Yan Guowei

## Political Views

### Ideology

Spiritualism, Restraint, Collectivism, Political activism, anti-communism, corporatism, technocracy

## Early life

Yan Guowei was born in 1884 in Voysowei, she was born to a peasant family who was often mocked by people for being Chinese by the European majority, her family were Catholics, Confucian Taoists, and Buddhists. She was always hard working helping at the farm from a young age as well as despite not having a formal education educated herself by self-learning how to read and read many forms of literature so that she could understand how the world works.

Her only friends were other migrants from Korea and China that her family were friends with as other people did not really like them for looking East Asian. She learnt Kung Fu from her Chinese friend Xiao San in Voysowi.

As she read more and more she started to develop her own thoughts for problems in the world, how to fix these problems as well as many other things in philosophy.

She saw many problems with the current religions that her family currently held while still believing in God she saw issues with Christianity, having many of the same thoughts as Spinoza seen Christianity as just people trying to humanize God and is just a creation of the imagination. She also saw problems with Taoism as she did not agree with the circular narrative and Confucianism while agreeing with a lot of what he has to say saw it more of just a philosophy that also missed out on a lot of core topics such as political action and trying to make the world better as well as seen issues with Buddhism as it was so widely interpreted and dis-unified.

She spent many years independently Studying, meditating, thinking, working hard on her farm, studying and training in Kung Fu.

She also observed political events around her, such as the independence war when she was 15 and seeing people around her being killed shaped her belief to been an extremely cautious and peaceful person.

## Path to enlightenment

She continued on her journey to obtain realization of the world’s workings when she was 25, she started writing about her new beliefs as she had obtained information important to understanding the world.

Her first book was called “Guidance for Life” this later became the most important book in her religion. This covered many topics such as how to live a good life, ethics, metaphysics, and almost any topic you can think of and is a total of 637 pages with 400 sub-topics covered.

This became the founding book of her religion as she still believed in God, but saw God as more of what the universe is. The laws of physics are the factors of God and by understanding how the world works we can understand what God is.

This was not popular with people at the time, many of the non-Asians saw this as anti-Christian and just increased the hate for her. A few Asians joined her religion as they saw how well thought out it was but many were still sceptical as they thought that their current religion was better.

In a total of 5 years she was able to get 34 followers, including her younger brother. She and her followers continued to practise the religion. Sundays were seen as a collectivist day where people would come together with people in the community, however as they did not have enough money to construct a temple they just used Guowei’s house for now.

She also predicted in her Guidance for life that there would be some sort of revolution by the poor considering how poor the country is currently and this would lead to chaos and massive amount of suffering and conflict unless the government changed. At the time this was seen as completely ridiculous.

She also started to teach Kung Fu when she was 26 as she had now learnt everything and founded her own style of Kung Fu called Ju. Which was based on the idea of a swan. Her Kung Fu does not rely on pure power but rather on technique.

She saw Kung Fu as important to build character, and keeping healthy and it is a core part of her religion. People who she taught also started to adopt her religion willingly.

In her training she makes sure to put a lot of emphasis on the philosophy and character building which is what Ju is most well-known for as well as the emphasis on technique rather than power.

As a Kung Fu teacher she faced many challenges. A lot of other Kung Fu and non Kun Fu martial artists and athletes did not like her as they thought that women should not be doing martial arts, Chinese saw it as wrong that she is teaching martial arts to non-Chinese and non-Chinese did not like her for been Chinese.

Many people came to her training place and challenged her to fight, however all of them were defeated despite many of them been far stronger, bigger men due to how she used their own power and weight against them.

They all felt a lot of shame and some even apologised and asked to be taught by her and started to convert to her religion.

## Efforts to stave off oppression

In 1920 the communist revolution happened which confirmed her predictions for how society was changing and this sparked many more people to convert to her religion. During this period Yan Guowei also predicted that temples would be built and that the Guoweians would travel to their own island and homeland.

When the communists were in power, her and her followers were sent to labor camps for believing in religion and being anti-communist. Her and her followers tried to hide all the copies of the “Guidance For Life” that she had as they knew the communists would burn it. Only 12 copies of the book remained after the communists were defeated.

Many of her followers were killed in these labour camps, by the time the communists were defeated she was down to 26 members from 106 members at the start of the communists coming to power.

However after the communists were defeated she and her communists were freed and continued to practise the religion.

However know many more members joined as her predictions about a communist revolution proved to be correct and the religion grew to 187 members by 1925.

During the civil war many members including Guowei were in support of the government but many also did not fight because they believed

carrying out violence was one the most evil acts possible, but some did fight as they saw that they needed to fight as if they didn’t the fascists would come to power.

The fascists mostly left the Guoweians alone but some did disappear as they criticised the government. There is also evidence from leaked documents which states that the Fascists were secretly planning to eliminate the Guoweians but never got around to it as they had more important internal security issues to deal with.

In 1930 she wrote the second book “Ju” which explains the techniques in her martial art as well as the philosophical side of the martial art.

