Spinach supplement may increase muscle strength

New research has examined the potential of spinach extract as an enhancer of athletic performance. The active compound in spinach extract significantly improves muscle strength, leading the study authors to recommend banning the supplement in sports.

Share on Pinterest

Spinach contains an extract that could boost athletic performance.

Rich in calcium, magnesium, and iron, some people call spinach a “superfood.”

Some studies have suggested that spinach has a variety of health benefits, such as keeping cancer at bay, preventing asthma, lowering blood pressure, and helping those with diabetes manage their condition.

New research looks at another potential benefit of the plant, although the study examined an extract from spinach in the form of a dietary supplement rather than the food itself.

Specifically, researchers led by Maria Parr — a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany — examined the effect of ecdysterone on athletic performance and muscle strength.

Ecdysterone is the main compound in spinach extract. It is a phytosteroid — that is, a steroid that occurs naturally in plants and belongs to a class called phytosterols, which are “structurally similar to cholesterol.”

Previous studies in mammals have shown that ecdysteroids have a wide range of beneficial effects. In the 1980s, researchers dubbed ecdysterone the “Russian secret,” following suspicions that Russian Olympic athletes were using it as a performance boosting supplement.

Other studies have demonstrated that ecdysterone “increases protein synthesis in skeletal muscle.” In fact, as Prof. Parr explains, previous tests in vitro and in vivo showed that ecdysterone is more potent than other steroids banned in sports, such as methandienone.

The new study paper appears in the journal Archives of Toxicology.

Studying ecdysterone and muscle strength

For their research, Prof. Parr and team carried out a double blind study involving 46 young athletes.

The researchers divided them into two groups: one that received spinach extract (the intervention group) and another that received a placebo. Neither the participants nor the researchers knew what they were taking, and the intervention lasted for 10 weeks.

During this time, the people in the intervention group received “[d]ifferent doses of ecdysterone containing supplements” to ascertain their effects on performance enhancement.

The scientists took blood and urine samples and analyzed them for ecdysterone and “potential biomarkers of performance enhancement.” They also did a “comprehensive screening for prohibited performance enhancing substances.”

Higher muscle mass and better performance

Results revealed that the participants who took ecdysterone had “[s]ignificantly higher increases in muscle mass.” In vitro experiments replicated the findings, and Prof. Parr and colleagues showed that ecdysterone interacts with the estrogen receptor beta. The tests also revealed significant “increases in one-repetition bench press performance.”

However, the blood and urine tests displayed no signs of liver or kidney toxicity.

As Prof. Parr and team explain in their study paper, “These data underline the effectivity of an ecdysterone supplementation with respect to sports performance.”

They conclude:

“Our results strongly suggest the inclusion of ecdysterone in the list of prohibited substances and methods in sports in [the] class […] ‘other anabolic agents.'”

Prof. Parr adds that the participants who took a low dose of the supplement received two pills of ecdysterone daily, which is the equivalent of anywhere between 250 grams (g) and 4 kilograms (kg) of spinach, depending on the quality of the plant.

So, to reap the benefits of such a low dose, a person would have to consume 250 g to 4 kg of spinach every day for 10 weeks. To mimic the high dose in the study, a person would have to consume anywhere between 1 and 16 kg of spinach every day for 10 weeks.

Did the late Romans just forget how to make concrete?

First, some background on Roman concrete. Concrete is best understood as a type of mortar. Mortar (the stuff that holds courses of bricks or blocks together) is typically composed of water, sand, and lime. There are variations - the Chinese, famously, made mortar by mixing lime with sticky rice - but in the Classical Mediterranean, the water, sand, and lime formula was always standard.

A view from inside the concrete vaults of the Basilica of Maxentius

Roman concrete differed from Roman mortar by virtue of its "secret ingredient" - the volcanic ash known as pozzolana, which was used in place of regular sand. This was really just a case of good geological luck on the Romans' part: Rome happened to be located near large deposits of pozzolana (later, even larger deposits would be discovered on the Bay of Naples). Roman masons quickly discovered that mortar made with pozzolana was much stronger that mortar made with regular sand. And so concrete was born.

It should be noted here that not all Roman concrete was made with pozzolana. Most Italian concrete was, and pozzolana was occasionally shipped to (coastal) cities in other parts of the Empire. But there were deposits of volcanic ash with similar properties in the provinces (above in the Greek islands). Roman builders eventually discovered, moreover, that a fairly good concrete could be made by using crushed terracotta in place of pozzolana.

