#chinese ownership

[alwaysbewoke]

[lazycranberrydoodles]

fanart of @missveryvery’s a biography of the male favorite <33

my favorite fengqing fic!

he’s wearing an ancient chinese cat collar :) it’s thematic :)

[tenth-sentence]

Most came from landowning families, and tended to be remarkably good at finding reasons to not do things that landowners found distasteful (like raising money for wars).

"Why the West Rules – For Now: The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future" - Ian Morris

[existential-screaming]

I just think every girl should deserve to just take down at least one toxic capitalistic establishment with a group of angry women as a treat. You know, for therapeutic reasons.

[roseband]

...whelp my husbands company has already started moving 100s of thousands of production orders from vietnam to china in preparation for tariffs being added onto vietnamese shipments, cause chinese labor is cheaper.......

and my company is starting to hoarde more blank garments that get printed in the usa in preparation as a stockpile.....which means my imports blank sourcing guy at work seems to be having a minor breakdown

this is gonna be a fucking shitshow.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

For many years historians suspected that these land laws told us more about ideology than reality; surely, scholars reasoned, no premodern state could handle so much paperwork.*

*"Paperwork" is the right word. Genuine paper, invented in Han China, became widespread in the seventh century.

"Why the West Rules – For Now: The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future" - Ian Morris

[niteshade925]

The cultural value of historical artifacts will only be realized when these artifacts are in the hands of the people that created them.

Now, since this is tumblr, of course there will be people who go "hurr durr cultural revolution". Ok, here's an analogy:

You have a pair of vases at your house that your great-grandparents made, vase A and vase B. One day there was a break in at your house, and the burglar took vase A, then they put it on display at their place as some sort of trophy. Your family appealed to the authorities, but they said the burglars did nothing wrong, "finders keepers". Years later, your parents were having an argument and in the chaos vase B was smashed. So now the burglars heard about this and started telling everyone: "see? They can't even protect their own stuff, so I'm justified in robbing them". Do people see the UTTER IRONY in this sort of statement?

Now the question is, are your parents guilty in this analogy? OF COURSE NOT. Because your family OWNS the vases. Whatever happens to them at the hands of your family is automatically justified. Yes, it's unfortunate how everything happened, and of course you can disagree with what they did, but again, Chinese people should have the right to decide what happens to the things they own, and NOBODY ELSE.

Apparently the Chinese solution to the issue of museums holding other countries' national heritage - is for the items to cultivate to human form and just leave?

[raspberryconverse]

Spouse: Do you want to get Chinese food? Me: I guess. We still have one more Hello Fresh meal. Spouse: What is it? Me: Some sort of pork chops. Spouse: Yeah, I don't want that. Me: Ok then. Sure.

*waits for them to start the order*

Spouse: So we're not getting Chinese? Me: 🤦‍♀️ I never said I didn't want to.

I know when you have autism, everything is black and white, so if I'm not super enthusiastic about something, they're like, "You hate it," or assume my answer is no , even though I literally just said, "Sure."

[whumping-in-the-dark]

List of Ways to (FICTIONALLY) Torture Someone

I genuinely have no idea how to make a content warning for this- just don't do this stuff irl ig

Click here to look for part 2

Caning

Electrocution

Stress Positions

Sensory Deprivation

Degradation

Water boarding

Strangling

Choking

Flaying

Skinning

Nailing

Drugging

Sleep Deprivation

Nudity

Shaving away the hair off their head

Plain ol' beating/manhandling

Public humiliation

Keeping them in a cage

Keeping them in a small dark place

Cutting off a body part

Carving them out with a knife

Whipping

Breaking their bones

Burning them with cigarettes

Poking holes into them with needles

Burning them in general

Forcing them to drink alcohol

Burning off their soles and forcing them to walk

Starvation

Dehydration

Sensory Overstimulation

Forcing them to scream their throat raw

Gagging them

Muzzling them

Crushing them w/ a hammer/mallet

Killing off their loved ones in front of them

Torturing their loved ones in front of them

Burying them alive

Hypothermia

Hyperthermia

Forcing them to hurt a stranger

Forcing them to hurt their loved ones

Forcing them to stay completely silent

Chemical burns

Chinese water torture

Forcing them into dangerous addictions

Forcing them to quit said dangerous addictions with zero support

Overfeeding them

Only feeding them food they are allergic to

Forcing them to vomit

And then punishing them for it

Forcing them to hang from the ceiling by their wrists while

Forcing them to walk on and on on the treadmill (and if they slip, they fall into the-)

Meat grinder. Enough said.

