Part One: The Well Hung Warlord Who Tried to Conquer China

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi Hi, Hi America podcast Robert Evans The Bastards. Yeah,
we're um, we're coming in this. This one's been rough.
There's been a lot of disasters behind the start of
this episode behind the Bastards podcast, where we talking about
the worst people in all history. First off, Um, I

(00:22):
got the time wrong. Our our our guest today, we're
doing reverse Bastards where someone reads me a story about
a terrible person. It's another coup. We have a lot
of coups, were like Guatemala, most of Latin America throughout
like the sixties to present day. Actually, um, we're a
lot like all that. Um. And and my coup guest
today is our our friend Christopher from Worst Year Ever.

(00:45):
You know him on Twitter as Ice must be Destroyed? Guy. Ums,
how's it going Christopher? It's it's it's going pretty good.
I have I have successfully come out, come out in
charge of this this warlord struggle. Yeah, successfully successfully taking
a roll of Beijing for about two hours, which is
about the average time that people hold Beijing in this period.

(01:07):
Very excited. Well, you've given us a little bit of
a hint about the episode for today. I want to
start this by noting that you are in Chicago, UM,
which I thought meant you were in the Eastern Standard
time because I assume everything east of Arizona exists in
the same time zone unless it's Texas, and that is
apparently not the case, which in Texas at the same

(01:28):
time zone, which makes rel You know, I haven't spent
much time in in southern in southern Illinois, but you know,
I think I think if you broke off a bunch
there for a little while, yeah, I me either or
not like that. I just want to let the listeners
know that. As we were testing our levels for this recording,

(01:49):
I went, whose airplane is there? Somebody? Is there an
airplane flying over somebody's house right now? And it was
just Robert's foot massage or I thought he could use
while we recorded. The thought gust and it was worth
the shot, so f it was worth a try. Look,
you know, it's impressive, horrifying. It wouldn't be the first time.

(02:13):
I keep doing things that create odd noises, Like a
couple of weeks ago, he had an episode where there
was like a clinking sound the whole episode and people
kept being what is it? It was a moon clip
of forty four plus p ammunition for my gigantic Revolver
that I was playing with as a desk toy. Um,
I removed that and then I got the foot machine.
So it's just just a disaster over here at all times.

(02:34):
You're a professional, but you know I'm a professional. This
is literally the only thing I do for money. Now.
They you are not our host, you are I'm not
so Christopher. Do you want to tell us what we're
talking about? Want to want to get started here? Yeah? Yeah, Robert,
I want to ask you something. How do you feel
about warlords? Oh? I'm very pro Um. I hope to
be one someday. The healthcare seems to be shipped, but

(02:56):
usually don't live long enough for that to really matter. Um.
I already own a Mauser C nineties six, which a
lot of my favorite warlords were during the Chinese Civil Wars,
and that was a popular gun there. So I feel
like I'm already halfway to being a proper warlord. Um. Yeah,
it seems like a good time. Um, I don't I

(03:17):
don't really know any downsides to being a war lord. Well,
sometimes sometimes you get assassinated about the Japanese because it
seems seems to be the biggest one. I'm already very
worried about that. So yeah, it's like it's a it's
a constant problem in the field. All right, So this
this week we're doing Chong Zung Chung. Who is you know,

(03:39):
he's probably trying his most famous worlord, but he's the
warlord who was having the most fun in this period.
Oh how yeah, that's the guy I like. Then. Yeah, yeah,
he's he's he's having a ball. He's gonna make history
work for you, you know. Yeah, what was that name again,
Chong Zong Chong Chung Zung Chung Jong Jong? Yeah, okay,

(04:03):
going John Will we'll work there. And I'm pretty good
on Jong. Okay, yeah I can. We can do this. Yeah,
And he's he's also known as the dog meat Warlord,
which I don't know. I don't know if I like
that part with three dogs in the room with me
right now, but yeah, okay, so we we we will
get to this. But it's not he doesn't eat dogs.
This is this is entirely unrelated to the consumption of dogs,

(04:24):
which is again pre incredible because doing that, he's called
the dog meat Yeah, gal, some eating dog meat, probably
not from the eating dog meat. Yeah, okay, okay, well, yeah,
let's let's get into this alright. John was born on
February eighty one in a rural village in shang Dung Province.
His family was incredibly poor. Later in life, Jong will

(04:47):
claim not to have known what a pillow was growing up.
And Jesus, yeah, you know, I mean, John is a
character where there's there's approximately ten billion sort of myths
floating around about him, but I actually believe this one.
Like his his family is poor by the standards world China,
which is, you know, not a great place media in
the beginning, that's a whole new benchmark for poverty is like,

(05:09):
what is a pillow? Yeah, well, I'm okay, Jesus, all right.
His father, his father played trumpet at funerals and worked
as sort of a barber who shaves people's heads for
religious ceremonies, and he was poor. Yeah well yeah, and

(05:29):
you know, and his mom does like small time ritual
magic for money. Yeah, and you know, as you can
pick up on work, is incredibly unstable and in freakent
for both of them. Now, now, this is the error
of child labor. And I mean, okay, it's still the
era of child labor, but it was really the era
of child labor back then. And this means that John

(05:51):
started his first job when he was either twelve or thirteen,
and he is his first job is It's kind of
cute he would accompany when when his dad would played
trumpet at funeral, he would go along with him and
play symbols Okay, okay, getting in the family business, which
is ship, get into the terrible family business. He does

(06:11):
not pay enough for pillows. Good call Nope, good call mm.
Other other than the sort of whole crushing poverty part,
we don't know a huge amount about his family life,
other than that he absolutely adores his mother, which seems
to be why when his mother left his father to
move to Manchuria, John goes with his mother. And it's

(06:34):
sort of unclear why this happens, but what's most likely
seems to happen is that the family just wasn't making
enough money a support to three of them, so John's
mother took him to the provincial capital to look for
work there. This is the first similarity between this Chinese
warlord and Dr Phil and I'm curious as to whether
or not it will be the last. Yeah, I you know,

(06:54):
I was thinking about what about that when I was
writing this, and I don't know, there's there there, There's
there's a little bit there. There's a little bit there,
except I don't know different. Dr Phil doesn't end up
in the army, And I think that's the big difference here.
I mean, I can imagine him as a bandit, but
I can imagine Dr Phil has a bandit for sure.

(07:16):
He is a kind of bandit, a spiritual kind. Though.
I think this guy is actually going to work out
to be much more ethical than Dr Phil. Well, well,
we'll see, we'll see about that, okay, all right, So
he moves with his mom to man Sharia. Yeah, and
while he's there, Uh, he's about fifteen at this point.
He starts working as a servant in a gambling house,

(07:37):
which he gives him his first exposure to this this
class of petty criminal that's most of his youth is
going to be spent avorting with these people. And this
pisces off the local gentry and they just expel him
from the city. Him specifically, not the criminals he's like
hanging out with. Why don't more than these other people? Yeah, my, my,

(07:58):
my guest on that is that so actual local criminals
probably have some kind of political power and he just doesn't.
So I can't really do anything to them. But they're
just like, yeah, well we'll kick we'll kick you out
of town. Okay, okay, so so and so once once
they're he does the thing that most young men do
when they have no jobs on throwing into the countryside.
He becomes a bandit. Hell yeah, alright, so this this

(08:21):
guy's this guy's moving up in the world. He's doing
better than his dad already. Yeah, now we for for
someone all of these reasons. We know very little about
what he was doing as a bandit um, but we
do know that his mother, who's now who's now completely
on her own, started it, starts to sort of data
series of men for the financial support, and eventually a