Contrary to what you might think, the Romans were seldom adventurous builders. Roman architects received no formal training, and had no way of mathematically modeling forces or stresses or other things likely to cause the collapse of buildings and careers. As a result, they tended to be very conservative in their use of building materials. At first, they only used concrete to save time when building thick walls: instead of making the wall of building four or five brick courses thick, they simply built brick facings and filled the interior of the wall with a mixture of rubble and concrete.

Sometime in the first century BCE, the Romans discovered that concrete made with pozzolana could harden underwater - in fact, thanks to chemical reactions the Romans knew nothing about, saltwater actually strengthened the material, forming nearly unbreakable mineral bonds. So in the waning days of the Republic, Romans began to build "artificial harbors" like the famous example at Caesarea Maritima. But the great days of concrete architecture still lay ahead.

Only in the mid-first century CE, under the stimulus of imperial funding and imperial demands, did concrete begin to be used to create the spectacular vaults and domes that are the greatest achievement of Roman architecture. The revolutionary moment came in the reign of Nero, when the architects Severus and Celer (about whom we know nothing) created a spectacular series of concrete rooms for Nero's infamously decadent Golden House. Their spectacular achievement followed nearly a century of experimenting with vaults, primarily in the large, imperially-sponsored bath buildings. But once they showed what concrete could do, the creative floodgates, for the first time in Roman architectural history, were truly open.

The next century and a half witnessed the construction of the most famous Roman monuments: the Colosseum (supported by a colossal concrete foundation), the Pantheon (crowned by a spectacular concrete dome), the Baths of Caracalla (roofed by an awesome series of concrete vaults and domes), and so on.

Concrete was also used in the provinces, but always on a much smaller scale. The basic reason was simple: the Roman emperors, by an incredible margin the wealthiest men in the Empire, seldom sponsored building projects outside Rome. In large provincial cities like Alexandria or Antioch or Ephesus, very impressive building projects were undertaken (in fact, I wrote my dissertation on some of them). But these were financed by the benefactions of wealthy citizens (often working in concert); and these men, for all their wealth, could never create anything on the scale of the concrete-crowned projects in Rome. As a result, provincial concrete tended to be used more conservatively. This was not solely a matter of scale - in the Greek east, for example, a well-established tradition of fine masonry ensured that stone, not concrete, was used in domes - but without imperially-sponsored scale or imperially-sponsored funding, the use of concrete had a fairly limited scope.

Once the emperors stopped paying for large-scale construction projects, concrete largely reverted to what it had been before the Roman architectural revolution: a useful filler for thick walls.

Roman concrete was not forgotten in the early middle ages, at least not in Byzantium: Procopius (Buildings, 1.11-18-20) mentions Justinian using Roman hydraulic concrete to build a new harbor in Constantinople. But after this, aside from a few mentions in Isidore of Seville's Etymologies (e.g. 15.8.1), concrete virtually vanishes from the literary record.

The domes of Justinian's Haghia Sophia, the last great product of Roman engineering, were made of brick bedded in concrete. But after Justinian, the troubles that overtook the Eastern Empire (like those that had destroyed the imperial order in the west a century earlier) virtually ended monumental building for centuries. And in those centuries, concrete vaults and domes became, like so much else across the former Roman world, mementos of a vanished past.

On the techniques of laying and modeling Roman concrete, I refer you to https://toldinstone.com/the-pantheon/

Is the European countries more capitalistic than the United States?

Capitalism, as first theorized by Adam Smith, involves private ownership of the means of production as well as free & fair competition, which is supposed to channel human greed towards a greater good, namely more innovation and cheaper goods for all.

Monopolies and oligopolies:

• As you can see, monopolies and oligopolies were frowned upon from the beginning, which is why most countries nowadays, including the United States, have a competition authority or regulator.
• The latter is responsible for the enforcement of competition laws, the breakup of cartels (an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the express purpose of maintaining prices at a high level), the removal of barriers to entry, and the eradication of anti-consumer practices.
• You see, without free and fair competition, capitalism is moot and counterproductive. This incomplete system, known as crony-capitalism, enables long-established businesses to reign supreme and thrive without risk-taking, thanks to previously amassed wealth and high connections.
• The crony-capitalism index, while not recognized internationally due to its limitations, is still our best tool in ascertaining whether a country is plagued by crony capitalism.
• It ranks the USA as the 17th most crony-capitalistic country in the world – one of the four developed countries in the top 20, most of which are developing or emergent countries, such as China or Russia – above France and under the United Kingdom.

