The History of China - #80 - Sui 4: Ringing Blood From The Stone

Episode Date: November 2, 2015

Emperor Yang of Sui has ventured forth to the far northeastern border of China in an attempt to rescue his honor from the clutches of the impudent King of Goguryeo, Yeongyang. Little does King Yeongyang know that the Sui Empire has secretly begun construction on a new waterway even more navigable that the first dreaded Grand Canal. When completed, this ultimate weapon will spell certain doom for the small kingdom of Koreans struggling to resist a renewed Chinese domination of East Asia… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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you enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 80, Ringing Blood from the Stone Last time, we covered the rise to power of Yang Guang, and then his early reign as the second emperor of Sui, Emperor Yang, showing that in spite of his historical name and the hatred of Chinese classical historians, he was actually a highly active and engaged monarch over his empire. Then we left off with the cliffhanger ending of his ominous threat to the king of Goguryeo, that is, Northern Korea and Manchuria, that if he did not personally come before the throne of Sui and bow before his imperial master, there would be hell to pay. And this week, we'll look at just

what happens when King Yongyang effectively thumbed his nose at the Sui ultimatum and said basically, yeah, come and get me. Emperor Yang of Sui has ventured forth to the far northeastern border of China in an attempt to rescue his honor from the clutches of the impudent king of Goguryeo, Yongyang. Little does King Yongyang know that the Sui empire has secretly begun construction on a new waterway even more navigable than the first dreaded Grand Canal. When completed, this ultimate weapon will spell certain doom for the small kingdom of Koreans struggling to resist a renewed Chinese domination of East Asia. Now, as we mentioned last episode, the major thrust of Emperor Yong's threat against Korea

had not been that the legions of China itself were about to bear down on the Manchurian regents. Instead, it had promised that the Chinese would lead the hordes of Turkic horsemen down upon them. Because, after all, why risk your own forces when you can simply compel one of your suzerains to stick out their collective necks instead? Unfortunately, that would be the first aspect of the invasion of Goguryeo to succumb to Murphy's law. Because in 609, two years after the little faux pas between the Chinese emperor, the Turkic Khan, and the Korean ambassador had first touched off this whole crisis in the making, Chimian Khan died, leaving the Khanate in the hands of his son, who took the name Shibi Khan upon his ascension.

As was customary, the Sui court sent fine gifts to what they saw as their new vassal Khan, as well as a Chinese princess to wed. But while Shibi Khan accepted the gifts, he would prove to be far less a manipulable step-chieftain than his forebears had been. He recognized the games the Sui court had been playing with his people, pitting them against one another for their own benefit. And he was having none of it. When Sui intelligence chief Pei Zhu once again began his oft-repeated tactic of building up one of his brother's powers in order to eventually oppose him and keep his reign off balance, Shibi Khan turned hostile to the affairs of Chang'an and ceased coming to or responding to the Sui court. Quite suddenly,

the fearsome horsemen of the north were no longer Suis to command. Instead, if justice was going to be meted out against the insolent Korean king Yongyang, the Chinese were going to have to get their hands dirty and do the job themselves. As it so happened, 609 was also the year that Yongji Channel was completed, the segment of the ever-expanding Grand Canal project that had been the northernmost of the whole affair, and now linked Luoyang's canals directly to its terminus at Zuojun, what is modern Beijing, almost 900 kilometers away. This 7th century superhighway would provide a means of funneling troops and arms almost directly to Goguryeo's doorstep, on a scale and speed never before dreamed of, and Emperor Yang understood this. The time to punish Korea was at hand.

The following year, he implemented a series of special war taxes designed to raise additional funds from the wealthy and began massing an army along China's northeastern border. The Book of Sui called his army the largest ever assembled in history, and numbered it at a staggering 1,133,000 soldiers, which is, let's just get this out of the way, a ridiculous number. More modern historians explain this huge inflation as probably being a product of the Tang Dynasty historians seeking to discredit their predecessor's sway. You know, they had this many soldiers and they still managed to screw the whole thing up. Obviously, they deserved to fall, kind of rationale.

