Dogs and Monkeys (3)
February 1912. The Forbidden City.
Yuan Shikai ascended the steps of the Hall of Supreme Harmony with a confident stride, the generals of the Beiyang Army at his back.
The guards. The high officials. Even the Imperial Guard, the sworn protectors of the throne itself.
Not a single soul barred the path of the rebel minister.
Not a single soul performed the duty they had sworn to uphold.
Creeeeak.
When the doors of the Hall of Supreme Harmony swung open, the men who fancied themselves the last loyalists of the Qing surrounded the throne where the yellow dragon had once descended — and the six-year-old child sitting there, staring blankly back at them.
"Yuan Shikai! How — how could you do this!"
"History will judge you, Yuan Shikai!"
"Good heavens. Is it any wonder the nation has come to this, with high ministers spouting the same tired platitudes? I have nothing further to say to the likes of you gentlemen."
Beiyang soldiers rushed forward and pried the loyalists off the throne one by one, dragging them away.
At last, Yuan Shikai approached the emperor left all alone — no, the little boy called Aisin Gioro Puyi — and spoke.
"Your Majesty. You are hereby deposed."
The moment the words left Yuan Shikai's lips, Duan Qirui, commander of the Beiyang Army's 1st Group, raised his arm high.
"Long live His Excellency Grand President Yuan Shikai! Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!"
"Long live the Grand President! Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!"
"Long live the Republic of China! Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!"
The rotten old empire collapsed, and a page of history turned.
"For distinguished service in the suppression of rebellion, Colonel Zhang Zuolin is promoted to Brigadier General and appointed Commander of the Fengtian 27th Division."
"Long live His Excellency Grand President Yuan Shikai! Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!"
"Furthermore, for his preemptive suppression of the rebellion of Brigade Commander Lan Tianwei of the 2nd Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Lee Tae-oh is awarded the Order of National Merit and granted a reward of ten thousand taels of silver."
"Thank you!"
Heh heh. Four hundred kilograms of silver. If I weren't a man out of time, I might have sworn eternal loyalty to old Yuan right about now.
The Republic of China had been founded, and it seemed as though the world were changing.
- The capital shall be relocated from Beijing to Nanjing.
- Grand President Sun Yat-sen shall surrender his office to Premier Yuan Shikai and step down.
- Grand President Yuan Shikai, having restored order, shall in due course transition the continent to a democratic republican system.
- All hostilities in every province shall cease immediately.
Except for Zhao Erxun, who had barricaded himself in his residence in shock that even Yuan Shikai, the man he trusted, had abandoned the Qing, everyone in Fengtian welcomed the changing world with open arms.
The old provincial Local Brigade structure was reorganized, and the 23rd, 27th, and 28th Divisions were established across the Three Eastern Provinces.
The 27th in Fengtian. The 28th in Heilongjiang. The 23rd in Jilin.
Not to mention the 1st Cavalry Brigade, patrolling Heilongjiang, and the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, patrolling the Liao River.
The 27th Division went to Zhang Zuolin, the 28th to Feng Delin, and the 23rd was concurrently held by the Jilin general Meng Enyuan.
Xu Lanzhou took command of the 1st Cavalry Brigade, and Wu Junsheng the 2nd.
Of that lot, everyone except Meng Enyuan — Zhang Zuolin, Feng Delin, Xu Lanzhou, Wu Junsheng — came from bandit or militia origins. It was truly an era where you had to graduate from the Bandit Officers' Academy rather than a military academy to earn your stars.
Mm. How surreal. How deliciously barbaric.
Manchuria has never once disappointed me.
Magnificent, Manchuria!
And I, now a lieutenant colonel, was appointed Chief of Staff of the 27th Division.
The 53rd, 54th, and 55th Brigades were placed under the 27th Division: Zhang Baochen commanding the 53rd, Sun Liechen the 54th, and Zhang Jinghui the 55th.
Sun Liechen was forty this year, a top graduate of the cavalry department at the Jiangwu Academy — one of the very few genuinely trained professional soldiers in all of Manchuria, and yet…
"WOOHAHAHA!!"
"Man, I had no idea Colonel Sun knew how to party like this."
"Hey! Give Colonel Sun the expensive stuff over here!"
He got along with the former bandits surprisingly well.
What is with that sociability?
"If Colonel Sun fits in well, isn't that a good thing?"
"I suppose so, sir."
"So what do you plan to do now?"
I drained my cup, glanced once at the banner reading 27th Division Founding Ceremony, and spoke.
"They say Beijing will be sending a diplomatic mission abroad soon."
"That figures. A new regime needs recognition."
"I intend to wedge myself into it."
"Oh? Why?"
"Because I suspect most of the weapons we hold are about to become useless."
