Hello, and welcome to the history of China.

Episode 228, 8th Anniversary Q&A Special!

Wow, it really is that time of year again when the show's anniversary creeps up on me and

I completely forget about it until someone jogs my memory by asking if there's going

to be a Q&A this year.

Well, obviously, the answer is yes.

That only has the show been luxuriating in the celebration of 8 years on the podwaves,

but it also, you're ready for this, recently surpassed the 10 million download mark.

And if that's not a reason to break out the casks of sorghum wine and roast entire oxen

on a spit in celebration, then I don't know what is.

Heck, we'll get Zheng Ha out there to get one of those huge birds from Africa and see

if we can't make the world's biggest paking duck.

So as such things tend to go, you asked, and now I answer.

There were some, and this is pretty typical, double-ups in some of the questions, so I've

opted to condense that into a single answer where those cases happened, so please be aware

that if you don't hear the exact phrasing of what you asked, I've nevertheless tried

to be as thorough as possible.

And what a list of awesome questions it was.

Some of them took some real digging, but it was totally worth it, and I hope that you

will find that you agree.

All right, without further ado, and in no particular order, let's launch right in.

Tim starts us off with a question, are there any funny stories from history that I really

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