Newspaper Article

The Song is Dead: China United Under Kublai Khan 
By Kira Peterson 
The Yuan Herald 

SHANGDU 1279- Yesterday, Southern China’s last Emperor, Emperor Bingdi, drowned in an attack by Southern Chinese warships manned by Mongols. On board his ship and its fleet were the adolescent Emperor himself and his entire royal court. They were fleeing to the safety of the sea, and heading south, trying to protect Bingdi. They were surrounded and trapped without food or water for two weeks before the Mongol ships attacked with rockets, flaming arrows, and grenades. Most of the ships sank. Everyone on the Emperor’s ships was killed, drowned, or captured. Now that the last emperor of the Song dynasty is dead, China is officially united under Kublai Khan.

Three years ago, the Southern Song capital of Hangzhou was surrendered to the Mongols by the Empress Dowager after roughly one hundred thousand people were slaughtered in Changzhou. The first heir of the throne, Emperor Gongzong, was taken to northern China and lives here in Shangdu. Since then, there have still been many groups who have resisted the Mongols. Gongzong’s second brother Duanzong died of unknown causes, and now his third brother, Bingdi, has been killed. Now that the resistors have no one to protect, their last hopes of continuing the Song dynasty have been lost.

“After battling for the control of Southern China since 1268, we have finally prevailed. The Song never had any true leadership. While we were battling our way down the Yangzi River Valley, they argued for years about what to do. Now they will be led by the strongest leader on the continent, Kublai Khan.” said Mongolian war general Yesugei. “I am immensely proud that my people’s empire is growing so large.” Indeed, the Mongolian empire extends all the way up to the borders of Europe and into Russia, as well as all the way down to the borders of India and now all of China. It is still actively growing in all directions.

However, not everyone in Northern China is in favor of the Yuan rule and the growth of the Mongol empire. Huang Li-Wen, who before the Mongols invaded was a highly respected scholar and worked with many people of high government status, told us in a letter, “Kublai Khan has created much chaos in China. The Mongols have deemed us third class citizens in our own country, regardless of the rank a person held before they arrived. They place strict laws, curfews, and taxes on us while foreigners who have only just arrived from Europe are exempted from these things. They repress our culture and have deemed the wonderful works of many artists and poets inappropriate, and so many great masters have become unable to do their work. Most of Kublai Khan’s construction projects are for the purpose of communicating and trading with Europe, but he is neglecting his own people. Now the Mongols insist on slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Southerners and they call it ‘inevitable.’ This is not the kind of leadership that China needs.”