Startups & nascent businesses:

• The importance of entrepreneurship in capitalistic systems cannot be ignored. In fact, without entrepreneurs, the virtues of capitalism would not last. Indeed, sooner or later, a handful of businesses would outlast viz. outcompete or buy-out, their competitors, and monopolies would ensue.
• Startups act as a new supply of competitors, which serves to deter established businesses from lowering their guard. The problem, however, is that the cost of entry in many industries, such as the automotive industry or certain arms industries, is exceedingly high.
• Moreover, using their available resources, already established businesses are able to sell at a very low price and still make a profit, thereby ensuring their continued control over the market.
• It is thus imperative for governments to come to the aid of nascent businesses and startups not only by relaxing regulations as much as possible and reducing bureaucracy, but also by providing them with financial aid in the form of low-interest loans, subsidies, or even tax exemptions–none of which happen in the US, at least not as often as in European countries.

Equality of opportunity

• When Adam Smith first theorized what would come to be known as capitalism, he understood that, in order for inequality of outcome to be perceived as legitimate, equality of opportunity and rights would first have to be achieved. To that end, he even argued against inheritance, which he thought conferred an unfair advantage to the children of the wealthy.
• Adam Smith’s rationale would later be dubbed as “Bourgeois Morality” by Karl Marx, who thought that equality of opportunity could not be achieved under capitalism due to its exploitative nature.
• For the most part, even in the United States, equality in rights has been achieved but equality of opportunity has yet to be achieved, although upwards mobility has reached a level unseen before.
• With that said, it should come as no surprise to learn that the economic model of European countries, especially that of Scandinavian countries and Switzerland, which have successfully established a functional Welfare State without unnecessarily constraining economic freedom (see Economic Freedom Index), is closer to the ideal of capitalism than the American model.
• After all, access to education and healthcare alongside better infrastructure and transportation ensures that people have access to better opportunities. The entirety of a country’s talent pool is thus used and society more meritocratic.

As you can see, the biggest lie in American politics is that laissez-faire economics is tantamount to capitalism. It is not!

P.-S. – Before any American comments that European countries are Socialist, please understand that European countries practice Social Democracy, which, unlike Socialism, does not encroach on private ownership of the means of production.

Under the aegis of the Welfare State, Social Democracy merely engages in a limited redistribution of Wealth (the output of the means of production), using various Social programs bankrolled by the taxpayer.

It should be said, however, that this economic model, which first originated in Bismarck’s Prussia, was the product of an alliance between renegade Socialists and aristocratic Conservatives, united in their anti-bourgeois attitudes.

Butterfly effect that have happened throughout history.

The decision of a Tang dynasty emperor to give a Turkic nobleman more status led to Central Asia becoming Turkic, the creation of Russia and Turkey, the Spanish colonization of America and eventually the USA.

The year is 742 and the Tang dynasty looks like this:

The Tang is arguably at its peak, the emperor would probably be known as one of the greatest Chinese emperors if not THE greatest emperor had he not made one major error.

The Tang dynasty at the time had something like 45% of the world’s economy and was socially and culturally flourishing, much of the major innovations in economic policy that powered the Song golden age found their roots in Tang dynasty economic policy. It was cosmopolitan, socially vibrant, scientifically advanced and arguably still had some room left to keep going up.

That is, until this guy right here gets promoted to regional warlord of the North:

This is An Lushan, a Turkic-Central Asian nobleman who was in the service of the Tang army in the 7th century AD. As a general he led his troops to defeat several rebellions by Khitans and other tribes on the Northern frontier and as a result gained a lot of power and prestige in the Tang court.

One of his major policies was to bring more non-Han soldiers and generals into the Tang army, so the Emperor says well he’s successful enough in defeating the Khitans and Turks, let’s go ahead and let him get his wish.

An Lushan had somehow managed to get permission to have not one region, but three out of nine military regions on the Northern border and he controlled nearly 50% of the Tang elite cavalry, many of whom were Turkic or Mongolic in origin.

