-letter word starting with Z that fits the category; so is this. zeal. 5: These 2 passionate words make up the title of a 1965 film about Michelangelo. agony and ecstasy. Round 2. Category: 1000 1: There was widespread fear that this would happen; people worried about the millennium back then, too. the world would end. 2: This sport can be traced back to c. 1000 when a monk named Eilmer jumped and sailed from Malmesbury Abbey. hang gliding. 3: This country's Stephen I was crowned in 1000 in his hometown of Esztergom and the crown is a national treasure. Hungary. 4: Piasts ruled this country in 1000; in 1919, a pianist ruled it: Ignace Paderewski. Poland. 5: Sweyn Forkbeard, King Olaf of Sweden and 2 others defeated and killed King Olaf I of this country at Svold. Norway. Round 3. Category: Name The Seuss Title 1: "I will not eat them in the rain. I will not eat them on a train. Not in the dark! Not in a tree! Not in a car! You let me be!". Green Eggs and Ham. 2: Through the high jungle tree tops, the news quickly spread: "He talks to a dust speck! He's out of his head!". Horton Hears a Who. 3: "No! Not in the house!" said the fish in the pot, "They should not fly kites in a house! They should not". The Cat in the Hat. 4: "Silence!" the king of the turtles barked back. "I'm king, and you're only a turtle named Mack". Yertle the Turtle. 5: "Socks on chicks and chicks on fox. Fox on clocks on bricks and blocks". Fox in Socks. Round 4. Category: The Original Language 1: "From the Earth to the Moon". French. 2: The diary of Anne Frank. Dutch. 3: "In this best of all possible worlds...Everything is for the best". French. 4: Kowtow, typhoon, and tycoon. Chinese. 5: The 1880s work "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". German. Round 5. Category: Love Actuarily 1: They may be "single", "birth" or "helicopter", and a 2017 study says they live longer than other people. parents. 2: A U. of Miami study found married men survived the longest with this most common male gland cancer. prostate cancer. 3: I know, he snores and has morning breath, but Pitt researchers found doing this raises stress hormone levels. sleeping separately (or alone). 4: The A.H.A., short for this, says having a dog lowers your risk of the type of disease it fights. the American Heart Association. 5: The death rate in healthy men was found to double if they'd experienced this sad event from Old English reafian, "to steal". a bereavement. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/ AI Voices used

Clothing label Kowtow has built a devoted following since its inception in Wellington back in 2006. 

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NICK BARRETT FRONTMAN FOR BRITISH PROG ROCK GROUP ‘PENDRAGON' CHATS ABOUT LATEST RELEASE ‘NORTH STAR' ON INTERVIEWING THE LEGENDS WITH RAY SHASHO!   Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Interviewing the Legends I'm your host Ray Shasho. Pendragon are an English neo-progressive rock band established in 1978 in Stroud, Glouce-ster-sher, England, as Zeus Pendragon by guitarist and vocalist Nick Barrett. The word Zeus was dropped before the band started recording, as the members decided it was too long to look good on a T-shirt. There were a few personnel changes in the early days, but since 1986 the lineup has remained relatively stable (with only the drummer changing several times since then). The band were active in the progressive rock revival spearheaded by the likes of Marillion, Pallas, Solstice and Twelfth Night in the early 1980s and often appeared as support acts to Marillion and other major prog bands, both on tours and at the Marquee venue which hosted many regular prog evenings. In September 2019 the band released a 40th Anniversary boxed set containing five compact discs. The first three represent a complete live concert recording made in London during 2018. The remaining two discs are re-mixed and remastered versions of the albums The World and Men Who Climb Mountains. In February 2020, a new album called Love Over Fear was released. Most recently this year an EP entitled North Star was released. PLEASE WELCOME GUITARIST, SINGER, SONGWRITER AND COMPOSER OF THE BRITISH PROG ROCK GROUP PENDRAGON NICK BARRETT TO INTERVIEWING THE LEGENDS …   PURCHASE NORTH STAR BY PENDRAGON Available at https://pendragon3.bandcamp.com/ and amazon.com Also THE MOST RECENT ALBUM BY PENDRAGON entitled LOVE OVER FEAR amazon.com   FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT NICK BARRETT AND PENDRAGON VISIT www.pendragon.mu Official website https://twitter.com/PendieHQ Twitter www.facebook.com/PendragonHQ Facebook https://pendragon3.bandcamp.com/album/north-star Bandcamp www.lizsaddington.com Liz Saddington artwork   PENDRAGON DISCOGRAPHY Studio albums The Jewel (1985) Kowtow (1988) The World (1991) The Window of Life (1993) The Masquerade Overture (1996) Not of This World (2001) Believe (2005) Pure (2008) Passion (2011) Men Who Climb Mountains (2014) Love Over Fear (2020)   Live Album's 1 9:15 Live 1986 2 Around the World in 80 Minutes Vol 2 1992 3 The Very, Very Bootleg: Live in Lille 1993 4 Utrecht...The Final Frontier 1995 5 Live in Kraków 96 1997 6 Acoustically Challenged 2002 7 Live at Last ...And More 2004 8 Concerto Maximo 2009 9 Out of Order Comes Chaos 2013 10 Masquerade 20 2017 EP's 1 Pendragon (aka The Armageddon Tape) 1982 2 Pendragon (aka The Excalibur Tape) 1983 3 The Friday Rock Show 1983 4 Fly High Fall Far 1984 5 Saved by You 1989 6 Fallen Dreams & Angels 1994 7 As Good as Gold 1996 8 North Star 2023   NICK BARRETT SOLO Nick Barrett & Clive Nolan – A Rush Of Adrenaline 2006   UPCOMING SHOWS Friday Nov 3rd – The Wharf, Tavistock, Devon Saturday Nov 4th – Trading Boundaries, Fletching, East Sussex     We're heading out on tour in the spring of 2024, and here's where we'll be… May 2024 11th – Saturday & 12th Sunday – VIP'24 Weekend – Key Theatre – Peterborough – UK 13th – Monday – Zentrum Altenberg – Oberhausen – DE 14th – Tuesday – Paris – FR – TBC 15th – Wednesday –  Z7 – Pratteln – CH 16th – Thursday – Lyon – FR – TBC 17th – Friday –  Chez Paulette – Pagney-derrière-Barine- FR 18th – Saturday – De Boerderij – Zoetermeer – NL 19th – Sunday – Das Rind – Russelshiem – DE 20th – Monday – Zik-Zak – Ittre – BE   21st – Tuesday – Logo – Hamburg – DE 22nd – Wednesday – Beta – Copenhagen – DK 23rd – Thursday –  Galej – Gothenburg – SE 25th Saturday & 26th Sunday – VIP '24 Weekend- CK Wiatrak – Zabrze – PL   Support us on PayPal!

Leland and Andrew do a switcheroo, Brawl at Montgomery, Alabama riverfront dock, The Biden's kowtow to the Chinese, Trans sues ex for not returning testicles, Civil War GoldSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Leland and Andrew do a switcheroo, Brawl at Montgomery, Alabama riverfront dock, The Biden's kowtow to the Chinese, Trans sues ex for not returning testicles, Civil War GoldSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Leland and Andrew do a switcheroo, Brawl at Montgomery, Alabama riverfront dock, The Biden's kowtow to the Chinese, Trans sues ex for not returning testicles, Civil War GoldSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Leland and Andrew do a switcheroo, Brawl at Montgomery, Alabama riverfront dock, The Biden's kowtow to the Chinese, Trans sues ex for not returning testicles, Civil War GoldSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Artist Song Time Album Year Honorable Mention North Star EP 2023 Pendragon Fall Away 6:22 North Star (EP) 2023 11. Kowtow 1988 Pendragon Total Recall 6:40 Kowtow 1988 10. Love Over Fear 2020 Pendragon Afraid Of Everything 5:00 Love Over Fear 2020 9. Men Who Climb High Mountains 2014 Pendragon In Bardo 4:51 Men Who […]

A prominent socialist politician tweeted the usual FREE STUFF demand, this last week, and a libertarian responded. After that, the deluge. Dennis Pratt of the Free State Project explains.

In today's Part I, episode, Mark Schneider interviews public school teacher and parental rights activist, Brenda Lebsack where they discuss the corruption of the California Teachers Union. Listen in as they unpack a recent article published by Lebsack entitled: Dodgers Strike Out with Fans, and Kowtow to Radical Teachers Unions.Donate to our Podcast Ministry: https://kprz.com/radioshow/9412See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

VISIT HTTP://PETERNAVARRO.SUBSTACK.COM FOR THE TRANSCRIPT AND MORE! The recently completed trips of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to Communist China have drawn a sharp contrast for voters in the 2024 presidential election.  These trips have solidified the Biden doctrine of “strategic competition and derisking” with China, which is as far from the Republican view as Beijing is from Washington.   The only “good news” the Biden-Blinken-Yellin negotiations provide is that of a clear choice for American voters.  If you believe as Biden does that we are simply in a strategic competition with Communist China and that China's economic and military activities pose no existential threat, then you will agree that the prudent course is negotiations aimed at first stabilizing the relationship and then achieving incremental changes over time.  Of course, in this view, you must also believe the Chinese actually want a mutually beneficial relationship and come in peace.  Believe all that and Biden is clearly your man in 2024. If, on the other hand, you believe China has no intention of ceasing its economic aggression, that its goal is hegemony in Asia, and that globally it seeks to control the world's resources and markets, then any one of a number of Republican candidates – with Trump clearly in the lead now – will be America's choice.   You decide.

Pentagon to Cut Off Filmmakers Who Kowtow to ChinaWhy Is Warner Bros' 'Barbie' Movie Under Fire?'Countermeasures Will Escalate': Beijing AdvisorCIA Director: Decoupling from China Foolish for U.S.Japanese Delegation Visits China Amid Slowing TradeTaiwanese Soldiers Down Air Targets in DrillChina Entering Systematic ‘Involution': Analysts'The West Needs to Uphold Its Own Ethical Standards': Dunning on Dealing with a More Authoritarian China

CHINA IN FOCUS

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT AT WWW.PETERNAVARRO.SUBSTACK.COM FREE OF CHARGE Veni, vidi, vici.  Secretary of State Anthony Blinken came to Beijing, saw and kowtowed to Xi Jinping, and yet another American diplomat was conquered by Communist China's “endless delay” negotiating strategy. I know this negotiating strategy all too well from my four years in the Trump White House trying to negotiate an end to China's unfair trade, cyber attacks on America, crushing of Hong Kong, and various other forms of aggression and Chinese imperialism.  In his latest display of diplomatic impotence, the deepness of Blinken's kowtow was startling.  LISTEN TO THE PODCAST FOR THE COMPLETE STORY!

By Peter Navarro, EpochTimes

By Peter Navarro, EpochTimes

READ THE TRANSCRIPT AND FOLLOW PETER AT HTTP://PETERNAVARRO.SUBSTACK.COM THE BIDEN REGIME HAS PUT PETER NAVARRO IN LEG IRONS AND NOW WANTS TO PUT HIM IN PRISON.  YOUR PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO HIS SUBSTACK HELPS FUND PETER'S LEGAL DEFENSE. Last week, as Communist Chinese warships completed a coercive circumnavigation of Japan's main islands, G-7 leaders met in Hiroshima to forge a unified response to China's ever-increasing economic and military aggression.  The result – a weak communique without neither bite nor teeth -- was hardly Churchillian. Why do G-7 leaders act as kowtowing rug merchants rather than Churchillian leaders?  Like Tolstoy's unhappy families, each is compromised in his own way.  