(08:41):
guy she was dating murderous her previous X and the
guy get sent to prison. But because this is and
I kind of emphasize this enough, an incredibly fucked up
patriarchal society, she also gets exiled from the city for
the murder, even though she had no golden in it.
Leaders just yeah, we're exceling you two. Yeah, your boyfriend

(09:01):
murdered somebody. You gotta get the funk out of here,
all right. So that's the kind of society. Okay, don't worry,
it gets worse. That was basically the whole world at
this point. So yeah, okay, and so yeah, So so
when she's kicked out, she she dates like she's able
to date one more guy, and she scrapes off enough
money to go back to John's father. But when she

(09:23):
gets back to him, he's flat broke and sells her
to a grain merchant for some millet, which is apparently
a thing you could do at this time. You can
you can just sell your wife to a grain r
I would condemn him for this, but this is the
This is the best financial investment he's made in his life,
is it. It was a wholesale merchant, So maybe you

(09:47):
got a good deal needed that fucking millet. Yeah, okay,
I shouldn't be laughing. This is horrible, but like, well, okay,
so this is just like such a bleak story. Well okay,
so at this point, John's mom just disappears in the
storic record for twenty years. But but don't worry about her.
She is the only person in the story. He was

(10:08):
getting a happy ending, and like frankly, after all of
these ships, she's like one of the people who deserves
it the most. Yeah. So yeah, John's mother will return later. Um.
Now John is banditing for about two years um, but
eventually he's able to get a relatively stable job in Manchuria.
In and because Manchuria is gonna play a pretty big

(10:32):
role in this story, I'm gonna give it a sort
of brief introduction to it. Manchuria is geographically, it's it's
in the very far northeast part of China. Like it's
kind of like it's China's version of New England, except
imagine if instead of border in Canada, it bordered like
Russia Korea and was five minutes away from Japan. Mhm,
So you know. And and when being in the middle
of China, Korea, Russia, and Japan means that's just basically

(10:57):
every empire is constantly fighting for control over it. And
this also means that that all of the empires wind
up putting just an enormous amount of capital into Macharia
sort of manufacturing belts and railway systems. And Jong Chung
is never able to get one of like the really
highly paid stable jobs in in uh materious arsenal, which

(11:18):
is one of the largest sort of weapons manufacturers in China.
But what are he is able to get is a
job on the Chinese Eastern Railway. Now the Chinese the
Chinese Eastern Railway is a Russian concession. It's it's one
of the concessions that sort of the Ching dynasty has
been giving out to the various empires that it loses
wars to in the sort of ninete twentie centuries. And

(11:38):
the way these things work is that like, okay, so
wh when you neive a possession to a country, you
get like if you're if you're like say like Britain,
you get you get a chunk of lands and you
just control that like that product China, like it's just
under your control. You get your own you can impose
your own legal system. They have their own police force,
and to one of their ports cities. Yeah yeah, yeah.
And there this happens all over the country, and there's

(12:00):
there's there's a there's a really big and famous like
French concession that's just like a third of Shanghai. Um.
This this is all gonna become important later when the
sort of just absolutely horrific treatment Chinese workers, and these
concessions boils over into just a full scale conflict. But
for right now, the most important thing about Chung's job
on the concession is that it gives him gives him

(12:21):
his first real contact with Russia. Now for for all
sort of like lack of education and it's it's really
questionable whether Jung really ever got more than like two
years of schooling. He's extremely good at learning languages, and
he like almost immediately able to learn Russian and is

(12:43):
able to very quickly leverage this job, wants to sort
of railway work, drives up to become a chief foreman
and a gold mine in Siberia, which was basically because
he was the only Chinese working with his big Russian
and the Russians trusted him enough to give him a gun,
which would turn out to be great for John and
an absolute fiasco for literally the other human being in China.
But it goes great for him. I mean, that's that

(13:06):
is a story you see a lot in this colonial period.
Is like the folks who make bank and are really
successful and often wind up basically owning huge chunks of
the world are usually polyglots. And it's the same with
the imperial powers to like all of these British colonizers,
like the dudes who are actually doing the colonizing tend
to be people who just like pick up language because
it's like your number one asset in this period of time,

(13:28):
other than shamelessness and sociopathy um is being able to
talk to everybody that makes sense. Yeah, and it's you know,
and it's really like, if you're trying to work in
this perier, this is like one of this or being
a really good Bandit are basically like the only two
real ways you can even sort of work yourself up
in the world. And you know, John said, John is

(13:50):
doing pretty well from self here. He yes, but but
you know, one one day he's working at this mining
camp and they can't because attacked by a bear. And Okay,
I don't know if you know about this, Robert. I'm
just psyched that a bear attack is coming into this story.
This is everything that I want in his stories so far,
so please, I don't don't know if you know this, Robert.
Bears they're really big. Yeah, they're pretty pretty sizeable. Yeah,

(14:13):
They're they're extremely strong, and and their mass means that
unless you have a very very large gun. You're not
going to bring it down with one shot. Yeah. I
have a bear gun and it weighs like four and
a half pounds. It's a handgun. Yeah, what just you
might need to shoot a bear, Sophie. Do you want
me to not be able to shoot a bear? If
a bear attacks Christopher Barrett? Look, Barrett, bears can tip

(14:40):
over seven hundred pounds steel like dumpsters, and there's not
even that much effort for them that can promise it
is only like seven hundred pounds. Sophie. I'm still scarred
from the guy who's running in the recollection in California
who's been using a bear as a prop and his ads.
So I'm triggered, that's all I'm saying. Okay, so bear

(15:00):
comes into camp. Yeah, and and John Jong Okay, he
has this incredibly dinky eight rifle and she just easily
kills this bear. He's got nailed it through the heart
or the eye or something which I couldn't find a
description of it, which is sort of wild. It's probably
if it's a midnight eighteen hundreds gun, I'm certain like

(15:20):
the best it could be is probably something like a
drice needle gun. Um, which is kind of an early
pre cartridge bolt action rifle. If it is a cartridge rifle,
I mean, if it is a cartridge rifle, the good
news is that it's probably a fairly large round because
most of the it was usually like kind of like
thirty at six or somewhere in that ballpark. Um, but
I'm going to guess the fact that this is the

(15:42):
late eighteen hundreds in China means that he's not using
like there's a decent chance it's a black powder anyway. Yeah,
that that that's a heck of a thing to be
able to do with the kind of weapon he probably
was packing. Yeah, and this, you know this, this has
a fairly cretable reaction everyone else there and she she
just immediately gets this like cult following among the workers

(16:03):
because he just you know, murdered this bear like extremely easily.
And you know this, this is sort of a point
where you start to see the things that are gonna
make him a really good soldier, because he's he's remarkably
calm under pressure. He's an incredibly good shot, and he's
also incredibly charismatic, which is important for a guy who
is an estimates very Here this dude is somewhere between

(16:25):
six ft six and seven ft tall. Holy shit, he's
told as and he's tall. He's that tall growing up
impoverished in rural China in the eighteen hundreds, which is wild. Yeah,
it's unbelievable. That's huge for people who grow up in
the United States with access to all of the protein

(16:45):
they could possibly want. That is Oh god, he's an
absolute monster. And yeah, you know, like like at this point,
like it's kind of hard enough to be sympathetic to him.
I mean, this is she bears. He's a giant. He's
a bear shooting giant bandit polyglott he's pretty rad. Yeah,
he loves his mom like it's great. And you know,

(17:05):
because this is behind the bastard. This is where everything
immediately starts to go to ship. Yeah, yeah, this is
this is like the moment where Saddam is robbing his
or is threatening his high school principle. At gunpoint of core,
Saddam turns bad. This is it. This is the part
where you're like, tell miss something bad. Yeah, let's go.
So in nineteen eleven, a revolution toppled the ruling ching

(17:28):
Daiste and replaced it with a republic led by grun Chikai,
a man whose sole qualification for this job is that
he has the largest army in China when the fighting stops.
I mean, what other qualifications would there be for this job? Well,
you know, for for for exactly one day, Sen yet
send a man with actual, real political qualifications was in charge.

