Character History

[civilize]

Yao was one of the first nations to exist, and he lived for nearly a thousand years as an immortal among humans before he met another nation. He was found as a toddler by a fisherman along the Yangtze River during the Shang dynasty (approx 1700-1046BC), and although he never aged, no one ever made too much fuss. People assumed he was a minor godchild, and took care of him well enough – and as long as the people of the region were prosperous, he was happy and healthy. If his current caretakers were growing old, or struggled to provide for him, he would wander to another village, and live with a farmer, or a hunter, or a minor lord.

As a small child during the Zhou dynasty (1045-246BC), he apprenticed himself to metalworkers and artisans, learning to create useful and beautiful things from bronze and iron, traveling and learning from various masters. A semi-feudal system developed, forging Yao into a serious child with respect for both distant authority and local strength, and a keen understanding of the potential abuses of both. It was then that he formulated the idea of the Mandate of Heaven, in which rulers were granted the right and power to rule from the gods so long as they were good rulers; if they failed to serve the people honorably, this divine mandate would be revoked. He was apprenticed to many of the great masters of Chinese Philosophy during the Spring and Autumn Period (722-476BC), including Lao Tzu (Confucius). He also studied Daoism, Legalism, Mohism, and other schools of thought. Buddhist monks from India crossed the Himalayas to spread their ideas, and although he was not converted, he was receptive. Occasionally India herself, a girl about Yao’s age, accompanied them, and the two became somewhat (literally and figuratively) distant friends. Although he believed in none of these systems exclusively, he used elements from all of them to inform his worldview and moral codes, and gained a lifelong appreciation for philosophical inquiry.

As the Zhou dynasty lost more and more control and China descended into conflict in the Warring States Period (476-221 BC), Yao became progressively weaker. In the chaos between the end of the Zhao dynasty and the beginning of the Qin dynasty, he fell very ill, and nearly died, until the Qin Emperor subdued and unify a vast swathe of territory. Ying Zheng, king of Qin, styled himself First Emperor, and established a state based on a centralized legal code, standardized currency, measurements, and products for uniform interregional trading, and the absolute authority of the empire, each of which Yao quickly saw the benefits of. His harsh suppression of dissent upset the scholar in Yao, but he accepted it as a necessary sacrifice in order to survive.

During the succeeding Han Dynasty (220BC-206AD) Yao worked as an assistant in both the sciences and the arts, learning about astronomy, mathematics, agriculture and medicine as well as spinning, weaving, lacquerware, earthenware, painting, and music. He also traveled with traders a few times on the newly opened Silk Road, but he had little but disdain for Europe and largely preferred to remain in China and allow western traders, explorers, and the like to come to him. He also joined explorations around Asian, during which he found and adopted his little brothers Honda Kiku (Japan) and Im Yong Soo (Korea). He taught them arts, his writing system, and philosophy, and in a typical bossy-big-brother way, saw no problem with interfering with their politics in addition to influencing their cultures. He began splitting his time between the imperial court and out amongst the people, a pattern which he maintained until the last imperial dynasty falls.

Another long period of instability followed, during which Yao, now with the appearance of a teenager, served as a soldier for various warlords and claimant-emperors, and frequently suffered serious wounds, which did not fully heal until the establishment of the Sui Dynasty (589-618). Stitching himself back together after the wars, Yao found comfort and peace in the Buddhism the Sui emperors promoted. They also instituted the civil service exams, which appealed to Yao’s respect for merit, scholarship, and accomplishment. He served several terms as a bureaucrat in the Sui and later dynasties, becoming highly organized as both a country and a person. Contact with India increased during this period, and they exchanged a plethora of sutras by different Buddhist sages. Yao and Mohini each lost their virginity to each other while exploring certain forms of left-handed tantra. The Tang dynasty (618-907) kept these traditions while producing innovations in science and art. By then a young man, Yao was concerned with the suffering of the poor, and experimented with ways to ameliorate it, culminating in the equal-field land redistribution system.

The period of conflict and instability that followed the Tang was even worse than the one after the Han, though thankfully it only lasted half a century – nevertheless, Yao spent the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (907-960) splintered, raving mad, and nearly disappeared. China emerged from the turbulent era fragmented into four different geographical empires. Yao himself became diminished instead of dying outright, his spiritual connection to China limited to the population and boundaries of the Song Dynasty (960-1234). Despite his reduced sphere of control, he flourished. He threw himself into industry, creativity, and contemplation. The Song Empire as a whole enjoyed economic prosperity and great cultural accomplishments that would remain classics for centuries.