How much do you really know about China's genocide and slavery?  Michael Sobolik of the American Foreign Policy Council is an expert.  He and Michele discuss the NBA's ties to China and if they can ever be broken.  Plus, Sobolik gets personal about a couple of surprise topics!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How much do you really know about China's genocide and slavery?  Michael Sobolik of the American Foreign Policy Council is an expert.  He and Michele discuss the NBA's ties to China and if they can ever be broken.  Plus, Sobolik gets personal about a couple of surprise topics!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sintonía: "Before The Flood" - Moreland & Arbuckle "Hate To See You Go" (Little Walter), "Legend Of John Henry" (Trad.), "Can´t Leave Well Enough Alone" (Ryan Taylor) y "Red Moon Rising", extraídas del álbum "Flood" (Telarc Records, 2010) "Shadow Never Changes", "Good Love", "Who Will Be Next" y "White Lightnin´", extraídas de "Just A Dream" (Telarc Records, 2011) "Kowtow", "Broken Sunshine", "Red Bricks", "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" (Tears For Fears) y "Time Ain´t Long", extraídas del LP "7 Cities" (Telarc Records, 2013) Todas las músicas compuestas e interpretadas por Moreland & Arbuckle (menos donde se diga lo contrario) Escuchar audio

Last time we spoke the first time the British and French armada attacked the Taku forts it was a literal cake walk. Reminscent of the first opium war, the Qing cannons proved inept at hitting the European ships. Elgin's coalition made their way to Tianjin where they were met by the Emperors emissaries who began the same old tired procrastination strategy. Elgin was simply fed up and left the job to his brother Bruce who thought he got the deal won and done, but little did they all know the Qing had no intention of following through with the new treaty. A rebellion broke out at Canton and now Bruce was left with a new coalition force to fight yet again to get to Beijing to force the Qing to heed the treaty. However this time the Taku Forts were led by Prince Seng and he served the Europeans a truly nasty defeat. The tides of war were turning in favor of the Qing dynasty.    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 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. #22 This episode is Part 4 of the Second Opium War: The March to Beijing   When news came back to Britain about the loss, Lord Derby's government fell on June 10th 1859. Lord Palmerston returned to power at the age of 75 and wrote to the foreign office  “We must in some way or other make the Chinese repent of the outrage. We might send a military-naval force to attack and occupy Peking.” Elgin sat in on a cabinet meeting as Palmerston had appointed him Postmaster-General in the new Whig government. Elgin proscribed a moderate response, fearing that if Britain toppled the Manchu government the new masters of China would become the Taiping who lets just say were not great friends to capitalism and especially not towards the opium trade. For those MP's who still sought diplomacy, a recent event had hurt their cause. American ambassador John Ward made an attempt at diplomacy, agreeing to go to Beitang around 160 miles north of Beijing before heading to the capital. Yet instead of traveling in a sedan chair like any respectable Qing official, Ward accepted the humiliating Chinese offer to use a wooden cart without springs or a cushioned seat. The Chinese it turns out slyly told Ward this was the preferred method of transport the Russians took when in reality it was the typical transport for tribute bearers. Apparently the trip was so bumpy and painful, Ward chose to walk the last few miles. The Qing were delighted at the sight of the western representative entering Beijing on July 27th on foot like a common peasant. Ward like so many before him, ran into the kowtow situation. Ward said he was willing to bow but “I am accustomed to kneel only to God and women” to which some Qing court official said “but the emperor is God'. Another absolutely ridiculous war about the logistics of Kowtowing emerged. Ward was unwilling to do the full blown deal and kept trying to cut corners. The Qing officials asked if he could touch the floor with his fingertips instead of his head, he said no. They then asked if he could hide his legs behind a curtain so the emperor thought he was kneeling when in fact he wouldnt be. Many letters went back and forth trying to find a way to accommodate Ward's kowtow, but at the last moment Emperor Xianfeng came out of an opium stupor and upon receiving the recent news about the grand victory at the Taku Forts demanded Ward do the full blown kowtow. The Emperor added, since the Americans decided to break neutrality at the Taku Forts it was the least Ward could do, ouch. If you can believe it, the kowtow argument went on for 14 days. The Emperor eventually ordered Ward and his entourage to be expelled from Beijing. Though this all looked horrible on the surface, in truth Ward went to Beitang without interference from the Emperor and signed a treaty with the Qing officials on August 15th of 1859. Wards success was due to the fact, unlike his British and French counterparts, America was not insistent on signing the treaty within the capital. The American experience made Bruce look bad and Palmerston was fed up with the Qing protocols, kowtowing and such. The British newspapers were calling for blood after hearing news about the Taku fort disaster. Yet the situation was delicate. 10% of Britains tax revenue came from the opium trade in China. As Elgin put it in a letter to a colleague “If you humiliate the Emperor beyond measure, if you seriously impair his influence over his own subjects, you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. [You] throw the country into confusion and imperil the most lucrative trade you have in the world. I know that these opinions are not popular. The general notion is that if we use the bludgeon freely enough we can do anything in China. I hold the opposite view so strongly that I must give expression to it at whatever cost to myself.” Then some international actions stirred things into motion. Italy suddenly seized the Austrian controlled territory of Lombardy. Rumors began to spread that France was mustering 12,000 infantry, two squadrons of cavalry, 6 batteries of artillery and 20 gunboats most likely to hit Beijing….or perhaps Britain. It does seem to all be hysteria, but one thing was for sure, the British needed to take action to secure their interests in China. The Foreign Secretary on October 29th ordered Bruce to demand an apology for the lives lost at the Taku forts, for unspecified reparations and an agreement to respect the terms of the Treaty of Tianjin. The Qing would be given 30 days to respond, no more tactical delays allowed, if they failed to meet the deadline Bruce would block the Bei He River. Bruce received the orders in January of 1860, but there were problems. The idea was to starve out Beijing, its been an idea tossed around a few times at this point. However blockading the Bei He river would result in just rice crop not getting north, those living in Beijing could simply sustain themselves on the other crops found abundantly at the time in the north, corn and beans for example. On top of this Admiral Hope needed to furnish the warships and it would take until April, thus Elgin began to showcase the issues and it was agreed to extend the deadline until March.  The Qing responded surprisingly quickly to Bruce's ultimatum on April 5th with a no. Instead the Qing officials invited Bruce to negotiate with some imperial commissioners, not the Emperor and at Beitang. It seems the Qing remained ever emboldened by their victory at the Taku Forts, they also ended the response off by telling Bruce the barbarian representatives in the future should be more respectful, ompf. Bruce was out of his depth and many officials in Britain knew it. Instead of replacing Bruce outright they simply superseded him with another British emissary…his brother Elgin, double ompf. Thus Bruce was to remain in China to help his brother. Elgin had spent his entire time in Britain trying to stop the escalation to war and was extremely reluctant to take the diplomatic role again. None the less he felt he had to defend the treaty he had built and was being stamped upon. En route back to China, Elgin stopped in Paris at the Tuileries to speak the Napoleon III to ask what Frances territorial ambitions were in China. Napoleon III said the major drive was for Indo-China and that France was more than happy to leave Britain the pesky nation of China to deal with. If anything, weakening China would just help France more so in Indo-China, une gagnon-gagnon.  Baron Gros caught up to Elgin en route to China and both steamed out of Sri Lanka aboard the Malabar. The pair were in for a real fun time, as a brutal storm hit their ship and it sunk taking with it Baron Gros's uninsured plate and Elgin's top secret instructions from Britain. Eglin and Gros were delayed 2 more weeks to retrieve their lost stuff, those documents Elgin had lost by the way held some brand new demands of China such as the annexation of Kowloon, something that might have distressed the French. Again, a rumor had been spread to London that Napoleon III sought to seize Kowloon. This prompted some panicky British officials such as our old friend Harry Parkes to negotiate a permanent lease over Kowloon with the Chinese Viceroy of Canton. In a bizarre fashion while the British forces were mustering for an expedition, this was occurring indifferently and the viceroy of Canton accused because he was bankrupt.  The international force sent to China was staggering, 18,000 men, 7000 being French. Because of Kowloon easily going over to Britain, this allowed Sikh cavalry to perform military exercises on their large arabian horses terrifying the locals. The Sikhs and British brought with them a terrifying new toy, the 25 pound Armstrong fieldgun. It held the accuracy of a rifle with the destructive power of a cannon. It was designed to scatter large armies by firing a shell that burst into 49 angular fragments, making it one of the most brutal antipersonnel weapon in existence. I can't state it enough here, this one piece of military technology is what will destroy the Qing forces, it performed tremendously. The French were armed with an outdated Napoleon gun for their own artillery. 2500 Chinese coolies were hired by the British at 9$ a month + rations and 2 uniforms. Ironically crime in Hong Kong declined dramatically after the British left with these men, seems they got all the criminals on the island haha. General Sir James Hope Grant led the British forces and commanded a special loyalty from the Sikhs as they served under his fair leadership during the Indian revolt. Grant got the job, not because he was particularly gifted, just merely the closest General in the east. An allied force of 2000 British and 500 French were sent to seize Chusan island allowing them to assert dominance over the Yangtze and its critical use as a supply road to Beijing. The residents of Chusan were so traumatized from the last invasion they gave up without a fight. 50 miles north of Chusan was Shanghai whom welcomed the allies also without a fight because the mayor desperately needed help fighting off the Taiping rebels. The Taiping had recently seized Fuzhou and were on their way to claim the grand prize of Shanghai. The mayor of Shanghai pleaded with the Europeans to help despite the fact they literally were going to war with other parts of the Qing dynasty. The mayor offered to secretly report the ongoings of Beijing to the Europeans. The French counterpart to Grant, General Cousin de Montauban hated the chinese in general but really hated the Taiping rebels particularly because they were protestant. The French general wanted to annihilate the Taiping menace once and for all, but the British held the mans bloodlust back agreeing to use forces just to defend Shanghai against any Taiping invasion. Even Baron Gros went against his General agreeing with the British. At Shanghai the Europeans helped augment the outdated Chinese cannons that could not aim properly to be placed as swivel cannons on the walls, which could fire outward and inward, a notably helpful feature against residents who might lend their support to the Taiping. They sold some pieces of artillery to the delight of the mayor of Shanghai. As Elgin approached Shanghai he was falling further into a spiral of depression, he had this to write in his diary “If I had been anything but the greatest fool that the world ever saw I should never have been where I now am. I deserve to suffer for it, and no doubt I shall do so.” Meanwhile the guy was getting letters from the Whig government saying if he did not conclude the China mission by the next meeting of parliament, their government would most likely fall and it would be his fault. Rumors had spread in London that Elgin's overly appeasement of the Chinese was dragging the conflict on. On July 26th, 150 British ships steamed up the northern coast to land near Beitang, just 8 miles north of the Taku Forts on the gulf of Zhili. The French fleet soon joined them and for 5 days they began to unload troops from more than 200 warships, if I was the Qing dynasty, already facing the Taiping horde I would be peeing my pants. None of the wall guns in Beitang fired upon the Europeans as they approached and as they opened the gates they soon figured out why, the garrison literally had run away. They also found out a lot of the wall mounted artillery turned out to be fakes made out of wood, and I just know theres a great embezzlement story for that one. The 20,000 residents of the city welcomed the invaders like liberators and even began to point out where the forces of the infamous Prince Seng had buried mines inside and outside the city. A lot of those kind residents were rewarded with rape and looting by the troops. It is alleged many of the women of Beitang escaped the rape by poisoning themselves with opium, strangaltion or drowning, my god. Many residents sought refuge fleeing to a fetid marsh outside the city. General Grant blamed the hired coolies who he said “were for the most part atrocious villains…the robberies and crimes they committed in the town were fearful”. But it is most certain all the groups present took part in the orgy of plunder and rape, war never changes. British Provost-Marshal Captain Con ordered 30 soldiers flogged for looting and military discipline was restored the next week. The march from Beitang to Tianjin was a mud filled nightmare, an advance company of 1000 British and 1000 French eventually crawled along a stone causeway for 4 miles until they finally spotted Tianjin in the distance and a large horde of Prince Seng's cavalry blocking the way. As the Europeans drew closer, hundreds of Manchus, Han and Mongol cavalry became visible. Their sheer numbers were intimidating at first until the Europeans saw their weaponry. Most were utilizing bows and arrows, spears, some 18th century flintlocks and of course Gingalls. The allies lacked enough cavalry to fight even such an under equipped force and pulled back for the time being. A Qing commander upon seeing the Europeans peel back away sent a letter immediately to Beijing proclaiming a grand victory had already been won. Then on August the 12th of 1860, Grant assembled 800 cavalry to march around the Qing blockading the causeway and to take them from the rear. The main allied forced would hit the Qing head on using 3 Armstrong guns. When the frontal units were within a mile of the Qing horde they open fire with the Armstrongs. The Armstrong shells exploded and tore to piece the Qing cavalry, but the defenders were truly fearless, even as their comrades at either side were literally blown to pieces, they charged at the invaders. The Qing forces got within 450 yards when the effectiveness of the invaders guns simply halted them in their tracks, creating 25 minutes of terror. The suicidal valor of the Qing impressed many of their opponents, Major General Sir Robert Napier commanding the second division under Grant wrote “they bore unflinchingly for a considerable time such a fire as would have tried any troops in the world”. The Sikh riflemen gunned down the Qing with enfields and pistols while they were met mostly bow arrows. Lt Col G Wolseley recalled “never saw men come on so pluckily”. The better armed but widely outnumbered Sikhs managed to force the Qing to break and flee. The Punjab cavalry would have caused an even larger bloodbath pursuing the fleeing Qing, but the mud trapped their horses. Many of the Qing fled all the way to the safety of the Taku forts.  