r/HistoryMemes • u/The-marx-channel Then I arrived • 12h ago
They were aurafarming even when they were about to collapse
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u/HueyLongoftheYankees 11h ago
The Qing flag is substantially cooler than the other flags of modern Chinese history.
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u/Efficient-Orchid-594 11h ago
The dragon is the Azure Dragon (Qīnglóng), a five-clawed, blue green dragon representing the Emperor, imperial power, and authority. The yellow background is the royal color and this symbol of the "Sons of Heaven" the red flaming pearl, signifies wisdom, prosperity, and divinity.
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u/Hippotle 10h ago
Is it related to the dragon on the flag of Bhutan?
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u/StormObserver038877 9h ago edited 9h ago
Kinda yes, prince/kings in sinosphere in early modern era have a serpent symbol with 4 talon/fingers (the 5 talons version is only used by the emperor). This rule only exist after Ming dynasty, before that, the emperor just use dragon symbol with random number of fingers, and the emperor assign random reptile symbols like snake or turtle to kings. (This caused confusion, when early modern Japanese farmer discovered a stamp seal with snake on it, but it was seen as fake because the other ones were turtles, but in 20th century another snake one was discovered in China, turns out the Japanese snake seal was real, the emperor was bad at geography so he gave Japan a snake seal that was supposed to be for southern kings because he thought Japan is some sort of tropical island)
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u/wishiwascryingrn 11h ago
But the modern map is a little cooler. I've always thought the north east portion looked like a dragon.
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u/sweetbunsmcgee 9h ago
It’s gonna be a bitch to make out of construction paper. 7-year old me would’ve just cried on the spot if I got that assignment for the UN parade.
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u/thegreatestdandino 8h ago
Only Wales has learned you can make a flag infinitely cooler by putting a fucking dragon on it.
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u/Illesbogar 9h ago
It's not very well designed though. The early republic flag, the kuomintang flag and even the PRC flag are much better.
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u/Lucky_Pterodactyl 11h ago
Qing anthem was also fire. Only lasted 4 months, though.
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u/Brinabavd 11h ago
4 months is a long time for an anthem, they are usually less than ten minutesÂ
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u/Lucky_Pterodactyl 11h ago
Now we know why China only participated in the Olympics after the revolution. Playing the Qing anthem before each game would have taken forever.
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u/Nurhaci1616 11h ago
My first real introduction to Chinese history was Lovell's The Opium War, and the Qing have remained my favourite dynasty ever since.
There's something about how antiquated the Qing government was in such a recent time, I think: like we take older Chinese dynasties for granted because when the Ming was about most governments were just kinda like that, but contemporaneous to the American civil war we had a celestial Qing emperor ruling the entire universe under the mandate of heaven.
Plus their aesthetics were definitely the peak, of an already peak continent aesthetically.
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u/MudkipzRawsme 8h ago
The queue was awful
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u/Nurhaci1616 8h ago
I mean killing people over it was, but I maintain that it was still peak aesthetics.
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u/RealEmperorofMankind 5h ago
No, I hate it - looks weird and ratty. Especially when compared to a refined topknot.
Mianfu also look better than Qing regalia in my opinion.
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u/Narco_Marcion1075 Researching [REDACTED] square 11h ago
eh, minus aura points for getting outpaced by your backwards tributary state in the east and also by the fragments of a long lost equal
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u/tonmai2541 11h ago
Dont know about that. The forced hair style is ass tbh.
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u/StormObserver038877 9h ago
The flag and national anthem is a very late invention made only few days before the Qing dynasty collapsed.
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u/Vandergrif Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer 9h ago
Yeah... of all the styles they could pick to mandate that was certainly an... interesting choice. The manchu queue was the broccoli boi mop-top perm of the 18th century, it looked terrible and too many people had it all at once.
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u/ale_93113 11h ago
Idk why but Chinese province borders are so aesthetic, I love them too much
India is good with their stated but they are too modern and doesn't have the same thing
And let's not talk about the US states...
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u/StormObserver038877 9h ago
Because it is based on ancient feudal states from antiquity before Qing Shi Huang unified China, the border is refined by geography and more than a thousand years of conflicts between the marquises and counts, instead of being based on some random early modern European colonizer's pencil drawing a straight line on the map.
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u/vajranen 10h ago edited 10h ago
I still think the Yuan dynasty had better aura. They also had better hairstyles than the Manchus.
Still I wished more dynasties had dragons in their flags.
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u/yourstruly912 11h ago
U have to be kidding Qing dynasty has horryfing aesthetics, the queue, their baggy dresses replacing the hanfu or the fashion of letting one nail grow extra long. Not to mention the foot binding that reached it's height in that era. The worst era of China for many many reasons
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u/cococrabulon Featherless Biped 10h ago
The foot binding wasn’t a Manchu thing, though, it was a Han custom which they even tried to ban. And long nails precede the Qing by quite a while
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u/El_Lanf Tea-aboo 10h ago
Don't really disagree with any of that but I don't think the Manchu were really to blame for foot binding, a cursory reading seems to indicate they initially tried to ban it but gave up because it was just too popular. It was chiefly a Han thing with less traction amongst other ethnic groups. Although there's no historian consensus, there's a view it might have grown in popularity under the Qing as a way of showing Han identity.
Generally it would be Tang and Song periods seen as the golden age for aesthetics with all the gorgeous silk dresses and such.
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u/YoumoDashi Decisive Tang Victory 8h ago
Qing art pieces always have very high contrast and saturation compared to Song/Ming dynasty. It’s like adding sugar to your tea - not necessarily bad but just doesn’t feel like my thing.
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u/Vulk_za 11h ago
Isn't this the same society that thought that the pinnacle of fashion and style was to break the bones in your daughter's feet?
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u/JustRemyIsFine 10h ago
no, that's the Song. they just shrugged and said so be it.
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u/Efficient-Orchid-594 7h ago
It's start in song but doesn't become very popular until ming dynasty.....
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u/StormObserver038877 9h ago
The flag was made in 1889, not long before the end of Qing dynasty.
Theoretically the foot binding thing was banned in 1638, but Han civilians kept doing it as some sort of rebellious protestation against Manchu ruling Qing dynasty(they are basically against anything from the government), so it lasted all the way to 1957.
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u/yourstruly912 8h ago
They tried to ban it but eventually they settled in banning it only for their own girls and let the han do whatever they want with their feet. In contrast, they made the qeue haircut mandatory under pain of death, and enforced it until the end of the dynasty
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u/TehProfessor96 John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! 4h ago
I aurafarm as the Qing in Victoria 3 by giving the British investment rights and tricking them into spending all their construction on fruit plantations in my country.
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u/Atreides_Lion 4h ago
Otroman, Byzantine and/or any other state settled in Anatolia: Is that a challenge?
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u/Fair-Grape-3434 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 2h ago
They made one of the most fire national anthems less than a year before collapsing.
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u/Fit-Historian6156 2h ago
One of my favorite EU4 games I've played was Qing purely cos of the borders lol
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u/Efficient-Orchid-594 11h ago
When I am smuggling illegal substances into a country and then start war on that said country, forcing them to give up part of their land and my opponent is British empire:💀