Escape from family execution

For decades I had denied who I was, a fear had been ingrained in me since childhood, that should anyone Chinese come looking for me, I should flee. This sadly, is not uncommon. Normally, most second generation of any Chinese are unaware of their parents struggle to escape their homeland and integrate into a foreign country. But for me that was not afforded. For me, news of my Princess grandmothers assassination had made it not only to newspapers, but listed all family members, even those born outside of the country. And these clippings found their way to my mother enclosed with death threats - that if she were to try to claim any part of her heritage, my mother and our family would also be assasinated.

My mother believed these threats so intently, that she instilled in me a permanent fear, and a constantly changing back-up plan for escape. Imagine being 10 years old, and forging a secret life, a backstory to cover up who one is. And in order to do that, I stopped speaking Chinese, I denounced all my heritage, and pretended I was like any other child, even though I was the only Yellow-skinned girl in the class.

I grew up secretly loving all my Chinese comics, story books, talismans, and calligraphy, but outside, at school, I denied who I was to anyone including myself. In my classical stories, familial execution is a known thing. And going back to my ancestors, I found where it all started.

250 years ago, when our natives lived in the mountains and had developed their knowledge of medicines, cures, antidotes - and poison. They had become laden with such suspicion and superstition, that they were also respected for their Oracle Bone of future predictions, and it’s related practices of witchcraft.

Every daughter of these mountain clans kept with them their “Gu” magic, in a silver locket as a talisman of protection against those that would harm them. “Gu magic” varied from a type of silkworm, wrapped in gold leaf, to give prosperity, up to the most hidden secret within families from their own tribes also. The poison of poisons, wrapped in silver to protect it from being stolen and used elsewhere by evil spirits. The poison Gu, was a recipe blend that could be used as cures for unknown diseases, antidote, or long-lasting poison that would slowly kill a person over a year.

The recipes were originally written on Oracle Bone, but also preserved by familial tradition, such that there was a special form of Gu, for holding back to unleash its particular purpose at that time needed.

The owner of the Gu, had cultivated it by instruction, which poisonous bug, toad, amphibian, or reptile, ate which other poisonous creature until such time the last surviving bug or creature had metabolized and become the most concentrated form of deadly potion, dried and wrapped in silver leaf, ready to activate when desired. potion, dried and wrapped in silver leaf, ready to activate when desired.

Gu was so feared that it was also believed that if someone didn’t know they were transferred the Gu ownership, the Gu itself would drain people in its whereabouts and give that power of luck, prosperity and health to its real owners. Until such time the entire family would fall upon such fate that the Gu could be returned to its original owner. Having sucked dry all the wealth and good fortune and health of its family of victims.

Whispers of the potency of Gu, had reached the emperor, and although he used the medicine people’s talents, he distrusted them for his ever returning army who became weak, diseased, and unable to fight from whatever bizarre manifestation of Syphilis. In those days, syphilis was an unknown sexually transmitted disease, that would make its way into the bone of its victim, and eat away the bone in their skull until their faces were purulent with exposed cavities full of necrosis. It was a horrifying disease, that victims own skulls would become infested with maggots that ate the necrotic tissue that decayed upon the infected cranium, or facial cavities. Men, would often look like living dead, and they would never survive this terrifying and slow ordeal.

However, as we all know now to this day, syphilis is bacterial and not viral, and so with modern antibiotics can be treated and eradicated. In those days however, only the medicine people knew how to protect themselves - with Gu. Perhaps it was the original form of antibiotic? Perhaps is was so poisonous it did indeed alter the immune system to massively heal from whatever chronic disease had befell the travelling soldier.

Either way, the emperor became so suspicious of the Miao medicine people, that he BANNED all practice of witchcraft and magic related to Gu. Anyone caught practicing this superstition would be executed, along with their whole family too.

This doctrine of killing the entire family parents, siblings, children, and aunts and uncles, even those married into the family, meant that a families survival was tied to one another. And through this means Gu could be destroyed. But it wasn’t.

Women in particular, did not want to give up their protection against sexual diseases. And so Gu became a tradition among the women only of the Miao and the Yao people of the South, only there were strict rules among themselves to learn who to trust before telling anyone.

Unfortunately, the Miao were easy targets to decimate, and any soldier having known a Miao woman immediately stepped up to denounce a woman and her entire family. So the emperor sent scouts, and often entire clans were executed, their bodies left to rot at the gate of the villages as a warning to others NOT to engage in witchcraft or Gu.

The manner in which they were executed, was to lock them into stocks with only their head exposed from the cage, and leave them to rot alive and die of the elements. If there were not enough stocks, they chopped off their heads, and spiked them all around the village as a warning so no one would enter, and the last cages were left for the long slow death of the main family perpetrators. No one was spared. Children were decapitated to save them a slow death and add to the punishment of the parental onlookers trapped in their stocks and either bound to a wooden pole, A-frame, or tiny cage until they died of gangrene and exposure -often over a few days.

This brutal form of punishment was afforded to witchcraft AND pirates. So the Miao were affected for their medicine practice, and the Yao of the seafaring people were accused of piracy and suffered the same fate. The reason was, the emperor was getting pissed at these sea-faring people interfering with matters of merchant trade, tolling, and taxing them for safe passage, and keeps the money to themselves. Pirates in those days were each to themselves, not organized in any way. And simply taking advantage of a situation where the pearl diving communities were assured of their protection from rapist westerners who boggled in disbelief at Nubian women in the waters who called their calling card to others in the form of whichever pressure breathing worked for that individual.

I practice pressure breathing on my long dives, and people on my livestream channel would wonder why I was hissing like a snake. But it is simply me increasing pressure and oxygen absorption in my blood before a 3 minute underwater challenge.

Anyway, I digress, so the story goes, one girl escaped the family executions of the Miao mountain tribes. Whatever she had seen or heard or been a part of, that was probably never her own intent, somehow she escaped the mountain tribes fate. To this day, there is a village labelled on a map the name of “death village” earning its unfortunate title from the death squad that was sent to decimate the population of all Gu practicing families.

Somehow, this girl was terrified and hid, and escaped down the karst mountains, into the underground waterways, that led to the sea, with her fellow Yao people. Karst mountains are bizarre, they are like a stony impenetrable forest of tall pillars of rock, and from the way they erode, there are waterways below that snake their way out to the South China Seas. And that is how the young girl escaped. Not more than 16 years old and alone. Unfortunately, knowing she was Miao, the Yao didn’t accept her, she had no skills to contribute to the community pearl diving, or water way foraging, and in light of the terrifying witch hunt and piracy claims among the threatened villagers, no one wanted to Harbour the girl. Except one.

On the major estuary busy with trade, transferring food and stocks and materials on barges upstream and around the coast, there were many living barge boats which houses up to 20 people. It was here the girl found refuge, on a brothel boat. She was to become a prostitute, and service any pirate or navy man, or merchant coming through the area. So the girl kept with her hidden the Gu magic that would keep her healthy, and men never coming back, for she would not tell them, they were all going to die within a year…

This girl, was the start of my ancestors adventures, whose trinkets I own to this day.