Zhang Zuolin, mid-drink, went stiff for a moment — then beckoned me closer with a wag of his finger.
"…Tell me more."
"Nearly all of our firearms are German-made, aren't they?"
"They are."
From the Hanyang Type 88 rifles we'd issued to our soldiers, down to the MG08s we'd used to crush the Tongmenghui uprising — all German license-produced or German-built.
"Did you follow the Agadir Crisis?"
"…Ah, that business in the country over in Afrique?"
"That's the one."
Now that the continent had settled somewhat after its chaos, destruction, and oblivion, the overseas situation was heating up: Kaiser Wilhelm II of the German Empire, afflicted with a chronic case of 'I Hate Britain', was pushing a foreign policy known as the 3B Strategy, and colliding with the British Empire's 3C Strategy at every turn.
Berlin–Byzantium–Baghdad. 3B.
Cape Town–Cairo–Calcutta. 3C.
Germany, finally feeling like it had some heft to its weight class, had picked a needless fight over Morocco — a country France, Britain's dear friend, had practically drooled all over — and as a result, the Kaiser's Reich had become the friendless loner of the international schoolyard.
What about Austria-Hungary, you ask? Didn't they back Germany?
Of course they did. Even the biggest scumbag alive can count on family to take his side.
And if your own family won't take your side, well, that's disqualification from the human race. Boo, you trash.
"The odds of war breaking out between Germany on one side and Britain and France on the other are very high indeed. And Germany cannot beat the Royal Navy at sea."
"Then resupply would be cut off."
"Precisely. Without German-made parts, bullets, and shells, most of the weapons we own become scrap."
And this is why the colonial empires are so infuriating. When they sell you something, they'll hand over the goods themselves, but never the factories, the blueprints, or the know-how to make them.
They'll be doing it even in the future, after imperialism dies — but right now, we can't even steal a sideways glance and copy them.
"Even the Hanyang Type 88s we're using are already third-rate castoffs that Germany itself has discarded. This is the moment to sell off our entire inventory to the other units and procure something new."
"So whoever buys the guns we dump will be drenched in blood when Germany starts its war — holding a liability becomes a crime. Heh heh heh."
After all, getting from Germany all the way here to Manchuria means crossing an ocean. How exactly would they punch through the Royal Navy to get here?
If they tried floating merchant ships across, they'd simply be laying out a buffet for the Royal Navy of the British Empire.
"And there's one more thing. It's time we built a proper military academy here in Fengtian."
"A military academy? Don't we already have the Fengtian Army Primary School?"
"That place is no academy. From what I saw, it was a breeding ground for reserve rebels."
The image of Zhang Rong pontificating up at the lectern, horn-rimmed glasses flashing, still burned vividly behind my eyelids.
The fact that a man like him had been teaching there meant that while we hadn't yet flushed out his collaborators, they were still lurking inside the school.
Send cadets into a place like that, and who knows — one night I might wake up to find my head rolling because some fanatic started shrieking 'Sun Yat-sen reborn! Ten thousand horses in submission!'
What? Why can't I found it myself?
Because I've got mountains of work already without adding teaching to the pile.
Feeding an entire division, handling telegraph reports flying in from Kiautschou Bay — and now you want me to hold a chalk too? I'd drop dead from overwork.
"Fine. Say we build one. But neither of us has ever attended an academy — how?"
I pulled out a newspaper that had caught my eye back in Beijing and handed it to him.
"…'The Dignity of the Continent Shines Abroad — Wen Yingxing'! Who is this man?"
"They say he's a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Top of his class, and about to graduate."
"But he's a Cantonese man, isn't he? Same hometown as Sun Yat-sen. It won't be easy to lure him here, will it?"
"That's beside the point."
"Beside the point?"
"A soldier visiting a promising young man who'll one day be the pillar of the next army, to offer his encouragement — that reads well, doesn't it? Nobody would suspect a thing."
"I suppose not."
And while I'm at it, I'll scoop up a few more West Point notables while I'm over there!
A George Marshall, perhaps. A Douglas MacArthur.
Frankly, anyone at all from over there would beat every man in this rathole of a Manchuria.
If I remember right, US Army officers need overseas deployment experience to climb to the top ranks.
Offer one of the ones who lacks it a one-year contract to lay the foundations of the Fengtian academy — at double pay — and it becomes a rather attractive proposition.
And even if the US War Department scoffs — 'Huh, Manchuria? Why would we send our precious officers to some backwater?' — well, I've got a plan for that too.
"Besides, we're routing through the United States and then on to Britain, France, and Germany anyway. If one fish won't bite, we simply dangle the hook somewhere else."
"Good. As always, I leave it in your hands."
