By DA FEIJI
Lifestyle Correspondent
XIAN (China Daily Show) – Call it the ‘Fifth Invention.’ Brothels and erotic scrolls, belonging to a previously undocumented ruling dynasty, have now been sensationally unearthed in central China, experts say.
The new evidence suggests that the world’s oldest civilization may have also invented the world’s oldest profession – a claim that the ruling Communist Party has moved swiftly to refute.
“For a full list of our inventions, please see the document on Xinhua [news agency] entitled the ‘Four Inventions,’” a spokesman said yesterday.
But growing archaeological evidence suggests that Middle Kingdom madames were likely the first.
The long-forgotten Swing Dynasty (385-380 BC) was an epicurean court in a society primarily devoted to endless warfare, according to a team of day laborers working time-and-a-half in the city of Xian.
“The Swing didn’t see the point of constantly falling out with each other,” claims Professor Eimen Von Häffenmast, visiting Professor of Archaeology at the University of Guttenberg, who is closely monitoring the dig. “These johns preferred to make love – not war. Spears, for example, were considered objects of love, rather than conflict.
“Consequently, this highly creative community didn’t stand a chance.”
In the course of their short-lived but immensely popular reign, the Swing are said to have invented the terracotta dildo, proper erotica, the water-calligraphy bed and tabloid journalism – all over a five-year period, during which almost everyone got laid and no one died.
The Swing’s young and well-endowed ruler Long – who contemporaneous scrolls describe coyly as the ‘She’long Emperor’ – apparently established his kingdom half-way through the year 385BC, in the middle of a brief lacuna when marauding rival tribes had simply agreed to take a breather.
Historians are unsure as to the exact origins of the dynasty, however.
The Swing are believed to have been descended from the Jin, who first quarreled with the Han, Zhao, and Wei dynasties but then made alliances to destroy the Zhi – a move later endorsed by the Zhou, but not before the Zhao attacked the Wei, after they had appealed to the Han for some help against the Chu.
In the resulting confusion, the Swing were able to quietly slip in and rule, legalizing polygamy and establishing a successful franchise of upmarket brothel-spas.
The brief interregnum was known colloquially as the ‘Whoring States Period.’
“China often reminds the world of its 5,000-year history and now we are starting to see the real fruits of that,” claims von Häffenmast. “We have also found evidence of a three millennia-old recipe for Kidney Surprise and definitive proof, finally, that syphilis originated somewhere in Henan.”
The She’long Emperor was regarded by his subjects as a laid-back, generous and giving ruler, and is depicted in recently unearthed statues as a long-haired dude, fond of making lewd hand-gestures.
But despite the brevity of its rule, one of the Swing’s major innovations – an equalized system of sexual barter, grounded in Legalism – would later take deep root in the national psyche.
Indeed, von Häffenmast claims, the legacy of the She’long’s rule lives on today – in China’s many neon-lit urban barbershops, attended by smiling peasant girls.
Working tributes to Emperor Long’s flowing locks and fondness for paid sex, von Häffenmast assures, “can continue to be found in every city, down countless darkened alleyways – which are still also very good places to get some.”
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