Ricki Tarr (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rickitikitarr) wrote2015-05-12 10:09 pm
rickitikitarr) wrote2015-05-12 10:09 pm
5. voice
[Ricki has been passed over in this week's event- he isn't nearly trustworthy enough for the powers this week to have to begun to reflect his way. So, in the absence of any other mayhem or hysteria, it's been sort of a dragging week for him.
His answer had been to ensconce himself firmly in one of the library back rooms, and to tear his way voraciously through another shelf of the history section. Which leads, quite late one evening, to him activating his feed to explain, in the hushed tones most appropriate for the small hours of the night;]
Some time in the early 1600s in Japan, a young woman had a rather illicit relationship with a Chinese pirate lord. The unlikely pair had a son who they christened Zhèng Chénggōng.
[His accent is so adept as to be potentially noteworthy.]
Our story finds him in the waters between Xiamen and Taiwan. At that time, Xiamen was a young port city, whose traded goods included silver, imported from Spain into China. This trade route was a ripe target for local pirates, in particular, for some reason, the Dutch. They snuck their boats in among the myriad of little islands at the mouth of the Nine Dragons, the Mekong River, or Cửu Long, we called it, where I was growing up. Zhèng Chénggōng, also known as Koxinga, succeeded in fighting about the nastiest kind of warfare you can imagine, for that era. The battles were nasty, but eventually the Dutch fled Taiwan, and the man himself had accomplished this while embroiled in some of the ugliest dynastic struggle imaginable.
A Ming loyalist, he had narrowly survived his own father's terrible betrayal to the Qing family- which I believe, though I haven't been able to ascertain this as being completely true- ended with his father's imprisonment and the then-Emperor being thrown into a well. Zhèng established a small province in the South of Taiwan, where his family held the territory for a little over twenty years, until some business with an illegitimate heir resulted in too much political instability, and the little province was reabsorbed into Taiwan proper.
Oh, here it is- it is rumoured that Koxinga's death was the result of a sudden fit of madness. He had ordered his guards to execute his son. The young man had apparently had an affair with a wet-nurse... of some relative or another, it isn't specific, and when he was disobeyed, Koxinga flew into the sort of rage that could stop a man's heart. He was only thirty seven. That's what one source says; the other just bluntly states malaria.
There was a statue of Koxinga in Xiamen when I was there last, though it may very well be torn down by now. I remember seeing the stonework, but never being aware of the proper story.
[And, now he is, and so is anyone else up late and listening on this drowsy, slow-drifting spacey night.]
It was whispered to me then, somewhat illicitly, that the man had been raised by freed Muslim slaves, and may have practiced that faith in secret, though the books all mention Confucianism.
I do wonder.
[He always feels most imaginative during the very witching hour of night.]
His answer had been to ensconce himself firmly in one of the library back rooms, and to tear his way voraciously through another shelf of the history section. Which leads, quite late one evening, to him activating his feed to explain, in the hushed tones most appropriate for the small hours of the night;]
Some time in the early 1600s in Japan, a young woman had a rather illicit relationship with a Chinese pirate lord. The unlikely pair had a son who they christened Zhèng Chénggōng.
[His accent is so adept as to be potentially noteworthy.]
Our story finds him in the waters between Xiamen and Taiwan. At that time, Xiamen was a young port city, whose traded goods included silver, imported from Spain into China. This trade route was a ripe target for local pirates, in particular, for some reason, the Dutch. They snuck their boats in among the myriad of little islands at the mouth of the Nine Dragons, the Mekong River, or Cửu Long, we called it, where I was growing up. Zhèng Chénggōng, also known as Koxinga, succeeded in fighting about the nastiest kind of warfare you can imagine, for that era. The battles were nasty, but eventually the Dutch fled Taiwan, and the man himself had accomplished this while embroiled in some of the ugliest dynastic struggle imaginable.
A Ming loyalist, he had narrowly survived his own father's terrible betrayal to the Qing family- which I believe, though I haven't been able to ascertain this as being completely true- ended with his father's imprisonment and the then-Emperor being thrown into a well. Zhèng established a small province in the South of Taiwan, where his family held the territory for a little over twenty years, until some business with an illegitimate heir resulted in too much political instability, and the little province was reabsorbed into Taiwan proper.
Oh, here it is- it is rumoured that Koxinga's death was the result of a sudden fit of madness. He had ordered his guards to execute his son. The young man had apparently had an affair with a wet-nurse... of some relative or another, it isn't specific, and when he was disobeyed, Koxinga flew into the sort of rage that could stop a man's heart. He was only thirty seven. That's what one source says; the other just bluntly states malaria.
There was a statue of Koxinga in Xiamen when I was there last, though it may very well be torn down by now. I remember seeing the stonework, but never being aware of the proper story.
[And, now he is, and so is anyone else up late and listening on this drowsy, slow-drifting spacey night.]
It was whispered to me then, somewhat illicitly, that the man had been raised by freed Muslim slaves, and may have practiced that faith in secret, though the books all mention Confucianism.
I do wonder.
[He always feels most imaginative during the very witching hour of night.]
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[It's possible Omar never sleeps.]
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[Not so little, though he knows his height guess is probably badly off, that he was much shorter back then and memory distorts these things.]
The Taiwanese apparently really don't care much for the Dutch.
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flashbacks to my Chinese history classes
You heard that when you was a kid?
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[Confucianism or Islam, she means. Faith is faith, unless it isn't.]
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Shut.
Up.
[Guess who is up and is not as cheerful about it as some people, or as curious as Ricki.
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[Oh so very mild.]
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[Let's not talk about how he showed up for sparring miserable and hungover as fuck on Sunday and almost certainly got his ass handed to him, ok? ok.
Also, Eggsy, you're still awake too.]
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[He answers, which is technically related to both issues, both his story and training tomorrow. It'd be nice to be out in a real boat at the mouth of the Mekong.]
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Only time I were ever down that way they still called it Formosa. I didn't get time to get too far into local 'istory.
You 'aven't been through a breach yet, 'ave you, Ricki?
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[Because he stayed on the ship last time, this is where he's remained his whole stay here.]
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[A historian, Jimmy isn't.]
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Depends if you've ever had to pitch a battle in a junk, I suppose. But there's a great deal of window dressing around the edges, I'll grant you that.
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A lot of good true stories seem to end real boring, don't they. William the Conqueror, I think it was, ate himself to death. Wasn't it Genghis who died of a bloody nose?
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[Mildly curious.]
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[Another person who only knows it as Formosa. 8v]
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where i'm from.
[Maybe not where you are, and admittedly he hasn't been in that neck of the woods in a long time, but.]
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Because he's upset, and because he isn't pretending more, Ricki's voice is eerily calm. He's taken the whole experience of being on the barge with a kind of terrible equanimity, but that is nothing compared to how he sounds now that he doesn't have to pretend to be a civilian any more.]
I need for us to speak.
[private to Anya]
Yeah. I guess we should.
Any place you want it to be in particular?
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