Hong Xiuquan’s American Brother, Orbán Goes and the KMT Comes — Dasheng’s Calligraphic Comments on Current Affairs (II)

The Other China

Liu Chan 劉蟾, who also goes by the pen name Dasheng 大生, is a writer, scholar and calligrapher. Born in Shaanxi, he lives in Beijing where he edits The Chinese Study 中國書房. We have frequently featured Liu’s work in The Other China (for details, see below).

‘Dasheng’s Calligraphic Comments’ are an innovative use of an ancient art from. In them, Liu Chan uses quasi-poetic couplets, often parallel in structure, to encapsulate current new stories, often juxtaposing items that superficially have little in common. In the colophons that he composes — they run vertically along either side of the lines of the couplet — the calligrapher elaborates on stories that have been highlighted in poetic brevity. Many of Liu’s couplets employ traditional semantic parallelism.

Although he is still relatively young, Liu Chan often affects the style of an ‘old fogey’, a personality type that is more than familiar to China Heritage. It is a persona that allows Liu considerable latitude in commenting on, and gently satirising, the welter of current affairs in a style that gestures towards late-dynastic prose. Indeed, Liu Chan’s lapidary couplets and drole commentaries are reminiscent of literati jottings 筆記, miscellanea 掌故 and historical marginalia 稗官野史 — various forms of informal records used by later generations to help gauge the realities and absurdities of authoritarian rule.

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China Heritage is grateful to Dasheng for sharing his recent work. Explanatory notes and other relevant material have been added. For a previous chapter in this series, see:

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
16 April 2026

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Liu Chan in The Other China:

Liu Chan’s work also features in:

See also:

Hong Xiuquan’s American Younger Brother

Trump posted an image of himself as a saviour. We all know that God’s son was Jesus and that Hong Xiuquan [leader of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom] claimed that he was [Christ’s Chinese]  Younger Brother. This would make Donald Trump son number three and it means that, henceforth, Hong Xiuquan not only has a Heavenly Father, Heavenly Mother, Heavenly Brother and Heavenly Sister-in-Law, he’s also got a Heavenly Younger Brother and a Heavenly Younger Sister-in-Law.

 

 

[Note: For more on Donald Trump’s apotheosis, see Cheeto Christ Stupid-Czar — Yes, Peter Thiel, Donald Trump is the Antichrist. We’d observe that things did not end up too well for God’s ‘Chinese Son’.]

— trans GRB

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Artemis II Circles the Moon & the KMT Pays Court in Beijing

Artemis II, an American crewed lunar flyby mission, was launched on 1 April 2026, successfully splashing down on 10 April. Its significance lay in the fact that this was the first space mission that had flown beyond low Earth orbit in over half a century. Oddly enough, quite a few specialists [in China] offered various absurd interpretations of and commentaries on the subject.

Then there was Cheng Li-wun, chairperson of the KMT Nationalist Party in Taiwan. From 7 to 12 April, during a formal visit to the People’s Republic of China, Cheng put on such a nauseatingly fawning and ingratiating display that one presumes that it merely served to further alienate voters back in Taiwan.

— Dasheng Liu Chan, 10 April 2026
trans GRB

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Orbán’s Exit & Ukraine’s Progress

Suddenly, everyone was paying attention to the election in Hungary because it would determine the future of Viktor Orbán’s sixteen-year-long hard-right conservative pro-Russian authoritarian rule, one that had proved to be a chronic problem for the EU. During the election campaign, Orbán enjoyed the support of Washington, Moscow and various other countries. US vice-president JD Vance even travelled to Budapest to help Orbán’s campaign. None of this saved the regime from a devastating defeat at the hands of the opposition. Might this perhaps be a sign that right-wing politics might face other defeats?

Meanwhile, news from the front in the Ukraine War is encouraging. Russian oil refineries have been struck repeatedly and Ukrainian forces have achieved notable territorial gains. These are further reasons to be confident about the future.

— Dasheng Liu Chan, 13 April 2026
trans GRB