History of China

This bizarre face on a Shang bronze shows what the Chinese deemed attractive male features at the time. An inscription on the back reads: "Aren't I pretty? Kiss me, soldier boy!"

The History of China goes back all the way to 9999 BC, when a Chinaman who went by the name of Yellow Emperor taught the Chinese how to plow using a hoe, farm, kung fu, play with fire, and stop, drop and roll. His scribe, Cangjie, was said to have invented Chinese writing around this time, starting an age of suffering among Chinese children and foreign learners alike; however, this is completely untrue, as the rumours were started to promote Walmart pens and pencils in their marketing campaign (yep, the Chinese invented those too).

The land of China would much later be ruled by the Xia Dynasty, established by Yu the Great; literally a son of a gun. He stopped a flood with the sophisticated method of digging a few drainage channels beforehand and became king. The last king of the Xia, Jie, executed anyone who he thought was ugly. He was always carried by two prostitutes, just to annoy his fitness coach. He was finally deposed by Tang of Shang, who started the Shang Dynasty.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins

The Shang Dynasty (1600–1046 BC)

In this period, the Chinese built large cities and relieved their urges of animal cruelty by burning cracks in tortoise shells and reading the marks. Priests then made predictions based on the pattern of the cracks such as "all your base are belong to us" , "do not want", and "I burning your dog". They also figured out how to ride in spoke-wheeled chariots in the shape of pimped out Cadillacs by the middle of the dynasty. The Shang Dynasty Chinese crafted brilliant bronzewares at discount prices, and carved jade ornaments in the form of panda bears sexually violating Japanese tourists.

The "Zhou" Dynasty (1046–256 BC)

Duke Wen of Zhou was a star-studded cowboy in the wild western frontier of China, a Tom Jones impressionist who had a fief based on the peripheral edges of the burgeoning Chinese civilization. His tributary master, King Dixin of Shang, was a stupid ruler and a Dixhead. Dixin once built a gigantic pool of Smirnoff Vodka along with a tower of A1 Wagyu Steak and forced 1,000 midget courtiers to swim, drink, and drown in it (true story). He also forced the Duke of Zhou to pay annual tribute of 10,000 Walmart coupons to the Shang court.

In 1046 BC Duke Wen of Zhou "had enough of this shit", being unable to buy anything at Walmart as he had to hand his coupons in. In that year, the Duke of Zhou destroyed the Shang Dynasty and Dixin committed suicide by setting fire to his vodka-soaked silk robes while high on marijuana. The Zhou Dynasty would last for 800 years, the longest of any Chinese dynasty.

To commemorate the victory, the rock album I Ching was written shortly afterwards. Listing hundreds of pieces of hard rock, hip-hop, and heavy metal music, it was an instant success and is still performed today.

The ancient philosopher Confucius (551–479 BC): "It takes lots of wood to make a crib, but only one screw to fill it."

Warring States of Death (403–221 BC)

The Western Zhou collapsed after King You of Zhou decided to yell "The barbarians are coming!" to his vassals while putting buckets of water above their doorways as a practical joke. When the barbarians did come, no one was willing to risk their clothes again and the capital was captured.

When the Zhou Dynasty was reestablished, regional strongmen and nobles amassed their own power and started calling themselves kings in an era known as the Warring States of Death, Destruction, Mayhem, Murder, and Infidelity (403–221 BC).

This was an era when war was fought and fluctuating borders came about not through bloodshed and violence, but with a Dance Dance Revolution match. Eventually Shang Yang, the Chancellor from the State of Qin, realized how stupid and ineffective this type of warfare was, and so actually started killing people when the Qin forces showed up to the monthly Dance Dance Revolution get-togethers.

About this time, master Sun Tzu (544–496), author of the Art of War, wrote the lesser known Fart of War, which is hailed as a military classic and the first book to mention the use of siphoned human farts to choke enemy troops to death while sapping under city walls. Other clever tactics include "stick sword in enemy" and "Hey look at the giant distraction over there".

