Hashtags, they are a-changin’

In Moscow, near the US Embassy, on the square provocatively named after the annexed DPR, hashtags are changing to keep the pace with fast and furious tempo of American Perestroika and New political thinking:

It reads #WEARETOGETHER.

I think the similar hashtag installation near the Embassy of China should be, nonetheless, erected, because in the longer term stable relations with China are of more strategic use for Russia (whatever her supreme ruler turns out to be called).

China has some recipes for human meatgrinders that would put even the toughest “art of just war” connoisseurs, be they from the West, Ukraine, or Russia, to shame greener than Zelensky’s hoodie.

During the Zhanguo era, in the Battle of Changping (長平), Qin commander Bai Qi eventually defeated his younger, brave, but painfully underexperienced opponent Zhao Kuo, which took him more than two months to fulfill (the entire battle, counting the very first skirmishes, lasted almost two years and a half).

To achieve this, he employed a maneuver strikingly resembling what had become later known as “Cannae movement” in the West due to Hannibal Barca’s victory over Romans. (Another examples of such “precoveries” or independent reinventions could be found in annals about the battles that changed the history of China; to wit, some 45 years after Changping Han Xin, general who served the future Han Dynasty Emperor Liu Bang, crushed the army of Wei kingdom under Anyi in a manner not unlike Alexander the Great’s crossing of the Indus at the Hydaspes.)

Then Bai firmly trapped Zhao’s army in the valley circled by mountains, so they couldn’t have broken out in a decisive manner, because of lack of forage for horses and other supplies.

Over 400,000 Zhao soldiers were captured. After the battle, Bai Qi failed to deliver on his promises to them and ordered to bury prisoners alive, with a sole exception of 240 youngest soldiers, who were spared and released back to Zhao to spread terror among the population of the kingdom.

Even today, some remains of ancient bones are sometimes found near Gaoping, as Changping is currently known, and locals prepare Tofu of variety called 白起豆腐, that is, “Bai Qi meat,” symbolically representing atrocities of Qin commander unleashed upon their ancient ancestors.