So now An Lushan has a bunch of soldiers whom are more loyal to him than the emperor, and also most of his generals are Turko-Mongol and certainly do not place the emperor over their resident Khagan. He then decided “fuck it, I’m gonna try to create my own dynasty now” which leads to a rebellion named after him and a small dynasty called the Yan dynasty centered around Hebei.

The rebellion caused the Chinese population to drop from ~50 million to 20 million and the Tang dynasty never really recovers from it, had the rebellion not happened the Tang would’ve likely kept going for another century or two considering that the Tang actually managed to stay alive for another century in our timeline even with this rebellion occurring.

Now the Tang dynasty was forced to devolve much central power to regional warlords known as Jiedushi, which meant that the local warlords fragment into much smaller statelets than in previous collapses, for example the Han dynasty collapsed led to the three Kingdoms periods while the Jin dynasty collapse led to again a relatively stable 2–3 kingdom period. The Tang collapsed into 5 dynasties and 10 kingdoms, relatively ripen for something dramatic to happen.

“Even after the difficult suppression of that rebellion, some jiedushi such as the Three Fanzhen of Hebei were allowed to retain their powers due to the weakened state of the court. The jiedushi were one the primary factors which contributed to the political division of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, a period marked by continuous infighting among rival kingdoms, dynasties, and regional regimes established by jiedushi.”

Now, remember the small group that An Lushan managed to suppress as a general the Khitans? Well the Khitans used to be a small semi-nomadic tribe in the Liao river valley that had been a vassal tribe to either the Turkic people in Mongolia or the Tang dynasty, the sudden collapse of Tang hegemony meant they were finally free to expand.

The political environment of Northern China is so fractured that the Khitans whom were originally a weak semi-nomadic polity in Manchuria are able to effectively blitzkrieg themselves into Northern China.

The Khitans then expanded into Mongolia and Northern China, establishing the Liao dynasty.

See that small yellow strip? That is called the 16 prefectures, a small but extremely important territory that completes the great wall, without it the great wall is essentially useless and as a result the Chinese dynasty that reunifies most of the country suddenly has a major problem on their hands.

The Khitans could attack south and retreat north whenever they wanted but the Song couldn’t follow back, as a result of this the Song and Liao fought pretty much non-stop for the first century of their existences, and neither could really make a big dent in each others defenses. Eventually the Song and Liao decided to settle the issue by having the Song pay the Liao a fixed amount of silk and other treasure each year to keep the Khitans from invading and the Song and Liao had peace for a while.

But the Song never really forgot about how a big piece of territory that was supposed to be theirs is in the hands of some barbarians. Even then the Khitans were actually faithful to the treaty, as long as the Song paid up, nothing happened.

One thing that is a common theme throughout history is when a settled civilization is being harassed by a nomadic one, and the settled civilization decides to call up some other nomads to beat up the original ones but then it turns out that the old nomads were becoming more like the sedentary civilization while the new nomads end up beating up the settled civilization even more after they are done.

So the Song never really forgot about how the Khitans took their land and decided to call up another semi-nomadic group of barbarians called the Jurchens (ancestral to the later Manchus) to come destroy the Liao.

Now in the meantime the Liao had actually sinicized to such a degree that when the Mongols rolled around, they actually called the Khitans Chinese and put them in the racial caste system they made as Northern Chinese instead of Semu or Mongol, this is despite the Khitans being very close to Mongols ethnically (The Modern name of China in Mongolian is still derived from the term “Khitan”). The Liao had begun its own process of sedentarization, with the construction of the Liao great wall to block various Mongolic and Turkic tribes and the Khitans began to pick up agriculture.

This meant that the Liao stood no chance against the Jurchens whom were still very much horse barbarians and the Liao got rolled over, but the Liao envoy dispatched to the Song had a warning they really should’ve taken seriously:

“We might’ve been horse barbarians 200 years ago but you guys don’t know, we aren’t those horse barbarians anymore! when the Jurchens take over our lands, they will take over your lands too!”

And what did the Song do? They ignore their advice and begin attacking the Khitans themselves, obviously due to the geography they get totally destroyed and the Jurchens have to finish the Liao themselves and just as the Liao envoys said the Jurchens marched south and conquered Northern China.

Now the Song is really fucked, not only did they lose their pretty terrible defensive line in the north but now they are set all the way back to the Huai river and the Jurchens can just launch attacks on a huge front, the Jurchens and Song fight wars on and off for the next century.

