Legend of the Giants
Among most peoples around the world, legends of giants circulate – for example, there is a legend of the Giant Kingdom in Europe, the Bible mentions the "Great Ancient Man" (extinct due to the Great Flood), and in ancient China, Confucius also mentioned that there were giants in ancient times (the Windproof Clan), and pointed out that Yu once executed the people of the Windproof Clan.
Whether there was a giant kingdom in ancient times, I don't know. However, there have indeed been giants in Chinese history, and there is a large amount of sufficient empirical evidence to prove the existence of this giant: this giant is zhan Shichao of the Qing Dynasty.
Life of Zhan Shichao
Zhan Shichao was born in the twenty-first year of Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty (1841 IN the Western Calendar), the year in which the Qing Empire was defeated by the British in the Opium War, and the Daoguang Emperor of the Qing Dynasty had to open the country to Britain. Zhan Shichao was born in this year, which determined that he had the opportunity to go to the world - if Zhan Shichao was born in the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras, when the Qing Empire was closed to the country, perhaps what Zhan Shichao left to future generations was at best a legend of giants with limited scope.
In the process of Zhan Shichao's adulthood, a large number of changes occurred in the land of China under the impact of foreign forces: because the Qing court lost its power such as tariff autonomy, it led to a large-scale influx of industrial products of foreigners into China, and at the same time, the collapse of the small peasant economy and the bankruptcy of a large number of peasants occurred. In order to make a living, many bankrupt peasants poured into the cities and went to the factories opened by foreigners to make a living.
It was in this context that Zhan Shichao arrived in Shanghai to work in a factory.
The greater Shanghai of old China was known as the "Adventurer's Paradise", and it was filled with speculators from various countries with different purposes. There is a legend that Zhan Shichao is 3.19 meters tall, and such a height in any era gives people a feeling of standing out from the crowd. Zhan Shichao's height quickly attracted the attention of British merchants, who also held the mentality of strange goods and designed to buy Zhan Shichao.
After the British merchants bought Zhan Shichao, they brought Zhan Shichao to Britain and engaged in some programs similar to circus performances - at that time, due to the underdevelopment of information, the understanding of the Far East by people in Britain and even in the European countries was often limited to hearsay, and there was rarely a chance to see it as a truth, so when Zhan Shichao, who had a giant and Far Eastern factor, appeared in Europe, it quickly attracted the attention of the people of European countries, and as a result, Zhan Shichao made a considerable fortune in Europe.
The businessman's instinct is to maximize the pursuit of profits. In order to attract attention, Zhan Shichao's agent made a set of Qing Dynasty official mansions for Zhan Shichao, and declared that Zhan Shichao was actually a local official of the Qing Dynasty, because those who offended the imperial court were forced into exile. Under the hype of the broker, Zhan Shichao's "point of view" is undoubtedly more.
However, according to the laws of the Great Qing Dynasty, Zhan Shichao, a commoner wearing an official uniform, was guilty of trespassing, so Zhan Shichao could not return to the Qing Dynasty safely at this time, and could not, Zhan Shichao had to become a British citizen, and died overseas in the nineteenth year of Guangxu (1893 in the Western calendar).
posterity
Zhan Shichao married an English woman in England and had a son named Zhan Zechun in the second year of Guangxu (1876 IN the Western Calendar).
Zhan Zechun returned to his hometown to find relatives, but because he was not accepted by his people, he could only continue to live in Britain. After that, future generations have no contact with the country. Now that it has been half a year, it is presumable that there will be no trace of Huaxia in its descendants.