Carve degrading names into their skin

Pierce their body without their consent

Tattoo their body without their consent

Force them to wear humiliating clothes

Dislocate their joints

Dowse them in hot water and force them into a cold environment

Forcing them to get/remain sick so that they can only rely on YOU

Sewing their mouth shut

Only feeding them through tubes

Sewing degrading words into their skin

Branding them with a sign of your ownership

Branding them with degrading words

Forcing them to wear a collar with bells

Forcing them to wear a shock collar

Crucification

Keelhauling

Drag them behind the fast moving transportation of your choice <3

Stabbing them

Vivisection

Cannibalism

Almooost drowning them

Poking holes into their eyeballs with a needle

Ripping out their eyeballs

Ripping out their teeth with a pair of pliers... one by one

Attaching a strong cord to their teeth and ripping them all off at once

Pouring melted glass down their throat

Replacing their organs

Removing their organs

Slowlyyy pulling their limbs apart

Putting heavy objects on them over time

Force feeding

Forcing them to betray a loved one

Denying them medicine

Rubbing salt/other irritant into their wounds

Pouring alcohol/other irritant over their wounds

Rubbing their skin off with sandpaper

Forcing them to clean themself up when they're sick/injured

Denying them medicine

Forcing them to earn their 'privileges'

Denailing (slowly peeling off their nails)

Apply leeches onto their body

Force them into a tub of disgusting bugs (bonus points if they're naked)

Paralyzing them

Trapping rats on top of them and then forcing the rats to escape through their body

Dehumanization

Forcing them to shoot someone, except the barrel turns out to be empty

Feel free to suggest additions! I will try to update it whenever I find/think up of something new

Tysm @electrons2006 and @lettherebepain and @aliencatwafers for your ideas :)

[energynews247]

Farmland Consolidation, Not Chinese Ownership, Is the Real National Security Threat

Following the wide coverage of a suspected Chinese spy balloon in US airspace earlier in February, Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) and others have proposed legislation that would seek to limit foreign ownership of US farmland, targeting China, Russia, and other “adversaries” of the US government. But how much land do foreign entities really own in this country? And does that tell the whole story of the…

[demospectator]

“Chinese farm workers winnowing beans, California, ca.1900.”  Photographer unknown (from the collection of the California Historical Society).  Chinese farm workers winnowing beans, California, ca.1900. Two men work near three large baskets on a blanket or tarp at left, while a third man works with two large baskets on a blanket or tarp at right. A woven basket is visible in the left foreground. A picket fence is visible in the background at right.  A group of rocks distinct from the grassy landscape are prominent in the background at left.  

Alien Land Laws: Been There; Done That

“Lawmakers in Texas, Florida, Arkansas and in Congress have proposed laws banning citizens of China from buying land, homes and other buildings in the United States.”  A proposed Texas property ownership law would ban purchases by people from four countries whose governments represent hostile powers to the US, including green card and visa holders, and asylum seekers. The laws would not apply to people who are already U.S. citizens.  See:  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/02/09/lawmakers-ban-chinese-citizens-buy-american-land/11163052002/

The State of California went been around this dreary block in prior eras, when legislation and constitutional provisions prohibited or restricted Chinese Americans and other non-citizens from owning land in the state.  Unlike today’s legislative proposals in the states, anti-Chinese property ownership bans were tied to the Exclusion Act which effectively rendered Chinese immigrants ineligible to gain citizenship through the naturalization process.

Some of the most significant of the measures were as follows:

1. The California Constitution of 1879:  

This constitution contained provisions that limited property ownership by aliens and non-citizens, effectively barring Chinese immigrants from owning land in the state.  California’s new state constitution in 1879 contained Article XIX, entitled “Chinese.”  Declaring the presence of Chinese to be “dangerous or detrimental to the well-being or peace of the State,” the state constitution authorized, among other odious actions, the legislature to ban employment of Chinese and to remove them from the state, or to limit their places of residence.  

