• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

You are born 100 years earlier, but in the same place; what do you do with your life?

Would you ever consider emigrating elsewhere, such as to the US?

I'd be born a little too late for it to be likely that I'd be one of those Swedes who emigrated to Minnesota and the Dakotas. There were quite a lot of them, but having been born in 1890, I would have grown up in a Sweden that had finally been touched by the industrial revolution (some half a century after Germany, France, and Britain) and was beginning to enjoy the fruits of it.

Frankly, I very much doubt that my life would be particularly much different from those of my forebears at the time. At least not in terms of my vocation.
 
Being born in a peasant family in southwestern Hubei in 1895, my prospects would not be good. China is in varying states of warlordism, lawlessness, and foreign occupation for probably the entirety of my adult life. If I survive to adulthood, I would be a peasant farmer, existing at the whim of the local landlord until the Revolution succeeds.

For comparison, my maternal great-grandfather was born around 1910 or so and died in 1938 or 1939. My great-grandmother supported herself and her children as a cobbler for some years after that.
 
Will you ever consider moving to the West Coast?

It'd be an option but it's not like that's a great choice either as mainland Asian Americans were just as poor. And depending on which side of the family I'm raised on there's a good chance that I'd get sent to an internment camp which yikes...
 
Being born in a peasant family in southwestern Hubei in 1895, my prospects would not be good. China is in varying states of warlordism, lawlessness, and foreign occupation for probably the entirety of my adult life. If I survive to adulthood, I would be a peasant farmer, existing at the whim of the local landlord until the Revolution succeeds.

For comparison, my maternal great-grandfather was born around 1910 or so and died in 1938 or 1939. My great-grandmother supported herself and her children as a cobbler for some years after that.

Only fourteen years older than Li Xiannian, though.
 
In terms of politics who knows. I'd grow up very disenfranchised, and white planter Republican dominance of Hawaii wouldn't end until the twilight of my life so likely little engagement with mainstream American politics. I'd like to think I'd have become a card carrying member of the Communist Party of Hawaii but I just as easily could've become a reactionary KMT partisan like so many overseas Chinese were throughout most of the 20th century.
 
Being born in a peasant family in southwestern Hubei in 1895, my prospects would not be good. China is in varying states of warlordism, lawlessness, and foreign occupation for probably the entirety of my adult life. If I survive to adulthood, I would be a peasant farmer, existing at the whim of the local landlord until the Revolution succeeds.

For comparison, my maternal great-grandfather was born around 1910 or so and died in 1938 or 1939. My great-grandmother supported herself and her children as a cobbler for some years after that.
If you want, you could try immigrating to Southeast Asia or perhaps Latin America. I don't know if Hawaii was actually an option for Chinese people back then; I know that the US wasn't.

It'd be an option but it's not like that's a great choice either as mainland Asian Americans were just as poor. And depending on which side of the family I'm raised on there's a good chance that I'd get sent to an internment camp which yikes...
At least you'll only be in a US internment camp for several years and won't be murdered there like a Jew in a Nazi concentration camp would be. :(

If you put in "Ormond St" in google's search bar, beneath you, "Ormond Street Hospital" appears. Once you search for that, you get the following Wikipedia article as your fourth result.

You should Google more, mate. It's quite a useful website. :)
Yes, I know, but laziness can sometimes be a bitch! ;)

I think we did this in the Pub a while back but it's always a fun concept.

Born to an American merchant living overseas in Brussels in 1894, there's a decent chance I spend my childhood as an expatriate in the Belgian Congo; hopefully I'd be disgusted by my surroundings (as I was by the expat world I actually grew up in) and would grow up opposed to colonialism, but there's always the chance I'd adapt and become a real piece of shit by the time I was an adult. If I returned to the States for my education like I did IOTL, I'd be drafted come 1917 but might be educated / privileged enough to get a military desk job in the war. After that? If I follow the same career path I'm following now, I could study under Melvil Dewey and become one of the first professionally trained librarians - which might be a good thing for the profession if my childhood experiences had made me less of a godawful bigot than Dewey was, or a very bad thing if I'd become a devotee of race science.