At the same time Grant had launched an attack on the Qing cavalry guarding the causeway leading to Tianjin when quite an unfortunate event unfolded. A drunk Irish sergeant who had recently took too much rum that he was literally ordered to delivery to the troops and got lost and stumbled into what he thought was a pack of friendly Sikh cavalry, it turns out they were Manchu. The Manchu cavalrymen seized the man and a few unfortunate souls who were following him. The Manchu ordered the Europeans to kowtow and they all did except for a Scottish private named Moyse who was beheaded on the spot. The Irish sergeant and other survivors were allowed to make their way back to camp to tell the others what had happened and they got back safely a week later. Their story made it into The Times which published a poem about the man, though it got his nationality wrong, typical English “Let dusky Indians whine and kneel,/An English lad must die./And thus with eyes that would not shrink,/With knee to man unbent,/Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,/To his red grave he went.” Two days after the kowtow incident the Europeans made their way up the causeway coming to a village called Sin-ho where they found the defenders had recently fled from. Further past the village was a large outpost called Danggu and unlike Sin-ho this was defended by Qing forces. Prince Seng had abandoned Danggu leaving behind Green standard troops. General de Montauban wanted to attack immediately, but Grant cautioned that the men needed rest. In a typical French-British rivalry fashion, de Montauban decided to attack without the British, but they found themselves quickly overwhelmed by the mud-walled fortification's 45 wall cannons. This setback humiliated the French general who had personally led the assault, but it did not lessen up his pursuit for glory. De Montauban came up with a wild plan to attack all 4 of the Dagu forts at the same time. Grant insisted on singling out the most northern fort as it was the most vulnerable. De Montauban made a mention of the situation in his diary on August 20th “I shall nevertheless send a French land force to work conjointly with our allies. The object of my observations is, above all, to free myself from military responsibility with reference to my own government.” On August 14th, the British and French took Danggu using 36 guns and two rocket batteries before the infantry swept in. As one British Lt said to his commander “the Armstrong gun is a great success”. By taking Danggu, the Europeans were now in a great position to attack the northern most Dagu Fort that Grant had singled out, it was just a mile from Danggu across the Bei He River. There was a 6 day delay at this point as the Europeans were bringing the rest of their supplies and equipment along the causeway and the French garrison in Shanghai had a nasty situation leading them to burn some of the city's suburbs in an effort to drive out Taiping rebels. On August 20th the Europeans set up 6 artillery batteries within half a mile of the northernmost Taku Fort and called in for 8 gunboats to attack it from the south. Just before sunrise of August 21st the Taku Fort opened fire on their position. The Europeans responded by performing a rolling forward bombardment all the way up to 500 yards from the Forts walls. The European Armstrongs, 8 inch mortars, 24 pound howitzers and French 12 inch cannons rayes absolutely smashed the forts wall cannons until the Qing were only left with Gingalls to operate. At 6:30am a powder magazine blew up inside the fort causing a massive explosion, but the defenders kept the fight on. Once the Europeans were 30 yards from the fort, a French force led by General Collineau began to scale the walls, but there was a moat in the way. The French General forced a detachment of coolies to stand in the moat up to their necks while supporting the scaling ladders on their shoulders for the French to climb up and my god is that a heinous act. Apparently Grant felt so terrible upon seeing what happened to the coolies that he gave them all an extra months salary as bonus. Once the French got atop the walls they launched bayonet charges that scattered the remaining defenders while the British blew a small hole in the forts wall allowing their own troops to charge single file through. The Qing commander of the fort showed more bravery than many of his men. When he was cornered he refused to surrender until an agitated Captain named Prynne of the royal marines pulled out his revolver and shot the man dead. Prynne then took the commanders peacock feather cap as a trophy of war. It took a few hours for the fort to be secured. The casualties were quite heavy, the British and French reported losing about 200 men, the Chinese were said to have over 1000 dead and another 1500 had fled the scene. 9000 surrendered to General Collineau, kneeling at his feet. The inside of the fort was a horror story. Thomas Bowlby described the devastation caused by the Armstrong guns to the defenders inside the fort “a mass of brains and blood smelling most foully”. Grant awarded 6 Victoria Crosses to celebrate the taking of the first Taku Fort. The taking of the northern most fort meant the other Taku forts were now uselessly outflanked, they had all been built to withstand attacks only from the river and were open from behind. The psychological effect was very apparent as within 5 hours, two emissaries from Heng Fu and the Viceroy of Zhili province turned up to negotiate. They were met by the ever xenophobic Harry Parkes who at this point was quite famous to the Chinese for being so xenophobic. Heng Fu's emissaries offered to remove the booms blocking the Bei He River and to allow the European ships safe passage to Tianjin where peace negotiations could resume. Parkes proceeded to crumple heng fu's letter and threw it right in the face of one of his emissaries, a man named Wang who happened to be an anglophile and fluent in English. Parkes he personally knew the guy, what an asshole. Parkes then began screaming that if the other 3 Taku Forts did not surrender within the next two hours they would suffer the same fate as the northern one. One European present at this parley described Parkes to be “harsh and unnecessarily violent towards Wang. This was not customary among European nations and the envoys should be treaty with the courtesy common to civilization”. Long before Parkes two hour screamfest had elapsed, white flags were already waving amongst the 3 other Taku forts without a single shot being fired.  The path to Tianjin was now open and as of August 23rd, Grant took the armada unchallenged up to the riverway with the infantry as the cavalry made its way overland on the twin banks of the river. By August 27th the Europeans had an encampment just outside Tianjin and the ambassadors prepared to negotiate yet again. This time the Qing court sent the senior official Guilian who had previously negotiated the treaty of Tianjin, but this time he carried plenipotentiary powers. Elgin and Gros were notified of his authority beforehand and discussed amongst another the best strategy going forward. Both men presented new demands much harsher than the previous ones. The Qing were asked to make a formal apology for the casualties caused by the first battle of the Taku Forts in 1859; to pay double the original amount in reparations of 4 million taels of silver; the right to station ambassadors in the capital and to confirm the treaty of Tianjin. The Europeans would occupy Tianjin, which controlled the flow of food to Beijing, giving them the power to starve out the capital if the Qing did not agree. The Taku Forts would also be occupied and they demanded admission to Tongzhou, a suburb only 15 miles away from Beijing. Now Guiliang did indeed have carte blanche from Emperor Xianfeng, but he found the new terms so unacceptable he resorted to the classic Chinese ruse that he did not in fact have plenipotentiary which completely contradicted his original claims. Elgin recognized the classic Chinese stalling tactic because it had occurred so many times at this point. Elgin wrote in his diary “The blockheads have gone on negotiating with me just long enough to enable [Hope] Grant to bring all his army up to this point. Here we are with our base established in the heart of the country, in a capital climate, with abundance [food] around us, our army in excellent health, and these stupid people give me a snub which obliges me to break with them,” Elgin at the same time wrote to his wife “I am at war again! My idiotical Chinamen have taken to playing tricks, which give me an excellent excuse for carrying the army on to Pekin.” Thus Elgin and Gros both agreed the time had finally come to simply march on Beijing. After the fall of Beitang and the Taku forts came so easily, Prince Seng was prepared to commit suicide. However he was ordered to retreat north to the city of Tongzhou just outside Beijing. Tongzhou stood on the road between Tianjin and Beijing and it was there he would prepare a last stand. He had sent 10,000 of his infantry and 700 Cavalry from Danggu and 40,000 Mongolian troops towards Tongzhou where he was amassing an army of 60,000. His instructions were not to attack, but to simply ensure peace while protecting the capital. As the Europeans marched, the Emperor dispatched more envoys and countless letters to Elgin and Gros to delay them. They kept saying that Guiliang had been confused and that in fact the Emperor had accepted all the terms if the Europeans would just stop their advance they could ratify the treaty. It seemed the closer the European force got to Beijing the high the frequency of letters and envoys became. But Elgin was fed up with the Chinese delaying tactics and told them all they would not stop until they reached the  suburb of Beijing, Tongzhou. Many of the frantic envoys made a counteroffer asking the Europeans to go to Hesewu which was between Tianjin and Beijing. Grant liked the offer because in truth, the military force was having a hard time keeping up their logistics. In a kind of humorous way, when Grant began to press Elgin about the logistical issue, Elgin began to blame the troops for quote “the difficulty of getting our army along is incredible; our men are so pampered that they do nothing for themselves and their necessities so great that we are almost immovable. I was disgusted to find out the troops refuse to drink their daily ration of grog unless it is iced.” I love the 19th century its so wild.  On September 14th Elgin sent Harry Parkes and Thomas Wade to negotiate with two new emissaries the Emperor sent to Tongzhou. Their names were Zaiyuan and Muyin, Zaiyuan was also the emperor cousin and both men held real authority. On the very first day of negotiation at Tongzhou, after 8 hours of discussion which is light speed it seems for the Chinese, they accepted all terms. They also agreed to a protocol for ratification, the European forces would be allowed to advance to a place known as Zhengjiawan, just 6 miles from Tongzhou. From there Elgin would leave behind the majority of the forces and proceed to Tongzhou with an escort of 1000 men to sign the treaty. After that Elgin and his escort could continue to Beijing to meet Emperor Xianfeng for a formal ceremony of the treaty ratification. Harry Parkes traveled back to Elgin to report the great news and by September 17th he came back to Tongzhou to tell the Qing emissaries Elgin was preparing his arrival. However by the time Parkes got back, the Emperor had secretly instructed Prince Seng to destroy Elgins party when he came to sign the treaty. The Qing forces at Tongzhou were all hard at work preparing artillery batteries and surprise attack launching points such as millet coverings to conceal units. When Parkes began talking to the emissaries they suddenly began an argument about Elgin needing to Kowtow, it was all a ruse to delay. Prince Seng meanwhile counseled his Emperor to save face by going on a “hunting expedition” near the northern border. Seng did not want the Europeans to take the Emperor hostage, though there were many who believed it was actually a secret ploy to grab the dragon throne himself. Emperor Xianfangs concubine turned consort, Cixi urged him to remain in Beijing. The Emperor proposed to march out of the capital at the head of a huge army, make a feint attack at the European force and then flee to the safety of his hunting lodge at Rehe over 100 miles away near the Great Wall. The European military officials told Elgin and Gros to go to Tongzhou with such a small escort was suicide and they believed it to all be a trap. On september 18th as Parkes was riding back to Tianjin to report to Elgin, he noticed Prince Seng's cavalry massing behind these rows of millets. The cavalry were beginning to occupy Zhengjiawan and now Parkes suspected it was all a trap. Parkes dispatched Henry Loch, Lord Elgin's private secretary post-haste to rush back to Elgin and report all of this. Meanwhile Parkes alongside two Sikh's returned to Tongzhou to confront Zaiyuan and Muyin. When Loch got to Elgin it turns out his warning was unnecessary, Grant had sent scouts who had spotted the force at Zhengjiawan. Loch showing true courage quickly rode back to Tongzhou to report back to Parkes with only a single body guard. Both men were captured by Qing cavalry units and they alongside Parkes were offered safe conduct to meet with Prince Seng too which they agreed, I mean they had no real choice. Once they reached Seng they were both arrested alongside 19 Sikh, Thomas Bowlby and 3 British officers.  Parkes remained fearless as he confronted what he described to be “a acne plagued, short, fat Prince Seng”. Despite being in no position to reject such an order, Seng ordered Parkes to kowtow. Parkes refused and was met with his head being smashed into the marble floor multiple times. Qing soldiers pinned Parkes down as Seng screamed  “You have gained two victories to our one. Twice you have dared to take the [Dagu] forts. Why does not that content you? I know your name, and that you instigate all the evil that your people commit. It is time that foreigners should be taught respect.” Parkes managed to free his head to look up at Seng and screamed “we came to you under the flag of truce and you promised safe conduct”. Seng laughed and had his men slam Parkes head back to the floor before he responded “write to your people and tell them to stop the attack”. Parkes replied “I cannot control or influence military movement in any way. I will not deceive your highness”. Suddenly European artillery could be heard and Seng ordered Parkes and the rest of the prisoners to be tossed into wooden carts and sent to Beijing. Parkes and Loch were shackled and incarcerated in the board of Punishments awaiting an execution. The prisoners hands were secured with leather straps that were moistened so they would shrink and cut into the victims wrists. Some of the POW's were sent to the Summer palace for private inspection and public humiliation by the Emperor. It was Prince Seng's intention to showcase these prisoners as such so the Qing who witnessed them would see they were not invincible and stop believing the Chinese could not win the war. The prisoners were forced to kneel in the palace courtyard, bound without food or water for 3 days. Their hands swelled and many became gangrenous. Disease and dehydration led to deaths. Parkes and Loch at the board of punishments were placed in separate cells and interrogated and tortured. After days of this they were demanded to write back to Elgin to plead for better terms. Meanwhile Prince Seng had his men continue to dig in and for the first time the Qing forces held a lot of firepower, 70 guns in all. Seng had a 3 mile wide force of cavalry at Zhangjiawan serving as a road block between the Europeans and Beijing. Seng had over 20,000 troops and. approaching them was a force of 1000 French and 2500 British. Yet again the Qing were relying upon bow and arrows for the mounted cavalry and antiquated firelock muskets and gingalls for the, versus the British Enfield rifle, French Minie gun and the deadly Armstrong guns. Seng was using a strategy of encirclement before going in for the kill, something more akin to medieval tactics that had the serious flaw of stretching Seng's lines out making them easier for enemy penetration.  The smaller European force fought its way forward to meet head on with the bulk of Sings army just outside Tongzhou on september 21. The swift Mongolian cavalry charged in a broad wave at the left flank of the approaching European force which was moving in three columns, cavalry to the left, artillery in the center and infantry to the right. The British and French cavalry quickly split and pulled aside as the artillery in the center wheeled their guns around to fire upon the incoming Mongolians. The Armstrong guns poured salvo after salvo deep into the ranks of the charging cavalry to terrifying effect. The Mongolians pulled up in confusion then the British cavalry of Sikh and Spahi being led by De Montauban smashed into Seng's left flank, breaking through the lines and scattering them into a chaotic retreat. Then the true slaughter came as one British officer put it “Our artillery opened fire upon the retreating forces with good effect. Firing slowly, every Armstrong shell bursting amongst them and bringing down the enemy in clumps”. A Qing eye witness had this to say about the same event “Our cavalry went out in front, but they were Mongolian horsemen who had never seen battle before. As soon as they heard the sounds of the foreign cannons, they turned back. The foot soldiers behind them scattered ranks, and then everyone trampled one another.” French infantry assaulted the town of Zhangjiawan as Seng's Mongolian cavalry's ponies were being crushed by the larger Sikh and Spahi horses using their more advanced rifles. As De Montauban's cavalry penetrated the Qing lines, they retaliated as best they could with gingalls and firelock rifles all the while Armstrongs kept blasting. When the Qing cavalry began to rout and flee the Sikh and Spahi chased them down bayoneting stragglers. Despite the absolute carnage of the artillery and bayonets, Seng lost only 1500 men during the battle, but the Europeans reported only losing 35, a staggering difference. By the end of the day the Qing forces were broken and their remnants were in a full retreat to Beijing. Elgin worried about the consequences of their victory writing in his diary “I rode out very early this morning, to see my General before he started, and to give him a hint about the looting which has been very bad here. He disapproves of it as much as I do”. General Grant had allowed the troops to sack Zhangjiawan, he considered it reparations rather than vengeance and thievery. Many of the women at Zhangjiawan feared rape, and many of the looting europeans were shocked to find countless women and children committing suicide by opium overdose. One man named Swinhoe recalled ‘the more conscious of them, beating their breasts, condemned the opium for its slow work, crying out, ‘let us die; we do not wish to live'”. Some British army surgeons began pumping the victims stomachs with such success only one of the victims still alive when the army got there died. Baron Gros shared Elgin's disgust over the looting, he wrote in a communique to the French foreign minister  “J'ai le coeur serré par les actes de vandalisme que j'ai vu commis par nos soldats, comme par nos alliés, charmés de pouvoir rejeter mutuellement les uns sur les autres les actes abominable dont ils se rendaient coupables.” (I was heartbroken by the acts of vandalism that I saw committed by our soldiers as well as by those of our allies, each delighted at the chance of heaping upon the other the blame for abominable deeds for which all deserved punishment.)” After the looting was done the force began to march towards Tongzhou. While the Europeans were marching over at Baliqao where 2 large bridge went over the Bei He River towards Beijing a Qing army was forming. 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 coalition forces served Pring Seng a bunch of nasty defeats and it seems it was impossible to stop them from marching upon Beijing. All that was left in their path was the great bridges at Baliqao where Pring Seng would make his last stand.

