Détruisez le mal

Chapitre 39

Marlene seemed to have forgiven Beryl's recklessness last night. She accepted the mint but didn't want to make any intimate gestures in front of her daughter.

Esme wrinkled her nose, feeling embarrassed, when she saw her mother holding Berhali's hand. She also noticed Wendy, who was turning around to peek at her mother and Berhali.

After an hour's drive through the darkness, the bus finally came to a stop. Walter and Benny got off first, and in front of them stood a white hotel, like a ghostly castle in the dim light—of course, that wasn't my home. Scattered around the hotel were many houses, all seemingly sunk to the bottom of the sea.

There is no moon.

The person who was asleep on the bus was woken up, got off the bus in a daze, and carried their luggage into the hotel by themselves.

Walter said loudly, “Ladies and gentlemen, please set your watches back to seven o’clock. The time difference between here and China is one and a half hours. You only need to stay here for one night, and tomorrow you will go to Mandala, the second largest city in the Kingdom of Lanna.”

Foreign Land (2)

My friends could only endure it, each taking their keys and finding their rooms. Perhaps they were truly exhausted; even the Americans, who love nightlife the most, hurriedly showered and went to bed.

Night fell, and as I looked down from the hotel at my friends and this ancient country, a sudden sadness welled up inside me…

A Brief History of the Kingdom of Lanna (1)

Yes, this is the Kingdom of Lanna, a unique civilization that lasted for more than a dozen centuries, tenaciously surviving in the gap between the two great civilizations of China and India until the 21st century AD.

In the time of the Buddha's birth—around the 6th century BCE—the land of what is now the Kingdom of Lanna was inhabited by a southern people speaking Austroasiatic languages. They practiced slash-and-burn agriculture and worshipped various deities. At this time, a few monks from India ventured deep into this desolate and pestilential land. Today, deep within some jungles, one can still find remnants of Brahmanism and statues of Mahakala carved into decaying stones.

In the time of Charlemagne in the West, an ancient people from western China, after a long and winding migration of about a thousand years, entered the Mandala River basin in the heart of southern Asia.

This ethnic group is called "Lanna" by the Chinese.

The ancestors of the Lanna people were valiant warriors and herdsmen who rode into this hot land, using weapons previously used by the Chinese. They were skilled in smelting metals such as copper and iron and possessed advanced agricultural techniques. The Lanna people migrated south along the Mandala River, conquering all the valleys along the way and subjugating the indigenous Nanyi people.

This marked the beginning of the tragic fate of the Southern Yi people. They became slaves of the new rulers and were gradually assimilated into the Lanna people. However, a small number of Southern Yi people escaped the Lanna army and entered the almost impassable mountainous regions. The successive kings of the Lanna would send troops into the mountains on expeditions to subdue those barbarians who refused to submit to the "royal rule."

By the 11th century, the First Lanna Empire had taken shape. Its most famous king, Namwut, was said to have been born with golden armor. He built a powerful army of war elephants and conquered vast lands stretching to the sea. He introduced authentic Indian Buddhism, built tens of thousands of stupas throughout the country, and the monks held power second only to the king.

However, two hundred years after King Lanna Nanwu established his kingdom, another ancient people from the north entered the Mandala River basin and swiftly destroyed the country. Amidst the vast jungles and fields, only the ruins of countless stupas remained, but these ruins were adorned with various exquisite decorations—they were also one of the important destinations for my tour group.

This people remained dormant for about three hundred years, during which time there was war and plague everywhere, while the Southern Yi people also regained their freedom for a time. It is a miracle that the Lanna people were not wiped out.

In the early 16th century, good fortune smiled upon the Lanna people once again. Yinglong Wang, a descendant of northern nobles, began his legendary military career at the age of sixteen. This king, leading his army, not only unified the entire Lanna Kingdom and conquered all the southern tribes, but also invaded and occupied several neighboring countries, establishing the second Lanna Empire. Much of South Asia and most of Southeast Asia trembled at the feet of Yinglong Wang's war elephants. He even led an army of 200,000 to launch a fierce attack on the Yunnan border of China. He scorned the Ming Dynasty emperor, who held supreme authority in Asia, referring to himself in a letter to the Wanli Emperor as "the White Elephant King of the South, ruling over eight million subjects." Centuries later, a European historian still regarded Yinglong Wang as "the Napoleon of Southeast Asia."

However, even the greatest empires eventually decline, as my homeland, the Chinese Empire, exemplifies. In the early 18th century, endless court intrigues and noble infighting exhausted the descendants of the Yinglong King. In 1720, the last Yinglong King was poisoned, and the Second Lanna Empire collapsed.

But within a few decades, the Third Lanna Empire returned. The son of a minor lord defeated the invading foreign tribes and eliminated all the feudal lords; all the local tribes and lords submitted to him. This king who rebuilt the Lanna Empire was the renowned King Yungtian, who once again embarked on a massive expansion, conquering all the surrounding neighboring countries.

His tyranny enraged the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. The "Perfect Emperor," residing at the Chengde Imperial Palace, dispatched a massive army of 100,000 Manchu and Han soldiers on a distant expedition against the barbarians, intending to emulate Zhuge Liang's seven captures of Meng Huo to pacify the south. However, the Celestial Empire's army suffered a major setback in the distant south, with malaria and other infectious diseases causing half the soldiers to fall ill. The remaining Qing troops, under the combined assault of Lan Na's war elephants and firearms, were almost completely annihilated. The general's head was placed on a tray and presented to the Yongzheng Emperor.

Finally, King Yongtian, weary of the war with the north, wrote a peace treaty and sent it to Beijing. However, this diplomatic letter of equal exchange was translated by Qing officials into a surrender document from a barbarian chieftain. The officials told the emperor that the King of Lanna was willing to be a subject of the Qing Emperor forever and repented for his past crimes against the Celestial Empire. Emperor Qianlong finally smiled, granting Lanna the status of a vassal state of the Qing Dynasty and sending King Yongtian a seal bearing the title "Prince of Lanna." King Yongtian, unable to read Chinese characters, mistook it for something like "Emperor of the South" and contentedly became the overlord of Southeast Asia.

As history entered the nineteenth century, the misfortunes of the Lanna Kingdom began.