Chinese Nationalist Hates Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

What happens when you try to ride off the nationalism wave of black myth Wukong but accidentally offended an entire generation of brainwashed gamers? Because your story is set in a period of history now deemed too inappropriate for the great rejuvenation of the CCP history, you get Wuchang Fallen Feathers. Yes, mythical monkey stories are fine, but when you talk about real Chinese history, well, then there's a lot of political sensitivities that go along with it, especially when it comes to talking about Han culture and non-Han ethnic groups. How dare you use real Chinese history as a background for your fictional game? Okay, so a viewer sent me this comment telling me to look into the game called Wuchang Fallen Feathers, and so I did look into it, and oh boy, this one's good and juicy. This game's Chinese title is translated to The End of Ming Dynasty, The Feather of Vast Emptiness. Wuchang is the main character's name, and she wakes up with this feather disease, and she's trying to save her sister. Now, the background or the story is set using the historical period of the end of the Ming Dynasty, which is also the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, around the year of 1647. Specifically, it's set in the province of Sichuan, which is modern-day hot spicy food, the most popular province for it. Well, none of that matters to the angry Chinese nationalistic gamers because, yeah, they're offended by this one. So, if you know a bit of Chinese history, you know that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, or the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, actually is a transition from a Han culture-controlled imperial court into a Manchurian-controlled imperial court. And specifically, this is set in the province of Sichuan, three years after the last emperor of Ming Dynasty had died. Now, one of the points that they're angry about is that there's zero people from the Qing Dynasty that you actually fight as regular soldiers or as bosses. In fact, all of the people that you actually fight are from the Ming Dynasty. So, when Chinese players played this and they realized that some of the historical names like Zhang Xianzhong and his adopted sons were now being used as a negative or bosses or antagonists being, you know, slayed when you go fight them. Well, that made a lot of people really angry because they thought that, oh, you're twisting history. Again, this game is fictional, as it states two seconds into the game. I mean, they even got Zhao Yun from the Three Kingdoms era, like thousands of years before this in the game, because it's set in this mythical, you know, Buddhist samsara reincarnation type of vibe, even with Chinese Daoism involved as well. So, it's a mythical fictional story, right? They're just borrowing parallel elements from the real historical stuff into this game because that's, I mean, Chinese mythology in a sense. During this turbulent period and, or as they say now, and gosh, I hate to see it this way, which is this huge amount of, currently in China, Han superiority and this complex of it instilled because of the CCP's brainwashing and their attempt to unify all of the ethnic differences from the 56 different ethnic groups. They view, obviously, the northern Manchurians not as the Han people enough. So, in the eyes of brainwashed nationalistic players, they view the Qing courts or the Manchurians as not the Han people, in other words, not the real Chinese people. To some degrees, even though they don't say it, this is actually equating to the Japanese invasion of China as well because they really just view them as a foreign force invading the real China, right? And that's really playing into the CCP's desire to equate itself to the Chinese people as well, right? They always say that without the CCP, there wouldn't be a new China. They really want to be the so-called representative of the Chinese people, even though communism is a very western idea. So, when the game was released, there were slogans like, if you play this game, you're a traitor to China, that type of thing. Basically, we're told to hate the entire period of the Qing dynasty because that's not Chinese enough, which is weird because in the CCP's cultural exports, the Qing costume or the Qing fashion and its cultural values are very much a key point in the cultural export and propaganda. So, that was just the domestic hate. Internationally, it got worse, but I guess from the developer's perspective, it had to be done. After patch 1.5, which is the most recent one, obviously, they caved to the situation in China, completely changed the plotline. Obviously, they didn't tell the players much. According to this review, Lean Z, which is the game dev, censor the game story so you can no longer actually kill anyone in the Ming dynasty. This includes bosses, soldiers, and sometimes citizens as well. You can't attack the soldiers and citizens and the bosses, and they become exhausted after the fight, start to talk to you now. I personally have a bone to pick with these black myth type of games where they purposefully darken the period or the story that they're trying to portray to make it seem like, oh, this is an alternative storytelling. I personally think that's a huge disrespect to the Chinese history and culture, but that's a whole other topic and very controversial, apparently. But the point here is that this story is fictional. It's, again, borrowing the elements from that period. It's not a historical game. It just sounded like to me, the Chinese players just wanted to kill demonized versions of the Qing bosses and Qing soldiers. This tweet actually raises an important point I think we have to make clear of how it goes in China. So, Daniel here argues that the Chinese government can intervene in games to change their plot lines because that would actually expose their shortcomings. On paper, this is true. They're never going to be individually going to games and say, hey, you need to do this and this. But what they can do is in the aftermath, drive public opinion to suit what they desire at the moment. And right now, they can obviously up vote, or I don't know how the word would be, but they can make those opinions about the game that are more desirable, such as say, this whole nationalistic reaction, more viral and popular, and then silence or down vote the other opinions, which maybe people have say, oh, this is not such a big deal, to make it seem like that this game is creating this sense of anti-China, anti-Chinese history, or demonization of Chinese history. Dear China Insider viewers, this August, I'm heading to Four City in Malaysia, a hunting symbol of China's real estate crisis. For a seven-day investigation, I'll be exploring the ghost city and speaking and interviewing with people in Malaysia and Singapore about the Chinese crisis in its real estate politics as well as the general perception in Southeast Asia. My goal is to expose the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party there. 