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?

On today's episode, Jason gets the party started by sharing his thoughts on the Arizona Cardinals' sudden about face regarding the 'homework clause' in Kyler Murray's contract. Arizona's decision to remove the clause less than 24 hours after it went public was almost as bad as putting it in the contract in the first place; the Cardinals could not have bungled this situation even more. As a result, it's hard to imagine there's any player under more pressure heading into the upcoming season than Kyler Murray. Later, NFL analytics expert and Sharp Football Analysis founder Warren Sharp swings by to discuss how the Los Angeles Chargers have done such a good job filling the holes around stud quarterback Justin Herbert, how the loss of Brian Daboll might affect Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills offense, what we can expect from Kirk Cousins with a new coaching staff in Minnesota, why he expects the Dallas Cowboys to come in under their projected win total, why he's higher on New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones than most in the football media world, the challenges professional sports gamblers can face when wagering on the NFL – both in-season and in the offseason, and much more! Click here to subscribe, rate and review all of the latest Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre podcasts! #FSRWeekendsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's episode, Jason gets the party started by sharing his thoughts on the Arizona Cardinals' sudden about face regarding the 'homework clause' in Kyler Murray's contract. Arizona's decision to remove the clause less than 24 hours after it went public was almost as bad as putting it in the contract in the first place; the Cardinals could not have bungled this situation even more. As a result, it's hard to imagine there's any player under more pressure heading into the upcoming season than Kyler Murray. Later, NFL analytics expert and Sharp Football Analysis founder Warren Sharp swings by to discuss how the Los Angeles Chargers have done such a good job filling the holes around stud quarterback Justin Herbert, how the loss of Brian Daboll might affect Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills offense, what we can expect from Kirk Cousins with a new coaching staff in Minnesota, why he expects the Dallas Cowboys to come in under their projected win total, why he's higher on New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones than most in the football media world, the challenges professional sports gamblers can face when wagering on the NFL – both in-season and in the offseason, and much more! Click here to subscribe, rate and review all of the latest Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre podcasts! #FSRWeekendsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Word of the Day is a verb that originally pertained to bowing but is often used today to mean “to act in a manner showing excessive deference or eagerness to please.” Want to know more about it? Listen now and then click here.

The Nashville Predators gave up six goals in a messy loss to the LA Kings last night, and Nick and Ann talk about what went wrong in this west coast game. We share our "one word" to describe the 6-1 loss, discuss the lack of production from top players like Filip Forsberg, Matt Duchene, and Roman Josi and how that affected the outcome, and talk about the concern when it comes to defensive depth for the Preds down the stretch. We also take a look around the Western Conference to analyze which teams' moves at the trade deadline could make Nashville's efforts to make it to the post season a bit more challenging. BetOnline Today's Episode is brought to you by BetOnline. BetOnline has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts! Rock Auto Amazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Built Bar Built Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you'll get 15% off your next order. BetOnline BetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline– Where The Game Starts! Rock Auto Amazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Athletic Greens Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/NHLNETWORK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Nashville Predators gave up six goals in a messy loss to the LA Kings last night, and Nick and Ann talk about what went wrong in this west coast game. We share our "one word" to describe the 6-1 loss, discuss the lack of production from top players like Filip Forsberg, Matt Duchene, and Roman Josi and how that affected the outcome, and talk about the concern when it comes to defensive depth for the Preds down the stretch. We also take a look around the Western Conference to analyze which teams' moves at the trade deadline could make Nashville's efforts to make it to the post season a bit more challenging. BetOnline Today's Episode is brought to you by BetOnline. BetOnline has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts! Rock Auto Amazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Built Bar Built Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you'll get 15% off your next order. BetOnline BetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline– Where The Game Starts! Rock Auto Amazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Athletic Greens Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/NHLNETWORK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By early 1793, parts of France were beginning to heat up with counter-revolutions opposing the conditions many faced.  In rural France the opposition continued to grow and would later escalate into the War of the Vendee.  Partially in response, the National Assembly, now firmly under the control of the radical Jacobin Party, created the Committee of Public Safety.  The Committee would soon be ushering in the Reign of Terror. Meanwhile, France continued to prosecute the war in Europe.  The thrust and parry of France's military progress typical for this war.  England, Spain, and Russia got involved in the war.  Within six months following the King's execution in early 1793, the whole of Europe was aligned against France. In early 1970, the latest effort, the one strike and three antis' campaign, was launched to root out and remove the perceived counter revolutionaries within China.  To counter and isolate the Soviet Union and to change the world's perception of China, Chairman Mao, using the Chinese table tennis team, invited the United States to China for diplomatic relations.  In 1971, President Nixon's administration sent Henry Kissinger to China to begin the preparatory work for diplomatic relations and an eventual visit from the American President.  By then Mao Zedong had grown weary and distrustful of his Vice Chair, Lin Biao.  Lin Biao, fearing for his life, attempted to flee China by airplane in the dark of night.  The plane crashed in Mongolia in September 1971, allegedly taking the life of Lin Biao and some of his family members.    