(17:50):
And then he was like, this guy is the only
person with an army large enough to hold the country together,
so we're's going to give it to him. H And
so yeah, John wins up running this country and he
it's a it's a disaster. He you know, he starts
a nice and eleven. He's basically lurching from crisis to crisis.
There's moustable rebellions against him, until in late nineteen fifteen,

(18:11):
he makes one of the most baffling disaster's decisions anyone
has ever made in human history. He convenes an assembly
to declare himself emperor. Now, again, this is a guy
who was in power. Literally the only reason he's in
power is because of a revolution, the sole point of
which was getting rid of the monarchy. And Jaron looks

(18:33):
around the country's collapsing around him and he goes, I
know what will unite the nation behind me, declaring myself emperor. Yeah, complete,
no flaws with this plan. Are you going to tell
me this doesn't go well? Now? To his credit, Joon
did briefly unite the entire country because basically all of
it immediately goes into revolt to drive him out. And

(18:56):
you know, he kind of remarkably holds on for about
three months sefore deciding and he wasn't going to be
emperor after all. I'm politely asking everyone to please stop
revolting so we could go back to the business of
running the country, and you know, kind of said that.
We don't know whether this would have worked or not,
because three months after he abdicates, he dies of an
armia Okay, and with his death in nineties begins what

(19:20):
is known in Chinese history as the Warlord period. Yeah,
this is what that game, um where you stab a
bunch of people to death was about, right that? No,
that's that's that's the Warring States period. Oh, that's the
Warring States period Blue Boo Bier, right, because nobody had guns.
Everybody was stabbing each other. Okay, this is this is that,
but significantly that's the name. Yeah, this is this is

(19:47):
this this is the Kaiser right special. Yeah, okay, that's yeah,
that that makes sense. Yeah. This is, by the way,
why we're bringing you on and will be increasingly have
you on is because I attempted to do several stories
is about China and other parts of Southeast Asia, and
very quickly realized that, like when I'm doing like Europe,
you know, or or or the United States or even

(20:09):
parts of Latin America, just because it's a place I'm
closer to and have spent more time and I have
like a certain base of historical understanding that I can
build on and I don't know anything about this. Um
So I'm I'm I'm fascinated and grateful to you for
studying this part of the world for years and years. Yeah. Well, okay,
you know here, let me let me, let me let

(20:31):
me resuscitate your reputation, because there is something that you do,
in fact, no significantly more about than I have. You
have been in way more civil wars than I. I
have been in a couple of civil wars. Yeah, so
I'm gonna run my my simple model of the two
kinds of civil wars past you, and well we'll see
what you think about it. Okay, okay. So on the

(20:51):
one hand, you have one kind of civil war where
half the country starts fighting the other half. This is
like the American Civil War. You very rarely see this.
And the other hand, you have civil wars were of
a whole country fragments into a million pieces and every
single one of them starts fighting each other. Yeah. We
call that du in Assyria, yeah yeah, or Yemen or
Yemen or a lot of places. It's kind of the
modern way of doing something. Yeah, yeah, And it's it's

(21:13):
also it's also what's going to happen in this period
except this war. Like I, you know, when when I
was looking at when I first looked at the control map,
I my brain shattered and I've never recovered since. And
like I I've never I've never longed for the simplicity
of the Mani Civil War before. But this war, there

(21:36):
are over a thousand warlords. Yeah, in the period between
nineteen six they fight seven hundred different wars. That's that's
too many different wars, Like you gotta if I was
in there, what I would say is like we can
cut that down to two hundred three hund oh at
the most. Like I feel like I feel like I

(21:57):
could have helped like consolidate the war. What they needed
was a consultant, a guy to be like, look, you
guys are fighting the same war that these guys are fighting.
Let's bundle that into one big war and then we
got less wars to deal with. My pitch, that's my
pitch to China a hundred and fifty years ago. I mean, look,

(22:18):
I'm all for it because it makes the history. It
would make, It would have made the history like incomprehensibly easier.
Like there are there are twenty pages of this script
that's just me trying to explain two different factions taking
losing control of Beijing, that that there's not here anymore,
because it's yeah, this is this is. This is maybe

(22:38):
the messiest conflict I've ever encountered, and we're about to
dive into it. First, it's time for products and services.
You know what won't fragment China into hundreds of different
warring quasi state militia things these ads questions, They will not,

(23:00):
They will not. I feel I feel confident saying none
of the people who advertise on our show have the
kind of like flex to to destroy the Chinese state
and launch a new civil war. Fair enough, Yeah, I
I just I don't think the dick pill guys have
that much weight to throw around. I really, God God, Okay,

(23:35):
we're back. All right, let's get going. Okay, So before
before we fully launch into this reference purposes, we need
to stop and do the briefest, most basic, and most
half assed Chinese geography lesson in human history, because this
is the point where Chinese geography becomes very important in
the story. So we're gonna we're look, we're We're only

(23:57):
gonna give you two cities. So I think we could
do this. So at the very south of China, there
is Hong Kong. Um, it's it's it's control, Hong Kong's
control by the British at this point, it's it's it's
separated basically from the province of guang Show, which is
very south to China. Shanghai is kind of in the

(24:18):
middle of China north south wise on the east coast,
and then Beijing is further north of that, and then
the very far north along the border with Korea's bench area. Um,
and there's you know, all of the different sort of
Willard clicks in this period because this this this whole
thing is the greatest proof I've ever encountered. The high
school never ends. Hey, it's all clicks, be all the

(24:40):
clicks form for just incredibly petty reasons. Like one of
one of the most powerful clicks, a click that like
takes Beijing and rules most of China for four years,
happened because one click of officers thought the other click
wasn't promoting them fast enough. And and to make it worse,
all of these people are classmates because they all they
all either went to sort of a military a couple
of military academy, either in China or Japan. This is like,

(25:02):
I mean, this is the same as a lot of
European history, to be honest. Yeah, yeah, it's just it's
just it's high school with more guns, which is fairly
impressive considering how many guns than an American high school,
to be you know, these people have a lot of guns.
Like it's it's it's pretty impressive. I was taking a

(25:22):
cheap shot. Please continue. So it's sort of unclear what
John was doing during the sort of revolutionary upheaval in
nineteen eleven. Oh, this is an every thing with John.
Every account basically conflicts on what he was doing. But
we know for sure is that by nineteen he ended
up as a division commander in the army station near Shanghai.

(25:45):
But in nineteen thirteen, the Nationalists, who are known in
the U S the k MP for reasons that pissed
me off to no end. But I will not get
in here, uh stage stage of disasters revolt And after
that revolt fails in sort of late nineteen thirteen, John
gets politically sidelined and tell the foremost start of the
Warlord period. Now, another person sidelined after the failed nineteen

(26:08):
revolution was the famous Nationalist general and this guy, like
my mom had heard of this guy and who had
not heard of basically anyone else in this story except
for the main character. So he's he's you know, he's
he's an important figure in in in the CAMT in
the sort of the Nationalist party. He's also an extremely
important organized crime guy. And we will get into in

(26:30):
the next episode why he's both a Camty general and
a crime boss. Um. This man's name, yeah, it's it's
it's a it's a wild story, but yeah, for for now,
this guy's name is Chen she may Um When when
when the Nationalist revolt fails. Chen does something that I
think Basstar's listeners would recognize immediately. He flees to the
early nineteen hundred China's version of Mexico, which is Japan.

