In 2023, in a house in a small town in Jinxian County, Northeast China.
A patriotic young man of about twenty named Gu Zhonghua is watching the finale of The Loyal Yue Fei. General Yue Fei is being killed by the great traitor Qin Hui at the Dali Temple in Lin’an. Although he is from Northeast China and is of mixed Han and Manchu heritage, his ethnic group is Han, and he is descended from the Manchu Plain Yellow Banner, one of the Eight Banners, he still deeply respects Lord Yue. The 56 ethnic groups are one family. We are all part of the Chinese nation, all Chinese.
But the ancient Jin state was founded in the Northeast by the Jurchens, after all. It is hard to avoid ethnic resentment, but what is hateful is the irreparable harm later inflicted on Han compatriots by the Manchus. They massacred not only Han compatriots, but even their own Manchu people, the so-called Golden Clan, the Aisin Gioro family. They carried out the Ten Days of Yangzhou, the Three Massacres of Jiading, the Eighty-One Days of Jiangyin, the massacres in Sichuan, and countless others. In truth, he deeply resents the Qing imperial family for massacring their Han compatriots.
Even later, during the War of Resistance against Japan in the Republican era, after the September 18 Incident, the Japanese set up a puppet regime in Northeast China, the puppet state of Manchukuo. They deceived and pretended to help the bespectacled last emperor of China restore his throne. They even came up with the absurd claim that Manchus and Mongols were not Chinese, along with brainwashing slogans like “After the Song fell, China ceased to exist; after the Ming fell, the Chinese ceased to exist.”
The concept of the Chinese nation did not exist during the Song dynasty, after all. If General Yue Fei had not died, and if he had possessed the idea of a Chinese nation united against foreign enemies, perhaps those later appalling tragedies might never have happened.
Damn first person. So awkward.