By 1935 the religion grew to 577 members and many original members who had now been studying for over 20 years got the role of “masters” which is the highest role in the religion that was outlined in “Guidance for Life.” This meant they could branch of and start teaching the religion to other people. By 1940 there was 12 masters who were teaching the religion and the Guoweians now had enough funding to make their own temples and by 1940 they had 6 temples. When the allies invaded in WW2 they massively supported the invasion and occupation of the allies.

In 1942, Guowei met her favourite student so far. His name was Qiao Zhenzhen. The way she met him was when she was teaching and out of nowhere a six year old kid came in and said “Can you teach me, I have run 20 miles to get here” and then collapsed from exhaustion.

The “Head Student” asked if he should be thrown out as he seemed rude and interrupted class. But Guowei said “let him stay, let him rest and when he wakes up give him something to eat” she liked his dedication and saw that he clearly needed help with problems in life.

He shortly became one of the most dedicated students, he would spend all his time in the temple training Ju for 5 hours a day and studying the religion for 10 hours and would always help people with less experience than him.

He however did have some disagreements with the religion but Guowei liked that Zhenzhen had his own thoughts and ideas.

She saw his rapid improvement, faster than any other student and by the time he was 18, with just 13 years of training he was on the second highest rank bellow master, “head student”, he would soon become the youngest master so far.

During this time however in the 1950s however when Howard was in charge they faced a massive increase in persecution against the religion and Chinese people in general.

This lead to a massive disagreement between Guowei and Zhenzhen, Guowei was still really political and thought that we should all get involved in politics to change it for the better but non-violently.

However Zhenzhen was more extreme, he had his own world view. He believed that the world was divided into two camps, the “heroes” and the “villains” the “heroes” decided what was good and what was bad but they only got that role because they were popular and people supported them, but the villains also have their own morals and beliefs. Like the communists in the war, they had the whole world fighting against them, it’s not fair, he believed in the idea that the world was really just divided between strong and weak and the weak was dominated by the strong and he wanted to show the world order what a blow from the weak.

In 1955, when Zhenzhen was 18 he launched his first attack against the government killing 68 ministers of the government. This provoked a huge retaliation by the central government which proceeded to execute twenty three members and extract many false confessions.

Zhenzhen was kicked out of the temple and was not allowed to return until he turned himself in as while Guowei did not like Howard’s government for it’s oppression still did not support these attacks and plus allowing him to return would have increased the oppression by the government against them.

Guowei did however feel personally responsible for Zhenzhen and believed that he needed to be brought to justice as it was better if she caught him then the government.

## Growth in the religion

She and her brother, who was seen as the second highest in the religion except for Guowei herself and a set of followers and left the temple to be run by the “head student” until they got back.

They followed news, reports and other clues to try and track down Zhenzhen. In 1956 they found him outside a hut in the middle of a forest. With 8 policemen on the floor, another one fighting him and with Zhenzhen absolutely covered in blood and beaten up. They decided to fight Zhenzhen as he was attacking police officers.

Zhenzhen was on the brink of defeat until a mysterious group of people with weapons came in and saved Zhenzhen. Who were later identified to be members of a communist guerrilla group.

Guowei returned to the temple wondering what had happened to Zhenzhen and if he was dead. No news ever came in until 1958 until she went to see the news and saw the headline “Unruly youth launches attack on government parliament building” she rushed straight to the capital to know exactly what was going on.

When she got there she saw that Zhenzhen had launched an attack on the government building and had took control. However for unknown reasons he surrendered his position to the police trying to restore order.

He said he had made a big mistake and asked to be killed, yan Guowei however was sad to see her student about to be killed. However before he was shot a kid ran up to him and said don’t kill him, he is a good guy he protected me from the charge party terrorists and communist guerrillas. The police hesitated and Zhenzhen used this as an opportunity to escape. He then disappeared from the public eye.

Life went back to normal after that for Guowei practising her religion with repressions against them occasionally.

In 1960 however after the new government was formed by Eva she gave full support to the new government. It was also this year Zhenzhen reappeared and apologised for his actions and asked for forgiveness, which Guowei accepted as forgiveness is important in the religion and he continued to be a student of Guowei and the government did not arrest Zhenzhen as his acts opposed Howard’s government, not .

Life became more peaceful again and the religion continued to spread, however in the civil war life became more violent again and when Howard Jr came to power repressions increased even more, even larger than under Howard or the communist period.

Guowei’s brother was excecuted and Guowei knew that they had to flee so that they are not all killed.

This saw the mass migration period where the Guoweians migrated to San Pash Hai island, facing many obstacles and formed their own government. This lead to the biggest holiday in the religion.

Between March 5th and May 12th (the days of the migration) people fast to remember the difficulties people faced under the oppressive governments before and the struggles of the journey and May 27th is a massive celebration where people come together give presents, be together and eat.

The island of San Pash Hai soon became one of the best places in the world to live in and became a technocracy with “masters” deciding how the island is ran.

Guowei lived to 1980, dying of a stroke at the age of 96. Her death was another day that is made a holiday where people morn her death, as well as her birthday which is another massive celebration. Yan Guowei had left two chapters of the book deliberately empty and had prophesied that they would one day be filled.