Restore the Ancestral Realm and Revive the Qing Dynasty

[A low-ranking bannerman in the late Qing] [Awakening of political consciousness] [Revolution] [Modern history] [Late Qing] [Beiyang] [Republican Era] [The roots of countless grassroots revolutionaries awakening to the cause]

The Restoration of the Imperial Clan and the Revival of the Qing? Novel Introduction

In 1924, Feng Yuxiang's order shattered the old dream of the Forbidden City and knocked the livelihood out from under Tongjia Tongkuo, a teahouse waiter who performed under the stage name Tong Kuo and used the Chinese name Tong Tongkuo. A low-ranking bannerman descended from the Manchu Bordered Yellow Banner, his ancestors had served as guards in the Forbidden City. Now, he could barely scrape together a living by secretly listening to storytelling performances. With nowhere else to turn, he apprenticed himself to the trade. Thanks to his fluency in both Manchu and Chinese and his remarkable memory, he became a favorite among Qing loyalists, specializing in tales of the dynasty's glory, like The Taizu Uprising and Kangxi Captures Ao Bai, stories meant to "Make the Great Qing Great Again."

Though he sang the dynasty's elegy with his words, the upheaval of the times had already shattered Tong Kuo's ambitions: after the Mukden Incident, Qing loyalists secretly colluded with Manchukuo and invited him to "restore the family legacy." He turned around and wrote The Loyal Yue Fei Fights the Jin, enraging his old patrons. The puppet farce in Manchukuo's new capital shattered his illusions about a "Manchurian revival." Then a question from an underground Communist Party member made him look away from the imperial throne and toward the humble steamed buns of the streets.

He traded his dragon-patterned folding fan for a plain fan bearing the word "People," and replaced Manchu shamanic chants with stories in plain language about the suffering of ordinary people. This storyteller burned his old drafts about the Qing court and wrote New Words of the Land and Rivers, recounting a century of national tragedy. As the broadcast of the founding ceremony rang out in 1949, Tong Kuo, terminally ill with lung cancer, closed his eyes with a smile. At last, he had cut off the "queue" in his throat, transforming from a storyteller of the old dynasty into a storyteller of the people in the new era.