You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

Hello and welcome to the history of China.

Episode 331, Kingdom Come.

Shen zai shuii chiegely. 331, Kingdom Come. How great is the power of water, for good and for ill.

Sima Qian, second century BCE.

Zhang Shea, Liu Jiao, Min Xuan.

Slay the depraved, spare the upright, relieve the people in distress.

Hong Xiu Quan, 1837.

The news of Wu Chang traveled by relay.

It moved north out of Hubei along the Imperial Post Road, carried by mounted couriers,

who changed horses at Wei stations spaced roughly 30 miles apart.

Each rider responsible only for his own segment of the route.

This was an old system, older than the Qing or even the Ming.

And on its best days, it could move a memorial from the Middle Yangza to the capital in somewhere under three weeks.

From a provincial governor's brush in Wuhan to the Grand Council in Beijing,

the news of Wuchang's fall on January 12, 1853, would have reached the throne sometime by early February.

By the time it arrived, though, the city was no longer the news of the day.

The army that had taken it, you see, was already on the move again eastward.

The summer palace sat in low hills northwest of Beijing, some 800 acres of artificial lakes

and ornamental gardens,

theaters and riding trails and miniaturized landscapes that recreated the empire in miniature

for the pleasure of the man at its center.

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