Contemporary historians like David Graff put the actual number of Chinese soldiers on this campaign at roughly half that, or around 600,000, which is still enormous. By way of comparison, that's about the size of the entire modern army of Turkey, or about a third larger than the entire Roman imperial army at its height, or just about the entire population of Vermont, all committed to just this one single campaign. And those, by the way, are just the active combatants as well. Such a number does not take into account the support units and laborers that would have been necessary for a movement of this scale. All told, over the course of the war, probably between one and two million people may have participated in the invasions of Goguryeo between 612 and 614.

It boggles the mind. The invasion plans were temporarily forestalled in 611 due to a catastrophic flooding of the Yellow River's lower plain, which inundated as many as 40 prefectures and caused no small number of desertions among the Sui ranks. Nevertheless, in early 612, the first invasion force began its march northward from the Zhuojun staging area. Amid, as Wright puts it, quote, a grandiloquent edict appropriate for the occasion from Emperor Yang, declaring the virtue, the cosmic ordering force, and the great accomplishments of the Sui, and which castigated the king of Goguryeo for his failure to submit for his cunning and his nefarious collusion with the Khitan and the Malgal in violating Sui territory.

The Malgal and the Khitan, by the way, were two other tribes of the northeast, and the Khitan in particular are worth remembering because they'll eventually have their own time in the spotlight as we press forward. The initial expeditionary force numbered purportedly between 300 and 350,000 strong and was personally commanded by Emperor Young. Reports at the time tell of the army being so vast that the time between the first soldiers departed in their columns to the final units leaving camp took more than 40 days. The column stretched over the horizon as it marched, apparently some 400 kilometers in length, meaning that by the time the last of the troops marched out of Zuojun, the head of the column would have been almost halfway

to Pyongyang. Against such a force arrayed against it, the commander of the Goguryeo royal army, Field Marshal Yulji Mundok, knew that his defenses could not hold their territories in Manchuria. Instead, and with King Yongyang's blessing, he gave ground before the invasion force and pulled his lines back to behind the Liao River. Once behind a far more defensible barrier, the two armies faced off for the first time in more than a decade. Faced with such a barrier, Emperor Yong called up his first ace in the hole, his chief royal engineer, Yuan Kai, who oversaw the rapid constructions of a series of three bridges to allow the Sui army easy access across to the eastern banks of the Liao.

This would prove to be rather more difficult than Engineer Kai first anticipated, though, and on his first attempt to bridge the waters, he found, much to his chagrin and embarrassment, that his bridges had been measured too short to reach the far banks. As such, the initial assault proved disastrous for the Sui troops, who were massacred as they attempted to ford the remaining stretch of river and were ultimately forced to withdraw. But Yuan Kai corrected his error in time for the second assault, resulting in a successful crossing of the Liao into Manchuria. And with that, what should have been the conquest of the Manchuria region began. You probably noticed I said should have been,

because the Sui Emperor had relayed instructions to his unit commanders that any and all major tactical decisions had to be approved by him personally before they could be enacted. The resulting lag time between the realities of combat and the sieges across Manchuria, and Emperor Yang actually being able to receive, assess, approve, and then get those orders returned to the fronts, made every tactical decision a nightmare of inefficiency, with approved orders often arriving long after a given window of opportunity or necessity had already closed. The result was a series of ineffective and frustrating sieges against the Manchuria and Liaodong regions, and with precious little to show for all the effort and lives expended.

In fact, even after five months of continuous siege works, the communications problem had proved so debilitating to Sui operations that not a single Korean fort had been forced to capitulate. Emperor Yang then turned to his backup plan in an attempt to end the war in a single stroke before more of his men and wealth could be chewed through. He sent word back to the armies that continued to muster at Zuojun, ordering another full detachment of some 300,000 to mobilize alongside a large naval force. Their goal? To head along the coast while the Manchurian defenders remained preoccupied with Emperor

