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XIRAN, Chinese History Educational Memer Profile picture
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7 Oct, 7 tweets, 4 min read
oh snap this is happening HELLO

I'm Xiran and my book Iron Widow debuts Fall 2021 from @PenguinTeenCa. It's a Pacific Rim x The Handmaid's Tale reimagining of Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history

Goodreads: goodreads.com/book/show/5245…

#BIPOCDebuts #the21ders Image
Zetian voted most likely to hang a real corpse by her door on Halloween and have people be like OMG THIS IS AMAZING YOU'RE SO DEDICATED TO YOUR DECORATIONS before realizing something is terribly wrong in about 24 hours Image
men with fragile egos. Image
Gao Zhinu: Would be that one legit cosplayer who's READY. Will show up in his extremely expensive professional mecha costume and make everyone be like "man why are you trying so hard"

Li Shimin: a nerdy joke costume. see Ross' spudnik costume from Friends

Wu Zetian: Wu Zetian Image
Google Image search "Wu Zetian" and you'll have the general idea 😂 Image
Sci-fi Wu Zetian and sci-fi Li Shimin get mecha-pilot-married by sci-fi Zhuge Liang on stage for money to bribe politicians to let them live. it's all very dramatic and probably betrays my past as a theatre kid. Image
Zetian aims to literally crush the patriarchy under her massive mecha and she will not stop until it happens #bipocdebuts #the21ders Image

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More from @XiranJayZhao

XIRAN, Chinese History Educational Memer Profile picture
9 Oct
ALL RIGHT BY POPULAR DEMAND HERE WE GO: Everything culturally right and wrong with Mulan 1998, the thread -

(Disclaimer: This movie never marketed itself on authenticity, so I'll only be nitpicking for educational purposes) Mulan 1998 title card
The movie immediately lets you know IT'S VERY ASIAN, YOU GUYS by referencing classical Chinese landscape paintings, which were very minimalist and used tons of white space. It was all about achieving a certain VIIIBE instead of realism, which shouldn't be the end goal of all art ImageImage
these inkbrush paintings were very technically demanding because literally one wrong stroke or a stray drop of ink anywhere could ruin the whole thing. so classical Chinese artists were presumably in full *sweats* mode whenever they painted Image
Read 131 tweets
XIRAN, Chinese History Educational Memer Profile picture
8 Oct
The spiciest takes on my YouTube comments are those that think I have no ground to speak about Chinese culture bc I "speak English like a native" and must be "westernized" when I am NATIVE-BORN CHINESE and ironed my accent out due to bullying after coming to Canada in my TEENS
I've faced 2 different sets of assumptions before and after I made the conscious effort to mimic a Canadian accent it's wild

Before: Must be international student, won't integrate well

After: Must be diaspora-born, disconnected from own culture, can't speak Mandarin
When u can in fact speak Mandarin and English equally perfectly and are also equally immersed in both Chinese and Western cultures Image
Read 4 tweets
XIRAN, Chinese History Educational Memer Profile picture
19 Sep
in the 2016 yugioh movie Seto Kaiba flies a jet straight from his space station and into the ancient Egyptian afterlife, transcending space, time, and dimension just to see Yami Yugi again, and some people still claim he's straight
PS be sure to turn sound on so you can hear the mUSIC they put in this scene because DEAR GOD
Seto Kaiba, literally disintegrating as he speaks: WHERE'S MY REMATCH

Yami Yugi: adl;fjafsl;f ARE YOU SURE IT'S A REMATCH IN A CARD GAME THAT YOU WANT
Read 4 tweets
XIRAN, Chinese History Educational Memer Profile picture
5 Sep
ALL RIGHT YOU GUYS READY TO WATCH ME LOSE MY MARBLES FOR 2 HOURS?? (but less because i watch on double speed). Livetweeting #Mulan, the thread:
why are you telling this to your ancestors i'm already confused
UMMMMM IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE, QI IS SOMETHING THAT GOES THROUGH EVERYONE, SO THERE CAN'T BE SUCH A THING AS "only boys can wield qi"???
Read 83 tweets
XIRAN, Chinese History Educational Memer Profile picture
28 Aug
decided to do a separate thread for this so here we go: how Song dynasty poet Lu You poem-liveblogged his descent from cat owner to cat slave 800 years ago

The year is 1183. Down On His Luck scholar-official Lu You gets a cat because rats keep munching on his books. 1/?
the effects are GREAT!! Lu You is delighted!!

THIS IS LITERALLY THE TITLE HE GAVE THE POEM I AM NOT MAKING SHIT UP

(also feel free to correct my translations because my classical chinese is not that good LOOOL) 2/?
several years later, Lu You gets ANOTHER CAT!! he calls it Snowy!! (probably had white fur then)

he loves it so much he suspects it was a child of his reincarnated from a past life 3/?
Read 12 tweets
XIRAN, Chinese History Educational Memer Profile picture
14 Aug
THREAD: How anti-Chinese racism led to the establishment of US immigration controls

So before the late 1800s, the US basically had open borders. People just showed up on ships and went about their business. But attitudes changed when large numbers of Chinese immigrants came 1/? Image
If you look at the early legal cases about immigration, it was mostly drama involving Chinese people. Chy Lung v. Freeman established immigration as a federal issue, and it was brought on because California tried to deport 22 Chinese women on suspicion of prostitution 2/? Image
The Page Act of 1875 was the very first federal immigration law, and it was directed at female Chinese immigrants bc, again, Californians were so scared that they were secretly prostitutes here to corrupt American society and give diseases to white men 3/? Image
Read 16 tweets

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