Saturday, February 8, 2014

Arundhati Paul for The Onion

Ideas to Stop the Imperialistic West
ARUNDHATI PAUL

The Boxer Rebellion committee convened to discuss the rising threats of the imperial West and how to possibly resist it. Throughout the meeting, the brilliant minds came up with clever ideas that the West surely would never see coming. Consort Zhen, a mild modernist, stated, “We want the imperialists out of China to show imperialistic countries that we are an army of spirit soldiers and that we fly.” Consort Zhen’s fellow members were excited by this idea. Who doesn’t want to be a spirit soldier with wings?
Perhaps the best idea of the evening came from Prince Duan, one of the leaders of the Boxer Rebellion. After many fruitless plans, the Prince pulled out a map of Manchuria and exclaimed, “Prince Duan has a plan. There is great stress among the imperialist nations, specifically Russia and Japan, and they both have allies. If we started an international incident, this could lead to war, and the international community would forget about China for the moment.” When asked what Manchuria had to do with his phenomenal plan, the Prince shrugged his shoulders and merely waved his map to seem impressive. The committee buzzed with excitement with the plan of possibly initiating World War I, because that would surely fix the problem at hand.
Later in the evening, while taking a break from the ideas being put on the table, the chair urged delegates to speak more because he himself had become a great public speaker through practice and therapy. This advice seemed to comfort the delegates who had previously resorted to staring at their laps throughout committee.
To conclude the events of the evening, Li Hongzhang, a diplomat and military figure, created a diversion using his great experience of military strategy, spilling water all over the table. Proud of his accomplishment, he happily posed for pictures and asked the most pressing question of the night, “Is there any way to fix the water to ice ratio in the pitchers?"

No comments:

Post a Comment