Patrick Terminals is refusing to kowtow to the union's demands amid ongoing strike action. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Patrick Terminals is refusing to kowtow to the union's demands amid ongoing strike action. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The post State lawmakers kowtow yet again to the gun lobby appeared first on NC Policy Watch.

The post State lawmakers kowtow yet again to the gun lobby appeared first on NC Policy Watch.

Conservatives Have Better Sex Lives than Liberals, CNN’s Collapse, and Don’t Kowtow to Bullies. ACU Archive Show. 

Conservatives Have Better Sex Lives than Liberals, CNN's Collapse, and Don't Kowtow to Bullies. ACU Archive Show. 

The Locked On Cougars Podcast for November 23, 2020: Jake Hatch began show with his impassioned defense of BYU and why they should feel no need to play the role of the sucker for Washington and/or the Pac-12 Hatch then talked about the return of BYU's blackout uniforms for the San Diego State game and why he thinks they should remain the exception vs. becoming the rule Finally, the podcast wrapped up with some thoughts on how Taysom Hill did in his first start for the New Orleans Saints in a 24-9 win over the Atlanta Falcons Support Us By Supporting Our Locked On Podcast Network Sponsors!  Built Bar - Built Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to BuiltBar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON,” and you'll get 20% off your next order. BuiltGo - Visit BuiltGO.com and use promo code “LOCKED,” and you'll get 20% off your next order. All Guard Pest Control - All Guard is your local pest control company that is ready and willing to serve you. Check them out at AllGuardPestControls.com or call them at 801-852-1812. Follow the Locked On Cougars podcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to stay up-to-date with the latest BYU sports news. Please remember to rate and review the show as well. Also, please consider subscribing to the Cougs Daily Newsletter that Jake writes and is delivered to your email inbox. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mike Matthews talks about a podcast from 5 years ago that he did which is finally getting noticed and the need not to kowtow. Plus it's Benita, the Disgruntled Fiddle Player, and the Brewmaster. Next show it's Madame Rootabega, Valentino, and Bison Bentley.

Mike Matthews talks about a podcast from 5 years ago that he did which is finally getting noticed and the need not to kowtow. Plus it's Benita, the Disgruntled Fiddle Player, and the Brewmaster. Next show it's Madame Rootabega, Valentino, and Bison Bentley.

Mike Matthews talks about a podcast from 5 years ago that he did which is finally getting noticed and the need not to kowtow. Plus it's Benita, the Disgruntled Fiddle Player, and the Brewmaster. Next show it's Madame Rootabega, Valentino, and Bison Bentley. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mikesdailypodcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mikesdailypodcast/support

Mike Matthews talks about a podcast from 5 years ago that he did which is finally getting noticed and the need not to kowtow. Plus it's Benita, the Disgruntled Fiddle Player, and the Brewmaster. Next show it's Madame Rootabega, Valentino, and Bison Bentley.

Yes this involves history, philosophy, truth-claims, and power. But there is still more at stake for me in all of this: profound suffering. Under Marxism the poor and the vulnerable are always the first ones to get eaten. What Christian values deeply benefit society? What American values deeply benefit society? What kind of things keep the state in check? What role does American niceness have to play in all of this? Why do I even care?

— 00:04:04 KY skywriter puts “OBEY” in the sky, parents shut down meeting to impose mask regulations in Utah & Georgia Gov Kemp pushes back on Democrat Mayors' mandates— 00:12:19 Lockdown 2.0 serves China's interests as their economy is already reopened and growing— 00:21:45 Barr warns corporations may be “pawns” & acting as “lobbyists” and “foreign agents” for China. — 0:31:05 Shopping in grocery stores or retail is a privilege granted to those that wear masks says National Retailers Federation. Kowtow to your masters or stay under house arrest.— 00:41:28 The bubble economy — literally— 00:46:01 GA Gov Kemp stands up to draconian dictates while other Republicans push beyond what Democrats have done— 00:55:20 Not one more Gold Star Family says Massie. Get troops out of Afghanistan— 01:04:08 Hopium epidemic of Wall Street trading on vaccine expectations will prove more deadly than opium epidemic— 01:22:25 Intel agencies push vaccine with phony story about Russia trying to steal BigPharma profits— 01:28:08 What life will look like in the new socialist Amerika — we've seen it before— 01:37:32 Richard Proctor, BathroomEconomics.com, how COVID test results are multiplied with multiple counting and color of law and corporate enforcement of government mandatesBANNED.VIDEO

Napoleon explains why the diplomats had better do the kowtow. … Napoléon explique pourquoi les diplomates ont intérêt à se prosterner. … Napoleon erklärt, warum die Diplomaten das Kowtow machen sollten.… https://www.thetanster.com/blog/2019/2/11/napoleon-memoirs-links

On Today's Electric Libertyland Brian gives his take on Justin Amash dropping out of the LP Presidential race, and then gives his endorsement for the LP Prez nod. Later - the Left's curious case of COVID kowtowing to authoritarian policy, the ACLU's latest embarrassment to its legacy, New Zealand's skyrocketing gun crime and the tragedy of Breonna Taylor. www.patreon.com/lionsofliberty www.lionsofliberty.com/ell177  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Today's Electric Libertyland Brian gives his take on Justin Amash dropping out of the LP Presidential race, and then gives his endorsement for the LP Prez nod. Later - the Left's curious case of COVID kowtowing to authoritarian policy, the ACLU's latest embarrassment to its legacy, New Zealand's skyrocketing gun crime and the tragedy of Breonna Taylor. www.patreon.com/lionsofliberty www.lionsofliberty.com/ell177 

Andy Benoit talks about the Browns' offensive line additions this off season in Jack Conklin and Jedrick Wills, the addition of Grant Delpit in the defensive backfield, the teams that made the best moves in the draft, how he would rank the quarterbacks in the division right now and more. 

Qianlong referred to himself as “old man of the ten completed great campaigns”. He was referring to his military exploits. Some of the great campaigns he was referring were disasters for China and him. He was everywhere, North, South, East, and West. Some of these military expeditions exceeded geographical distances accomplished by Napoleon's famous march on Russia.Heshen was a Manchu guardsman that befriended and impressed Qianlong. He eventually became a Dynasty manager for the Emperor.Late in Qianlong’s reign, in 1792, King George III of England sent Earl George McCartney to China seeking a treaty. The English wanted a trade agreement with China and a permanent embassy in Peking. The English ambassador, however, refused to kowtow in front of the Emperor Qianlong. All the English demands were denied. Qianlong retired on Chinese New Year in 1796. He did this because he did not want to overshadow the reign of his grandfather Kangxi. He appointed one of his sons to succeed him. The Emperor died in 1799.

Show Notes No Agenda Episode 1234 - "COVID KowTow" "COVID KowTow" Direct [link] to the mp3 file ShowNotes Archive of links and Assets (clips etc) 1234.noagendanotes.com Sign Up for the newsletter Archive of Shownotes (includes all audio and video assets used) archive.noagendanotes.com The No Agenda News Network- noagendanewsnetwork.com RSS Podcast Feed Experimental IPFS RSS Feed Get the No Agenda News App for your iPhone and iPad Get the NoAgendDroid app for your Android Phone Torrents of each episode via BitLove document.write("Last Modified " + document.lastModified)This page created with the FreedomController Credits "COVID KowTow" Executive Producers: Trenton Scovell Sir Dreb Scott of the ELB express Earl at Large Anonymous Baronette Octane Sir Dave, Duke of America's Heartland and the Arabian Peninsula Dame of the Crystal Core Anonymous Sir Randolph Luddy Sir B-Lo, Knight of the Land-locked Drunken Texas Pirates Thomas Lees ANONYMOUS LESBIAN Matthew Schock Dexter Bonaparte Señor Miguel of Washington Heights NY Stephen Hutto Sir Rotorhead, Knight of the Order of Dysemetry of Lift Lee North Sir HoGiHung, Baron of Mong Kok Frances McCandless Anna Merkuryev Kim & Jon Watson Arien de Jongste Matthew Dietl Associate Executive Producers: John Byrne Joe Hawter Andrew Hann Combat rock of the Idaho highlands Sir JoFo, the Plundering Knight Sir Net Ned Sir Bee Boop Knight of the Frozen Tundra Erik Ahrsjo 1234 Club Members: Trenton Scovell Sir Dreb Scott of the ELB express Earl at Large Anonymous Baronette Octane Sir Dave, Duke of America's Heartland and the Arabian Peninsula Dame of the Crystal Core Anonymous Randolph Luddy Sir B-Lo, Knight of the Land-locked Drunken Texas Pirates Become a member of the 1235 Club, support the show here Title Changes Sir Dreb Scott -> Earl at Large Sir HoGiHung -> Baron of St Augustine Florida Sir Paul Love -> Baronet Knights & Dames Jambo Joe -> Sir Jambo Joe, Knight of Reflection Mark Worst smokin hot girlfriend -> Dame of the Crystal Core Brian Loe -> Sir B-Lo Bruce -> Sir Rotorhead Robert Taylor -> Sir Bee Boop Knight of the Frozen Tundra Chris Pauly -> Sir C.P. Knight of the Twin Toddlers Matthew Minikel -> Sir Matthew of the Falls Thomas Lees -> Sir Tom of the County of Yorkshire Art By: Darren O'Neill Engineering, Stream Management & Wizardry Mark van Dijk - Systems Master Ryan Bemrose - Program Director NEW: and soon on Netflix: Animated No Agenda End of Show Mixes: John Fletcher - UKPMX - Gx2 -Oh My Bosh - Danny Loos-Secret Agent Paul-Stepford Wives-PlaceBoing- Dave Courbanou - Able Kirby - Jungle Jones - Chris Wilson - Tom Starkweather - Conan Salada - Future Trash - Phantomville Billy Bon3s - Sir Seat Sitter Sign Up for the newsletter ShowNotes Archive of links and Assets (clips etc) 1234.noagendanotes.com New: Directory Archive of Shownotes (includes all audio and video assets used) archive.noagendanotes.com RSS Podcast Feed Get the No Agenda News App for your iPhone and iPad Get the NoAgendDroid app for your Android Phone No Agenda Lite in opus format NoAgendaTorrents.com has an RSS feed or show torrents document.write("Last Modified " + document.lastModified)This page created with the FreedomController 15962 Keywords

In this episode of American Thought Leaders

In this episode of American Thought Leaders

China’s state broadcaster CCTV on Sunday removed Arsenal’s Premier League game against Manchester City from its broadcast schedule following Mesut Özil’s messages that criticized the country’s policy towards its Muslim Uighur minority. Arsenal have done everything possible to distance themselves from Mesut Özil’s comments, thus supporting the systematic oppression of the Uighur. Mike and Paul discuss.  Support the pod

With Melissa Chen, Spectator USA's New York Editor. Americano is a series of in-depth discussions on American politics with the best pundits stateside. Presented by Freddy Gray, editor of Spectator USA. Click here (https://audioboom.com/channel/americano) to listen to previous episodes.

With Melissa Chen, Spectator USA's New York Editor. Presented by Freddy Gray.

Kowtow. Zo heette de groet aan de Chinese keizer, op de knieën, en met het voorhoofd op de grond, als teken van nederigheid. De nieuwe keizer heet Xi Jinping, en naarmate de opstand in Hong Kong voortduurt en heftiger wordt, zijgt de ene na de andere ondernemer neder om aan Xis toorn te ontglippen.

