Anon learns about history

The Ancient Chinese were certainly good at recordkeeping*, having a unified kingdom and being a lot of people.

*numbers to be taken with a grain of salt, but European countries often just didn't make or preserve records at all.

Aguascacas

I have a slight suspicion that a few names might be made up.

Nah they're real. I should know, I operate my business outta ooksteinberg

europe rules

If you want a sample of how crazy Chinese history can get look at the Tai Ping rebellion:

Student fails Civil Servant Exam for the third time and has a mental breakdown
starts claiming he's Jesus' little brother who trained him to fight demons in his dreams
more dead than WWI

There was also that time a prison guard lost a prisoner during a transfer, and because the punishment for such a crime was death, he released all his prisoners, became their leader, and overthrew the monarchy.
- There's a few examples throughout history where having an insane punishment for a crime has caused serious problems.
- Please tell me there's a movie about that.
- Wasn't there at least one other time where "failure means death" turned into "guess we might as well just try to take over"?
  Time I'm thinking about was when an emperor had summoned some warlords to be there by x date or die and one group realized they weren't going to make it by the date, so since they had their armies with them anyways, they just pivoted from answering summons to invading/conquering. Not sure that one worked out though.
You doubt Jesus Hong Christ?
That's it, Wing King Shi Dakai Lord of Five Thousand Years is going to escort you out of the Heavenly Kingdom.
Now you won't ever get to eat grass with the Heavenly King.
- Pfft, imagine believing Jesus was in Nanjing. He clearly traveled through Siberia to rural Japan where he changed his name to Torai Tora Daitenku, all thanks to his Japanese brother Isukiri who went to Jerusalem to replace Jesus on the cross.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirisuto_no_Haka
- No no no! The true second coming of Christ was Sun Myung Moon!

There's a period of time where the population of China legitimately moved in a sawtooth pattern, as they had a massive war every few generations and wiped out a chunk of their population.

...some hooligans and gadabouts were gaoled for overturning dustbins on Hampstead Heath...

The hooligans are loose! What if they become roughians?