Now as the Liao collapsed they lost control over Mongolia, so the Jin dynasty which sees itself as a successor of the Liao basically tries to walk into Mongolia again, a few of the Mongol tribes align themselves but one of those tribes doesn’t, the name of the tribe? Khamag Mongol.

So the Jin never really was able to control Mongolia like the Khitans were, so they decide to go the good ol’ divide and conquer route, they decide to support the Tatars against the Mongols, the Tatars capture Genghis Khan’s grandfather and the Jin have him tortured and executed which leads to huge enmity between Jurchen aligned tribes and anti-Jin tribes.

This was the first motivation for the Mongols to eventually start attacking the Jin dynasty. Now the Jin dynasty itself became like the Liao that preceded them, the Jin became sinicized and slowly lost the marital ability that had allowed them to conquer the Khitans and subdue to proto-Mongolic tribes as well as conquer Northern China, so by the time the Mongols roll around the Jin get absolutely wrecked by the Mongols.

So the Mongols are now supremely confident, they managed to defeat the Jin and now they develop tactics they used during their war with the Jin and consolidate their forces, now swelling with Khitan, Jurchen and even Han defectors from the Jin whom would later form the core of the Mongol army later on.

Remember those Khitans from earlier? A splinter group of them whom had refused to submit to the Jin actually fled west to Xinjiang and created a dynasty called the Western Liao in Xinjiang that bordered the Khwarezmian empire which controlled Iran and Central Asia.

The Western Liao had recently had a coup d’etat, a Naiman prince fled to Western Liao and was given a position, only for him to betray the emperor and take power for himself. Now the Mongols had a major reason to go into Central Asia, the prince could use the Western Liao as a stepping stone to reconquer his tribal lands from the Mongols and this was a very big threat. The Mongols then invaded the Western Liao and put to rest the last remnants of the Khitan Liao dynasty.

Now the Mongols border Russia, Central Asia, Iran and China.

Eventually the Mongols conquer China, Iran, Central Asia, Russia and the middle east:

First instance of the butterfly effect:

So the Mongols end up invading central Asia and killing 90% of Iran and Central Asia’s population, which led to the end of the historical dominance of Iranian languages in the area. The result of this conquest meant that the centuries old dominance of Iranian cultures and languages ends up being supplanted by Turkic languages in less than a decade.

Now that’s not the only instance:

The destruction in Central Asia leads to the displacement of various Turkic tribes that fled the Mongol conquest to the only place that had a similar climate and terrain to Central Asia that was not under the control of the Mongols - Anatolia.

To the north of the Ottomans on the Eastern European plain the Mongols then conquer the Kipchak-Cumans and the early Russian states, the legacy of this is the unification of the disparate Russian states into the Muscovy duchy. Which is the basis of modern day Russia.

The Mongol empire ushers in a new era of trade and commerce along the silk road, one fellow from Italy named Marco Polo decides to head east and eventually ends up in China. His writings and stories are recorded and passed around in Europe and paint the picture of Asia as a rich and prosperous continent that has a lot of treasure waiting to be taken and a lot of heathens waiting to be Christianized.

The Ottomans would then eventually cut off trade between Asia and Europe, which leads to the Spanish and Portuguese to seek alternative trading routes. One of these fellows named Cristobal Colon is inspired by Marco Polo’s original stories and decides he wants to try to get to Asia, he decides to get west instead of east which leads to him bumping into two new continents.

This eventually leads to the Spanish colonization of the America’s

Soon one of the countries that was a rival of the Spanish that wanted in on all the gold and resources the Spanish now had in abundance due to the colonization of the America’s starts to claim the Eastern coast of the United States

Which then expands to the Continental US we know today.

Synopsis: The decision of a Tang emperor to give a Turkic nobleman more status leads to the decline of the Tang dynasty which leads to the rise of the Khitans which leads to the rise of the Jurchens which leads to the rise of the Mongols, whom unify Russia under Moscow, displace Iranic languages from Central Asia and push Turkic tribes into Anatolia, which leads to the Ottoman ban on European trade heading East which leads to Spanish ships heading west which leads to European colonization of the America’s and eventually leads to the establishment of the United States.

