Jottings from the Granite Studio

Monday marks the 735th anniversary of the founding of the Yuan Dynasty by Kublai (Qubilai) Khan. Kublai, the grandson of Chinggis Khan, inherited the easternmost areas of the Mongol empire after a brief spat with his younger brother and declared himself emperor of the new dynasty in 1271. Within a decade, the Mongol armies had swept southward and reunified China under Kublai’s rule. In a scene reminiscent of the Japanese epic, The Tale of the Heike, the Song dynasty finally gave way in 1279 when an official took the boy emperor into his arms and jumped into the sea following the Battle of Yamen off the coast of Guangdong. Kublai’s victory was complete.

Traditional Chinese historiography has usually considered the Song Dynasty militarily weak and too concerned with philosophy, commerce, and the arts. But if you think about it, the Southern Song held their own against the Mongols for nearly 50 years–long after everyone else in Asia had folded–and it was only after the Mongol armies had pretty much killed every living being in Sichuan and started sailing down the Yangzi towards the Chinese heartland that the Song defenses started to crumble.

Having conquered the Asian mainland, why stop there? In the first few years of the new dynasty, Kublai ordered a series of ill-fated attacks against the Japanese islands. The Japanese warriors held off the Mongols for as long as they could (with the help of a long sea-wall constructed for just such a purpose) until a typhoon whipped up and turned back the Mongol fleet–a seeming answer to the prayers of the Japanese. The name of this storm? “Divine Wind” or “kami kaze.” (神風)

On December 19, 1984, Maggie Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping agreed that Britain would hand Hong Kong back to the PRC in 1997. Funny story about Hong Kong: After the first few battles of the Opium War, the British Superintendent of Trade Charles Elliott and the Manchu noble Qishan, negotiated terms–cession of Hong Kong plus reparations to the British. When their respective bosses heard these terms, both Elliott and Qishan were fired. Qishan for giving away Qing territory. Elliott got into trouble because the British thought they could do better and that Elliott had failed to press home his advantage. After such a series of decisive military victories, the best land they could get was a rocky little island with a couple of fishing villages? Eventually, the Chinese wouldn’t sign off on Qishan’s negotiations, the British recalled Elliott in favor of Sir Henry Pottinger, and the war lasted another year until the signing the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842.

On December 22, 1885 Ito Hirobumi, one of the leading figures of the Meiji Restoration, was named Japan’s first prime minister. Ito would go on to serve four different times in the job. During his second term, he conducted the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 and participated in the negotiations for the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Ironically, Ito would later die in China. Korean nationalist An Jung-guen assassinated Ito while the latter was on a trip to Manchuria in 1909. At the time, Ito was serving as Resident-General of Korea and had been a force behind the 1907 Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty.

Finally, in honor of Kublai, a weekly dose of British orientalia courtesy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”