By XI MEITEI
Western Media Correspondent
Boasting nearly 5,000 aeons of history, China is a country that has been uninterruptedly ruled by several different major dynasties, with only brief 300-year periods of chaos in between.
Each of these dynasties, in their own different yet ethnically consistent way, provides incontrovertible evidence of the immutability of China’s unique form of governance — whether Mongol horsemen, Manchu invaders, Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, or simply enterprising Buddhist warlords, all were truly Chinese.
o celebrate the dawn of a new dynasty, take our China Daily Show test — fully accredited by the Chinese Academy of Approved Sciences — to find out which dynasty you are!
After buying a fine courtyard residence, you build a large wall to prevent anybody else enjoying it, and stop your family getting out. Yet the local teens keep breaking in anyway. How do you respond?
A) Lead a brutal horseback raid on the teens, taking one of their sisters as your third concubine
B) Add a magisterial watchtower to your useless wall, then watch impotently as the garden is desecrated by teens, taking secret pleasure in their rough, dirty hands probing your delicate flowers
C) Bribe the largest of the teens to beat the others up for you
D) Agree to allow teens access to the courtyard during certain periods. When they arrive, have them all arrested
E) Order a vast warren of electrified walls to be built, then give a speech at Davos announcing your new home is open for business
After suffering years of marital abuse, your wife finally leaves you. Her decision finally prompts an emotional response, which is to:
A) Lead a brutal horseback raid to reclaim her, and all her 12 sisters
B) Write a 250,000-word Harry Potter-themed erotic novel, in which your wife appears as several of the villains, particularly the futa dominatrix Hermione
C) Bitterly regret not having bound her feet properly
D) Pretend you’ve changed to lure her back — then denounce her as a whore, locking her in the basement
E) Publish an editorial in the local newspaper, decrying the societal dangers of feminism. Then dedicate the rest of your life to poisoning your children against her
A foreign friend comes to visit, and brings his new gadget – a GPS system. You smile, then:
A) Use the gadget to lead a brutal horseback raid. It’s been a while
B) Later that night manage to find a bizarre sexual use for the gadget, then ban its use for anyone but yourself
C) Deny the system exists, while extolling the virtues of ancient cartography
D) Lock some students in a basement, telling them they have five years to create their own satellite for the motherland
E) Have your friend arrested for “illegal mapping,” then launch Baidu Maps
Coming home early one afternoon, you catch your son wearing makeup. Do you
A) Applaud his stylish taste, celebrating his newfound manhood with a brutal horseback raid
B) Silently brood on how much your son now resembles a younger, prettier version of your wife — the coquette!
C) Force him to wear a proper man’s haircut, like a ponytail
D) Loudly denounce the bourgeois influence of makeup, secretly accumulating a giant stash of Maybelline for yourself.
E) Detain the cosmetic firm’s CEO at the airport for violating regulations, take over his business, then add a hundred-percent markup on all products
You lose a game of ping pong to a Japanese neighbour at a temple fair. In order to avoid losing face, you:
A) Laugh heartily, slap the winner on the back, wait till he’s thoroughly drunk, then lead a brutal horseback raid on his house
B) Realize, belatedly, you left lube on the handle of your paddle
C) Angrily insist on the superiority of the ancient Chinese game of “pong ping”
D) Launch year-long “Against Confucius, Against Ping Pong” campaign, while your Japanese neighbor becomes regional champion
E) Patriotically boycott all Japanese imports, then acclaim the free markets. Quietly begin training your children to play ping pong in grueling 16-hour steroid sessions, before announcing your plans to continue as their coach for life
How Did You Do?
Mostly As Your thuggish temperament combines the charmless arrogance of a nomad civilization with the grim realities of life on the steppes. You’re the Tang!
Mostly Bs Ming Dynasty — more like the minge dynasty, right guys? Existence is an uninterrupted journey of intellectual self-pleasure, while reality collapses around you
Mostly Cs You are powerful, strong, and exceptional — and you won’t brook any historical evidence that says otherwise. You, madam, are a Qing (and everyone else is scum)
Mostly Ds Your legacy is in trouble. When they dig up the bodies from your gingko garden, ageing neighbor Henry K will insist to everyone else that Madam Mao always seemed like “such a reasonable woman”
Mostly Es Your local newspaper acclaims you as the leading light of civilization and diplomacy, after you sued the previous editor into bankruptcy. You’re a thoroughly modern member of the Xi Dynasty, and you’re not going anywhere!
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