The People's History of China Vol.3 (Fiction)

Sun Yat Sen

Case Notes

3/11/13

It was horrible to behold. It is as if he’s given his entire being into every sob, his body alternating between violent convulsions and reflective silence. I cannot quite explain it, but his cries seem to have unearthed something buried deep within my subconscious that tapped into the same well of sorrow he is trapped in. I was overcome with emotion but could not pinpoint exactly what brought me to tears. This onset of emotions proved to be too taxing for many of the orderlies and other doctors attending him. I alone remained, driven by curiosity. The exodus of people seemed to lessen the intensity of his weeping, reduced to a single constant stream of tears originating from his left eye. In accordance with previous reports, as his weeping subsided so did mine, and after I was able to regain control of my emotions I was left feeling somewhat lighter, almost refreshed. Evidently, the number of people Liu Shui is exposed to correlates to the intensity of his weeping. I have requested permission to conduct his rehabilitation individually with the aid of a few selected advisors.

Having calmed down, Liu Shui commenced speaking tentatively in his unknown dialect, as if he himself was new to the language. Attempts to communicate with him in Standard Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hakka, Gan, and Xiang yielded no results.

There is some debate as to whether the language he’s speaking is actually Chinese and even if he is of Chinese descent. His physical features are quite puzzling and it is clear his genealogical line is diverse. His face, to me, is distinctively Han Chinese but with some key differences. The plane of his face is flat and without the pronounced Caucasian brow, he has small almond-shaped eyes and cheekbones with very pronounced round apples. But Liu Shui’s hair is long and tremendously thick. He has a narrow nose, a very square jawline, and a heavy beard, its mostly black hairs mingling with patches of brown and red. All of which is extremely uncommon for people of China, save in the provinces in the far west of where the population is predominantly of foreign blood. The most curious physical attribute is definitely his skin. The visible complexion is deeply tanned, which would normally be an indicator of the peasant class or people of Southern China, but is uniformly hairy, strangely similar to the hair distribution of Arabic peoples. Further inspection revealed an area of very pale skin from his waist to the middle of his thighs. From my personal observations, I would compare the hue of his pale skin to those of Russians or other Caucasians.

Clearly, there is too much ambiguity in speculation. With the CAT scanner malfunctioning, the only avenue of scientific investigation we can take is to analyze his DNA. We have drawn blood and taken a sample of his hair in the hopes that by tracing his genealogical history we might be able to find something that can help us pinpoint the origin of this mysterious dialect.