Chapter 14
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 014
Chapter Title: China Illiterates
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Shock.
Huge shock.
It was horrific.
This was a disaster.
"So... this is everything?"
"...Yeah."
I had made a massive mistake somewhere.
I'd assumed that Great Britain, the empire spreading freedom, democracy, and opium across the world, would at least have a rough grasp of information from every corner of the globe.
I'd come here planning to say something smug like, "Heh, you lot really know nothing about the Orient."
But I hadn't thought they'd know absolutely nothing.
- What's the difference, exactly?
Imagine I'm an English teacher dealing with Koreans.
I'd figured my students would be your typical "Hello, nice to meet you, I'm fine thank you and you?" level learners.
But when I actually meet them, it turns out they don't even know what the alphabet is!!
- Nah, it's not that bad, right? They at least know hanja.
Fuck!
Fuck!!!
This was supposed to be the gathering of the world's top experts on the Orient!
Not the British Museum or the Oxford libraries—this place was the cutting edge of Eastern studies!
And yet.
And yet!
"You're telling me there's no Li Bai or Du Fu anthologies in all of London...?"
"Is that really so shocking?"
"No Dao in Britain...?"
"Calm down, lad."
"How can I calm down? Huh?!"
I could understand not having the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government. That thing's insanely massive. But this was like the Shakespeare section being empty in the Beijing Public Library's foreign books aisle!! How the hell was I supposed to stay calm?!
The quickest way for one nation to understand another is through its literature and history. It wasn't just because I'd buried myself in those back in Joseon—it really is the fastest path to grasping their foundations.
And yet, in this meager collection of under a thousand volumes that these so-called Orient experts had scraped together... the histories of the Yuan, Jin, Song, and even the Five Dynasties were completely missing. There were a few Tang books, then it jumps straight to the Ming. Oh, fuck. It was like going from Unified Silla straight to Yi Seong-gye.
"So what you're saying is—"
"It's like the chapter after the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain jumping straight to the Hundred Years' War."
It was suffocating.
For a hero from the 21st century like Arthur Leigh, who lacked any superpowers... could I really guide these ignorant Saxons onto the right path?
"Any books captured as war spoils from the recent conflicts? You know, that sort of thing."
"What book is that?"
"This massive encyclopedia the Qing put together a few decades back. If we had that, it'd be a goldmine."
As if. Even Joseon didn't have a copy. Still, staring at this overwhelming void made it hard to breathe.
"Here, lad. Want to take a look at this? It's our hanja translations."
Thank goodness for small mercies. Some brilliant scholar who'd died before I was even born had at least left behind an English-Hanja dictionary. Right. With a dictionary, basic translation should've been possible.
But pure-hearted Arthur Leigh was wrong again this time.
Even setting aside how hard it is to unpack the condensed meanings of logographic hanja... they'd translated proper nouns like people's names and place names literally, turning it into a horrific mess of chaos! Rendering Sichuan as "Four Rivers"?! As if anything readable could come from that!
- We're screwed. What now?
No.
It's not like that.
I stroked my chin and fell into thought for a moment.
The Anglo-Saxon DNA coursing through my veins was whispering a new creed: crisis is opportunity.
"Almost nothing on Joseon. A few of these are Japanese books, not Chinese."
"Hmm. I see."
"So, got any bright ideas?"
"If I wrote a concise history of the Orient, would that help?"
They looked distinctly unimpressed. Sure, a smart kid was one thing, but could they really trust a child in an academic field?
Biting back tears, I decided to hit them with the facts.
"Sorry, but no Li Bai or Du Fu means you don't know Shakespeare. Not knowing Joseon is like not knowing Scotland."
"Umm..."
"Alright. Will you help us out?"
I nodded... no, instead, I touched my thumb and index finger together to make a circle.
You know I don't even have a house, come on.
Pay me.
- Nice?
More than nice. I'd put out the immediate fire, at least.
I'd made faces among London's elite.
And I'd firmly imprinted that I wasn't your average kid or lucky castaway, but a bona fide prodigy.
Landing a little translation gig was nothing.
The real win was doing work that even jaded scholars would respect. There'd been that newspaper article saying Queen Victoria wanted to meet me. If by then I'd swapped "surviving boy" for "once-in-a-millennium boy scholar," it'd be total victory.
- Victory over who, exactly...?
This barbaric world, obviously.
In the 21st century, I wouldn't need this crap. I'd just call up a TV station or fire up YouTube or TikTok.
While steadily building my scholarly reputation, I'd manage my other weapons too.
My biggest weapon right now?
My connection to Joseon.
This era still clung to class systems.
Racism against colored folk? Separate from that, if the person of color was royalty or nobility, a lowly commoner couldn't strut around with their nose in the air. Sure, they might respect a black prince, but fellow white nobles might sneer that the underling didn't know his place.