Priti Ugli Life-Cycle Series - Recycle Boutique Interview. While being on my weekend in Palmerston North I thought, “Hey Liv, why don’t you go interview the Palmy Recycle Boutique?” So I damn did. Had a chat with their lovely store manager Rebecca. Rebecca recommends a label called Kowtow and to watch a documentary called ‘The True Cost’ Here are the links: nz.kowtowclothing.com truecostmovie.com Our worldly crisis of global warming and pollution is out of control with many industries (and people) contributing to this while we do nothing about it. I love the textile industry but it is the second largest polluter in the world right next to oil. We ignore this (even myself) and we produce or we buy our clothes from fast fashion industries because is cheap, it’s fast and the feeling of purchasing something releases endorphins that make us so happy! So we do it again and again and again until there will be nothing left. I am making this podcast series so that you as a designer, consumer or entrepreneur in the textile industry can get all the do’s and don'ts so that you are wearing the label of “Completely Sustainable” in your thoughts, wardrobe or store. I want you to think about a products whole life-cycle with the Priti Ugli mindset so that the decisions you make have been thoroughly thought about - with the Priti vs the Ugli of a purchase being considered. Each episode I delve into the chapters of a garments life-cycle and how we make this cycle Completely sustainable and what brands are reaching into a stage. Music: That Old Feeling by DeKobe and April Showers by Aqualina Written and Produced by Liv Redman