In this exercise, as in life, I'm very lucky to be a white cisgender man from a reasonably well-off background.
Interesting alternative life story.
 
Coal miner in County Durham. Born in 1887 so I'd be 27 come ww1 and probably old enough to not volunteer. Coal mining was a reserved occupation so unlikely to be conscripted.

Likely to be desperately poor but I'd also see Sunderland actually win trophies so very much a some good, some bad scenario.

Almost certainly not able to vote until I'm older than I am now so politics won't come up.
 
I mean not to be too morbid, but gunned downed in a muddy field in France. Alternatively catch a horrendous mining disease and die before cash my pension. Isn’t past life grand 😂😂😂
 
Coal miner in County Durham. Born in 1887 so I'd be 27 come ww1 and probably old enough to not volunteer. Coal mining was a reserved occupation so unlikely to be conscripted.

Likely to be desperately poor but I'd also see Sunderland actually win trophies so very much a some good, some bad scenario.

Almost certainly not able to vote until I'm older than I am now so politics won't come up.
When would you get the right to vote? Also, for a marriage partner, are you going to seek a friend or relative of some coal mining buddy of yours?
 
I mean not to be too morbid, but gunned downed in a muddy field in France. Alternatively catch a horrendous mining disease and die before cash my pension. Isn’t past life grand 😂😂😂
If you're gunned downed in a muddy French field but you would have written poetry that gets discovered and published after your death, though, then you could become a posthumous legend. :) Unknown in life, immortalized and lionized after death. :)
 
When would you get the right to vote?

I was wrong actually, would get the vote in 1918. So would get the chance to vote 2 years ago. I'd vote for labour in most possible seats, unless I was living where my dad currently lives in which case the election was unopposed.
 
Born as the son of a Methodist Minister in rural Northumberland, but we'd move around a lot due to itinerancy - almost certainly not overseas, though. I would probably sign up for non-combatant service in the First World War, as being a conchy was marginally scarier than stretcher-bearing in No Man's Land. Afterwards, I feel like I'd probably enter the ministry as well, and fill my spare time with writing - all of which will fail to find a publisher and be burned after my death by my rightfully ashamed relatives.

Politically, I would feel excluded from the Labour Party due to my middle class background and either remain a Liberal or support a tiny, irrelevant party. I would probably be stupid enough to vote for the New Party in 1931.

And of course there is no version of me, in any timeline, who does not die alone.
 
I love this scenario but I'm going to pretend to be a cis woman for this because I don't like the alternatives. :)

It seems unlikely that I'd be born in Los Angeles in 1901 to Jewish immigrant parents; somewhere in New York (where my ancestors did of course live) is more likely. I'd probably end up as a garment worker. If I was lucky I might be able to get well educated or something - I did have some fairly prosperous forebears, actually - but Smith doesn't really seem like my cup of tea, especially not when quotas are still around. Upshot of it all is I probably become an avid New Deal Democrat and a teacher, maybe? Either that or I do politics and run pointlessly for Congress as a Socialist. Alternatively, I might enter vaudeville, which seems fun? IDK; my family was never theatrical before me, basically, so the former is more likely, In any event. I'd likely come to hate the Orthodox Judaism that'd exclude me.
 
Last edited:
Like most of my family ancestors at that time,I probably end up as an Aromanian shepherd and mostly likely die during WW1 or in the Thirties after having disagreements with some other members of my family and community who joined the Holy Guard.

That or I die during WW2 or get deported to Baragan after the Communists get into power,also possibly dying there.If I survive that as well,I’ll probably be forcefully relocated in a village or a city and work the fields or in a factory til I die, occasionally listening to Radio Free Europe like everyone else.Best case scenario is that I become a teacher after WW1 and somehow survive everything,but end up forcefully retired from the profession by the communist authorities or get relocated teaching kids in a forgotten village as punishment.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top