(26:53):
Hell yeah, good, great, yeah, all right, yeah did you
pend to and just it's Japan is it's it's literally
just Mexico. Now, um, you know when we just grew
up in China. The army comes after you fleed in
Mexico and you flee feed Mexico or now you fleed
to Japan, and you know, while you're in Japan, you
have two choices. You can either sort of live out
your life clients quietly, or you can plant your triumphant

(27:15):
return to China. And the second thing is what China
ends up doing. In nineteen sixteen, Chan Saw saw his
opportunity and returns from Japan to Shanghaiis are another revolution
against the government. And this is where John takes his
first real action of the brave new world of World Artism.
He has Chinn assassinated. Which this this has a number
of sort of effects. One, the nationalists at this point

(27:38):
just sort of crumple and they're not going to be
a real political force for a while. In China. The
second important thing is that this is how John gets
in with a couple of very very powerful political patrons.
The most important person here is this dude named Wupefu
who is also known as the Jade Marshall who is
he is universally regarded as a Worldard period's greatest strategist,

(28:01):
and he he runs one of the Worldard clicks, and
you know, he he rewards John for his loyalty and
having his national skuy assassinated, and John that moves up
in the world really quickly. He briefly becomes the Vice
president's personal bodyguard, and then eventually he's he's given a

(28:22):
new command in the army of his own. Yeah, it's
this whole period's politics. It's really weird because basically all
career advancement has to do with like which click you're
able to please, and so you know, if you do
something for one click, they'll give you something, and if
you fail, then they kick you out. It's it's yeah,

(28:42):
it's high school, except a bunch of people are dying
or more people are dying, like American high school. Like yeah, yeah,
you said, we're we're looking, we're gonna here. We're all
familiar with this. We all we all understand the source
material here. Yeah, you know, Unfortunately, these people are incurribly fickle,

(29:04):
and Cheng managed to lose his entire army in an
incredibly minor sort of border dispute war, and this gets
him just kicked back into the political wilderness. Do they
get killed or do they just kind of like piece
out from him? Uh, it's unclear that this is one
of those things where we're talking about their seven hundred wars, right,
so most of them, this war I can literally the

(29:26):
only reference I can find to its existence is that
Jong like lost his army in it. But it's really
unclear what happened. And so there's two stories of it.
One of them is that like they all died, and
then he goes back to Beijing and tries to bribe
one of them for his allies with just a bunch
of these tiny golden lions to get the un assigned

(29:48):
to him. But who finds out about this and kicks
him out of the army. And you know, okay, bribing
a superior officer with a bunch of tiny golden lions
is like exactly the kind of thing he would do.
But like the sourcings. Now good, because again, this this
man's life is just this incredible haze of stories. There
there's some other sources that say that so she loses

(30:10):
his war, and then his army is absorbed to another
warlord army, and then that warldlord also subsequently loses a
war and collapses. But either way, what we know is
that he fleets sort of broken, completely alone, back to
Manchuri in Okay, and okay, this is this is this
is the point where we have to make another brief announcement,

(30:32):
which is that there are two completely unrelated dudes in
the story named jong Um. This is largely because one
of the early Chinese dynostes essentially got Piste off. The
people in villages didn't like that they were trying to
tax didn't have last names, and so they just came
in and gave everyone last names. And yes, and they
have like a hundred of these names. These are gonna
called like the old one hun names. And they do
this they can get tax records, get better tax records.

(30:54):
Now every like everyone in China has the same last
name because they just slaves on people. Yeah, okay, done.
Two of the main characters in this in this are
have the same name as what you're telling. Yeah. So
so there's two big Jongs. If I just say Jong,
I'm talking about our hero Jong Jong Chong, who is
the dog meat warlord. The second Jong is the guy

(31:16):
we're going to meet now, whose name is John Druling Um.
She's the warlord of Manchuria. If I talked about him,
I'll say his full name, or I'll just say his
last name, so it's no confusion. Um. Unfortunately for all
of history and for us trying to get through the
story the like, basically, the moment a geins to Manchuria,
Jong decides to try to join dru Ling's army. And

(31:38):
this is another one of those things that there's a
very weird story here, which is so his attempt to
get into the army seems to be that Ruling throws
this massive birthday party for himself because you know, okay,
so if you're a warlord, right, like, yeah, you're gonna
have some pretty wild ass birthday parties for sure. Yeah, yeah,
this is what what is else is the point of

(31:58):
being a warlord? If you don't that doesn't even require explanation. Absolutely. Yeah. Now,
now the weird part about this, so everyone else shows
up to it. It okay, so we're we're meeting the warlord, right,
you show up to birthday party with incredibly expensive gifts.
John just doesn't show up at all. What he does
instead is he sends these two empty coolie baskets, which
are those like you know those baskets that, yeah, that

(32:18):
are being like a coolie is like what the British
called dudes in India they would pay to carry ship
for him, and yeah, baskets people carry ship in Yeah,
they have like there's like a pole that you hang
them off of there there. There's a lot of people
use him in China. So John just like gives him
these two empty baskets, and true lying is extremely confused
by this because you know, okay, this guy doesn't show

(32:41):
up to my birthday party and then just gives two baskets. Yeah,
kind of a weird flex for the warlord. Whose arm
do you want to be in? Yeah? Yeah, you know. Apparently,
so what what Jong appears to have been implying and
what druling like somehow figures out through the powers of
deductive reasoning that I don't have and I don't understand.
But apparently what John is saying is that the baskets

(33:03):
are empty to represent that he would shoulder any burden
that Joe Ling would give him, which is weird, but
this actually works. That's but that's like a weird like
he's doing symbolism shit. Okay, yeah, but you know this works.
And John is given a minor post in the army,
which you know will wild. We'll take it um and

(33:25):
really fortunately for John. A few months later, there's there's
there's a revolt in Manchuria and Jong is the person
who puts it down and for that he's given a
much like a I don't know, I don't know if
field grades like the right term for this, but he's
given like a fairly superposition. Yeah, he gets a huge promotion.
And this, this one decision is going to turn Jong

(33:47):
from a minor military commander into the most feared and
despised warlord and all of China. That makes sense. Yeah,
and you know this, this sucks for the rest of China,
but for Drew Ling, this is this promotion troults being
in dably good idea. Um in two Dueling brings John
with him to negotiate with a group of Russian emigrates
who become trapped in Mongolia when the country had gained

(34:09):
a dependence from China and we're trying to get out
because Mongolia just aligned itself with the USSR. And these
Russians were former members of the pro Zarus White Army,
which as as as as as we know from the show,
had been defeated by the combined efforts of Great Hero
pod Alum Nestor mock Nos anarchist Black Army, and the

(34:29):
Bolshevik Red Army in the Russian Civil War. So there's
a bunch of these Russian dudes in Mongolia, and because
John's incredibly fluent in Russian, she's able to just sort
of extract them and convince, convince these people that work
for him. And this is where John starts building up
the core of what's going to be a very dangerous
and incredibly formidable army. Um he's he gains about is

(34:51):
like three thousand Russian infantry infantrymen who are you know
that they're well trained, but you know they're just sort
of infantrymen. The big deal here is that he gets
one thousand Russian cavalrymen who aren't with lances, your favorite
Mauser pistols and he's just enormous funk off swords become
basically just the backbone of Drung's new army. Yeah, and
these guys are Cossacks basically, right. I don't I don't

(35:12):
actually think they're Cossacks. I think they're just yeah, I
think I think of just regular Russian coffrey, which is
you know, still just absolutely neverifying, like yeah, like these
people have just fought through the Russian Civil War, which
is like one of the worst wars in history. Yeah, yeah,
and they're just yeah, they're just a bunch of like broken,
dangerous monsters and every everyone, everyone in Chinese terrified of them,

