"Throne of Jade"

[fiefoe]

The Chinese, naturally, had different ways of doing things.

• Yongxing's attendants had demanded, at first, a walkway leading down to the ship - wholly impossible, .. because of the height of (the Allegiance)'s decks.
• "There are many turnings  - / Which am I to follow? / I will mount a long wind some day and break the heavy bank of clouds, / And set my wings straight to bridge the wide, wide sea."  .... "It is one of the works of the honored Lung Li Po, of the Tang Dynasty."
• Laurence.. baffled entirely by (Yongxing's) description of the relations between their countries which should lump Christian missionaries together in with smugglers and so absurdly refuse to acknowledge the benefits of free and open trade to both parties.
• "They tell me that in China, dragons do not eat the skins, any more than people do."
• Laurence being more conscious of owing gratitude than truly grateful, and guilty over his lack of sincerity, did not try to interfere with the menus, even as the servants daily trooped back from the markets with a succession of increasingly bizarre ingredients: penguins, served stuffed with grain and berries and their own eggs;
• "She was born in mourning colors, of course she is unlucky,".. "Yongxing insisted on having her himself instead of letting a celestial go outside of the Imperial family. He could have been Emperor himself, but of course you couldn't have an Emperor with a cursed dragon."
• One of their companion dragons.. swooped down. A man came out of the shed and held a discussion with the dragon, then went inside again; .. the dragon.. carved a few Chinese symbols into the plank with its talon. The man took away the plank, and the dragon took away a cow: plainly it had been making a purchase. It lifted back up into the air at once to rejoin them, crunching its cow happily as it flew.
• "They are too lazy and slow to do well on the examinations, and the Scarlet Flower breed all like fighting too much, so they are not good for anything else."
• In time of conscription, the head of each family had at one time been required to serve or send a child in his stead. Girls being considerably less valued than boys, they had become the preferred choice to fill out the quota when possible. As they could only serve in the aerial corps, they had come to dominate this branch of the service until eventually the force became exclusive.
• Shen-lung are like people, some are clever and some are lazy,"... Many superior breeds have risen from the best of them, and the wisest may even be honored with an Imperial mating."

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