Give it time, and mini-nations like Joseon would get totally ignored. But not yet.
So the effect of my epic title—"Arthur Leigh, swept up in a horrific disaster, lost his parents, drifted the vast seas, washed up in a distant mysterious land where he was welcomed, hosted by the prime minister no less, even studying alongside the young king, dazzling the Orientals with Anglo-Saxon wit and brilliance"—was at its absolute peak right now. Robinson Crusoe? Don't compare me to that hack.
Here's the problem.
What's the most rational play for someone in my position?
The answer's obvious.
"Joseon is a small peninsular nation at the edge of the Chinese mainland, but with a large population and rugged mountains, it's maintained its sovereignty despite a great power next door. China calls it its Number One Vassal—the foremost tributary state. Any dynasty claiming to rule the continent had to either bully or woo Joseon into submission to legitimize its authority."
"Like the Ottoman Turks and the Crimean Khanate?"
"Seems so."
"Joseon, huh... What about Japan?"
"Europe and Britain are close, but Japan is quite a distance away. They say it has little exchange with China."
Boost Joseon.
Boost it hard.
"The Qing dynasty ruling China now was founded by the Jurchen tribe, a Tatar clan. They were once slaves to Joseon, seized independence in the chaos, toppled their masters, and conquered China."
"Ho ho."
"So a minority Tatar group rules the native Chinese, and rebellions keep popping up."
Next, an endless beatdown on the Qing.
China's currently dominated by Mongols, the Han majority seething with rage, ready to revolt any day, blah blah blah.
No lies told. No lies. That's just how Joseon folks taught it, still pining for the Ming. How could you compare the demon hordes of Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Qing—who burst through portals to found their dynasties—to the true Central Plains? I loved chapagetti and ate it every Sunday, but that didn't make it anything other than chapagetti. Order jjajangmyeon and get chapagetti from a steel lunchbox instead? You'd kill 'em.
The Brits, absorbing my new intel, naturally filtered it through their worldview.
"Indeed. Just like Rome falling to barbarians."
"Every Chinese dynasty lost its founding vigor, outsourcing defense to foreign mercenaries until they collapsed? For distant nations to share such fates, there must be some natural or scientific law at work."
Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
Listening to these scholar gents, it seemed the West used to see China as a distant utopia or a mighty, prosperous dreamland. Orientalist (though it didn't look very Oriental to me) art styles had dominated the era, after all.
But trends change.
They said the China craze was fading. More and more, it was dismissed as a barbaric despotism. The Opium War had shown the Qing crumbling too easily for its size, and to these strong-eat-weak European barbarians, it was starting to look laughable.
I gladly tossed fuel on this anti-China fire.
'That's not real Zhonghua!'
'Those are Tatars! Not the great China, but fake Mongol Hordes!'
'No wonder it feels off lately—it's a knockoff, not the genuine article!'
One more nudge, and they might reach the weird conclusion that "gentleman thief Britain must protect the true Zhonghua's brilliant civilization." But Britain didn't know enough about the Orient yet to go that far.
The "Orient" Brits and Europeans talked about was closer to the modern Middle East and India. Even in the Asiatic Society, the main focus was those regions.
Middle East for trade routes, India for Britain's core interests—they had to study those hard. So naturally, research on China, Korea, and Japan was amateur hour.
Plus, the atmosphere around me was a bit awkward.
"Ahem. China research is fine, but right now..."
"The Ottoman Turks are far more pressing, no?"
Damn. If only I had a lightning-bolt scar.
The "miracle survival boy" story had electrified Europe and puffed up British national pride like a balloon.
But the scholars now, especially archaeology buffs and intellectuals, were way more focused elsewhere than China.
European explorers, scholars, and diplomats had unearthed ancient city ruins in 21st-century Iraq—under current Ottoman Turk rule in the Middle East.
Nineveh.
In biblical terms...
The Assyrian ruins were revealing themselves.
"Kieeeek!!"
"Assyria? Assyria was a real country?"
"The Bible really does hold the truth!"
"No way. Does that mean Philistia, Moab—all of them were real? Sodom and Gomorrah actually existed?!"
Regrettably, I couldn't hop on this rising Assyria hype train.
I was born with a mission to civilize this barbaric land of Britain.
I had to redirect that bait, that interest, toward the Orient somehow!
My old life as an honest salesman Park In-ho, motto of integrity and trust, might feel a tiny prick of conscience. But since I wasn't fabricating total fiction, it wasn't too bad. A bit of exaggeration? Everyone does it.
Time to cast the spell that would move the British.
"Actually, Joseon is Zipangu."
Interest in Joseon exploded.