“But it makes sense right? My argument totally made sense!”
“Sigh… get over it man, it’s not gonna change anything.”
“Come on dude! I totally was beating her in the argument. The Chinese are gonna take over the world! They’re gonna beat us in a cultural victory like in Civ 5! First the Mongols invaded China, and after Genghis Khan died, then Kublai Khan was the one that took over the Chinese territory. But do you know what the Chinese did? They turned Kublai CHINESE! They fed him Chinese food, gave him Chinese clothes and even gave him a Chinese wife! All of his Mongol descendants that were in China are now Chinese!”
“But it still doesn’t change the fact that the United States has the strongest military in the world. What can China do about that?”
“No, no, hear me out. What you say is true, their military is trash but why do you think they have so many troops in Africa?”
“I don’t know.”
“They’re colonizing Africa.”
“What the fuck? No way. I thought people stopped colonizing other countries a long time ago and the United Nations no longer allows that.”
“The UN doesn’t allow countries to colonize other sovereign nations. Do you think Africa has a lot of that over there?”
“...No.”
“Exactly. When the Europeans colonized Africa and after they left, those country borders that we see on the map today aren’t the true representations of the countries. Some of those country borders literally split tribes in half and caused a lot of problems in Africa because the Europeans fucked it up there and when they left they just randomly scribbled some lines on the map to say that they’re now countries. That’s part of the reason why Africa is so fucked up now. They don’t have actual sovereign governments ruling them.”
“Okay, so?”
“And that’s where China comes in. China comes in with their “goodwill” and begins giving them money and helping them build some infrastructure. They get the Africans to be familiar with their culture. They start setting up shops and Chinese restaurants pop up and soon a Chinatown pops out of nowhere. You can literally find a Chinatown in almost every major U.S. city can’t you?”
“Yeah…”
“So the Chinese are turning the Africans into Chinese just like they did with the mongols. You think that they would give the African countries money out of their “goodwill”? They’re not gonna do that for some black people. They’re doing it to colonize them. It’s like how the United State are trying to get on the good side of all the major countries in the world except China is doing that with all the poor third world countries.”
“That’s racist dude.”
“I know. But it’s true.”
“Kay, whatever, I’m hungry let’s go get some food.”
*End of flashback*
Now that I think about it. My friend was probably right about China. Mainly because I see it happening right in front of me.
Well, the only thing different is that I died.
And I’m no longer on Earth…
So… yeah…
I died at the tender age of 21 in a car accident, right as I was about to graduate my university as an undergrad in a political science major.
When I regained consciousness, I found that I was a new born baby. At first I freaked out like any other normal person would and after two years of coming to terms with my death and getting over the fact that I reincarnated into a different world, I decided to embrace my new life, and I considered myself blessed to still have memories of my previous life.
Plus, it’s not like I was a freaking genius in my previous life with vast amounts of knowledge like knowing how to make a gun. I wasn’t a freaking chemist. I don’t even know how to make soap! So there goes my ideas of trying to revolutionize the world and create “new” inventions and get rich quick and easy.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
My parents were somewhat worried during my first two years of my life because of my odd behavior that was normal for babies. But I got over it and did my best to act like a normal baby.
My father was a minor official of The Empire. I don’t know the name of The Empire. People around literally only say, “For The Empire.” This really confused me. But I was obviously able to deduce that this place is probably not a republic like the U.S. But then again, these people in this world probably have no idea what a republic is.
The Empire was very much how I would imagine an ancient Asian empire to look like. Not that I know what they actually looked like, but from my experience of looking outside the window of our manor or the rare occasion of getting my mother to take me outside for a stroll, let me see that it was a very Asian type of environment that I was now living in.