The Writer's Diet—a book and companion website—won't spiff up your prose for you, but it will point you toward the flaws that can make writing dull and stodgy. Helen Sword wrote the book and developed the Writer's Diet Test after noting the uneven quality of writing by students and academicians. A professor with a PhD from Princeton in Comparative Literature, she takes aim at zombie nouns, prepositional podge, waste words, and more. This brief writer's guide is a favorite of mine. Listen to this episode to learn about five common trouble spots in writing, how to spot them in your own prose, and what you can do to fix them. Not everyone has a zombie video to their credit! Links and Stuff (scroll down for a transcript of our interview) HelenSword.com The Writer's Diet website Books by Helen Sword: The Writer's Diet Air & Light & Time & Space Stylish Academic Writing   Other books mentioned: Joseph F. Williams' Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace William Zinsser's On Writing Well   Transcript of our interview with Helen Sword Amy:                         00:09         I love reading writing guides and you have such an interesting take on what you've done. But first, could you start by telling the listeners a little bit about your background and why you've decided to make a specialty out of helping people improve their writing? Helen Sword:   00:25         Sure. Well, I started out as a literary scholar. I have a PhD in comparative literature, taught in an English department for long time and still do a little bit. But at some point I moved into working in faculty development, which is more working with academics to try to improve their teaching and that meant that I started reading research also in, in higher education as well as in literary studies. And I think that made me really aware of the different kinds of writing styles that people use in these different academic disciplines. And it made me really start thinking about why white people didn't communicate more clearly. I guess I'm at the same time. I was also, as always teaching students, reading colleagues work, doing my own writing. And so my first book on, on writing the writer's style really kind of came out of that work. Helen Sword:   01:26         I was just trying to figure out how to help people write better sentences, was what it came down to. And one of the things that I observed was that as people spent longer in school, particularly like advanced undergraduates and people just starting Grad school, the writing often got worse rather than better, you know, there's sentences got longer and longer and the words got more and more sort of jargon-y. They're praised for doing that because that is kind of the secret handshake into the discipline in some instances. And so I was just trying to show that you can say the same things often in about 60 percent of the words. I'm not the first person who has done this, but with the writer's style that I developed a particular algorithm to help people see if, as I put it, they're writing is sloppy or fit. Helen Sword:   02:22         Or you could just say kind of soggy, sharp, you know, different ways of different metaphors you could use on that and then really give some quite clear principles, not rules but principles for writing, clearer, sharper, more energetic sentences. And then that work led me to looking more broadly at academic writing, research, writing and all the different disciplines and John was that people write in. So that led to my book Stylish Academic Writing, where I just trying to distill the principles used by the best writers to try to kind of jolly along those who had fallen into the, into this trap of the long winded boggy prose. Show them how to get out of that by telling stories, by having introductions that make people actually want to keep reading, writing stronger sentences, all that sort of thing. And then working on that book meant that I started running lots of writing workshops for academics. Helen Sword:   03:31         So both for faculty but also often graduate students. And then I started hearing about all the human problems involved in writing. You know, the lack of time, lack of confidence, power struggles. Like when you're trying to write a really interesting first person narrative in your thesis, advisor says, no, that's not what we do in this discipline, even though sometimes it is what other people do in the discipline, but the gatekeepers can be really conservative. So that led to my most recent book, which is called Air and Light and Time and Space. How successful academic right now, both of those last two books have the word academic in them, but I really want to emphasize that they're not just for academic writers. I think the kinds of people who listened to your podcast, who are writing histories, family histories, that sort of thing. I'm pretty much all of the same principles apply. Helen Sword:   04:32         People who have moved into historical writing are somewhat less likely to have fallen into these particular traps, but they still can. And, and I think some of the, a lot of the ideas and the information and the research and these books could be really helpful to them as well. So the most recent book is much more about writing habits. How people learn to write in these different genres, how they make time for writing and how they feel about the writing. There's a whole section on the emotions involved in academic writing. So, for that book I established a kind of rubric. Again, like the writer style. You can find it online and I can tell you more about that if you like that. Again, I think this is applicable not just for writers but for people to just about anything, whether it's learning a sport or becoming better at art or music, but I've found that it's not just about behavioral habits. Helen Sword:   05:32         You know, you can read these advice things that tell you should wake up every morning at 5:00 and write for two hours every day and that will make you the perfect prolific writer. Well, if you really hate doing it and you feel incompetent at it, you probably won't keep doing that for very long because there are lots of other things that go into a productive writing practice. So I talk in that book about what I call the writing base, which looks at the behavioral aspects of writing that also the artisanal aspects. So that's the craftsmanship because I see writing as an artist and like activity, but then also the social aspects. So that's getting feedback from others, being part of a community of writers, not just trying to do it all in solitude. And then the fourth aspect of this writing base is the emotional side of writing. Helen Sword:   06:25         And that's what my, what my next book is going to be on. It's called writing with pleasure because what I found was that the most successful writers come to the writing with some kind of deep well of desire and passion and pleasure that gets them through all the frustrations, gets them through the fact that writing can be hard and slow. And yet there's very little written about this. A lot of the productivity literature is much more, you know, crack the whip just right. This is not a real writer or, or if you think that you need to have a nice room with a beautiful view, you know, you're just looking for excuses and you know, when it comes down to it, if you give me a choice between writing in an unheated basement while I'm feeling really stressed and agonized and writing in a nice light filled space when I'm feeling good about myself and good about my writing, I would take the latter. Helen Sword:   07:30         I would recommend it to anybody else. So the book is trying to help writers find that air and light and time and space metaphorically as well as you know, in, in the actual world. So lots and lots of different aspects of writing. Each one seems to lead onto another, but I'll say one more thing and then I'll let you pop in. But that's my topic I'm working on now. Right with pleasure. I think actually feeds right back into all three of those books. I think the craft of writing a really great kick ass sentence is a deeply pleasurable activity or should be. I think that learning to write stylishly, means learning to communicate with your audience in the most effective way and there's a real pleasure that comes from doing that and from having people respond and really get what you're trying to do. And then of course the pleasure is an important part of all the kind of behavioral and habit aspects of writing as well. Right. Well, and I think probably for a lot of people who do live story books, you know, there's, you were talking about the artist side of things and that's pretty much what I want to focus on mostly because we don't have the option of writing or not writing. If you're, if you're not writing then you're not making living doing this. Amy:                         08:56         So you have to have been the chair. Do you have to get the job done? whether it's pleasurable or not that you know, that at least for me it depends on the day. It depends on what section of a book I'm working on and I would absolutely love to have a little bit more insight into what can make that happen, you know, on a more consistent basis where it is a pleasurable exercise. But what I, what I really wanted to talk about was because so many people come into this, people are drawn into this industry for various reasons, but something that I hear all the time from listeners is that they want to come into this industry because they want to listen to people's stories. They want to help them get their stories recorded and help them share them with their families. And so they're not necessarily. Amy:                         09:43         Some people are writers and some people are not, but they're not necessarily focused entirely on, you know, building super strong writing skills. and I think, or the flip side is that maybe they're feeling a little bit weak with their writing skills, but they still know that they want to do this and they still know that they, they can help people. So I think that's why I was so drawn to your first book, The Writer's Diet: A guide to fit prose. Besides all of the good information that you gave, I absolutely love your writing style. I mean it's just very tricky and it can be funny and you use, you know, you talk about helping academics, but you have examples from Shakespeare and you know, classic literature, all kinds of great examples, but the, the promise that you make to your readers in that book, and here I'm going to read it, you say this book will help you energize your writing, boost your verbal fitness and strip unnecessary padding from your prose. Amy:                         10:43         And then you go on and you give very concrete ways of helping writers do that. So that's what I would like to address in greater detail by know, it's not your latest book. I know it's your first one, but I think it's something that can really help life story writers out there just with the Zombie nouns, propositional package. There's some very specific ways that you steer people towards improving their writing. So can you give us just a brief overview of the main topics and then I'd like to talk a little bit in more detail about each of them. Helen Sword:   11:16         Yes, absolutely. And it all comes back to the same stuff. You know, I wandered far away from style as I talk to writers and yet in the end it's all about sentences. And I, I like to think of sentences as being the bricks and mortar of building your, your house, of writing, building, whatever it is that you're producing. You just are not going to do it. If you go out in the backyard and take a few handfuls of mud and sit them in the sun to dry for a bit and then start building your house, you know, it's all going to collapse. I'm sentences are like bricks that need to be shaped and set and fired and really worked. That's how you're going to get that strength. That's a different metaphor from the Diet and fitness metaphor, but I think, I think they're both quite powerful. Helen Sword:   12:09         The Diet and fitness metaphor, what I really had in mind, there was not so much diet as in not eating. I had in mind diet as an eating well, and so the metaphor that I use there is that we all know that in order to be fit, physically fit, you've got to do two things. You've got to eat good food and you've got to exercise and I think sentences are exactly the same. You've got to fill them with good words and then you've got to put them through their paces and that often means working them again and again and again. For me, a sentence is never ever finished. And I think some writers might find that kind of disconcerting. Even a quite skilled writer will still be tinkering up till the last minute. But for me, it's helpful to link that craft back to the pleasure. Helen Sword:   13:07         Again, if you are wrestling with any media, whether it's clay or would you know anybody, any crafts person is, has got to love the medium and not allow themselves to be frustrated by the medium. So, you know, when you talk about getting through those hard days and those days where you just don't want to be doing it, I'm, one of the things I always try to do is to just remind myself why I'm there in the first place, which is a real love for the medium of language and for the communication that it can do, have these ideas or in the cases that you're talking about these, these stories, but every single sentence is a story in microcosm. And so that gets us down to the nitty gritty of how sentences work. I'm in the writer's style. I have five main chapters. One looks at nouns, one looks at verbs, one looks at adjectives and adverbs, one looks at prepositions, and then the last one's kind of grab bag of categories, that I call called the waste words. Helen Sword:   14:12         But it's four words that don't necessarily have anything grammatically in common, but they often tend to end up in sentences together. And when you see a lot of them congregating together, the sentences may end up being a bit long. And then we'll do use. So those are the words, it, this, that and there, and I talked to them about each of those in turn in the book. But really if I had to boil, boil it down to just two things that would be nouns and verbs. And if I had to boil it down to just one principal, it would be the principal of concreteness of concrete language. Nouns can be concrete or abstract. Verbs can be concrete or abstract, even adjectives and prepositions for that matter can be concrete or abstract. So understanding the distinction is just absolutely key to understanding how a sentence works. There's a, I don't know if you've seen the youtube video on the Ted Ed site, but, there's a hilarious video that was made from an article that I wrote about Zombie nouns in the New York Times. And that kind of animates, shows you what they are and how they work. But zombie nouns is just the phrase that I use to describe nominalizations, which is such an unwieldy word that I have trouble even saying it. Amy:                         15:50         So I'm going to jump in there for a second. Nominalization. Did you come up with that word because it's, it's brilliantly funny. I mean, because it is what you are telling people not to do. Helen Sword:   16:04         It is a nominalization, but no, I didn't come up with it. It's a grammatical term. You can find it in the dictionary. I think it was some of the best writing about nominalizations is in Joseph Williams. Really Fabulous. It's classic book: Style: Lessons in clarity and grace, and any of your listeners who don't already know that book should raise that and buy it. It's been around for decades, but it's a, it's really a great book on how sentences work. So in some ways, I'm not saying anything that, that he doesn't say or the William Zinsser doesn't say in, in his book, On Writing Well. Well, but it seems to be a lesson that needs to be repeated over and over again. Partly because so many people have not ever been taught to recognize nominalizations or to understand what they're doing. Amy:                         17:00         So the fact is, I mean you're. You're citing some really good, prestigious. I'm writing books, but the fact is that I'm. I have it in front of me, The Writer's Diet, and I've read William Zinsser. I haven't read the first guy that you were talking about, although I have a note to do so Amy:                         17:15         because you mentioned him in your book, but you've done it in 73 pages and you've done it very, very clearly in, you know, you're talking about using concrete now and said, I'm staying away from abstractions. You, you give app, you give exercises, you give ways of testing, like taking something that a writer is already written and seeing where the tweaks need to happen and I think that's something that's so important for people who maybe are new to the craft of writing and they haven't read tons and tons craft books. This is such a good primer to get started with. So I, I interrupted you there, but if you could tell people what a nominalization is and in my mind I'm going to let you describe what it is, but in my mind sometimes we just like academics try to write smart and I think that's when things like nominalizations creep in and it's, you know, masking maybe some inexperience and if you want to get into the psychology of it, I think it's probably the fear of coming across as not being a good writer. So we tried to spruce things up and that's where we go wrong. Helen Sword:   18:27         Yeah. And sometimes we get a lot of that same kind of language in bureaucratic prose, in all kinds of different places. And sometimes it's just easier. It's easier to come up with a nominalization followed by a weak verb followed by something like is or shows or you know, sort of what I call the usual suspects. rather than to find a verb that really has a lot of energy and uniqueness to it, which really is the key even more than nouns. But what a nominalization is. it's a, an abstract noun by definition. All nominalizations are abstract, it's an abstract noun that has been created from other parts of speech, so usually either a verb or an adjective, occasionally another noun even. So a nominalization itself. It comes from, well, the in French nom is is a name, but it's also a noun, right? So nominal. Helen Sword:   19:37         One meaning of nominal is having to do with nouns, so that's already an adjective, a descriptive word that's been formed from a noun. So the noun or noun becomes the adjective having to do with nouns, nominal. And then you can turn that into a verb to nominalize. So if you take a noun and you turn it into a verb, you have nominalized. It. Nominalization takes the final step of turning it into a noun by adding one of these endings. Like in this case t I o n. So a nominalization is a noun that has been created from other parts of speech and nominalization as a process is a way of describing the process of creating nouns from other parts of speech. So it's quite a. it's, it's a big word that's describing a complex process, but the beauty of it, as you said, is that it's a word that enacts would. Helen Sword:   20:39         It describes a nominalization is a nominalization that has undergone nominalization. So what's wrong with nominalizations? Well, nothing at all. We use them all the time. We need them. We need to abstract language in order to communicate it. That ideas. So the word education is a nominalization. Does that mean that we shouldn't use it? Of course not. It's very useful to be able to talk about education, but a writer who is using the word education in every sentence, sometimes more than once. I might want to think about the verb that it came from educate, which has a kind of energy to it that education doesn't have education or any abstract noun is something that we can conceptualize. We can talk about it right at that edge, but we cannot visualize it. We cannot touch it and that's the problem really with abstract nouns in general, but nominalizations just seem to be a version of them that were especially drawn towards an English for whatever reason and that are easily minimized by if you become aware that you used in a lot of nominalizations, you can just look at them and say, okay, what if I take half of these and release? Helen Sword:   22:06         So word that's hiding inside there? So what a past. The Times I say education, I try to talk about educating and educate and maybe that will actually get me thinking about where it's like teaching and learning so that I have a bit more variety in my vocabulary, you know, so it's just a way of doing that. But the greater issue of abstract versus concrete nouns is just so important to think about because I've read academic articles where people use six, seven, eight, nine abstract nouns in a sentence. Sometimes just in the title, you know, a reflection on the normalization of the this, the, that you know, and it's just this big string of these saints. Lots of examples in the book of real world writing that does these things and not just from the academic sphere. So, the, the problem with that kind of writing is that the reader can visualize anything and so they just get lost. Helen Sword:   23:13         So in the zombie nouns video, I take a sentence that has a bunch of nominalizations in it and I cut it down to just one, so because it's an active sentence in which the one abstract term is really foregrounded and you can see what it means and you can see why it's being used instead of being in there with, with all these others. So just think it's such. I mean it seems like this kind of dry concept, why should I have to learn this? But it's like learning how to hit your nail with your hammer. If you haven't learned some of these really basic things about how a sentence works, you're going to be building them the much more hit and miss way. So my, my kind of rule of thumb is to make sure even when I'm doing or I would say especially when I'm writing about quite abstract things to make sure that in every paragraph, if not in every single sentence, I've got some concrete nouns and congregate nouns are things that exist in the world that you can visualize, that you can perceive with the senses. So you know, in family writing, historical writing, you've got an advantage that you're writing about real people in the world and yet it can be really easy to start talking about them in more abstract ways by letting these zombie nouns creep in there. Amy:                         24:48         Exactly. And that's always a danger with zombie nouns and with other ways of having the, the prose go a little bit lifeless because generally we're going out, we're interviewing the storyteller and then we are reshaping the storytellers words to put down onto the page or you know, maybe doing some editing for videos or are probably less so with audio. But definitely for the written format. We're taking a transcript and those words have a way of getting stuck in your head. And sometimes you, it's hard to see beyond the way that they have expressed something and you and I both know the way we express things in speech is not how we want to be reading things on the paper and, and so the challenge is probably a little bit different from an academic trying to write in a lively manner, but it's still a challenge because, because we're trying to reshape what somebody else has said and so if, especially if you haven't really studied the craft of writing so much to be able to hear something like nominalizations, you're going to be much more aware of what you're seeing on the paper. And especially for nominalizations because they have a few different word endings, right? I mean the words that end in men and yeah. So M, e n, t a, T I o n or ion, right. So, so those are visual clues that we can see on the paper and that we can, that can alert us like, hey, maybe we need to Helen Sword:   26:22         better website the writers start Amy:                         26:25         I have. And that's something that. Yes, I know. Let's, let's, let's talk about one or two of the other things and then I definitely want to talk about the website because it's such a good tool for us so listeners are just going to have to wait and wait until the end and then we're going to talk about it, but. So I'm jumping around in the book a little bit, but one thing we all, you know, we have definitely heard to use strong verbs and a concrete nouns, but something that you brought up that I had never really heard of before is that there's different qualities to different prepositions and you also give a few rules and I'm sure that these rules are meant to be broken if the need arises. But. So I'm, I'm reading from your book again, avoid using more than three prepositional phrases in a row. That's something that as readers we can all understand. We can all intuit when somebodies piling on prepositional phrase after propositional phrase and we'll probably lose interest, but it might not necessarily be something that we consciously understand and can apply to our own writing. So I, I so appreciate that. You just Amy:                         27:34         putting a, putting a number on it, and then the other thing that you say is do not allow a noun and its accompanying verb to become separated by more than about 12 words. That's brilliant. You're telling us 12, you know, it's not, it's not the kind of advice that I've seen before and it's just, it's so exciting to be able to have something that you can just in a very practical way apply to your own writing. So and. But the thing that I started talking about was you, you, you mentioned that some propositions are just a little zippier than others. Can you talk about that? Helen Sword:   28:09         So I have some examples in the book of people who use a lot of prepositions in a sentence because they're physically taking us someplace. So if you're describing somebody who walks through the garden into the shed, behind the lawn mower, into the pool of darkness, you know, you're, you're breaking the three preposition. I don't call it a rule, but a rule of thumb. It's kind of like good one to stick to unless you have a really good, clearly defined stylistic reasons for doing otherwise, but if you are somebody who's trying to kind of pull out the suspense of that movement through the space back behind around, then you're using those prepositions really, really well and really effectively, but often we're using them just to hook a bunch of, in many cases, abstract nouns together, a demonstration of the efficacy of the practice of, you know, these sorts of things where it's, Amy:                         29:22         oh, that rolls right off your tongue. Helen Sword:   29:24         I actually think it's easier to write this kind of soggy buggy prose than it is to write tight sippy pro. Some people are fortunate and they just seem to have been born with that gene or they've been trained into it. But I find, I once a paper in which I was kind of parodying prose that broke all of these rules and I found it dead easy. It was way, way easier than trying to find the concrete language and what I call the fresh unusual for. So prepositions, there's, I would say for most writers, prepositions are not a big issue and yet what I do with all in all five categories as I do put numbers on things and I basically say if you're going over this percentage of prepositions in your prose, you might want to think about that. You probably want to make sure you have a good reason for doing that. Helen Sword:   30:26         And if you do, you know, if you're able to articulate well, I'm using all those propositions because I'm walking us through landscape. Getting us to a particular place and the prepositions helped me draw the suspense. Then great. Ignore the principles. But if you're just piling them on because somehow you haven't figured out how to get to the end of your sentence. That's one where you need to go back or it would be a good idea to go back and have a look and think about the work that each of those prepositions is doing. And as with I think any part of speech varieties part of it as well. So you can. You can start to see if you use the same five or six prepositions over and over again. If you are, then that writing will be much more monotonous than if you're. If you're using quite varied ones that really are taking us spatially or prepositions are connecting words and if you're using prepositions consciously and imaginatively, then there's gonna be some variety and some interest in the way that you're doing it. So I would put. I would put thinking about prepositions as being, you know, kind of at the nerdy and the specialist end of, of thinking about how to craft a strong sentence. Amy:                         31:43         I think you just called me. It's funny because this has become a favorite book. This, the writers your yearbook because of the content and because of your writing style. Another one that I have sitting on my desk right now, his sister Bernadette sparking dog, which is all about diagramming sentences. Something I love, but it's also, you know, it's, it's using grammar to serve, to serve a bigger purpose which is writing sentences that convey meaning in a, in a pleasurable way to read. Okay. So we're getting a little bit close to the end. So I do. I, I wanted to go through more of your, your rules of thumb, but I think people are just going to have to go out and buy the book themselves because I do want to give you the chance to talk about the website and that website. Helen Sword:   32:35         The very beginning when I started working on the rider stud, I thought, well, if I'm using kind of going to the gym analogy and let's say you're going to the gym because you want to start a personal training routine to get stronger and fitter. Your personal trainer is going to get out the calipers to measure the fat on your arm and they're going to make you. Do you know the treadmill tests? They're going to put you through your paces and they're going to say, here are some things where you really could could improve or where we'd like to see the numbers change and that will indicate your fitness stuff. So I just thought, I wonder if it's. Is it possible to do that with some of these grammatical and syntactical principles? In a way that's not saying you must do this, and I think this is really important, the writer's style test you, you copy in between 100 and a thousand words and you click this button. Helen Sword:   33:38         This is at writersdiet.com. You click the run the test button and then you get this diagnosis of whether your sample. I won't say your writing and it's certainly not you. It's just the sample that you've put in whether it is so I say flabby or fit. Now I'm working on a version of this right now that is actually going to be a plugin that you can run in Microsoft word on your own machine or in the cloud. That will allow you to look at an entire document of whatever length and not just something up to a thousand words. It's turning out to be quite complicated to program, but we will get there eventually and as part of that, I'm going to have some customization options. So anybody who doesn't like the words flabby and fit can rename it to red and green. You know, or whatever they want to apples and oranges, but they at the idea of it all, it's showing you when it puts you over from lean and fit into needs, toning or flabby or the most dire emergency category is heart attack. Helen Sword:   34:51         All it's saying is that you've got a lot of words in that category, a high percentage higher than we would expect somebody writing vigorous prose to have and you really should go and have a look and think about why. Again, if you're doing it consciously for repetition or because you need to use a certain word over and over or for a stylistic effect, then you ignore the results and you'd go on with what you're doing. But for most people it shows them things that they aren't aware of. So with the nominalizations for example, if you get a reading of a heart attack, I think it's showing you that six percent or more of the words your sample are nominalizations and it's just saying, you know, that's kind of dangerous zone. You may be losing your breeders because if you have that much, that many zombie nouns, you probably have a whole bunch of other abstract nouns that aren't even getting you know that the that the algorithm won't find because it's only looking for certain word endings. Helen Sword:   35:57         And if you have all that abstract language, you probably don't have very much concrete language. So the way it's working is it's an algorithm. It's doing is counting you, put in your words, it spits out a result and we all love algorithm thinking because you know you push a button and you get an answer, but what it's trying to teach you is what I would call her ristick thinking, which is thinking in terms of principles rather than rules. So that's where you can see the principle is that if you have too many prepositions, your sentences are probably quite long and stringing together a whole lot of nouns and you may be losing your reader. But the heuristic is saying, oh, but if I understand how prepositions work and what the different effects are, then I can make my own choices based on what the algorithm is telling me. Helen Sword:   36:50         It's just giving me a very simple diagnosis and now I take that diagnosis and I, the human being with a brain, you know, look at, look at my writing with new eyes and, and think about how to improve it. So, you know, I do get comments every now and then from people. I'm usually undergraduates, often undergraduates for whom English is not their first language. Saying this tool doesn't fix my writing. It doesn't tell me what's wrong. It tells me all these that I have to get rid of all these words. Well, it's not telling you that at all. It's just saying you've got a lot of words in this particular category. So the nouns category, all it's looking at our nominalizations. So that is nouns with anyone of seven word endings and both the book and the website will tell you what they are, but we'll tell you how to identify them yourself. Helen Sword:   37:49         And you can even do the whole thing with just the book by counting and color coding. It tells you how to do that in the back. So it's giving you a formula but it's not meant to be a formula that any thinking person is going to, you know, Kowtow to and, and follow without thinking about it. Quite the opposite. But it's data that can shed a light on problems that you might not be seeing yourself. So like you said, it's not, it's a diagnostic tool and you can do what you want with the results, but it can definitely show us where we are falling down when we don't realize it. And I think that's the beauty of it because it, it can really, it can eliminate some things that you didn't understand about your own writing. I follow those principles myself very rigorously, but I can also tell when I'm moving away from them and it's often when I'm doing a certain kind of academic writing. Helen Sword:   38:47         Like writing an abstract often is quite abstract and I'll, I can, I can start to feel that I don't have great verbs in there. And then I've got an awful lot of these, the zombie nouns, you know, more than I would like to. And if I start to feel that I can almost always put that segment through the test and Yep, sure enough it will have gone over over the line. Now having said that, it doesn't tell you whether your writing is good or bad. it doesn't even tell you whether it's interesting or boring. It's just looking for characteristics of sentences. Set tend to be types of words that tend to be associated with a certain kind of foggy longwinded prose. That's all it's doing. But that turns out to be quite a helpful thing to have a mechanism to do. Because what I used to do before I developed it is I would hand back students' papers or sometimes colleagues draft articles or whatever and I'd say go through circle all of the forms of the word to be. Helen Sword:   40:02         So that's: is, was, were, all of those verb forms and get rid of half of them, which was a pretty, a pretty random, you know, pretty scatter shot sort of thing. Whereas now with this particular algorithm, you can, you know, I basically said generally if I read something where it's up to three percent of these, be verbs, it's fine, and generally if it gets to more than that, either the language is quite passive. You're using passive for constructions which always then brings in a be verb. You know, the research was performed, mistakes were made. So if you're doing the passive then you've often got rid of the agent, the person or thing doing the action, or it may just be that you're writing a lot of kind of lazy sentences. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, you know, it's this kind of monotonous use of one verb over and over again, and it's just so common in all levels of writing that that seemed an interesting and important thing to flag. Now, what it won't tell you is how to replace or how to rewrite those sentences using more energetic verbs. The book will help with that because it gives you some exercises and lots and lots of examples, but it will not do it for you. Amy:                         41:35         Well, you're writing in this book is a great example of the things that you're trying to teach us in the book itself. So thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Can you tell us again the name of your latest book and where the listeners can reach you? Helen Sword:   41:51         The latest one published last year is Air and Light and Time and Space. And if you go to The Writer's Diet website, so writersdiet.com down at the bottom, you can subscribe to my newsletter now having said that, I write to the newsletter about once a year, so it's not a very active one, but I do use it to inform people of new developments. Also at the bottom of the page, you will see a link to the writing base, which is where you can go and, do a little self diagnostic tests looking at your behavioral, artisanal, social and emotional habits and how they all intersect. And you'll also find links from The Writer's Diet site to my kind of main website, which is helensword.com. And there you can find links to all of all of my books on writing as well as various other things and things like the zombie nouns video, which is pretty much my favorite thing ever. Being able to take a piece of writing and then having somebody animated and add sound effects to see it. And I think I think practices what it preaches because it's taking this quite abstract. Know what is a nominalization, what's wrong with nominalizations? And it's, it's actually putting a story on it, the story about the zombie nouns that go and cannibalize other parts of speech and wreak havoc in our sentences.  