With respect to land ownership, Article I, section 17, prohibited property rights to Chinese. It stated:

“Foreigners of the white race or of African descent, eligible to become citizens of the United States under the naturalization laws thereof, while bona fide residents of this state, shall have the same rights with respect to the acquisition, possession, enjoyment, transmission, and inheritance of property as native-born Citizens.”

California passed a law that same year which required towns and cities to remove Chinese; this was declared unconstitutional by the US Circuit Court in California because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the Burlingame Treaty.  

Significantly, and by implication, section 17 favored white immigrants and African Americans  over Chinese and, eventually, other Asians.  These provisions were included in the state's constitution until 1952 and served as the constitutional basis for later legislation.

2. The California Alien Land Law of 1913: 

This law prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship," which largely meant Chinese immigrants, from owning agricultural land in California. This law remained in effect until 1952.

3. The California Alien Land Law of 1920: 

This law expanded the restrictions of the 1913 law, prohibiting "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from leasing or occupying land in California for more than three years. This law remained in effect until 1952.

4. The California Alien Land Law of 1923: 

This law further tightened restrictions on land ownership by aliens, prohibiting them from owning any land in the state, including urban real estate. This law also remained in effect until 1952.

These laws and constitutional provisions reflected the widespread anti-Chinese sentiment in California in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and aimed to restrict Chinese immigration and limit their economic opportunities in the state. The state supreme court eventually overturned the laws in 1952, and the provisions in the California Constitution were amended to allow all aliens to own property in the state on equal terms with citizens.

[baiwu-jinji]

Has anyone talked about the translation of "Mo Ran, hell is too cold, I'm here to die with you?" Even when reading this part I thought about how difficult it must be to translate it, specifically because the Chinese verb for "to die with," 殉 (xun), has layers of implications and doesn't really have an equivalent in English.

殉 means "to be buried alive with the dead" or "to die for the cause of/to be a martyr for." The original meaning of 殉 is human sacrifice, which was practiced in ancient China by monarchs and noblemen, who bury their concubines and servants with them to accompany them in afterlife. When 殉 takes place without the concubines' consent, it's a very cruel and barbaric practice, but I think Meatbun used this term partially for its implication of ownership - the concubines are buried with the monarch because they belong to the monarch; Chu Wanning used 殉 because he belongs to and belongs with Mo Ran. In the rare historical cases where the concubines are voluntary, 殉 is carried out to express grief and loyalty.

A more modern and common usage of 殉 is in the phrase 殉情, which means "to die for love." 殉情 is often used in cases where lovers who couldn't be together either because of their families' disapproval, or their relationship being frowned upon by society, or some other insurmountable obstacles, choose to commit suicide together. If they can't be together in life, at least they can reunite in death. Chu Wanning, too, chose to martyr himself for love.

So you see how 殉 conveys so much emotion and subtext in the space of a single word - love, grief, devotion, loyalty, belonging, self-sacrifice, Chu Wanning's desperate resolution, and the cruel circumstances that drove his action.

[fatehbaz]

In fact, far more Asian workers moved to the Americas in the 19th century to make sugar than to build the transcontinental railroad [...]. [T]housands of Chinese migrants were recruited to work [...] on Louisiana’s sugar plantations after the Civil War. [...] Recruited and reviled as "coolies," their presence in sugar production helped justify racial exclusion after the abolition of slavery.

In places where sugar cane is grown, such as Mauritius, Fiji, Hawaii, Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname, there is usually a sizable population of Asians who can trace their ancestry to India, China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere. They are descendants of sugar plantation workers, whose migration and labor embodied the limitations and contradictions of chattel slavery’s slow death in the 19th century. [...]

---

Mass consumption of sugar in industrializing Europe and North America rested on mass production of sugar by enslaved Africans in the colonies. The whip, the market, and the law institutionalized slavery across the Americas, including in the U.S. When the Haitian Revolution erupted in 1791 and Napoleon Bonaparte’s mission to reclaim Saint-Domingue, France’s most prized colony, failed, slaveholding regimes around the world grew alarmed. In response to a series of slave rebellions in its own sugar colonies, especially in Jamaica, the British Empire formally abolished slavery in the 1830s. British emancipation included a payment of £20 million to slave owners, an immense sum of money that British taxpayers made loan payments on until 2015.