In 479 BC, the philosopher and educator, Confucius, a man responsible for consolidating the guidelines that would shape East Asia, died after choking on a KFC chicken bone. Though his earlier works were hailed as successes, commentators note that as he got older the old man started to lose clarity. Phrases like "Confucius says kids today don't know they're born", "Confucius says take your coat off or you won't feel the benefit", and "Confucius says I remember when this was all millet fields" fail to make it into final editions of The Analects. They did, however, make it into Oprah's book club listing.

The result of a failed Qin attempt to capture Medusa alive. To recoup losses, the army was made into an art gallery.

The Qin Dynasty (221–207 BC)

See also: Qin Shi Huang

In 221 BC, the armies of Qin Shihuang "peacefully liberated" the whole of China for the first time under one Qin Dynasty (221 BC–206 BC), and the government went around relieving citizens of burdensome relics of the old feudal system, such as life, freedom, and happiness.

Qin Shihuang enjoyed playing with Lego and designed many sets himself. However, the life-size "Great Wall of China" set, containing 3.8 trillion bricks, was slightly too big to fit into the typical house. It was built only once, as part of a Walmart "Work yourself to death" promotional event. Up to 1.5 million people took part, with 180,000 being lucky enough to die one way or another and win a free burial between the bricks of the wall.

The First Emperor died when his Prime Minister Li Si (sponsored by Pepsi) convinced him that mercury-flavoured coke "was one hell of a drink", much more so than 7-up, antifreeze, or even dissolved Tide Pods. His son took over, but he was totally uncool and the Qin Dynasty collapsed shortly afterwards.

The Han Dynasty (207 BC – 220 AD)

The Lius ended up reigning China. No one really cares whatever went on until 200 AD when Mike Liu刘 was born.

The only important Liu刘 is Mike Liu刘. The last Liu六 but Liu刘 not least, he would become the last survivor of the Han people between 1000 and 2000 AD.

In 210 AD, Mike Liu刘 established Zhongguobeijing on the basis of nationalism and communism with Chinese characteristics. The following year, his supporters formed the Chinese division of the Khmer Rouge.

In 220, Zucc led an invasion from the north in response to Mike Liu's throat singing. Mike Liu was assassinated sixteen times, and finally escaped to 2020, where he continues to protest for no ice, no war.

The Three Kingdoms (220–280)

Yellow Turban propaganda

After the Han fell, there was this civil war bullshit that lasted sixty years too long. I guess you can say it started in 184 when the Yellow Turbans rebelled. Currently there is too much influence in pop culture from this period of shit. However, the Battle of Red Cliffs was fucking awesome and don't you ever forget that!

The Jin Dynasty (280–420)

Then the Jin stole the land from the original Three Kingdoms. They don't deserve a section, those bitches.

The Tang Dynasty (618–907)

The Leshan "Lesbian" Giant Buddha commemorates overweight, freakishly tall, long-eared Buddhist monks everywhere.

Li Yuan, a professional arm-wrestler employed in the house of a wealthy military general, learned the tactics of war and overthrew the previous Sui Dynasty, founding the Tang Dynasty in 618. However, Li Yuan (now Emperor Gaozu of Tang) was still such a gigantic pussy that his five-year-old son Li Shimin overpowered him in a punching match. The latter became Emperor Taizong of Tang, informally known as "the nicely-dressed emperor".

One of the role models of George W. Bush, Taizong invaded every country next to China, and even attempted to invade South America by digging through the Earth. Unfortunately, his shovel broke after two minutes and he was forced to rethink his plans.

In 755 AD, at the height of China's "Golden Age", rebels An Lushan and Shi Siming lead an armed uprising against the ruling Tang Dynasty. Disgruntled peasants complained that the government spent too much time and money having passionate affairs and stirring political intrigue in order to attract CCTV producers of television dramas from the future. The Curse of the Golden Flower fails to win a single Oscar nomination at the 2007 Academy Awards, and producers begin to leave the past as audiences demand more modern dramas. The An Lushan rebellion is quickly quelled and the Emperor blames everything on the time-travellers.