Yang's personal forces, and assault the Korean capital at Pyongyang directly, thus dealing a coup de grace to Goguryeo. This strategy, however, would also run into catastrophic complications when the ground force and the navy became separated from one another. While the infantry yet trudged through the rain-slogged summertime hills and valleys of the northeast, the Sui navy had pulled ahead and arrived at the mouth of the Daedong River, the gateway to Pyongyang. In order to draw the now-detached Sui navy into his clutches, King Yongyang ordered a small force to feign an attack on the ships and then retreat back towards the capital. When the Sui admiral Lai duly followed

up on what he saw was to be an easy victory, dispatched his force of some 100,000 marines to assault the outer citadel of the Korean city while waiting for his army to catch up. The marine force, much to their surprise, found the outer gates of Pyongyang open and seemingly deserted. Though Admiral Lai at first remained cautious, a small but seemingly convincing attack by Goguryeo defenders convinced him that somehow he had managed to take the outer city with almost no fighting whatsoever, and he at last permitted his men to move in and begin collecting and looting the valuables that had been temptingly scattered across the newly captured outer city. Now, with their guards down, out of formation, and more concerned with finding the best treasures for themselves than defense,

the Sui Marine Expeditionary Unit lost all composure or battle readiness. In fact, the defenders of Pyongyang, lying in wait, had been counting on. They now fell upon the Sui troops, totally exposed and weighed down with treasure and loot, and slaughtered them by the tens of thousands. Of the initial force of 100,000, it is written that only a few thousand managed to stagger back to their waiting ships and shove off to await the still inbound Chinese army from the safety of the river. But the Sui army was facing its own set of problems. Due to the inherent risks of traveling into hostile territory, the battalion's commanders, Generals Yu Zhongwen and Yu Wenshu, had decided that a baggage train was an unnecessarily vulnerable part of their force. Instead,

they had the bright idea to order each of their men to carry their own foodstuffs and supplies, an incredibly heavy burden that rapidly fatigued the entire army as it marched across the rugged, uncooperative terrain. The wait proved so much that many soldiers, in a fit of short-sightedness, actually discarded large portions of their provisions in an attempt to ease their discomfort. Obviously, this in turn led to another problem, the fact that by the time the Sui army had reached the banks of the Yalu River, which separates modern China from North Korea, the force was facing starvation due to all the food they dropped along the way. At around this point, the Korean field marshal, Yul Ji-moon-dak, under royal orders to assess the strength of the Sui force, approached the beleaguered Chinese army,

ostensibly to open up terms of negotiation and surrender. Though the Sui generals had been ordered to capture either the Korean king or his field marshal should they happen to fall into their hands, it was decided at the time that to do so while under a flag of truce would be bad form indeed. Thus, in a decision they would come to regret, the Sui commanders ultimately allowed Field Marshal Yulji to return to his force within Goguryeo. The Korean commander then began a series of light raids against the Sui army, as it once again began to advance towards Pyongyang. With each strike, often multiple times in a single day, just to keep the Sui military on their guard and without rest, the Korean army would harass the Sui column and then fake defeat and retreat, with the goal of luring the enemy force further inward and stretching it out all the faster.

The Sui army ultimately made it to within some 20 kilometers of the Korean capital city, egged on as they were by the perception of having driven the Goguryeo defenders back time and time again. Yet, when faced with the mighty walls of Pyongyang, General Yu and General Yuan belatedly realized what the defenders had been up to this whole march. Their own Sui troops were now thoroughly exhausted from the pursuits and chases, and they had virtually nothing left in the way of supplies. And the Korean walls stood, well defended and nigh unbreachable. At a loss for what he should do, whether to commit his troops to an unwinnable siege, or break off his attack and retreat after having come so far and with nothing to show, General Yu hesitated. But Field Marshal Youji saw his chance and attempted to sway the wavering

general in the direction he wished to push him. He penned a poetic letter to the Chinese commander, stating, quote, Your divine plans have plumbed the heavens. Your subtle reckoning has spanned the earth. You have won every battle. Your military merit is great. Why not then be content and stop this war? End quote. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the

turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. When even so blatant ego-stroking a maneuver as this failed to move the Chinese general to decisiveness, Youji further sent an emissary to the Sui camp, promising to deliver King Yongyang himself to be escorted back to the waiting Emperor Yong in exchange for the Sui army pulling back from Pyongyang. It was an offer that

