Today is the 980th anniversary of the Battle of Ting-Tong Bing-Bing, the final confrontation of the War of Three Sucky and One Fucky. Following orders from dowager-empress Mi Sukku Yu of the Chingchong dynasty, an imperial army under eunuch Liu Bi marched into Wong Dong province to besiege the rebel stronghold of Chittybangbang, but was intercepted by the combined rebel forces of generals Liu Ba and Liu Bo on the sorghum fields outside the city. Both armies were composed of peasant conscripts and were virtually annihilated in the bloody fighting, done primarily with chopsticks and kitchen pans as the Chinese weapons quickly broke due to corruption in the blacksmith’s guild. By the end of the day, the rebels held the battlefield only because they ate with sturdier chopsticks and had a few more peasants to press into the slaughter. Combined casualties were over 90 million (approx. 0.0000012% of the population of Chingchong-era China) and the sorghum harvest was trampled and completely destroyed in the fighting. The victorious rebels were only saved from starvation by cannibalizing the large number of rotting corpses, but most succumbed a week later to an outbreak of plague which was blamed on foreigners. The rebel usurper-emperor Hong-Kong Ping-Pong was among the victims and the few surviving rebel soldiers quickly dispersed into the countryside following his death. The Chingchong dynasty was saved and the decaying bodies brought great fertility to the fields of Wong Dong province, which reported a bumper sorghum harvest the following autumn. China grow stronger.