This idyllic existence was destroyed by the Mongol invasion of Genghis Khan and the arrival of the Bubonic Plague, which together slaughtered tens of millions of his people. Mongolia fought and defeated Yao, wounding him terribly. Sick, battered, and burning with broken pride, Yao succumbed to the final insult when Genghis Khan’s grandson Kublai Khan, enamored with him and Chinese ways, established the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), officiating the marriage between China and Mongolia. Although not destructive or abusive as the initial invasion, the marriage was not a happy one. Mongolia was uncivilized and controlling, using enserfment to subjugate large portions of Yao’s populace. Yao often tried to fight back, paralleling the many peasant revolts, but Mongolia punished him each time, until the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) overthrew the Mongols, and Yao successfully threw his husband out. Resentful and xenophobic, Yao retreated from public life, spending a generation as an obscure peasant farmer, which the Ming economic system based itself upon. He later moved to several of his cities in succession; although square, walled cities had been a fixture of China since ancient times, urbanism accelerated, and Yao learned to navigate larger and more chaotic cities, throwing himself in the immense bureaucracy of the Ming era.

Yao adapted more easily to the Manchu-dominated Qing dynasty (1644-1911) than he had to the Yuan, changing his hairstyle and clothing without more than a few qualms. As contact with Western nations increased, the harbor of Hong Kong became and international port, developing a national character of his own. Although the little boy called him elder brother, Yao always though of him as more like a son. Weakened by internal squabbling and desperate for distractions from the circling colonial vultures, Yao became addicted to opium and gambling. When England won the First Opium War, not only was Yao humiliated, but Arthur forced him to cede custody of Hong Kong/Caojing. Utterly distraught, Yao joined the pseudo-Christian cult of Hong Xiuquan and nearly committed suicide during the peak of the 15-year long Taiping rebellion, an internal civil war which killed 20 million people. The attempt failed, and the stronger, industrialized nations quickly exploited his weakness, governments extracting the unequal treaties while their personifications robbed him. Furious with his losses and the way the Qing submitted to westerners and allowed the spread of their influence, Yao decided they had lost the Mandate of Heaven, and joined the Boxer rebellion, which sought to return China to its traditional ways. When the 8 Nation Alliance marched on Beijing at the request of Yao’s boss, the Dowager Empress Cixi, to intervene against the Boxer rebellion, Yao was beaten bloody. The ensuing treaty, which crystallized permanent foreign military influence on Chinese soil and rivers, was sealed with gang rape.

Yao fought for the Wuhan uprising which destroyed the Qing imperial rule and instituted a republic, but when Yuan Shikei died, another Warlord Era began. Disillusioned with the republicans, Yao turned joined the Mao Tse-Tsung’s Long March, hardened against the horrible conditions of starvation and exhaustion which prevailed throughout it. Before the civil war could be settled, Japan invaded. His little brother’s betrayal hurt Yao more than all his other hardships. Kiku was brutal to him, slicing open Yao’s back with his katana, violating him during the Rape of Nanking, even performing experiments with biological weapons against his civilian population. By the time WWII ended, Yao had become a deeply committed nationalist with barely any human empathy; he had cut himself off from compassion simply to survive. However, Kiku was the monster, not him – he fully believed that he wanted the best for his people. The communist regime would uplift the peasants and workers, after all, but his goodwill was more mathematical than meaningful, and he urged on the destruction of millions of lives during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in order to advance the progress of China. The Sino-Soviet Alliance at this time was an equal relationship between Yao and Ivan, but more political than romantic, and they split messily over ideological differences. As the worst of his excesses became clear, Yao clamped down politically and emotionally. China remained autocratic, but lost the edge of revolutionary madness, and Yao identified more with the autocratic government than his oppressed people. He moved in high Party circles, although he did dedicate himself to trying to make the system work without resorting to the horror of civil war and regime change yet again.

After the Tiananmen Square massacre, he became more ambivalent, and pushed for reforms – but still without trying to topple the system. The return of Hong Kong in 1997 also helped Yao loosen up slightly, adapting his economic framework without changing his political system.

Throughout the 21st century, China angled America’s debts into a web of obligations that drew them diplomatically closer and kept them increasingly tangled economically. As the global political situation deteriorated, the American republic became the American empire, and Yao helped Alfred through the rocky transition, providing a pillar of stability for him. With both nations taking advantage of their fraught neighbors with expansive conquest, America and China sealed a formal military alliance. Yao and Alfred married for political reasons, and although Yao continued to manipulate his younger husband, the marriage was considerably less miserable than Yao’s last one. As climate change grew more and more catastrophic, they pioneered terraformation and interstellar travel, forcing other nations into a devil’s bargain during the exodus: the could join the Alliance and submit to Sino-American rule, or they could stay on earth and die. They explored, tamed, and colonized an abundant new solar system together. Although they ruled the known verse as co-nations, they lead separate lives, even on different planets (Alfred made his home on Londinium, while Yao settled on Sihnon.)

When the Rim declared independence, they fought side-by-side against the rebels, who included Arthur and other remnants of nations from Earth-That-Was. After Unification Day, Yao returned to his work as a highly placed, unobtrusive official in the Alliance hierarchy until Malcolm Reynolds and his crew revealed the origins of the Reavers. Yao immediately began working on damage control. Shortly before he arrived in Bete Noire, he was coordinating the drafted troops slated to wipe out the Reavers, mixing core and rim soldiers in every unit. After all, nothing unifies a nation better than a common enemy, and he could not have invented a better enemy if he’d tried.