General Yu, quite frankly, couldn't refuse, and finally seeing an honorable way to extricate himself from the situation, he leapt at the chance and ordered his force to pull back towards the main Sui lines. But little did he know that he was now retreating directly into the field marshal Youji Mundok's well-laid trap. The path of retreat would take the Sui army across a river, then called the Saosu, though now known as the Chongchang River. And yes, to those of you who might be Korean war enthusiasts, it's the same Chongchang River that proved the decisive battle between the UN forces and the Chinese PLA in late 1950, ultimately driving the UN back to the 38th parallel and ensuring the continued existence

of North Korea. As the great philosopher Mark Twain once put it, history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. But back in 612, Yeoji Mondok had previously ordered the South Sea River to be dammed as part of his grand strategy to drive off the invading Chinese. As a result, the water levels were now quite low at the downstream place of crossing for the now-withdrawing Sui army. As the Sui began to float across the calm, shallow waters, Marshal Youji waited, and waited, until the middle of the Chinese column was wading through the deepest section of the river, and then he ordered his dam opened at

once. We've discussed the sheer destructive power of opening dams as a weapon prior in the show, and this was certainly no exception. The rampaging cascade of river water tore through the effectively trapped Sui flotilla, sweeping away tens of thousands of men in an instant. Then, as the Sal Su's waters began to ebb, the shocked and already devastated Sui forces turned to find Goguryeo's heavy cavalry sweeping down upon them, forcing the survivors to literally flee for their lives back across the Yalu River. A grueling 65-mile trek in even the best of times. But with the Korean cavalry hot on their heels, the disastrous rout would result in the almost

total destruction of the Sui army. Out of the more than 300,000 strong force that had initially crossed the Yalu and advanced on Pyongyang, reportedly only 2,800 would ever make it back across, earning it the top spot as history's most costly classical battle in the world. More than three times the losses as the Battle of Red Cliffs, and between four and six times the number of dead as the Battle of Cannae. It was and is for the Koreans one of their greatest and most glorious triumphs in their entire national history, and for the Sui dynasty a costly and embarrassing defeat. But costly though it was on a scale almost unimaginable in the 7th century, The Sui were down but far from out.

Though the expedition to take Pyongyang had been wiped out, the occupying army of Manchuria yet remained, albeit with their confidence badly shaken. Nevertheless, by this point, it was nearing the onset of the Manchurian winter, where temperatures can easily plunge to between negative 50 to negative 30 degrees Celsius for the duration. Emperor Yang and what remained of his army had little choice. They could withdraw, or they could freeze. The 612th campaign to reclaim Goguryeo was over, and what a catastrophe it had been. Upon returning once again to his own domain, however, the surely already grumpy Emperor Yang was in for another wave of bad news. You may recall that immediately prior to his invasion of Manchuria, the Yellow River,

as it is wont to do, had flooded and caused widespread famine, displacement, and disease across the basin. As a result, virtually all up and down the Yellow River, from Fufeng to Bohai, agrarian rebellions had broken out across the north, aided and abetted by the by now thoroughly disabused and downtrodden elements of the imperial army that had deserted before, during, but especially after their catastrophe at the South Sea River. Nevertheless, Emperor Yang would not be dissuaded. The king of Goguryeo had now not only flouted his will, but embarrassed him in the field. And the ego of the Sui emperor could not allow such slights to stand. As such, even as

further unrest gripped his own heartlands, Yang re-raised another force in the spring of 613 to once again commence the invasion of tiny, obstinate Goguryeo. That summer, once the heaviest of the monsoon rains had subsided, Emperor Young commenced his second invasion into Manchuria. This time, however, he would barely make it past the Liao River at all, though not due to any great action by the Koreans this time. Instead, he learned very early on in his campaign that the civil unrest back in Sui had just upgraded itself a few large notches on the seriousness scale, because it had been joined by the sitting director of the Board of Rights, who just so happened to

be the son of the murdered Yang Sui, the official Yang Xuangang. He and his force had seized control of the lower terminus of the Yongchi Canal, an especially worrisome point for the rebels to hold, not only because it was perilously close to Luoyang, but at least as much because by holding that point, Yang the Younger could effectively pinch off any and all additional troops or supplies from flowing north to the badly disheartened expeditionary army. Clearly, this situation could not be allowed to persist, and so Emperor Yang dispatched one of his top commanders who had managed to survive Sao Tzu, General Yuan Shu, to stamp out this rebellion once and for all. Arthur Wright tells us, quote, Yang Di sent his top general, Yuan Shu, back from the northeastern campaign to crush the rebellion.