(35:36):
and only accounts are like kind of racist about it.
But it's like, yeah, like Okay, if you were confronted
with a group of people who like have been killing
continuously for like ten years now, and like who probably
read the protocols the elder Zion to their children's bedtime stories,
like I too would be afraid. Yeah, yeah, that they

(35:57):
sound terrifying. They were, Um, they probably have a couple
of ethnic cleansings under their belt to get to China. Now,
the white Russians also importantly bring another piece of technology
from the Russian Civil war armored trains. Yeah, there's a
good train stuff here. There is not a goddamn thing

(36:18):
I love more in the world than a good armored
train story. Yeah, there's there's some Sadly I can't get
into full thingre but there's one of these trains is
absolutely wild. Like one of these trains was like a
train that the Czech Ilesion had taken to like flee,
so they they'd like taken it across half of Russia
to like flee and ends up in the hands of
the Japanese and then John gets ahold of it here

(36:39):
and then he starts to corporate into his army. And
this is also great because so the Chinese Worlder period,
this is like the other great armored train war O
in the Russian Civil War. Now, these trains, these trains
are and they performed extremely well in this war, which
is sort of weird because normally they don't perform that
great because they have this problem where like, okay, so

(37:00):
if you just cut the tracks in front of them,
they're kind of useless. But that is the downside of trains. Yeah,
but you know when when they don't do this, you
get essentially is a troop transport of tank and an
artillery battery roll up into one, and this combined with
the Russian cavalry, makes Jong's army incredibly fast, and this

(37:22):
speed gives them like a really deadly edge against the
sort of slower and worst trained Worlord armies that are
going to sort of serve John Well in the upcoming war. Now, okay,
we've talked about the right Russian cavalry, We've talked about
the armored trains, so I think it's time we induced
we introduced Jong's third secret weapon, the baby squads. Okay,

(37:44):
all right, I'm I'm I'm excited to hear about this. Ya.
So the baby Squads are Jong's special army of child
soldiers who are commanded by his son, who is also
a child. Now, when we say child, are we talking
like Garrison child or are we talking like child asked child?
You know? So the estimates vary on this. They seem

(38:08):
to have been in their early teens, okay, like like eleven. Okay, yeah,
it's it's you know, but you yeah, I mean some
of them are child child, some of them are like
older tweens. Yeah, And you know what's interesting about them
those so they get their own like incredibly fancy uniforms

(38:31):
and they get trained with these. John has custom made
German rifles that can be handled by children, like imported,
Like he breaks a weapons in Bargo. Do you get
these custom made German rifles that children can use? I mean,
you know what I always say, if you're going to
arm children, you gotta go with German guns. Nobody knows

(38:55):
arming small children and sending them into war like the Germans.
You know, that's just that's just historical fact. Yeah. Yeah,
you have historical experience combined with quality craftsmanship. I mean,
they just got through a war that with where they
participated in a battle called the Slaughter of the Innocence
because they sent so many children off to die. You know,

(39:15):
I I They're the right people to go to for
child rifles, is what I'm saying. Yeah, you know, it's
a good choice. And you know, I okay, so interestingly,
so as bes as I can tell, the Baby squadeous
sort of like a pet project that John gives to
his like teenage son. But there you know, but all accounts,
they're extremely well paid and well fed, which makes him
one of like three units and Jong's entire army that

(39:38):
is like paid on time and fed, so you know,
like to be fed or strong. Also, every like literally
every faction in this war is also using child soldiers.
And it's notable that Jong spends like a huge amount
of effort trying to like kick people out of his
army who doesn't think you're fit to fight, So like

(39:58):
he kicks like three tho and troops out of his
army for either being bandit's bad soldiers just like being
too old or too young. Yeah, that is um, that's
a lot of that's that's okay. Yeah, why And this
is another thing. These armies, the world armies are massive,
like and and you know they and they they kind
of swell dream when battles are happening as sort of

(40:19):
this mass conscription, they like recruit bandit groups. But like,
I mean, there are battles in this war where there's
there's there are single battles with four thousand troops like
this is yeah yeah, but you know, but somehow the
baby squads never get cut up and it's downsizing and
so they seem to have been there until the end
of the war, which you know, all in all, it's

(40:42):
not the worst use of child soldiers I've ever seen,
but it's also not the best so Jong Sung Chong
mid level child soldier users. Yeah, okay, that seems good.
I mean, you know, look, look, it's we've always said
on this show, using children to fight wars for you
is as much an art as it is a science,

(41:03):
you know, And it sounds like he was pretty good
at the science part, but maybe he could have been
a little bit more artful in his use of miners
as as death troopers for sure. Yeah, nobody's per poty's neerfect,
you know, you know, it's it's meeting of that though, right,
Like we're we're gonna get here's something, all right, I'm
gonna attempt to redeem Jong after his child soldier army.

(41:24):
So this is also the point in the story when
John's mother reappears, and it's not clear if they'd like
found each other sometime in between like when when when
she was sold off for grain and when he joined
the army, but by they've reunited and Jong just like
he he like loves his mom, like they literally travel

(41:47):
everywhere together, like every time he goes out to the field,
she's on the train. She just like lavishes her with
gifts and meals, and attention, and you know, and she
she loves out the rest of her life and luxury,
so you know, good for her. She deserves. It's take
care of your mama for sure. Yeah. Yeah, it's just
kind of a shame how her son turned out, question Mark.

(42:08):
I mean, look, you know you you don't. You don't
make a happy mom omelet without breaking a couple of
other people's children eggs. Yeah, and and really, what are
other people's children but fodder for the baby squads. Well,
I mean, the benefit of using children as your soldiers
is that it's very easy to make more children. People

(42:29):
have been doing it for forever. Yeah, it's it's it's
like cutting down trees when they're when they're young. There,
just plant more trees. Yeah, that's why we have so
many trees. Yea. So so in a war starts between
Upe food and his Click, which is based out of Beijing,
and junk Shillings Click, which is based out of Venturia.

(42:51):
And this begins a massive series of seppies battles on
what is the greatest set piece on earth, the Great
Wall of China, And this whole war is fought along
like this is the famous part of the Great Wall
like this is this is this is the part you've
all seen pictures of it. It's the part that was
built by the Being dynasty to keep Demand Choose contained
to Manchuria. Um, you know. And and this means that

(43:12):
in order to get from Beijing to Manchuria, and Jong
zong Chong is in Manchuria attempting to invade Beijing, you
have to go through one of these very small number
of heavily guarded passes. And it's these passes that the
Great Wall of China was built the fortify. So each
of their armies sort of mass and their respective side
of the Great Wall, and they try, they try to
prepare a force away to fight the four sort of

(43:34):
forced away through the passes. Now while everyone else is
fighting this just like incredibly bloody, pointless stalemate. At one
of the largest passes, Jong moves up to attack another
smaller pass, hoping to sort of flank Whoope Foo's army,
and Cheong immediately realizes that the passes way under defended
and just storms his way through it. But realizing that
he was just sort of alone on whoope food side

(43:55):
of the mountain, he said, he he sits in the
entrance and he waits for his chance to strike, and
that chance is going to come after what I can
I can only describe as absolute clown ship from one
of whopefoo subordinates cost him everything. So another very crucial
mountain pass is held by the worst commander in upe

(44:19):
foo his army. This is a guy, is the guy
who he's a general, but he's been given a general
just like because his brother is the president. Now, who's
assumption is that this past it is literally impossible to
group defending defending it because it's narrow and there's an
artillery unit, and so we'll put the chiller unit there
assuming that. Okay, if anyone comes to the past, she's

(44:39):
both with our chillery and who's who looks at this
guy is like, okay, so we need to keep him
out of the fighting, because you put him anywhere where
he can command troops, he's going to screw everything up.
So we're gonna put him in this pass. It'll be fine.
You can't possibly not not hold it. This would becomes
the single greatest mistake of Whoopefoo's entire career. His quote

