Sina Weibo lit up again. Then Douyin. Then Xiaohongshu. Soon, all of China was engulfed in the roaring fire of public intellectual warfare. Debates raged in coffee shops and comment sections. The young questioned what they’d been taught. The old were torn between pride and confusion. Even Chinese state-run media couldn’t ignore it anymore. They entered the fray with carefully worded reports, cautiously dancing around the one point that everyone now agreed on:
The books were real.
And with that truth in place, nothing else would be the same again.
Across Sina Weibo and Douyin, the public began asking their own questions—raw, unfiltered, and dangerous in their implications.
“Why were we taught 5,000 years of history when our own language predates that?” asked 墨色风灯.
“I support the Party,” said a third user cautiously, “but if these books are real, then why do they remain silent?” wrote 小美的日式便当
饭圈守护者L comment was more biting: “My great-grandfather died in the Cultural Revolution protecting books like this. Were they destroyed because they told too much truth?”
The questions multiplied. Comment threads were buried under floods of replies. Teachers were asked questions they had no answers for. Something old and sacred had been disturbed—and it was not going to rest quietly.
It was at this point that The Global Times, a mouthpiece of the state, published a full-page spread on Yong Liang’s discovery. But instead of discrediting him, the article took a neutral tone. It acknowledged the historical value of the books and hinted at “the complex nature of oral traditions and regional records.” For a regime built on tightly controlled narratives, even this mild recognition was seismic.
But Yong Liang didn’t stop.
He posted more images. More translations. More maps. More names and timeframes that made no sense in the current version of Chinese history. Then came the image that stopped the scroll for everyone: a passage detailing trade exchanges with Pharaoh Khepra-Sutekh-Thot—a ruler from Ancient Egypt.
According to the family book, Chinese envoys had once exchanged silks and medicinal knowledge for incense and obsidian. It was a time before dynasties. Before the First Emperor. Before even time as we know.
How could a 21st-century I.T. worker in Shanghai possess this?
That’s when Yong Liang wrote it. The sentence that sent ripples from the lowest worker’s dorm to the highest office of Zhongnanhai:
“What if everything the CCP taught us was a lie?”
And that… is when everything began to change.
The CCP Gets Involved
It happened swiftly. Brutally. Without announcement or warning. On the night of October 31st, the silence broke—from marching boots.
The State Security Bureau descended on Gahaizhen like a thunderclap. In less than four hours, Yong Liang and his father Yong Sheng were arrested. His grandfather, Yong Rui, was beaten so badly he could not speak. Their family home—centuries old, holding secrets now deemed too dangerous—was set ablaze. The flames devoured everything.
The books. The furniture. The memory of an entire bloodline.
One villager said the smoke carried pages.
But no one dared catch them.
The CCP labeled it a "containment action.” Official broadcasts used coded language: “counter-terrorism,” “protection of ideological integrity,” “preservation of national unity.” They claimed the family was in possession of “contraband” and “illegal documents.”
Agents went door-to-door in Gahaizhen, ripping through homes, confiscating heirlooms, books, trinkets—anything remotely old. The villagers were told: “Do not make trouble. What the Party says is history… is history.”
No one dared speak back.
The CCP seized the entire Yong family estate, posted warnings on their land, and blacked out all local communications. Then they deleted Yong Liang’s entire Sina Weibo account, backups, and cloud drives. Gone. As if he never made a post.
State media issued a final message:
“The Party will not tolerate the promotion of wrong thought and wrong values. Those who confuse the people will be met with disciplinary action.”
And just like that, Chinese social media fell silent.