Below are excerpts from three primary sources that have recently been de‑classified (the Imperial Archives of the Qing Dynasty, the Royal Society’s Confidential Correspondence, and the British Museum’s Acquisition Records).
Part II abandons the linear narration of its predecessor, opting instead for a montage‑like structure reminiscent of early modernist techniques seen in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and the cinematic “jump cuts” of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The novella is divided into twelve “frames,” each labeled with a bodily term (“Shoulder,” “Knee,” “Ankle”) that serves both as a physical marker and a thematic signpost. This fragmented architecture mirrors the disjointed nature of revolutionary consciousness: moments of clarity are interspersed with bouts of confusion, reflecting the “entangled” experience of living through a seismic political shift.
The prose itself oscillates between vernacular Chinese, Germanic loanwords, and English interjections, reinforcing the text’s multilingual entanglement. The author frequently employs parataxis—short, juxtaposed sentences without explicit logical connectors—to simulate the rapid, chaotic flow of street protests and newspaper headlines. For example: tushy jia lissa entanglements part 2 1911
“The crowd surged. Lanterns flickered. Guns—click, click—silenced the night. Lissa’s shutter snapped.”
Such sentences compel the reader to fill the gaps, actively participating in the entanglement of meaning. Below are excerpts from three primary sources that
The repeated focus on the posterior is not merely comedic. Drawing on Butler’s performativity theory, the narrative foregrounds the rear as a site where power is both exerted (the “push” of colonial authority) and resisted (the “wiggle” of subversive agency). For example, in Chapter 3, Tushy’s steam‑powered prosthetic is described as “a rear that can thrust forward, yet never forgets its roots in the earth,” a clear inversion of the imperialist metaphor of “the front” (the colonizer’s advance).
| Technique | Observation | Interpretation | |-----------|-------------|----------------| | Micro‑CT | A hidden compartment behind the amber vial, sealed by a thin layer of gold leaf. | Suggests an additional, perhaps more valuable, element concealed from early investigators. | | Raman | The amber oil exhibits a complex mixture of sandalwood terpenes, cinnabar particles, and trace amounts of mercury sulfide (cinnabar). | Aligns with alchemical recipes involving Hg for transmutation symbolism. | | XRF | The copper filament contains 5% arsenic, a known alloying element used to improve elasticity. | Implies a sophisticated metallurgical knowledge predating modern standards. | | Infrared Thermography | When illuminated, the prism concentrates heat onto a specific spot of the copper filament, raising its temperature by ≈ 12 °C. | Supports the hypothesis of a thermal activation mechanism—possibly to trigger a chemical change in the oil. | “The crowd surged
A career diplomat with a reputation for supporting scientific expeditions, Hargrave had previously funded the excavation at Luoyang that unearthed the original Jia Lissa tablet. In a letter to his colleague, Sir Arthur W. Mallory, dated 12 October 1911, Hargrave wrote:
“The Chinese officials were most eager to rid themselves of this peculiar contraption. They claim it is a relic of the ‘Tushy’ sect—a name that makes little sense to us, yet seems to hold weight in their oral histories.”
Hargrave’s curiosity was immediate. He arranged for the box to be transferred, under armed guard, to the Royal Society’s special collection.