![]() Czerski is a physicist at University College London who studies the behavior of bubbles and films of bubbles her expertise is in phenomena at the human scale. Authors write best about what they know well. They begin binding their daughter's feet. I am delighted to add Helen Czerski, author of the new book Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life, to that distinguished company. The Sevenpounders relax, as it seems the emperor is not coming back after all. Another neighbour remembers that Mrs Sevenpounder did not object when her husband stopped growing his queue, and an argument breaks out.Ī fortnight later, Mrs Sevenpounder notices that Mr Zhao has coiled up his queue again, and is not wearing his gown. Trusting in Zhao's scholarship, Mrs Sevenpounder gives up all hope and curses her husband for having shaven off his queue. Zhao bears Sevenpounder a grudge, and taunts him that he will now be executed. Mrs Sevenpounder notices that he is wearing his special gown which he only does when an enemy has met with misfortune. Zhao had only coiled up his queue, and has now let it down. Zhao is renowned as the greatest scholar for ten miles round, as he reads the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He worries, as people in town had shaved off his queue during the revolution. The boatman Sevenpounder (七斤) comes back to his village one night, bringing the news to his family that "the Emperor has returned to the Dragon Throne". Given the primitive communications infrastructure in China, this news took longer to spread to rural and remote areas. In July 1917 the Qing loyalist Zhang Xun attempted to restore Puyi to the throne, but the revolt collapsed in a fortnight. After the last emperor Puyi abdicated in 1912, the Republic of China was established and the queue was widely abandoned. On the other hand, during the Taiping Rebellion, the revolutionaries would execute anyone who wore the queue as a presumed Qing loyalist. In 1644, after the conquest of China by the Manchurian Qing dynasty, Han Chinese males were forced on pain of execution to adopt the queue, a Manchurian hairstyle consisting of shaving the forehead and wearing the rest of one's hair in a long plait.
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