After more than 40 days wandering in the desert Laszlo is back with a topic that languished on the list for more than six years. At last the early years of Russia-China relations can see the light of day (here at Teacup Media, that is). As you can see, this is another one of those hour plus episodes that was not long enough for two episodes and a bit overly long for one. Basically this covers the beginnings back in the late Ming when they first met and mostly in the Qing where all the history happened. This isn’t a particularly deep dive on the subject. I first give you a 走马看花 view of the history of Russia’s expansion east and how they ended up on the doorstep of Manchuria. Hope you don’t mind. Continue reading “CHP-181-The Early Years of Sino-Russian Relations”

Many people don’t know that the first preaching of Christianity in China pre-dated the Jesuits by more than nine centuries.  We’ll take a second cursory look at the Jesuits as part of a bigger story that includes Christianity in China during the Tang and Yuan dynasties.  We’ll see that prior to the arrival of Matteo Ricci, there were two other lesser known attempts to grow Christianity in China. Continue reading “CHP-180-The Earliest Years of Christianity in China”

Thanks to Carole in Virginia for giving me enough of a push to get this episode finally produced.  This might have been one of the first ten topics I came up with when I began writing the original list back in 2010.  The history of silk is really an amazing testament to humankind’s ingenuity and the randomness of life since Neolithic times. I hope you enjoy this episode.  It turned out to be a much greater story than I was ever aware of. Continue reading “CHP-179-The Ancient History of Silk”

In part two of this series examining the forgotten life of William Mesny, we hear the second half of his story in China. We’re mostly using author David Leffman’s 2016 book The Mercenary Mandarin: How a British adventurer became a general in Qing-dynasty China
Continue reading “CHP-178-William Mesny Part 2”

In this first part of a two-part series we examine the forgotten life of William Mesny. Drawing from author David Leffman’s 2016 book “The Mercenary Mandarin,” Laszlo discusses an unknown character from the bad old days of late Qing Dynasty China. Though he never made it to the history books, he nonetheless witnessed and took part in a lot of it. Through Mesny we can once again wander through some of Imperial China’s worst years.
Continue reading “CHP-177-William Mesny Part 1”