(45:01):
unquote general and I'm using this term incredibly loosely develops
this like incredibly elaborate scheme where he's gonna send his
troops through the past to learn the enemy army back
through it so that he can shell the enemy army
after learning the minute. You know, if this is like,
if you study any military history at all, it's like, Okay,
this plan is increasingly incredibly convoluted. There's no way it's
gonna work. What happens instead is that his general's troops. Okay,

(45:28):
so they go out and they retreat back into the past.
But this guy mistakes his troops for the enemy and
kills them all with his own artillery. Excellent general, Yeah,
that's great, great stuff. And the guy on the other
on the other side of the past, the commander on
their side of the past, this guy named Han, and
Han watches his opponent blows up, blowing up his entire army,
rips his shirt off, and just like charges into the past,

(45:51):
barre chested into the past is minefield. Now between four
and five thousands of Hans troops die in this attack,
but by by what I can only describe as just
an actual act of God, Han just like survives this.
And you know this is he disappears into the fabric history,

(46:11):
having won a war by just doing a parody of
Dudes Rock by charging Shirt Loves into a mine field. Yeah,
he just fucking Leroy Jenkins to victory. Absolutely incredible. And
what happens next, So so Whoope Foo hears about this
charge and it's like, okay, this morons charging through the past.
It's fine, we have the artillery unit there. What he
doesn't know is that the artillery has used all of

(46:31):
their ammo showing their own troops. So Hans troops take
the pass, and the rest of Jong Jo Ding's army
just fledged through the great Wall. And it's at this
moment where Whoopey Foo is betrayed by one of his
subordinates and everything falls apart, and so Whoope Food makes
he makes one last desperate attempt to sort of like regroup,
and for for a very brief moment, it looks like

(46:53):
this is gonna work. But unfortunately for him, Jong Jung
Chong sees his sees his chance. He's been he's been
sitting on their side of his past the whole battle.
He sees his chance, and he makes it. He launches
an attack that splits Uope Foo's remaining army in half
and with just a single attack end zoope Food's career
or you know, Okay, so this is what you would

(47:13):
think would happen in a normal war when you lose
your entire army, all of your territory, and all of
your political support collapses. However, welcome to the Woolard period,
where the rules are made up, the points don't matter,
and whoope foods. Somehow, after literally losing everything, we'll be
back in part two. God, this whole war, why not?

(47:35):
I I don't believe in this cancel culture bullshit. So
look if I I feel like, as a warlord, you're
not really getting good until you've lost two or three armies, right,
just you gotta you gotta, you gotta Yeah, it's it's
it's um, it's like riding a bike. Right, You're gonna
fall a couple of times, you're gonna lose a couple

(47:56):
of armies. You're gonna get tens of thousands of people killed.
Like that's just you know, there's no avoiding it. Yeah,
And you know the product of this is that if
you look at the full history of this period, like
it's basically a comic book plot, Like there there are
dozens of characters who lose everything and then reappear and

(48:16):
lose everything because just no one, no one ever dies
until you see a body, and even then it's like
a Marvel movie. Yeah yeah, it's incredible, except it's somehow
less coherent. Yeah yeah, I mean it's one of those things.
The lesson here about all these guys who lose everything

(48:37):
repeatedly and keep coming back to lose more things and
then some cases eventually win, is that what determines winners
and losers in history is that the the winners lose
just as often as the losers, but they have no
shame about it. It's true, and you've got to keep
that in mind. So never ask about how your actions
affect other people. Um use them as tools and walk

(49:01):
into the pages of history like this guy. Yeah, and
the other really important thing here, betray your allies at
the first opportunity. Oh yeah, that goes all the people.
All the people who do well on this war immediately
betray all of their friends, and they get portray their friends.
I don't, I actually cannot. I mean I absolutely will, Sophie,

(49:21):
because as soon as the dogs in your house bark,
I threw you under the bus. You know, that's mean,
that's why I'm successful, Sophie throwing my friends under the bus.
But you know who I won't throw under the bus
the products and services that support this podcast until they
stopped supporting this podcast, at which point they're dead to me.

(49:47):
We're back, all right, What else we got now? Joan
makes it like a bandit from this warm So he
is a bandit? Oh yeah, I mean she He is
now the supreme bandit, which is really what being a
warlord is. You know. He tries to take Shanghai in
sort of late nine, but another warlord gets there first

(50:07):
and they do this really awkward dance or both of
them occupy parts of the city, and everyone in Shanghai
is like, oh God, they're going to fight a battle here.
Please go fight somewhere else, don't destroy the prestis city.
And so eventually, like this winds up involving a bunch
of foreign governments and there's this huge set in negotiations
and eventually the two warlords workout in agreement where they're

(50:28):
both gonna pull out of the city. Now, the other
warlord abides by the agreement, pulls his army out. Jong
just doesn't leave. He just stays there. And occupies the city.
And you know, it says several months in the n
he finally gets in order to leave Shanghai, but he's

(50:48):
only he's only sort of convinced to leave the city
after he's given full control of his home problem with
to Shendong, as well as the really frankly delightful title
that we should bring act banded extermination Commander. Yeah, yeah,
he gets at for like a couple of other provinces,
and and it's it's in this moment as he as

(51:10):
he sort of takes Shanghai and it's given control of
his own province of Shandong, that he really becomes the
dog meat general. Now, Chong was never like the best dude,
even before he was given absolute power over an entire
province and an enormous funk off army. I mean, you know,
to reproprise the old Antie Nixon song power Corrups. We

(51:30):
know that by heart, but you have to admit Jong
had a head start, and just just the moment she
takes real power, she goes wild. And one of the
immediate products of this is he just starts collecting just
this unbelievable pile of nicknames. His most famous is Ko

(51:53):
joan Jing, or the dog Meat General, a title he
gains because of his reputation for playing a Chinese gambling
aim once like Domino based, and for some indescribable reason,
people of Manchuria called this game eating dog meat. I
don't know why this is. Like, the best I can
come up with is that one of the words kind
of sounds like dog who knows now now Confusingly, I've

(52:17):
also seen claims that he did actually eat dog meat
because he thought it would make it more virile. But sure, yeah,
but you know, the sourcing on this is not great
and and it's it has no relation to why he's
called the dog Meat General. So I just to make
it clear, He's called the dog Meat General because this
dude he spends so much time gambling. Like half the

(52:38):
descriptions of him that you read are just like from
some diplomat or from like some high society person just
ran into him at a gambling den. Now I'm just
gonna read out his list of the rest of his nicknames,
because like lordal Money, this dude has more nicknames than
any other person I've ever heard of. Okay, his nicknames
the tiger, big Tongue, blue Sky, the Dragon. We we

(53:03):
gotta have to take a second here. Why why half
of these? I have no idea, Like it's really weird.
He just every every source has like a different thing
of nicknames. Um, yeah, well we'll, we'll, we'll explain some
of them. He's yeah, he has the Dragon. I think
the Dragon is because he has this like the the

(53:26):
I don't know he he has he has some sort
of complicated relationship to the Dragon Emperor that we're who's
a mythological figure. We're gonna get you in a little bit. Um,
he's called the start start that list again, the Tiger,
big Tongue, Blue Sky, the Dragon, the red bearded Bandits,
the Monster, the Linky, the lanky General, the three doesn't knows,

(53:47):
war Lord seventy two, cannon Jong, the general with three
long legs, old and the long leg General. Yeah, okay,
we're gonna get that part in the second. But so
his his second moments from those nickname Yeah, okay, you know, well,
well we'll we'll, we'll, we'll do this, okay, so old

