Sometimes evil doesn’t wear a mask. Sometimes it wears the
face of a government official, sitting behind a polished desk with soft hands
folded neatly over state papers. Sometimes it smiles at you from behind round spectacles
while it signs your death warrant.
Folks in China know this truth better than most. They’ve got
a name for that kind of evil: Qin Hui.
Even now—Jesus, almost a thousand years later—they still
spit on his statues. Think about that. Not the kind of legacy most government
men hope for, is it? His iron likeness kneels perpetually outside the tomb of a
hero he murdered, and the good citizens of Hangzhou have been known to relieve
themselves on it when nobody’s looking. That’s hatred with some staying power,
friends and neighbors.
I shit you not.
---
Qin was born in 1090 in what they now call Nanjing, just
another baby squalling into the world with no idea of the darkness he’d bring.
Smart kid, though. Got his fancy degree at fifteen—like one of those computer
prodigies you read about in TIME magazine, only this was back when most
folks were lucky to survive childhood.
The Southern Song Dynasty was no picnic, let me tell you.
Picture New England in February, only the cold seeping into your bones isn’t
just weather—it’s fear. Fear of invasion. Fear of those Jurchen Jin warriors
from the north who’d already captured two emperors like they were snatching
butterflies from the air.
Our boy Qin was among those captured in that mess they
called the Jingkang Incident. January 9, 1127. Cold day, I imagine. The kind of
cold that makes your fingers ache while you’re watching your world collapse.
And here’s where things get… peculiar.
Most captured officials didn’t come back. That’s just how it
went. Capture meant death or a lifetime eating humble pie in some freezing
northern prison. But Qin? He waltzes back in 1130 with his whole family intact
and a story about escaping that didn’t pass the smell test for anyone with
working nostrils.
(You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the
wind blows, and in this case, it was blowing straight from Bullshit Mountain.)
---
The new Emperor—Gaozong—should’ve known better. That’s what
they always say afterward, isn’t it? Should’ve known better. But he didn’t.
Made Qin his right-hand man faster than you can say “catastrophic judgment
error.”
You can imagine Qin sitting in his new office, those soft
hands I mentioned earlier drumming on hardwood, a little smile playing at the
corners of his mouth like a cat that’s found the cream. Power has a way of
changing a man. Or maybe it just reveals what was always there, lurking beneath
the surface like an alligator in dark water.
Meanwhile, there was this general—Yue Fei. The kind of
patriot that makes your heart swell when you hear his name spoken. The kind of
military man who actually believed in something beyond his next promotion. He’d
been pushing the Jurchen Jin back, reclaiming territory, giving people hope.
Qin couldn’t have that.
No sir, that wouldn’t do at all. Because Qin had made
himself a deal with the devil—or in this case, the Jurchen. The kind of deal
where betrayal is written in invisible ink between every line.
---
Have you ever watched someone destroy a good man? It’s like
watching a house fire in slow motion. First, there’s the smoke—rumors,
accusations. Then the small flames—arrests of associates, questioning of
loyalty. Finally, the inferno—trumped-up charges, forced confessions, a prison
cell.
On January 27, 1142, they executed Yue Fei. Some say Qin’s
wife—a woman named Wang Shi with a heart as black as midnight in a mine
shaft—sent the execution order herself. Maybe even personally delivered poison
to Yue’s cell, watching with those flat, dead eyes as a hero choked his last.
The order supposedly contained just four words: “Deal with
it immediately.”
Four words to end a legend. Four words to earn eternal
hatred.
---
The corruption Qin fostered wasn’t just about lining
pockets, though God knows he did plenty of that. It was about power. Control.
The slow strangulation of truth.
He appointed yes-men to every position that mattered.
Censored the Imperial University like a small-town library board on a
book-burning crusade. Exiled honest officials who dared speak against him. And
all the while, he lived like a king—better than the Emperor himself, some
whispered.
The treaty he pushed through in 1142 might as well have been
written in the blood of patriots. It ceded everything north of the Huai River
to the invaders and promised annual tributes that would drain the treasury like
a punctured artery.
But hey, Qin got to keep his cushy job. Ain’t that America?
(Except it wasn’t America. It was China. But the song
remains the same wherever powerful men gather to carve up the future of the
powerless.)
---
When Qin Hui finally died in 1155, it was peaceful. In his
bed. Surrounded by wealth and comfort. The kind of death that makes you
question whether there’s any justice in this world or the next.
History, though—history has a way of settling accounts that
even death can’t prevent.
Chinese people didn’t forget. They didn’t forgive. They
immortalized their hatred in iron statues forced to kneel for eternity. They
renamed fried dough “Yau Zaa Gwai”—the fried ghosts of Qin and his wife—so they
could symbolically devour the betrayers with every bite.
That hatred has survived centuries. Dynasties rose and fell.
Invaders came and went. Revolutions tore the land apart and stitched it back
together. But the name Qin Hui remained a curse on the lips of the people.
Because some evils don’t fade with time. Some betrayals cut
too deep to heal.
And sometimes, the most terrifying monster isn’t the one
hiding under your bed or lurking in the shadows of some abandoned house on the
edge of town.
Sometimes, it’s the one signing papers at a government desk,
smiling as he sells your future to save his own skin.
Sometimes, the darkness wears a bureaucrat’s face.
And sometimes, it never really dies.
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