page_title: A Storm in a Teacup (Lu Xun)
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: A Storm in a Teacup (Lu Xun) / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Close crop of Image:Elderly Chinese American Man with Queue.jpg for use in the en:wikipedia Queue (hairstyle) article
context_page_description: Storm in a Teacup is a short story by Lu Xun, the founder of modern Chinese literature. Originally published in September 1920 in the journal New Youth, it was later included in his first collection of short stories, A Call to Arms. A Chinese boatman hears news of the abortive Manchu Restoration of July 1917 and fears that he will be executed as he had abandoned the queue after the fall of the Qing dynasty. At the same time his neighbour, who has kept his, exults.
context_section_description: In 1644, after the conquest of China by the Manchurian Qing dynasty, Han Chinese males were forced on pain of execution to adopt the queue, a Manchurian hairstyle consisting of shaving the forehead and wearing the rest of one's hair in a long plait. On the other hand, during the Taiping Rebellion, the revolutionaries would execute anyone who wore the queue as a presumed Qing loyalist. After the last emperor Puyi abdicated in 1912, the Republic of China was established and the queue was widely abandoned. In July 1917 the Qing loyalist Zhang Xun attempted to restore Puyi to the throne, but the revolt collapsed in a fortnight. Given the primitive communications infrastructure in China, this news took longer to spread to rural and remote areas.
caption: A Chinese man wearing a queue
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