A short, sharp civil war ensued, and Yang Shuanggan's forces were defeated, his head sent as evidence to the emperor in the field. But the social fabric, the tax, militia, and supply systems had been badly disrupted. End quote. Moreover, though General Yuwen would by the end of 613 indeed manage to defeat the personal forces of Yang Xuangan, he had been generally unable to stem the overall rebellious spirit that loomed ever more ominously over a China that was more and more put upon by the demands of its imperial sovereign. In fact, the southern campaign is generally agreed to have done more harm than good to the stability of the Sui dynasty. In his zeal to root out the elements of rebellion, General Yuan prosecuted a remarkably vicious campaign against any and all

he suspected might be complicit in the uprisings. Mass reprisals and collective punishments were authorized, and indeed became the order of the day. And when several of the now-dead Yang Shuangan's lieutenants and advisors were captured, they were all publicly executed using methods considered especially harsh even at the time. They were executed via what was in effect a firing squad of archers, and then their bodies were drawn and quartered, and then burned, and the ashes scattered. For a people who still largely held to traditional folk beliefs about the body needing to remain intact in death for the spirit to likewise remain whole, such mutilation, even post-mortem, was a terrifying prospect.

The result was, and no real surprise here, a general backlash against the empire's exceedingly harsh measures and inhuman treatment of its captives. Rather than quashing the rebellion, Yang had only managed to fan its flames, and the more he tightened his grip, the more prefectures slipped through his fingers. As his empire spiraled further into rebellion, Emperor Yang was forced to call off his invasion plans for the year and once again withdraw back across the Liao River to Sui proper. The Sui dynasty's final campaign against the Goguryeo kingdom would come the following year, a choice as puzzling as it was ill-advised. Historian Arthur Wright explains his understanding of the decision as Emperor Wen having developed an almost single-minded obsession with the Korean peninsula's conquest, and no amount of blowback, rebellion, or casualty figures was

going to deter him from seeing its insolent king ground to dust before him. He writes, Yangdi was driven to these repeated campaigns, ruinously expensive in manpower and material, by his conception of the majesty and cosmic centrality of the Sui Empire, by his urge to restore the glory of the Han, and by his image of himself as destined to great victories against all who resisted the benevolent transforming influence of the central kingdom. End quote. In the first or second month of year 614, Emperor Yang once more declared his intention before his court to prosecute war against Goguryeo, and then opened the floor up to his officials to present their views on the matter. But it must have been very clear then that he was not really willing to hear anything but

full-throated assent of his plans, and as such, the Book of Sui tells us, quote, for several days no one dared speak out, end quote. Duly convinced that his officials backed him, when in fact they privately agreed virtually to a man that to launch another invasion now was absolutely crazy, Emperor Yang issued another proclamation. Again from Wright, quote, in the second month, this time in a self-justifying tone, he said that he had always devoted himself wholeheartedly to his kingly task and to military matters. He then invokes both the exploits of the Han and the much earlier Shang dynasties as a point of comparison. Following up the passage, quote, he spoke of his

hatred of war and his distress at the loss of life in previous campaigns, and ordered that the remains of the war dead be collected and buried, and that a Buddhist shrine be erected to confer grace on the souls of the departed and allay the suffering of the unhappy ghosts. End quote. In short, look, I don't want to go to war, but we have to go back to Korea anyway. It's what the fallen deserve. Which is a nice little self-justifying logical pretzel there, isn't it? Preparations were made, and the plans pushed ahead towards enactment. All of this despite the fact that by now the ruinously costly war efforts had drained the imperial coffers, as well as the imperial supply and grain caches, which had only a few years prior been literally overflowing with millions of bushels of grain,

but which were now insufficient to even feed a peacetime populace, much less supply yet another adventure into Korea. The military conscriptions proved rather less than wonderful as well. Across the empire, thousands of men slated to report to command posts simply failed to materialize, and horses had grown as scarce as they'd ever been since the inception of the Sui dynasty, resulting in piteous cavalry turnouts as well. But none of these setbacks would deter Yang. He would have his conquest.

