The Decline and Fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty (106 - 220)

[@treeinafield5022]

I love that you use maps with elevation information. It's so much easier to imagine why particular cities are where they are, easier to imagine where armies move and why, and it makes visualizing the setting so much easier and more. It's such a smart thing to utilize.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, glad you've found it helpful. I'm a huge fan of topographical maps in general, and wish more sources use them.

[@dyla-gent6090]

These are some remarkably high quality and informative videos for such a small channel, keep up the great work dude.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, will do!

[@JiaruiChen_]

​I wish there were more chinese soldiers than historians

[@vaiyt]

History is written by the literate. Emperors who treated confucian scholars well entered written history as just and kind, while those that executed them and burned their books would be remembered as depraved cannibals.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Yes definitely, the traditional Chinese narrative of history is extremely biased towards the interests of the scholar elites, whereas groups like eunuchs that are usually used as tools against the scholar elites tend to be universally vilified.

[@tfsweet]

I couldn't wait for part 2!!!! Super informative. Keep up the quality work!

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks! The next few centuries get pretty hectic too

[@SacredDaturaa]

Watching your videos on Chinese geography is already paying dividends - I find myself able to intuit much more of the underlying reasons for certain events where I hadn't before. For instance Dong Zhuo's relocation from Luoyang to Chang'an in the face of military pressure makes more sense - he was fleeing an exposed position to a much more defensible one between the passes.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Glad you've found them helpful, and yeah one of my main motivations for making these videos is to help illustrate these concepts. I'll talk more about Dong Zhuo relocating from Luoyang to Chang'an in either the video I'm working on now about the geography of Chang'an, or a future video on the geography of Luoyang.

[@natashatercera8536]

Where do you get your maps? I love your map of China. It illustrates the elevation so much better than is usually done.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks! The maps are from a website called "maps-for-free", and there's a link to it in the video description. I then make the corrections by hand, especially the rivers and coastlines that have changed over the centuries.

[@feilox]

wow you're really good. Can you do commentary on the art of war, 36 stratgem or other miltary books as well? I like your insight on it as you are a cinese person. It's very hard to understand when the book is translated to english without the perspective of the chinese people.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, appreciate the support. I've been thinking about doing a series on the 36 strategems at some point, since they're quite story-driven, and I could possibly just split them into six videos each centered around one set of strategems. For the Art of War I don't feel like I know it well enough to teach it in a systematic manner, and in any case it's much more abstract. I do plan on starting a second channel on philosophy and related topics in the near future, so could always include elements of the Art of War as appropriate.

[@feilox]

@@gatesofkilikien k nice. Yea the Art of War was well done I think some think tank separated it into 6 parts and it was more understandable. Keep up the good work really love your videos and will tell others to watch.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, appreciate the support again!@@feilox

[@baylithe]

Me a Dynasty Warriors fan that thought Sun Ce was a good dude: WHAT lol Love these videos

[@tehkaihunganthony9179]

Great work, love the short concise content, keep em up!

[@gatesofkilikien]

thanks, appreciate the feedback and support!

[@Jay_in_Japan]

7:13 Lol @ how the eunuchs favored the younger son instead, got massacred for it, then the younger son got installed anyways 😂 Life is often a tragic comedy

[@LOLMAN9538]

Lü Bu was the name of the general who assassinated Dong Zhuo on May 22, 192, with the aid of Interior Minister Wang Yun and Cavalry Captain Li Su. As mentioned in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, on that day, Lü Bu greeted Dong Zhuo outside the palace gates with about 12 trusted men, all under the command of Li Su, who first stepped forward and stabbed Dong Zhuo in the arm. As the warlord cried for Lü Bu to save him, Lü merely told Dong, "This is an Imperial edict", and delivered a fatal blow to Dong.

[@shinsenshogun900]

Lv Bu went on to join the Yan rebels against Cao Cao, who then was currently waging war against his father's alleged killer Governor Tao Qian of Xu province (his underling Zhang Kai was a reformed Yellow Turban rebel, rehabilitated into a provincial commandant, but turned bandit when he was supposed to either intercept or protect Cao Song and his accompanying entourage). Governor Cao was forced to abandon his second campaign to consolidate his holdings as Tao Qian passed away, willing the entire eastern province to the minor warlord Liu Bei, who as the Chancellor of Pingyuan in Qing province had been a subordinate to Gongsun Zan, a northern warlord and ally of Tao Qian in their war against Yuan Shao's proxy coalition, who Cao Cao is a member of, having been best friends, classmates, and colleagues of Yuan Shao in their times as government officials and military captains. Lv Bu would be defeated by Cao Cao after a famine stricken stalemate had been broken in a series of decisive skirmishes and would flee with his followers to Xuzhou province, where he would be welcomed by the new Xuzhou governor Liu Bei. Lv Bu would go on to take opportunity of the situation as he is persuaded by followers to take over the province, as the Governor Liu Bei had to deal with Yuan Shu, now established in the Huainan region of Yangzhou province, the land between the Huai and the Yangtze, who had made war on Liu Bei for the control of Xu province. Lv Bu would be welcomed by local troops recruited by the late Tao Qian, whose superior was killed in a drunken rage or heated argument with Zhang Fei. Thus Lv Bu, now a warlord becomes the governor, but now on Yuan Shu's target as well as being denied a promise of supplies, would treat the vanquished Liu Bei leniently into a vassal to, switching their roles and responsibilities, maintain a semblance of protection against warlike outsiders such as the magnanimous Yuan Shu and wily Cao Cao.

