/u/DrSousaphone's posts in /r/askhistorians

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When and why did fairy tales become fixed in the Middle Ages?

191 upvotes

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I'm an upper-class married woman in Qing China, and I've found myself to be smitten with my husband's lovey new concubine. How acceptable is it for me to pursue her sexually/romantically?

189 upvotes

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Why did Wang Mang try to ban slavery?

17 upvotes

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In the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, Sanzang's mother, Wenjiao, is said to have selected a husband by throwing a ball out the window and marrying whoever it landed on. Did such a practice ever actually occur in Chinese society?

14 upvotes

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How familiar would the common people of Imperial China have been with the Confucian classics?

9 upvotes

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What did the ancient Chinese think of volcanoes?

8 upvotes

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How did the DaodeJing become one of the most-translated books in the world?

7 upvotes

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How have the Chinese historically reconciled their varied and (seemingly) conflicting notions of the afterlife?

7 upvotes

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In the 1936 propaganda film Reefer Madness, Jimmy offers to buy his friend Bill a soda, which Bill refuses, agreeing instead to drink a root beer. Did soda and root beer mean different things than they do today? Was there a particular stigma around the word "soda" that wasn't applied to "root beer"?

7 upvotes

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When China adopted the Gregorian calendar, how exactly did they go about "translating" the traditional dates of its history to the new, Western-style dating system?

6 upvotes

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Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
When and why did fairy tales become fixed in the Middle Ages?	191
I'm an upper-class married woman in Qing China, and I've found myself to be smitten with my husband's lovey new concubine. How acceptable is it for me to pursue her sexually/romantically?	189
Why did Wang Mang try to ban slavery?	17
In the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, Sanzang's mother, Wenjiao, is said to have selected a husband by throwing a ball out the window and marrying whoever it landed on. Did such a practice ever actually occur in Chinese society?	14
How familiar would the common people of Imperial China have been with the Confucian classics?	9
What did the ancient Chinese think of volcanoes?	8
How did the DaodeJing become one of the most-translated books in the world?	7
How have the Chinese historically reconciled their varied and (seemingly) conflicting notions of the afterlife?	7
In the 1936 propaganda film Reefer Madness, Jimmy offers to buy his friend Bill a soda, which Bill refuses, agreeing instead to drink a root beer. Did soda and root beer mean different things than they do today? Was there a particular stigma around the word "soda" that wasn't applied to "root beer"?	7
When China adopted the Gregorian calendar, how exactly did they go about "translating" the traditional dates of its history to the new, Western-style dating system?	6