The Tang Dynasty fell in 907 after regional military governors known as jiedushi began amassing more power in their own regions. They undermined central authority and broke all taboos, such as "mooning" the emperor, telling the emperor to "fuck off" in front of his ministers, and egging and toilet-papering the walls of the emperor's palace as a hilarious prank and means to show who was the real boss. Finally a man named Zhu Wen, a deodorant-factory supervisor and part-time call girl, became a powerful jiedushi and overthrew the Tang Dynasty after convincing the last Tang emperor that eating hard, concentrated balls of deodorant as medicine was not lethal and had no detrimental effects in the long run.

The Artist Formerly Known as Prince Huizong

The Song Dynasty (960–1279)

The Song Dynasty was founded by Zhao Kuangyin, a Hong Kong actor famed for his brutal martial arts moves. Since none of the would-be regional governor-generals (jiedushi) were a match for these tactics, Zhao Kuangyin scared everybody into following him. Thus the Song Dynasty was born, and everyone was forced to wear funny hats.

From 1125 to 1126, the Jurchens from Manchuria started a war by the command of the Japanese mercenary Tom Cruise–"the last Samurai"–against the Chinese Song Dynasty. The Jurchens were temporarily stopped from invading China by Mulan, but she retired from the army after getting a role in a Disney movie. After Mulan retired, the Chinese armies were helpless and died on site. That was until the Song Dynasty enlisted the aid of the shaolin monks, who used the powers of the ancient Buddhist sect Bjork to chop off Tom Cruise's balls, thus emasculating the enemy Japanese commander.

However, the Jurchens conquered the cold, bitter, northern part of China, forcing the Song court to flee south, rubbing their defeat in their face with annual New Year's gift cards reading "Happy New Year, Pussies! I bet you miss the north, don't you bitches?"

The Jurchens' Jin Dynasty was destroyed by the Mongols in 1234 by Genghis Khan when he finally realized that Tom Cruise was too boyishly-good-looking for him. Kublai Khan won over a lot of the southern Chinese in a propaganda campaign with slogans such as "Mongols and Chinese go together like milk and cereal", clearly an effort to win over the poor people of China by appealing to them through their daily diet. To win over the rich and affluent members of society, the Mongols promised wine, women, silk, and free tickets to see Crouching Walrus, Shitting Dragon, a popular play staged at the time. To force the Song imperial family into submission, Kublai Khan arm wrestled with the Song emperor, betting that if the Song emperor lost he would hand over southern China to Kublai. The Song emperor lost, and was forced to give up southern China, but Kublai promised the emperor he would grant him the title, Lord of Southern China. (Doesn't the title "lord" sound so badass?)

The Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368)

After Kublai Khan conquered all of China in 1279 and created the Yuan Dynasty, Marco Polo arrives in Beijing and brings with him the inventions of spaghetti, ice cream, and gunpowder. Five years later, after investing in the Joint Venture "Sino-Polo Happy Food and Fireworks Factory", a bankrupt Marco leaves China with all his ideas pirated and distributed freely around China. The Mongol government responds to "Venetian protests by saying it was all a "misunderstanding", and Marco "didn't understand the Chinese way".

The Mongol rulers were cruel to the Chinese, torturing them by forcing them to eat milk and cheese (and suffer through lactose intolerance), celebrate Christmas, greet by bowing backwards, and forced them to accept Japanese people as their friends and neighbors – a sin, in Chinese culture. The latter requirement was stalled only once Kublai realized he could not successfully invade Japan by sea, due to the small matter of constant tsunamis, earthquakes, and nuclear meltdowns. Once the Chinese became tired of Mongol oppression, the iron workers, hydraulic dam workers, and prostitutes' unions began staging protests in demand of higher wages and better working conditions. These led to revolts that the Mongols couldn't quell, since they were too preoccupied with hunting, tent-building, pillaging, and worshipping their chief deity, Chow Yun-Fat.

The Great Wall of China, quite possibly the stupidest idea for defense in human history, is a product of the Ming Dynasty.