[@Alusnovalotus]

16:41 I beg to differ!! the FANTASTIC performance by Chen Jianbin as Cao Cao completely revised his reputation in modern western fandom. He is always a top pick in the many role playing games and has a following with us as a man who used all the tricks in his toolbox to achieve his goals. Brutal, yes, but this was a different time and life was valued differently then.

[@mohammadzaker575]

Love you video from Iran 🇮🇷

[@Nick-hi9gx]

During the late part of the Eastern Han, a new agricultural labor system was invented, the Tuntian system. At first it was very similar to the Roman colonies of settled veterans, it was just farmland run by soldiers and their families, maybe former soldiers. I've seen Cao Cao credited with the creation of it, but just like "Zhuge's bow", he didn't make it. He renovated, now turning those refugees tied to the land into essentially serfs, directly monitored by soldiers a lot of the time, which is why Cao Cao was able to tax them heavily AND efficiently. The loss of life in the ~100 years from the end of the Han to the last phase of the Three Kingdoms can't be overstated. China went from 55-60m people down to something like 30m. Enormous portions of that had been in the China Plain. Cao Cao forcibly revitalized an entire region of China, something that hasn't been successfully done in many places in history. For all the talk of strategy and tactics from the Three Kingdoms era, it was Cao Cao's economics that won. First in controlling the Central Plain against Liu Bei/Tao Qian, Yuan Shu, then Yuan Shao and the Sun. Then it was controlling the entire north of China, with the exception of the far west, which were just under his hegemony and not direct control. China had its economic heart ripped out of it, and rather than build a new one elsewhere like multiple other warlords tried, Cao Cao just shoved that heart back in. With a sword. Or probably a horse, a ji, and crossbow.

[@Jay_in_Japan]

Emperor Juan 🌮🇲🇽🤠

[@Sean12248]

Gate of Kilikien........what are good books on ancient china to someone who knows nothing about china (aside from the 20th century). Audio books are also accetable, I'm just trying to get out of Europe and get into Asia. I still love middle eastern history.

[@gatesofkilikien]

I responded to you under the other video, not sure if you see it or not. Let me know if you don’t and I can try to reach out a different way. I’m on my phone right now and can’t copy and paste the answer over

[@Cyberphunkisms]

great

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks!

[@brixflores5121]

What are the eunuchs?

[@pingukutepro]

People without balls

[@juamu1132]

homosexuals

[@shinsenshogun900]

Domestic palace servants without nuts, selected from common peasantry or punished rural gentry in order to serve household and bureaucratic duties and avoiding scandalous affairs with the imperial court ladies and maidens Being the closest to the emperor, they will have the influence and power whenever there are child regencies as shown in the reigns of Huan and Ling

[@fajaradi1223]

​@@juamu1132 Not homo, but completely dickless or over circumstated people.

[@ivanwong3273]

​@@juamu1132not really they are sex toys for the concubines. Thier tongue is useful though

[@vincently1995]

End of the Han Dynasty = Pre-Three Kingdoms Era

[@yoshihammerbro435]

yes

[@planescaped]

Ah, so He Jin and Dong Cheng and their ilk were consort kin? Man, it really was a repeating cycle until Dong Zhou broke it wasn't it.

[@y.b4251]

Totally correct if you see it in this way. After the decentralized 3K era, we get to see insane rulers with less than savory lifestyle once again, since the warring states. The monarch once again reclaim the blame for bizarre acts that eventually lead to the decaying mandate of heaven, without many people sharing the power, hence the focus was all over them. The centralization of power only came back around earlier Ming dynasty, only then, the eunuchs and consort kins were back to business.

[@gwnifer3355]

Crazy that china didn't have real unified government after the fall of han dynasty, and only the Tang dynasty finally unified china

[@AlexVictorianus]

The "good" emperors like in Rome, some decades later.

[@alaricthescholar2517]

There is a growing Western interest in this period: see Baptiste Pinson Wu's historical fiction "Yellow Sky Revolt."

[@jeffersonthomas1269]

You say "him", why would you use a pronoun ? I could not understand who meant. He was deified ? Who ? You should have written the name on the screen AND spoken the name. personally, i feel you use way too many pronouns, say the name, repeat the name, use pronouns sparingly. limit them to three in a row at most and two is better. Oh and Good Job, you do very good work.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, these are great reminders for me and I'll try to be careful with it in the future. Pronouns are hard enough for English names, let alone names in a language like Chinese that's full of homonyms and often hard to pronounce. I'm also experimenting with better ways to display the names/Chinese characters on the screen to help viewers better organize the information.

[@planescaped]

I mean, Guan Yu is pretty famous...