(54:08):
eighties six that one. Yeah, so as you've gathered three
of these are the last three these ones are just
about his dick. Um old eighties six is the most
interesting one because supposedly it's because this dick is as
long as a stack of eighties six Mexican silver pastos.
That's amazing. Now that that just in brings up so
many questions because we're again in China, So, okay, is

(54:31):
the paso anyone's go to for the size of the
sky still so so. Mexican silver pasos have long been
used in hard currency in China, dating back to the hundreds,
when the Ming's instatable demand for silver formed the base
of the Being currency system. That results in them importing
a huge amount of the silver that that's that's removed
from Spanish control of minds in Latin America. So yeah,

(54:52):
Being dynasty. Uh, they do great things for quality of life,
are also kind of responsible for all of the genocides
in Latin America. Not great, Yeah, well yeah, I mean
it should to be fair, they didn't know where it
was coming from, but yeah, they just needed to measure
people's dicks. Yeah yeah, And you know, as sort of
various currencies collapsing the Warlord period, people keep using Mexican

(55:14):
silver like pasos as coins are just worth their weight
in silver. I'm I'm just I'm still I'm still working
through in my head the Wow, the boss has a
huge dick. Hey, get some of that silver. I want
I want to I want to figure out exactly how
this dick shakes out in Paso so So. One of
my one of my friends, who has experienced with Mexican

(55:35):
coins from this period, calculated that a six Paso stack
on top of each other means that this dude's dick
is eight point eight inches long. Yeah, and you know,
this is this is the kind of thing that like
you'd expect Okay, this is like the kind of myth
making you'd expect to get from warlords. But like stunning Lee,
this like seems to be true. Yeah, I mean eight

(55:56):
eight point six inches. If we're if he was like, yeah,
he's got like a fourteen fifteen inch dick, I'd be like, Okay,
well this sounds like some some raspute and nonsense. But
eight point six is like, yeah, it's pretty good sized dick.
But that's not like we're not talking outside of the
realm of possibility here, especially for a dude as big
as this. Eight point six inches for a near seven
feet is just kind of like, yeah, that sounds like

(56:17):
it sounds about right. Yeah, and he you know, as
as as as you guess this dude just fox all
the time. Yes, I I had gathered that from his nicknames.
I'm pretty sure the tongue one is about fucking two. Yeah,
I think so. Um there's another one that's like famous,
which is about the three doesn't know his general, which

(56:40):
is because so his his most famous quote is that
he doesn't know how many he doesn't know how many
troops he has, he doesn't know how much money he has,
and he doesn't know how many women is having sex
with it any given moments. It's the most warlord ship ever.
I mean, you're not making being a warlords sound like
a bad gig. Yeah, you know. And this this, this

(57:03):
seems like as good a time as any to mention
that this is the period where John starts traveling around
with special train cars for his forty two concubines, the
names of which he just didn't know and thus her
for Yeah, yeah, you're a war lord. I don't expect
you to know anyone's name. Yeah, you know, you know
so So, contrary to Young, I spent a pretty good

(57:26):
amount of time trying to figure out who these women were,
and there's just there's just like a really depressing lack
of interest in his women's lives, just like across the
whole academic literature. What I was able to find out
about them was that half of them are Russians who
came with the White Army, and the rest of them
are either sort of Chinese, Japanese, are American, but we
don't really know how John got his hands on them.

(57:50):
These are a foreign yeah yeah, and that that's like
one of the big things that all of the sort
of like media people pick up on and it's like, wow,
he has like white prostitute and it's like okay, oh yeah,
I'm sure that makes the news back in New York.
Yeah yeah. Now, it's possible that some of these people
have been sex workers in Shanghai, but it's also possible

(58:13):
that Jong's troops and the white Russians do this literally
all the time, just literally grabbed them off the street
at random. Because you know, if if there's this, we're
starting to get at the downside of the boiler period,
which is that like, yeah, so if you're like a woman,
like a woman in the street of China, someone can
just like grab you off the street and you're concubine now.

(58:34):
But you know, and what I think is really depressing
about this, this is like like we don't know what
the relationship to him was. Um, all of the sources
they don't even agree as to like like half of
the sources called them concubines and half of them call
them wives, and like we don't know if they they're
against their will, we don't know if they're getting paid.
We just we don't know anything about them. And it's

(58:56):
extremely frustrating, especially because chong Hers have had kids with
some of these women, but we don't know what happened
to them. We don't know what happened to the women.
We don't have to the kids, and you know, and
there's a lot of other very weird stuff here. I
saw some evidence that some of the dudes that John
was sleeping with for men, which implies it like he's

(59:17):
by But again, this is one of those I mean,
they're also when you're that kind of powerful person, it's
almost less about sexuality and more about just like power,
like you just fun people because they can't not fuck
you because you're the warlord. I think that is some
of these dudes like it's almost not worth kind of

(59:37):
trying to box them into a sexual category. It's kind
of like how rape is less about sex than about
power for this kind of person who power is everything
for it's just like he can he just sucks. Yeah,
And and there's a sort of interesting consequence of this,
which is that like if you look at like John's life,
he kind of just turns into this just like like

(59:58):
physical embodiment of structural of forces. It's like, okay, so
like what is the patriarchy? Right, It's like, well, here
is this dude whose whole thing is that he like
he literally physically reduces women to numbers. And you get
this with sort of in various different ways, with like
state violence, like the banking system, where like a lot
of what Jong sort of reveals is that it's just
all of these systems are just a dude with a
lot of guns. And if you yeah, you know, if

(01:00:21):
you just give, we're watching ship go down in Gaza
right now. All of the systems today are still just
dudes with guns and dress it up more and less. Yeah. Well, really,
the only difference between it is is the amount of
legitimacy you have mm hm And yeah, you know, this

(01:00:41):
legitimacy problem is like, this is a big thing for
all the warlords, and Jong just doesn't try to solve it,
which is what makes the unique. Everyone else is doing
this like oh I do I plant gardens, I I
do public works, and John is just like nah, I'm
just gonna have fun. Ok. Yeah. You know the consequence
of this, though, is while while John's like jet sitting

(01:01:03):
around with a train full of like maybe sex slaves,
what's happening in Shendong the provinces just been hand to
control over is oh boy? Um, so some of it
is pretty funny, Like so when when he leaves his
office every day when he's in Shendong, he he has
like all the streets cleared, and then he has a
bunch of people like sprinkle clean water on the road

(01:01:25):
to prepare prepare, like prepared for him to walk on,
which is just like this is some great petty dictator
ship like this. And he also, you know, he does
the thing a lot of your getters do, which is
he starts issuing his own paper currency. Hell yeah, hell
he has his face on it. Well, so this is
why I couldn't find much about it because and the
reason is for this is she just gets bored of

(01:01:46):
it and stops printing it, and then after that she
starts making everyone's military staffs his money. Oh man, I
you know, I'm on board with of this guy everything,
but the probable rape, Like yeah, you know, and I
think this is this is this is what puts him
like the fact that he's not using his own currency,
that he's using military stamps. This is like what puts

(01:02:07):
him like a tier above the rest of the world lords,
because the rest of the warlords just like whatever, I'll
print my own money. But John's like, okay, so these
stamps are made in Manchuria, which means I don't have
to pay for them, I just get set them. So
so if if I use these stamps his money, I
don't have to like spend the money to like make
your own fake paper currency. Hey look, you don't. You

(01:02:31):
don't get an army, lose an army and then get
another army, and then lose another army and then get
another army unless you're pragmatic. And you know, we can
we can see some examples as pragmatism. So there's a
there's a famous story of like, at one point a merchant.
It's just like these are stamps. This is not money.
So John has a dude taken out of his shop,
beaten and shot, which, you know, funnily enough, this is

(01:02:53):
how states forced originally forced people to use money, and
it like worked because yeah, it's like money is the
thing that like when when the state asked you for it,
you have to give them give it to them. Yeah. Yeah,
and he also so the other one thing he starts
doing in this period is he starts going to banks

(01:03:13):
and just like pulling out guns and telling them to
give him loans, which yeah, that's I mean, look, I
am currently in the process of wanting to buy a house,
but a lifetime of shit credit is making that difficult,
and I might do the same thing. That seems like
a pretty good idea. This is one of his best ideas.