The force that did bother to report for duty would one final time cross the Liao River into Goguryeo. Once again, the Korean fortresses on the far banks of the river held fast against Chinese sieges. But this time, the Sui army was actually able to break through the defensive network into the inner workings of Goguryeo, and even all the way to the outskirts of Pyongyang proper. Let the Koreans keep their river forts. We'll see all the good it will do them when their capital has fallen. Seeing, perhaps for the first time, a very real threat to his life and livelihood, King Yongyang dispatched an emissary in late 614, offering Emperor Yong his submission, along

with a Chinese general who had earlier defected to Goguryeo. Emperor Yong believed the Korean king, and against the wishes of the Sui vanguard, which was within sight of the capital, he ordered his forces to pull back from their assault. The emperor then sent a reply to the Korean king, repeating his demand from two years prior that Yongyang come to him personally to submit to the will of Sui. And then he waited, and waited, and waited some more. And King Yongyang just never got back to him. What force of arms probably could not have prevented the lure of false diplomacy had secured for Goguryeo without further bloodshed.

The Sui armies had withdrawn. What further use was such a promise of submission? It goes without saying that Emperor Yang was furious when he finally figured out that Yongyang was never going to call him back, and the following year he duly issued an order to commence with a fourth invasion of the peninsula. And this time, he meant it. But it was not, it would turn out, to be. Between the massive toll his foreign misadventures had taken on the empire, the as-yet unsolved hardships of the Yellow River's flooding, along with the ongoing burdens of the mega-projects such as the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, and the still-under-construction capital, Daxing,

the Sui Empire had begun to buckle under the crushing weight of imperial demands and domestic slippage. By 614, the rebellions that had begun as agrarian revolts against the hardships of the Yellow River floods had themselves spilled over into the larger empire, with reports of uprisings as far south as the Yangtze and as far west as the Gansu Corridor. The campaign against Goguryeo, or any other foreign state for that matter, was definitively at an end. What had gone wrong? How had Goguryeo, what should have been a minuscule annoyance for the might of Sui, come to so utterly best the Middle Kingdom. Historian John Jameson sums up the analysis of himself as well as Chen Yinguo

and others with, quote, first, the terrain and climate favored the defenders. The area attacked was forbidding, heavily forested, where heavy summer rains were quickly followed by long, severe winters. The fighting season for the invaders was only from April to the beginning of rains in July. Second, the Goguryeo strategists, knowing the terrain and having most of the year to prepare themselves, were formidable in defense. Time after time, they tied down the besieging armies until the onset of winter forced their withdrawal. Third, the distance of the campaign was formidable, close to a thousand miles. Goguryeo enjoyed a compensating advantage, end quote. Regardless of the reasons, Yang's misadventures in Manchuria had done a whole lot more damage to his rule and his very state than

he was prepared to admit. At a feast in early 615, he declared before his assembled guests from across China, as well as emissaries from the Khitan, Turks, Malgal, and even guests from Silla, one of Goguryeo's rival kingdoms in the south of the peninsula, that for all its recent trouble, the Sui Empire was nevertheless, quote, pacified and united, all within the four seas bit in Mandarin, was an old way of referencing China itself. As it was the central kingdom, so too all within the bounds of the four seas must submit to its will. In reality, though, nothing could be further from the truth. The Sui dynasty is in utter turmoil, and rebellions had broken out across its breadth and all up and down its classes. Next time, we will explore the final days of the increasingly troubled Emperor Yang of Sui's reign, as well as the ignominious twilight of the very dynasty his father had

built up from nothing. And as Sui succumbs to his own excesses, we will likewise watch the rise of the governor of Taiyuan City and the Duke of Tang Prefecture, a man named Li Yuan. Thank you for listening. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marveled at the golden face of Tutankhamun, or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti. If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore tales

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