No one thought this was weird, by the way. [♪ INTRO MUSIC ♪)] Right, but anyway, you hear a lot about how China's going to overtake the U.S. and bury us under a pile of inexpensive electronics, but I don't want to address those fears today. Instead, I want to talk about how the way you tell a story shapes the story. China was really the first modern state, by which I mean it had a centralized government and a core of bureaucrats who could execute the wishes of that government, and it lasted in pretty much the same form from 150 BCE until 1911 CE, which is technically known as a long-ass time. The Chinese were also among the first people to write history. In fact, one of the Confucian classics is called the Shu Jing, or Classic of History. This is great for us because we can now see the things the Chinese recorded as they were happening, but it's also problematic because of the way the story is told.