Pictured above: the old ass bond my aunt says she's gonna use to make china pay

For personal reasons, I had to briefly return to my shitty family and my aunt launched into this rant about how evil the CCP is for "unleashing" the coronavirus upon america. She started boasting about "our great family history" of "sticking it to China" and how my great-great-great-grandfather or some shit was part of the expeditionary force that crushed the boxer rebellion and became a "businessman" residing in one of the foreign concessions. She declined to specify what exactly this "business" was. 🤔 I wonder why?

She went on ranting about how the Chinese have "unlearned the civilized ways that we taught them" and segued into some truly bloodthirsty shit about the need for western powers to unite and invade China to "re-civilize" them.

Anyways she said the first step in making the commies pay for their crimes (which included "destroying our family business there" and "stealing our property") was by forcing the government to redeem some bond from fucking 1913 passed down from her precious ancestors. She has this old piece of paper framed.

She was so unhinged and yikesy even my ghoul cousins started to get visibly uncomfortable.

Didn't know my family could get any shittier but here I am.

putting a reply up here that gives important context because the comment links are broken:

My family is super into this ancestry shit. Not like those sketchy DNA tests, my great-uncle was a genealogist who compiled a list of all our ancestors dating back to the late 1600s. My family has a collection of letters written by ancestors, photos of each of them if available, and other personal effects (including antiques looted from China!). They weren’t the usual “destitute people who sold themselves into bondage to get here and clawed their way to the top” story, they were wealthy pricks before they came here, and they remained wealthy pricks afterwards. They made a fortune off the slave trade. Unsurprisingly, they were confederates. At the dawn of the 20th century, (and this is the part I learned about today) they saw an opportunity to make an even bigger fortune in the far east and Africa. And they did. “Big fortune” might be a tame way of describing it. You’re not gonna find a 10 page biography of them on Britannica, but they were big players. They benefited massively off of the unequal treaties. Meanwhile, they decided that just wasn’t enough for them, and opened up factories at home with their blood money. I think we all know how early 20th century factory owners treated their workers (a substantial amount of which were children). But wait, that’s not all! Those workers need some place to live, don’t they? So on top of that, they became landlords too.

Although the age of blatant imperialism is long over, they still own factories and they’re still landlords. And they’re perfectly happy with enjoying the fruits of their ancestral plunder.

edit: I've already cut a lot of my family off by now. The only reason I agreed to go was because my aunt (who herself has become sort of an outcast) lives by herself and the only other people going were two of my cousins. I haven't seen most other people from the family in a year.

    • VILenin [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      unironically late 19th century & early 20th century design aesthetics is chef's kiss

    • joshieecs [he/him,any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Seems like the document was a product of Waterlow & Sons Limited, London Wall, London F. C. and not the Chinese, but it's still lovely.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterlow_and_Sons