The darkest period of Chinese history 1839-1949

Imagine being one of the most powerful countries in history. Imagine having a long, rich history of almost 5000 years. Imagine being one of history’s 4 biggest empires. Imagine, for thousands of years, having been the “almost” centre of the world. Wars were fought to get access to your trade. Empires expanded to reach you. European adventurers accidentally “discovered” a new continent to find you. Imagine being the birthplace of some of history’s most important inventions such as paper and gunpowder. Imagine all of that, then imagine that all being gone.

Now imagine your country in poverty. Imagine what was once the most powerful of empires, being raped and colonized by “barbarians” half a world away. Imagine losing a war to a country that was once your vassal. Imagine having your land taken after losing humiliating war after humiliating war.

Ladies, gentlemen, carrots, parrots, everyone and everything in-between, allow me to introduce you to the century of humiliation.

The century of humiliation (1839–1949) started when the Qing Dynasty (清朝) of China lost the first opium war to the British Empire in 1839. Before then, China had been feared and respected. European powers had been, literally, fighting to get to trade with China. But China was an isolationist country. European traders were only allowed to trade with China from a few ports in the south (Canton). Trade with China was also hard, China only accepted silver and this was draining the treasures of the British Empire. So the British tried to trade opium for tea and they tried to sell opium for silver which they could then use to buy tea.

Understandably, the Chinese were not happy about addictive and harmful drugs flooding into China. The Qing government tried to ban Opium, but it started to be smuggled in illegally through India. Eventually, the Chinese had enough and they destroyed a bunch of British Opium by dumping it into harbours.

The British retaliated, claiming that the Chinese destroyed their property and that the Chinese needed to pay compensation. Obviously, the Chinese didn’t. So long story short, the British and Chinese started fighting.

The Chinese had expected that the British wouldn’t really fight and that they would quickly sue for peace as there would be limited British Soldiers in Asia. But the British has soldiers in India and SE Asia, which were quickly mobilized. The Chinese had much less advanced weapons, fighting for a large part with swords and traditional weapons. The British had rifles and muskets. The Chinese had traditional ships called Junks and fireships, the British had steamships and cannons. The British made their way up the Chinese coast, and the Yangtze River, winning battle after battle. China quickly sued for peace and signed very unequal treaties. It had to pay reparations to Britain and it had to give land to Britain. This was in the form of Hong Kong.

Over the next few decades, other European powers and even the US got involved in China. China was split up and divided amongst the European powers. Japan too got involved.

Russia took Tuva, parts of Mongolia and a large portion of Manchuria.

The Germans took Qing Dao.

The British took Hong Kong.

And the French took some lands in the south which were added to the French Indo-China colony.

China was humiliated and even Japan, a long time vassal of China and a nation who the Chinese saw as lesser, took land from them. Japan took Taiwan, Sakhalin and Korea.

China was being colonized. And it was powerless to stop it.

Now let’s fast forward to the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912. The Qing had fallen after a civil war and had been replaced by the Republic of China, led by the KMT. For a moment it looked like China was about to become a rich, prosperous and stable democracy. But…

The ROC was founded by Sun Yet Sen (Sun Zhong Shan), but Sun wouldn’t lead it for long. The leadership of the ROC was quickly handed to Yuan Shi Kai. Yuan became the president of China and quickly gathered power as a dictator. Then he declared himself to be the emperor of China. Then there was another civil war, this time the country fell under the control of warlord states. China was divided. Eventually the ROC “retook control” and “reunified” the country.

By this time ww1 had ended and the central powers had lost. Because of the league of nations, China couldn’t just annex its old lands that were controlled by Germany. China tried to appeal to the league of nations, but its lands such as Qingdao, were given to the Japanese. More humiliation. China saw that the world didn’t care about it.

Please keep in mind that by this point, China had been being screwed over for almost 80 years. China had been colonized and defeated. China had been robbed and raped and pillaged. Foreign powers had occupied and taken over Chinese land and what was once the 4th largest empire in history had lost thousands of kilometres of land and had become a 3rd world country. At this time, China was an impoverished and war-torn country and, oh boy, was it about to get worse.