Importing indentured labor from Asia emerged as a potential way to maintain the British Empire’s sugar plantation system.

In 1838 John Gladstone, father of future prime minister William E. Gladstone, arranged for the shipment of 396 South Asian workers, bound to five years of indentured labor, to his sugar estates in British Guiana. The experiment with “Gladstone coolies,” as those workers came to be known, inaugurated [...] “a new system of [...] [indentured servitude],” which would endure for nearly a century. [...]

---

Bonaparte [...] agreed to sell France's claims [...] to the U.S. [...] in 1803, in [...] the Louisiana Purchase. Plantation owners who escaped Saint-Domingue [Haiti] with their enslaved workers helped establish a booming sugar industry in southern Louisiana. On huge plantations surrounding New Orleans, home of the largest slave market in the antebellum South, sugar production took off in the first half of the 19th century. By 1853, Louisiana was producing nearly 25% of all exportable sugar in the world. [...] On the eve of the Civil War, Louisiana’s sugar industry was valued at US$200 million. More than half of that figure represented the valuation of the ownership of human beings – Black people who did the backbreaking labor [...]. By the war’s end, approximately $193 million of the sugar industry’s prewar value had vanished.

Desperate to regain power and authority after the war, Louisiana’s wealthiest planters studied and learned from their Caribbean counterparts. They, too, looked to Asian workers for their salvation, fantasizing that so-called “coolies” [...].

Thousands of Chinese workers landed in Louisiana between 1866 and 1870, recruited from the Caribbean, China and California. Bound to multiyear contracts, they symbolized Louisiana planters’ racial hope [...].

To great fanfare, Louisiana’s wealthiest planters spent thousands of dollars to recruit gangs of Chinese workers. When 140 Chinese laborers arrived on Millaudon plantation near New Orleans on July 4, 1870, at a cost of about $10,000 in recruitment fees, the New Orleans Times reported that they were “young, athletic, intelligent, sober and cleanly” and superior to “the vast majority of our African population.” [...] But [...] [w]hen they heard that other workers earned more, they demanded the same. When planters refused, they ran away. The Chinese recruits, the Planters’ Banner observed in 1871, were “fond of changing about, run away worse than [Black people], and … leave as soon as anybody offers them higher wages.”

When Congress debated excluding the Chinese from the United States in 1882, Rep. Horace F. Page of California argued that the United States could not allow the entry of “millions of cooly slaves and serfs.” That racial reasoning would justify a long series of anti-Asian laws and policies on immigration and naturalization for nearly a century.

---

All text above by: Moon-Ho Jung. "Making sugar, making 'coolies': Chinese laborers toiled alongside Black workers on 19th-century Louisiana plantations". The Conversation. 13 January 2022. [All bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[adragonthatwrites]

Absolutely loving your marine biologist cqms diaries and need to know the full Moshang backstory at once... Why do I see sqh taping programmable LED strips to himself with double-sided sticky tape so that he can 'talk' to Mobei Jun...

Thank you, glad you're enjoying it! As for the story behind MoShang... Sit down, grab a drink, because I am about to do a lot of elaborating!

So first off Dr. Shang Qinghua; he's a very renowned marine biologist, who specializes in Leviathan Class mer language and behavior (though his knowledge regrading the behaviors and linguistic abilities of smaller, coastal species is nothing to sneeze at either). He's the head of Leviathan Class mer study at one of Cang Qiong's facilities; a different facility from the one Dr. Shen Jiu works at, actually! He did spend time working with Dr. Shen; both in school, and during their internships, and during those time periods it was decided that those two should not be allowed to work in the same space as each other. Project Pisces is an exception.

One of Dr. Shang's most well known and well renowned achievements (aside from The Tank Incident which we'll get too) was his part in the illegalization of mer poaching, selling, and ownership. His study of mer habits and language assisted in the official classification of mers as Sentient Species, granting them rights against being killed or owned as pets. He also assisted in the seizure, rehabilitation and release of hundreds of mers previously being kept as pets or sideshow attractions.