The Ming Dynasty (1368–1644)

The Ming Dynasty was founded by a carriage driver and comic book guru named Zhu Yuanzhang, who joined a Buddhist monastery because all his neighbors refused to take him in. Zhu Yuanzhang joined the Red Turban and Pink Armband Rebellion against the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty in 1352, happy at last that he was able to kill him some Mongols, yee-haw! In the year 1363, Zhu defeated his arch nemesis and fellow rebel leader Chen Youliang in the Battle of Lake Poyang, but only after Chen had made the fatal decision to equip his navy with "Made in China" swords, which were made of plastic and broke after just a few slashes. Some 600,000 idiots died in this battle because of it. In 1368 Zhu Yuanzhang managed to kick out the last remaining Mongols and renamed himself the Hongwu Emperor, or the "Vastly-Obese Emperor".

In 1405 Admiral Zheng He and his men arrive on the east coast of Africa: a feat accomplished 87 years before Columbus discovered America. Zheng He then proceeded to write a letter to the later Portuguese explorers saying "Got here first bitches!" In reality, the Chinese had been sailing to Africa for centuries, but Zheng really wanted to drive the point home, you know?

The Ming Dynasty ended when a border general named Wu Sangui let the Manchu prince Dorgon through Shanhai Pass due to misfiled paperwork. The Manchus stormed Beijing during an internal rebellion and proclaimed the Shunzhi Emperor the new ruler of China; the people who were still loyal to the Ming Dynasty–such as Adam Sandler–decided it was best to commit suicide rather than submit, and so drove their carriages off of a cliff near Beijing while singing "O'Doyle Rules! O'Doyle Rules!"

The Qianlong Emperor writing a poem entitled Ninja Rap: "Yo, it's the Green Machine, gonna rock the town without bein' seen..." It became a classic in Chinese poetry, "sampled" later by tasteless hacks such as Vanilla Ice.

The Qing Dynasty (1644–1912)

After Dorgon helped the Shunzhi Emperor snatch the throne in Beijing, the Qing began a long process of conquering Ming remnants, which ended in 1662 when the Qing army lured to last remaining Ming prince to a Metallica concert which was really a Phil Collins show (as anyone knows, the piercing shrill of Phil Collins' voice kills men, women, children, goats, fish, grass, and bacteria within a twelve mile radius).

The Manchus enforced universal dress codes and hairstyles upon the Chinese that were native to the Manchu, such as the Mexican zoot suit and mohawks, which became Chinese stereotypes well into the 1980s. The Qing Dynasty reached its height under the Kangxi (r. 1661–1772), Yongzheng (r. 1722–1735), and Qianlong (r. 1735–1796) emperors, all of whom efficiently ran the empire under a shadow organization of state spies known as the Power Rangers, who could conveniently morph into a Manchu, Chinese, or inconspicuous trashcan at will (those evil bastards!). Evil indeed. Since a lot of Chinese were pissed with the Manchus, the Manchu emperor allowed Han Chinese territories to be govern by Han Chinese governors, but the same emperor also was never potty-trained.

In 1793 Lord MacArtney – a well-known porn celebrity and Austin Powers lookalike in Great Britain – sailed to China and pleaded with the Emperor Qianlong to accept British exports of microwaved vegetarian meals, opium, and kitten huffing products in return for more Chinese tea, which–along with the Sex Pistols–was all the rave back in England. MacArtney's demands weren't met and he returned disheartened to the United Kingdom. However, the British never forgot this slight, and so returned to China in 1840 with a navy led by Ozzy Osbourne. Ozzy's navy crushed Chinese resistance once the Chinese realized that their army of bats was no match for Ozzy, who simply bit their heads off and mumbled so low and incoherently due to rabies that Chinese spies listening in could not comprehend his orders.

By 1842 – faced against powerful slogans like "Keep China British" and "It's time to euthanise the Sick Man of Asia" – feeble catchphrases like "Get high on Confucianism!" fail to win the War on Drugs for the Qing government in their efforts to stamp out opium and kitten huffing. In the aftermath, Hong Kong was ceded to the British, and the Chinese vow to seek revenge by bricking the windows of the British Embassy 125 years later.