Let’s skip a few unimportant people and start to talk about Chiang Kai Shek (Jiang Jie Shi). Chiang became the president of China in 1928. It didn’t take long before he established himself as a dictator, controlling the country through a military dictatorship. He was a generalissimo, but he didn’t ever really have control over the entire country. Tibet and Xinjiang, both important and large Chinese territories, started to act with almost total autonomy. Mongolia was basically a Russian puppet state and much of the country was lawless and uncontrolled, run by warlords. China was basically a divided nation. But still, Chiang ruled with an iron fist. He cracked down on workers’ rights protests and unionists, sometimes violently. The lands that he did control, he led poorly and cruelly. This led to the CCP and the communist revolution. Peasants were basically owned as slaves by landlords and warlords and still China was being screwed over by foreign powers. China had divided, for the first time in almost 700 years. China was, yet again, humiliated. China had gone from a respected empire to a half dead, rotting shell of a country, broken into bits and pieces.

So then there was a Chinese civil war, again. The Communist guerrillas vs the nationalist KMT. But this wasn’t just a civil war, it was also a war for China’s future. The Communists and the modern CCP, as much much nationalistic as they are communist. They fought, yes, to get power and yes, for workers’ and farmers’ rights, but also for the very heart and soul of China. They fought to save China from humiliation. The Communists fought as nationalists, looking to finally rebuild the country. The Chinese civil war was bloody, the nation falling further into poverty and war. More and more and more humiliation. Then ww2 happened and to the Chinese, it was the second Sino-Japanese war. The Japanese invaded China through Manchuria, taking it over and heading southward. Japan, an old vassal of China’s and a country whose culture was almost copy and pasted from China, was beating China bad. The civil war stopped, both sides worked together to fight the Japanese, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t take the Japanese long to invaded down to Nanjing, at that time the capital. During the annexation of Nanjing, the Japanese raped the city in one of the worst mass rapes in history. What happened there, and in the rest of China, is called, by some historians, a genocide. It almost rivals the Holocaust. I, obviously, won’t show images of the rape of Nanjing as it would be incredibly insensitive. It was a terrible mass rape where terrible atrocities were committed. Search it up if you are interested, but I won’t give details here as it may be inappropriate to some readers. Anyway, the rape of Nanjing was one of the final nails in the coffin for the collective dignity of the Chinese people. It was the ultimate humiliation for the Chinese people. It showed that China was too weak. China could be taken over by the Japanese. China had become a third world country and a husk of a nation. Chinese people were living as slaves as the most important parts of their country had been taken over.

Another humiliation came at the end of the war. China never got the chance to defeat Japan. America did it.

Then another humiliation, China didn’t get the Korean Peninsula back, instead it got split between the USSR and the USA.

Then another humiliation. The UN didn’t let it partition Japan, like the rest of the allies did with the rest of the Axis, instead it all went to the US.

Then China was plunged again into civil war.

This time, the KMT didn’t even really rebuild the country. The peasantry was still in poverty and many were slaves. So the Communists started to gain traction. The Communists got volunteers and got a massive peasant army.

After 4 years of fighting, it was over. The republic had fled, the country was reunified and it was finally over. On October 1st, 1949, Mao gave his famous speech at Tiananmen Square, announcing that the People’s republic of China had been founded.

That day, the century of humiliation officially ended. China had a government of their own. But China was still a rotten, skeleton of a country. In truth, the century of humiliation ended. The country was still divided, the country was still poor and the scars of the century of humiliation were still fresh. China had gotten out of the century of humiliation, but it was yet to recover.

China had gone from this:

(This isn’t a full map, at its height the Qing empire controlled Korea)

To this:

Britain still controlled Hong Kong, Portugal still controlled Macau, and the Nationalists still controlled Taiwan. In fact, the majority of the Chinese people were not represented in the UN. The UN still only recognized the KMT as the official government of China. “Red” China, was nothing in the world’s eyes.

Under the CCP, China eventually took back Xinjiang and Tibet and got back Macau and Hong Kong. China eventually got rid of the warlords and became united again. Then, in 1997, Hong Kong was given back to China. Then, the oldest, deepest and most noticeable wound from the century of humiliation finally healed. The century of humiliation had officially ended for China in the 40’s, but when Hong Kong was returned, China was reunified. The century of humiliation finally, truly ended.

The scars are still there today, even as China becomes a world power, the scars are still there. The Koreas are independent nations, Taiwan is still controlled by the ROC, Mongolia is a separate country and Hong Kong still has protests. But they are healed, and the Chinese people don’t really notice them.

To the Chinese people, China is returning to its old days. Personally, I think China can never have those old days back, the world has changed too much. But China has healed and China is moving into the new world, ready to try to put the past century behind it.