(01:03:37):
And it's great because I will pay the loan, but
I am going to get it at gunpoint fucking credit. Yes, absolutely, Yeah,
they are funny play about this. So there's like a
bunch of banks in Shendong that have been open for
like like like a lot, like a couple of hundred years,
and she drives like six of them out of business
because he just like takes all of their money and loans. Unfortunately,

(01:03:59):
now we have to come to the really bad stuff. Yeah,
you know, we've been having fun, but oh boy, I
hate it when people do this to me because I
normally do this to people. Yea, and only techis like
fourteen pages. Yeah. So one of the most famous accounts
of what's happening in chang Ndong from this period comes

(01:04:20):
from a guy named Joseph Stillwell, who Okay, I need
to mention the outset. Still Will enormous racist, huge piece
of shit. Um, he's a white guy in China in
this period. Yeah, naturally Yeah, but like naturally be because
he's incredibly racist and a piece of ship. He goes
on to be an incredibly important American general in World
War Two who fights in the like the China and

(01:04:41):
India theater. So that's great. He's like still beloved in
the US for reasons. But you know, his accounts, his
account of it like matches with other stuff I've seen,
so I saw i'd start with that. So so still
Will's there, Still Wills in Shandong in and what what

(01:05:01):
he describes is the huge swass the population made homeless
by war huddling together desperately in packed city streets without
even a tent. The shelt of them at night, bodies
begin to pile up on the streets, but there's no
one to take them away, and the corpses stayed where
they fell as famine ravaged the province. Shown solution, if
it could be called that, to this problem of famine

(01:05:22):
is industrial waste. So one of Manchuria's chief exports in
this period were soybean cakes, which is it's basically like
it's it's a bunch of massive soybean that's been smashed together.
And I want to say at the outset, so when
I call these cakes, right, these are cakes in the
sense that like cakes a uranium or cakes, like they're
not food. This this is a this is an industrial product.

(01:05:42):
And you know what you do of them with them
is that you you know, you shipped you shipped them
somewhere else and then you squeeze the oil out of them.
And that that oil is used to make like it's
is using like a number of like important industrial processes.
And what at least behind is this even worse like
quote unquote cake, that's it's it's waste materially people use
it as fertilizer or somethings use it to feed pigs.

(01:06:04):
And this is what Jong starts to import from Manchuria
and used to feed the refugees. Yeah, like I need
to reiterate this. This is not food. This is an
industrial waste product. It's edible in the sense that it
will fill your stomach and temporarily stop hunger payings without

(01:06:25):
actually providing you with nutrition. And and it might just
poison you because again, like the usons are being just
taken from a factory, right like you know, and this
is this is this is what's happening to people that
he's trying to help, the people that he's not trying
to help. So I think that the best way to
sort of understand how brutal his army is in this

(01:06:47):
period is that everywhere his army goes, it starts to
change the leg the language of the provinces, because every
time they find a new way to murder someone, it
gets popular, like people have to comp with a new
term for it. So for example, one of the one
of the things in the beginning of this is there
there's an expression that becomes popular called to cut apart
to catch the light, which means like taking a skull,

(01:07:10):
splitting it into and like exposing the inside of it
to the sun. Yeah, and you know, but the thing
is like that that that you know, you you split,
you split enough skull s, it's like okay, whatever, And
so the strips get bored. And when they got forward
that account with another one, which is they would split
schools in half, like fully clean in half, and then
they'd find a telephone poll that's like connected by a

(01:07:31):
wire further telephone pole, and they'd hang the skulls on
each end of the telephone pole, at opposite ends of
the wire, with their ears like pressed up to the
to the things that looked like they were listening to
the telephone. And this becomes so widespread the phrase he
had been made to listen to the telephone becomes like
another popular expression in the province. Jesus, that's dark. Yeah,
it's you know. This whole ring of terror became known

(01:07:53):
as the steel sword policy after Drang's policy of just
decapitating his political opponents and splitting their heads with swords.
And when I say that was pretty straightforward, but you
know when I say this is his policy, right, I
mean he is literally personally doing this, like he is
the guy holding the sword shopping people's skulls open action. Yeah, yeah,
and you know, and when when you when when you're
when when you're six ft seven and you have a
bunch of really sharp swords, like yeah, you can. Mean again,

(01:08:17):
he's making a lot of calls I too would make
in his situation. And there's you know, there's, there's there's
and I think I think you will also appreciate this
one as a member of the press. So very early
on when he first started takes power, uh, one of
the earliest instances that said the steel sword policies, there's
an editor of a newspaper who like publishes an article
criticizing him. Yeah. Yeah, so John has the newspaper editor

(01:08:41):
dragged out of his office and shot in the street,
and then like you know, after that, all the newspapers
sort of stopped criticizing him. Now, and I should mention this,
what John and his men are doing here is not
just random violence. John has the same legit legitimacy problem
that every other warlord does, and his solution to essentially
just to cut the gory and not and kill anyone

(01:09:02):
who opposes him in ways. So public and so violent
that no one would ever dared do it again. And
this has a devastating effect on the population in Shandong.
The effects of constant warfare, bandits, droughts, and locusts, combined
with the sheer brutality of John's extraction to wealth to
leave four to nine million people like including my family,
by the way, who are who are in this problems?

(01:09:24):
In the period on the brink of starvation, which luckily
that part's not red, you know, but you know, to
have a family connection to a story, Yeah, yeah, I
discovered it in the middle of and like we we
have some records from that period, and I was like,
I'm not going to read these, like I'm just not. Yeah,
it seems like it would be pretty yeah. Yeah. And

(01:09:48):
so while while the masses ate fertilizer to stay alive,
John was partying with an endless succession of local sycophants.
He left as every word for a chance to turn
the chunk of his favor into a chunk of his
stolen wealth. It was gambl fucking constantly, just completely wasted
literally all the time, Like driving around with this person
personalized Belgian dining set in his personalized training with a

(01:10:10):
bunch of women taken from like who knows where exactly
the absolute time of his life. Yeah, And that that's
the image I'm going to leave you with today, Chong
Zong Chung living out as wildest, Yeah, while the people
of China died in droves around him. And in part two,
we're gonna see what happens when an increasingly out of
touch ruling class leases people to die in birddhism in

(01:10:32):
the streets where they protest, because in part two, those
ordinary people are going to start to fight back. Well,
that's your brother. It was off the internet for a while.
Look ah well, Chris, this has been a great episode. Um.
I'm still more on this guy's side than not because

(01:10:55):
I love me a warlord. Um, And it sounds like
he's doing he's doing the right thing right, He's he's
living it up, committing horrible crimes against humanity, drunk off
his ass, just just just being a being a king
about it. So, I don't know, I'm excited to see
where this guy goes. Yeah, ye, do you have any

(01:11:16):
plauables to plug? Yes? So I guess I'm I'm at
me c h R three or since be destroyed, dude,
on Twitter. Um, yeah, I have a substack called the
Long twenty one century, which I swear I do occasionally
post to it. And then I'm also not a turf Yeah, great, great,

(01:11:41):
all right, well we will be back with more of
this guy and more um of of of horrible war crimes.
I'm gonna guess more horrible war crimes, Chris. Yeah, if anything,
they get worse. Yeah, well check in for that. And remember,
if you're gonna be a warlord, you kind of got
to go all the way. M hm

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