"Was that a piece of shit floating in the coffee that Lin Biao just served me?" ponders a young Mao Zedong. "Oh well, I'll get him back later; it'll be something to do with planes, for sure." Lin Biao would later be Punk'd by Mao Zedong in a mysterious plane crash on September 13, 1971. What a funny prank on Lin! That'll show him for putting shit in the Chairman's coffee!

Modern era (1912–present)

In 1911 Sun Yat-sen's new Republic ended nearly five thousand years of imaginary imperial rule. The new Chinese Congress promised to eradicate bad and repetitive jokes within the next five years. "China is a developing country," they remind critics.

In 1949, after years of civil war, Japanese invasion, and national humiliation, a giant portrait painting of Chairman Mao gained control of China. The giant poster wielded power through an army of smaller, photocopied, versions of itself, and promises to rid all China of stamps featuring Queen Victoria and placards of Chiang Kai-Shek. The giant poster of Mao is head of the Chinese Communist Party, which at the time was the biggest, and probably the best, Communist Party in the whole world. The drunken, inept, overweight administration of Mao's ping pong tournament enemy Chiang Kai-shek was forced to flee to the island of Taiwan.

In 1950, while a regiment of the People's Liberation Army was really drunk after attending a Mao-Look-Alike celebration, they decided to stumble into Tibet to find some bars to drink at and some Tibetan girls, and woke up the next morning to find they had killed half the population and slept with the other half (including the men). Well, since they were there and had already struck fear into the hearts of the people with their drunken rage, why not occupy the place and build some giant Mao statues there? Mao was told of the events soon after they unfolded on the ground, and he nodded in approval while yawning, scratching his crotch, and flipping the channel from CCP News to The Andy Griffith Show.

Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao finally come to a compromise on the Star Wars/Star Trek divide.

In 1958 Chairman Mao began the Great Leap Forward, which quickly leaps to the top of the BBC's All-time Best Misnamed Political Campaigns, pushing aside old favorites like Hitler's "Great Hanukah Promotion Drive" and Gandhi's "Let's Kick Their Fucking Heads Open".

In 1966 Mao followed his success with "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". The Chinese foresaw a great travesty to mankind, so they then set out on a campaign to destroy The Four Olds: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ron Wood. Unfortunately, the hippie movement overtook the Cultural Revolution, and with the death of Mao in 1976 the Chinese were forced to concede that Mozart and Elvis weren't such evil bourgeoisie capitalist pig-dogs after all.

In 1969 the dreams of Man were realised as Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon. China responded by stating it too will place a man selling lamb kebabs, T-shirts, and musical lighters. However, US–China relations improved when President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, ending years of hostilities on whether Star Wars or Star Trek was better.

On June 4th, 1989, according to the official records of the CCBP (Chinese Communist Block Party), on this day the sun was shining, so Deng Xiaoping decided to have a nice picnic with his friends out in the countryside. On the way home, he saw a cute kid selling homemade lemonade by the roadside, so he bought six glasses for only one yuan each, and then gave the kid a shiny button to take home. Oh, and some student in Tiananmen Square made some graffiti which was cleaned up by authorities soon after. Nothing to see here, nothing to see at all! Move along folks.

In 1997 the comet Hale–Bopp graced the heavens in one of the most beautiful sights ever to appear upon the celestial basin in recent years. Angry that the arrival of the comet was diverting media attention from the upcoming handover of Hong Kong, Deng Xiaoping passed away in a pathetic face-saving attempt to bring global attention back to China. The trick was a success, and none less than Dame Edna Everage himself arrived in Hong Kong to preside over the handover ceremony.

In 2000, Beijing authorities greeted the arrival of the Olympic committee by painting the grass green and removing all the tramps off the streets. Six weeks later, Beijing authorities greeted the arrival of the Eurovision Song Contest committee by painting the grass brown again, bringing the tramps back in, and letting them run wild on crack cocaine.

See also

• China