"No one more reliable than me, sir."
"You rascal. That's why I gave you the pocket watch, isn't it? I've fed you — now get to work."
Mid-1912. I boarded the train for Tianjin.
"Hyuuuung~ Why do you get to go abroad and not meee~"
"Why? Because you can't speak a foreign language, that's why."
"B-but I'm learning English! I can speak it now!"
"You're hilarious. 'I'm fine thank you' is the extent of your vocabulary. Skip your homework while I'm gone and I'll double it when I'm back."
"Wha-wha-WHAT?"
"Sir, you need to board now."
Shaking off Zhang Xueliang — now an eleven-year-old brat — I stepped aboard, and the train carrying Guo Songling and me pulled slowly out of Fengtian.
I'd left Ma Jeom-san to handle logistics in my absence, and Du Lisan behind as a marksmanship instructor.
Jo Do-seon and Woo Deok-sun had been given their own separate assignment — and if it succeeded, it would be an enormous boon for the independence army as well.
Which left Guo Songling.
If we were going to build a military academy in Fengtian, it made sense to bring along the man who knew the city best and had the relevant experience.
What? Why just the two of us? Isn't anyone else going?
Of course not.
Why, I even got the occasional 'You're LEAVING? Damn it all — you're the hero of the Fengtian Army!'
The Qing dynasty had just imploded, and its privileges were scattered everywhere for the taking. Hop a boat abroad now, and you miss the whole feast.
First come, first served — and in times like these, joining a diplomatic mission abroad is an act of supreme folly.
Of course, none of that applies to me.
Why would I bother hoarding some piddling toll rights when a man from the future can just tap-tap 'buy' on Mercedes stock and outpace it thirtyfold? Let the locals curse the speculators; I'll take the capital gains.
I do wonder what faces the same people who wore such pitying expressions at me will make when they see the returns printed in my account.
Besides, this was my chance to personally tour the companies I'd invested in and take stock of several of them.
And so it was that I found myself joining the remarkably lean delegation known as the Debt Delegation.
The Debt Delegation was scheduled to tour four nations — the United States, Britain, France, and Germany — all of whom held staggering quantities of Qing dynasty bonds.
In essence, it was a mission sent to plead: 'We've gone from Empire to Republic, you see, and things are a bit chaotic at the moment — could you possibly push back the bond maturities until we've tidied up the house?'
The head of the delegation departing from Tianjin was a man named Chen Jindao…
"A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Chief Delegate. Army Lieutenant Colonel Lee Tae-oh."
"Ah, likewise. Chen Jindao."
Neatly combed hair, a fastidiously trimmed beard, and cultivated, courteous speech — the man was a modern gentleman through and through.
And then.
"…You say Yale?"
"That's right. Undergraduate at Columbia, master's and doctorate at Yale — I received my PhD in economics under Professor Irving Fisher."
What is this monster?
Bachelor's in mathematics from Columbia.
Master's and doctorate in political economy from Yale.
Thesis adviser: Irving Fisher, the father of econometrics.
In the twenty-first century, this man would be working in a skyscraper on Wall Street.
With talent like this in the building, how on earth did the Qing government keep running policies as asinine as 'Aww, we're broke. Guess we'll confiscate some private businesses'?
Truly magnificent, House of Aisin Gioro!
Connecting with a genius like this is absolutely, absolutely crucial. When else would I get a line on an elite like this in Manchuria?
"Might I buy you a drink and hear some stories about America? I've never been, and I'll pay handsomely for the storytelling."
"Haha! A free drink! If the Lieutenant Colonel is buying, I could hardly refuse! Though — the ocean liner's bar is said to be quite expensive. Are you certain?"
"Cheap at the price of getting to know the Chief Delegate. Shall we?"
Not long after our glasses clinked…
"Son of a biiiitch… This country is finished. Finished, I tell you! Goddamn, goddammitall—"
"Songling. See the Chief Delegate back to his cabin."
"Yes, sir."
He was a spectacularly poor drinker.
If he'd lived in Manchuria, cirrhosis would have taken him years ago. What a lightweight.
Several weeks passed.
"Lieutenant Colonel, you awake?"
"Yes, Mr. Chief Delegate. Is something the matter?"
"Haha, none at all — but stop moldering below deck and come up top! You can see San Francisco!"
"Really?"
I followed Chen Jindao to the open stern of the passenger liner.
"…Hold on. Where's the Golden Gate Bridge?"
"The Golden Gate what?"
"…Ah. Never mind. It's a… thing, back home."
So it hasn't been built yet, huh.
For the first time in this life, I set foot on American soil — on San Francisco.
The few weeks I would spend in America, and the months ahead in Europe, promised to be very, very busy indeed.