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And I doubt that the devs in China want to not have, obviously, this game is not released in China. It didn't get a license of some sort. I believe the entertainment license, because they only give out so few to different media platforms each year. And a lot of these licenses are actually bought out by companies like NetEase or Tencent to release their games. So it's hard for independent or indie studios to get these licenses. But what this situation is evolving into is that the game dev studio is in China. So there's no way that they want to lose the Chinese audience base. So naturally, censorship and caving, bending that knee is necessary for their own survival. So for that part, I don't really blame them. It's just how it's going to be in China. I mean, being a Chinese dev is just hard, right? You want to make a story. It can't be too real. It has to be a fiction. But also at the same time, you literally cannot touch so many of these sensitive spots. Otherwise, you never know what's awaiting for you. And apparently in these leaked internal discussions that they even warned the game director that this sort of element could trigger some type of backlash. But the dude's a boss and he just didn't listen. He proceeded with it anyways. Now, let's talk a little bit about the details of this whole nationalism aspect. Now, the Chinese situation right now with the ethnic groups is anyone that's a Tibetan Uyghurs or not the Han group, which is the biggest ethnic group in China can face some level of discrimination because what the CCP wants is this unified Han culture, right? They want to eliminate the differences or the ethnic distinctions between each of these groups. They want every group to learn Mandarin. They want every group to eliminate or diminish their own special identities as much as possible. Qing Manchurians, I'm actually half Manchu, is always going to be seen as the outsider group, just like the Mongols were when they conquered China. It's an outside invader that did this, right? They're never going to admit the idea that outside of Han is also Chinese. They're never going to admit that. But guess what? Without the Qing dynasty, you wouldn't have the Republic of China. You wouldn't have the CCP anyway. So at some level, you have to kind of admit that actually, yeah, you should be thankful that there was the Qing dynasty. Okay, so regarding the portrayal of the Ming dynasty bosses like Zhang Xianzhong, which is a very controversial figure, he started this uprising of the peasants and he slayed a bunch of court officials. And actually, nowadays, a lot of people see the indiscriminate rampages in China, they call them Xianzhong, which is the first name of this guy, as sort of equivalent to what he did back in the days, right? He slayed these corrupt officials. But Xianzhong was a controversial figure because he later took Sichuan province and made himself, for a short period of time, emperor of Xi. And now, obviously, he was defeated. But some of his adopted sons in this game, they're also portrayed as negative figures because they tried to defend the last days of the Ming dynasty. But so here's the thing, right? If you study just one period with any period, and you study the obsession over the end of the era, you're going to be like, oh, yeah, well, look, I mean, these people fought valiantly, bravely to defend their dynasties from the Qing. And so, you know, they're heroes and stuff. But throughout the examination of the trend of history or the timeline of history, you would see that you had to usher in the new era, because the end of Ming had so many problems that can only be solved with the next dynasty. And that's happened through so many iterations throughout Chinese history. So the swapping of power or the changing of dynasties is nothing new. And again, I see this as a parallel to what the CCP really wants is they want to preserve the current dynasty of the CCP, the current regime, they don't want a regime change, they don't want to see a dynasty change to the next. They don't want people to want what's coming next, they want people to defend them, so that they can remain in power for a very long time. That's, I guess, natural with any people, any group that's in power. But we all know that no dynasties last forever and dynasties rise and fall. So it's also it's a good part for people to know the history, especially for China or other more ancient civilizations, it is that powers do change and do transfer and it's never a forever thing. I do think that this comment is right for for a non Chinese players perspective, though, quote, if the developers at Linzi are scared of sharing their own stories with the world, they should stop creating stories at all. My biggest problem with this is not those specific changes, but the lack of confidence that Linzi have in their creation. But the problem is in China, everything is political. The politics trumps everything. I actually think agreeing to release the game targeting the Ming dynasty is against the trend of the CCP. Here's why. So in 2023, there was a book about the last emperor of the Ming dynasty, Emperor Chongzhen, and it was actually de-shelved and banned in China. For what reason? Well, it was apparently insinuating Xi Jinping. Now Chongzhen Emperor is somebody one of the bosses you get to fight in the game as well. Emperor Chongzhen was somebody who tried to get involved in every aspect of government, much like how Xi Jinping did trying to concentrate all the powers. He had to dip his hand into controlling everything. Right. So this parallel of Chongzhen and Xi Jinping, also because Chongzhen was the last emperor of the Ming court, people are saying, look, you know, could Xi Jinping be the last emperor of the CCP? And obviously, the CCP didn't like that because you're saying literally a doomsayer situation, right? You're saying, oh, yeah, this is going to be the end of your regime. So I personally think you can already imagine why a game set at the end of the Ming dynasty is a trigger point for many things to go wrong and brave enough for them to even try to attempt this. And I honestly am shocked how it even got past the inspection aspect at the game sensors or the entertainment sensors in China. And it was even allowed to to. Well, it's not released in China, but you can still get it on Steam. Right. So, yeah, let me know your thoughts in the comments and I'd love to hear what you think. And like and subscribe to this channel if you haven't already. Until next time. Bye bye.