Jeans are a ubiquitous staple in many wardrobes. And today, jeans are big business with street wear denim brands competing against premium labels. 

In episode 102, Kestrel welcomes Dominique Drakeford, the founder of Melanin & Sustainable Style, to the show. A platform that is bringing melanin to the forefront of sustainable fashion, beauty and living, MelaninASS is helping to give the ethical industry an authentic and culturally relevant voice.  "This whole community is about 'let's talk about what's wrong' - we talk about what's wrong from an environmental point of view, we talk about fast fashion and we point fingers at H&M and we do all this ... but let's look at ourselves and let's talk about some real issues that are wrong because honestly, sustainability is founded on culture - the essence of sustainability is rooted in culture and we don't talk about it."  -Dominique Drakeford, Founder of Melanin & Sustainable Style In this episode, Dominique shares a bit of her background and the eclectic experiences that have led her into the sustainable style conversation. Kestrel and Dominique also discuss the layers behind two notable articles written by Dominique: "Who The Hell Wants To See Only White Women In Sustainable Fashion" and "Why I Think Ethical Fashion Is A Privileged White Girl Thing". Dominique highlights several of the disconnects in the sustainable fashion conversation - from representation to discrimination to tokenism to appropriation to privilege - and how historical relevance and institutional racism are being left out of the discourse. They talk about the reality of how the ethical fashion space has been dominated by white women, and how privilege and race relations need to play a larger role in our approach to this conversation. Also, Dominique shares her inspiration behind the Vanguard Series, a project she developed on her platform to highlight "true visionaries and cultural influencers who are creating a positive impact in the fashion, beauty and/or the sustainable lifestyle industry."  The below thoughts, ideas + organizations were brought up in this chat: The GreenShows, a company Dominique worked with in the past Donna Karan Urban Zen, a company Dominique worked with in the past "You're not really going to create change until you make people uncomfortable." "Who The Hell Wants To See Only White Women In Sustainable Fashion" by Dominique "Why I Think Ethical Fashion Is A Privileged White Girl Thing" by Dominique, published on Eluxe Magazine Food apartheid, as explained in this article: "a relentless social construct that devalues human beings and assumes that people are unworthy of having access to nutritious food" Studio 189, one of Dominique's favorite brands, which she also worked with in Ghana Chan + Krys, one of Dominique's favorite brands Susana Colina, one of Dominique's favorite brands Remuse, one of Dominique's favorite brands Voz, one of Dominique's favorite brands Kowtow, one of Dominique's favorite brands Grammar, one of Dominique's favorite brands Vanguards Series on Melanin & Sustainable Style Dominique's 'Conscious Closets' Dominique's YouTube Channel Recommended reading from the intro: "Why Fashion Is Key to Understanding the World of Black Panther" by Tanisha C. Ford in The Atlantic

Welcome back! We're excited to kick off Series 2 with this inspiring interview with Gosia Piatek, the fabulous force behind cult ethical fashion label Kowtow. Decluttering, minimalism and the sustainable wardrobe are big themes in the ethical fashion conversation. But what does minimal design really mean? And what's it like to be an aesthetic minimalist with a partner who's a full-on maximalist? In this Episode, we discuss how to build a sustainable fashion business, and the pressures of running one between London, where Gosia lives, and New Zealand, where Kowtow is based. Gosia shares about her early life as a refugee from Poland, what it was like for her family to arrive in New Zealand knowing no one, and how she grew up a greenie. The story of how she began her label is fascinating and unusual. Find out how she built it up, according to her values and her interests in art, architecture, craftsmanship, landscapes and travel. And how to make clothes while making a contribution to Mother Earth - enjoy! THANK YOU for the music Montaigne. Montaign is singing an acoustic version of Because I love You. Follow Clare on Instagram and Twitter, @mrspress

This week on Black on Black Cinema, the guys are back to preview episode 99, The Pursuit of Happyness. The 2006 biographical drama about investment banker Chris Gardner played by Will Smith. The film depicts the one year that Gardner was homeless and taking care of his son. The random topic of the week is on how a number of Black celebrities have been meeting with President Elect Trump and the implications of those meetings.

Robert Tracinski with The Federalist explains why the Left seems to be afraid to speak the truth about Islam.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today’s expression and dialog: Kowtow You look stressed. I have to go out with my boss tonight. He drinks. Don’t kowtow to him when it comes to drinking. Be polite but strong. But what if I lose my job?     Please subscribe on iTunes and get this podcast EVERY DAY! Support Coach Shane by giving $1 a month! www.patreon.com/coachshane Our sponsors: www.letsmasterenglish.com/tryddm (Get 8 FREE DDM lessons!) www.audibletrial.com/lme (Get a free AUDIO BOOK!) www.letsmasterenglish.com/grammar (CHECK YOUR GRAMMAR!) Our YouTube channel:   www.youtube.com/DailyEasyEnglish

Pete Mundo and Derek Duke discuss why the College Football Playoff committee got it right with the Oklahoma Sooners and the Georgia Bulldogs and an inside look into Derek's trip to the Big 12 Championship Game at AT&T Stadium. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/heartland-college-sports-big-12-college-football-podcast/donationsWant to advertise on this podcast? Go to https://redcircle.com/brands and sign up.