Back to MoShang:

Mobei Jun, a category 2 Leviathan Class mer (Yue Qingyuan is a category 3; the first and currently only), was one of Dr. Shang's first subjects of study in his pursuit of proving mers capable of complex language. He was found caught in a fishermen's net and brought to Dr. Shang's facilities for both treatment and study. Almost all of Dr. Shang's knowledge of Leviathan Class behaviors, as well as mer language, was gleaned from his study of Mobei Jun over the course of several months' worth of treatment and rehabilitation. He spent hours and hours outside the mer's enclosure, speaking to him in English, Chinese, and even incorporating some sign language. He took direct responsibility over feeding, guiding and treating the mer, studying Mobei Jun's behaviors and responses to the stimuli around him.

He was able to identify complex, grammatical structure within the calls and sounds Mobei Jun made when interacting with him, though he wasn't able to reliably decipher these into a language (at least not one that would earn mers the rights of Sentient Species). His major breakthrough came in studying the bioluminescent patterns located on Mobei Jun's face, shoulders, chest, and across his back. He discovered that mer language is actually largely associated with these markings; words are formed via the flashing of certain markings in certain patterns over certain areas of the body, while the low, intense vocalizations Mobei Jun frequently made were generally associated with more broad emotions; for example hunger, irritation, curiosity, threat, etc.

Essentially; the markings convey words, while vocalizations convey feelings, as Dr. Shang put it his paper on the subject.

Actually decoding, understanding and then mimicking these individual words in order to have a proper conversation with Mobei Jun proved to be a bit more of a challenge, in large part because Dr. Shang, being human, had no markings of his own, and no ability to make the appropriate sounds to convey his emotions.

His solution to this problem was ultimately to pick up a flashlight and start turning it on and off over various parts of his body in an attempt to mimic the signals used to convey words. He was... actually surprisingly successful, and was able to engage in one of the very first human to mer conversations. Which mostly consisted of Mobei Jun asking what the fuck he was doing while Dr. Shang spammed a rudimentary approximation of the words for 'learn' and 'friend'.

Which finally brings us to The Tank Incident...

Near the end of Mobei Jun's rehabilitation, a few weeks before he was to be moved to one of their oceanic enclosures (a big pen off the side of the facilities that connects to the ocean itself), before being released back to the wild, Dr. Shang was walking alongside the edge of Mobei Jun's holding tank making observations about his sleeping patterns. It was very late and most of the lights had been turned out, and Mobei Jun himself had retired to the den built into his tank for sleep.

Evidently a feed bucket had been left out beside the tank and Dr. Shang wasn't aware of it, as he tripped over it and fell, directly into Mobei Jun's tank.

He would later go on to describe the experience as 'equal parts terrifying and thrilling.' Mobei Jun was naturally woken up by Dr. Shang's tumble into his tank, and emerged to investigate. The sound of his voice; echo-locating to see what exactly had fallen in his tank; was loud enough to make Dr. Shang's chest vibrate.

Dr. Shang had expected to die then; it wasn't common for mer's to eat humans, but not unheard of, particularly in Leviathan Class. Sentient though they may be, mers are undoubtedly much more... wild than humans.

Mobei Jun, on the other hand, had apparently recategorized Dr. Shang from food to a potential mate during their months of interaction, and took the opportunity of having the man within his reach to... finalize, that decision.

Dr. Shang has gone on record stating that the experience was 'not as bad as you'd expect actually! For one thing it's nice and narrow at the tip and he doesn't just shove it all in at once, so you have time to adjust. The smaller one's on the sides also help to distract you, and the fact mers also like to be penetrated at the same time they're doing the penetrating definitely helps too." (for more info on speculative mer reproduction, check out Sinn-Bee's MerLiu au, I took a lot of inspo from them ;))

Regardless, Dr. Shang quickly became very famous for his little... adventure. He is not however the first person to end up in such a situation; he's not even the first researcher, so he wasn't blacklisted or fired. He is the first to pull it off with a Leviathan Class though...