The Empire was established by the Hanwu Tribe, they’re a group of fierce warriors that first defeated their neighboring tribes and then took everyone by surprise by declaring war on their larger neighbor the Shinwu Kingdom. Whom the tribes normally paid tribute to. No one took them seriously and treated them as a joke. And that was their biggest mistake. Because in one year they conquered the Shinwu Kingdom and conquered five more neighboring kingdoms and became the largest country in the known world. Battle after battle. They proved themselves to be the greatest warriors in the continent riding their wurks into battle. A wurk is apparently the equivalent of a horse in this world. Except these strange creatures are longer, faster and are reptiles. So they basically rode giant fucking lizards into battle.
Anyway, that was 40 years ago. And the leader of the Hanwu Tribe, the first emperor of The Empire, Han Xin passed away and The Empire was currently ruled by his grandson Han Wu.
And do you know what happened?
The Hanwu tribesmen used to wear animal leather and skin, but now they wear the soft silky clothes of the Shinwu Kingdom, eat their food, speak their language and they even take their women as wives. The current emperor, Han Wu has a Shinwu empress. The Shinwu defeated the Hanwu culturally, completely.
Looks like my friend was right. But that’s none of my business.
When I turned three my parents had another child. Another boy. A younger brother.
“Come here Xiao Lan! Look at your little brother.” My father held me up to see me newly birthed younger brother.
He was literally just born so I didn’t really think he was all that cute. Very wrinkly. But my brother nonetheless. And I will do my best to protect and teach him good values.
By the time I became five, my father began hiring private tutors for me. Apparently there was no public schooling system here and only the high status and rich are able to afford an education.
And my father, wanting me to follow in his footsteps in becoming a government official like himself and bring honor and glory to the family, had me begin my lessons.
As the firstborn son of the family, I was pampered with many toys which I had absolutely no interest in, because my mental age was 21 years old. But I still did my best to be happy and play with them. I honestly just wanted to learn more about this world and try my best to fit in.
Shouldn’t be that hard.
Ooh boy, was I wrong.
First off, there are no freaking toilets. Instead there are chamber pots. I can’t describe how much I miss toilets, where I can just flush my shit away. But instead, I have to shit in a fucking pot. It was extremely humiliating for my now 24 year old brain. But I had no choice but to tolerate shitting in a toilet. At least I wasn’t the one that had to throw my shit out, and instead was my servant.
And there are so many other small things that I took for granted in my previous life, like cars, it literally takes forever to walk everywhere, not that I left the house much but still, with a car I would have been able to travel and sightsee much of the other places this world has to offer.
I had one tutor. He taught me history and math. My father and mother worked together to teach me reading, writing and calligraphy.
My father was a busy man with his work in the palace as a minor official and is the subordinate of one of the higher ranking officials and does some work, I have no idea what. But apparently his boss favors him or my dad is a very competent man because he always comes home to spend quality time with his family. But of course, there are times when he stays at the palace working overnight.
After three months, my tutor deemed me genius and my parents were ecstatic. They immediately spent more money getting me more tutors for a higher level of education. Now, I don’t know if my parents could afford to do this but I guess this was a parents love for their child, willing to do anything at any cost for their future. It touched me really, knowing how much my parents cared about me. This made me do my best to learn what i was taught and this greatly pleased my parents and my tutors.
Of course, not everything was easy. I had to work hard at learning these things, but the hardest subject was definitely learning a new language. It looked similar to Chinese or Japanese or Korean, back on Earth, but I didn’t know those languages in my previous life so who am I to judge?
It’s not easy learning a new language but I managed, and it’s surprising how fast you learn stuff if you put your mind to it.
“Son come here.”
“Yes father!” I said in my prepubescent high pitched voice.
“Follow me. You are now six years old. You must know that every man must learn how to fight and protect themselves and their loved ones, so today you are going to learn kung fu.”
“Really!”
Was I really going to learn kung fu? I always wanted to learn martial arts back in my previous life just like in the movies and TV shows, but I never got to it for some reason or the other. But now I really have a chance to learn something really badass! How could I not be excited?
“Here’s your new teacher, Shen Zu.”