FINALLY got a design that I could stick with for her! Never underestimate how intricate qipaos are @-@” also yes I wrote it in simplified, I’m barely literate in Chinese and I’ve given up all hopes of ever being literate/fully fluent, I don’t wanna attempt traditional thanks.
Anyways, yes, this is Huaxia. Daughter of Ming, beloved concubine of Qing and mother of RoC and PRC. I went through a lot of sobriquets to try and find something appropriate and decided to stick with this one since the Han people are the largest ethnic group (like 90+%, I’m Han or at least mostly Han) in China and Huaxia is like… referring to them being proud of their identities or something? If you look at the Chinese names of ROC (Zhonghua Minguo) and PRC (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo) you’ll find that both use Hua (Zhongguo being the what you’d usually refer to China as in Mandarin, Guonei/’in country’ if you’re talking about the mainland) and Han people are sometimes called “Hua ren” (lit. Hua people).
Backstory: Huaxia was one of Ming Dynasty’s many children (pretty much every emperor had tonnes of concubines back in the day as a way off flaunting their wealth, virility and fertility. Actually not even just emperors had concubines/harems, hell I even learnt recently that my great-grandfather had a concubine or second wife). When Qing/Aisin Gioro wanted to take the throne, they ended up in a bloody war which resulted in Ming basically snapping at the last minute and hung himself (this is what the last Ming emperor did actually, as well as kill a concubine, a 5yo princess and chop of the arm of another 16yo princess). Qing managed to secure the Dragon Throne and founded a new dynasty (guess the name) and took Huaxia as a concubine because he really liked her. However, this also subjected her to the highly competitive and dangerous world of the Imperial Harem (seriously, jealousy was a major issue since the emperor would sometimes have THOUSANDS of concubines and never even visit most of them. Plus if the empress didn’t have a son then everyone else would try and get their kid to be the heir). Eventually, she’d have two sons, ROC and PRC, which would elevate her status as well. She was supportive of ROC when he overthrew Qing and try to start his own nation but died around 1915-1916 (before the Warlords Era). She died with the years in which ROC and PRC remained close to each other, would eventually pit the two brothers against each other in yet again one of the deadliest wars in history.
Also, yes her feet are bound. All noble ladies and most commoners did so otherwise they wouldn’t be considered marriageable. The practice itself was extremely cruel, my mum told me that when her grandmother and her grandmother and her sister’s parents were away, her sister would unbind her feet because of the pain and would get in trouble for doing so. As a result, her feet were slightly bigger than my great-grandma’s. My mum told me how it was difficult for her to walk and that she and her brother would help her bathe and stuff when they visited. The ideal size was three Chinese inches (4″/10cm), to achieve such a size binding often started when a girl was 3. We used to joke about how if binding was still a thing my sister would’ve had a breeze compared to me.
I like her!!! very detailed!
