Zhang Xiao rubbed his eyes, thinking he must have seen wrong, then looked at the blackboard again.
There was no mistaking it: the kind dressed in an old dynasty's official robes, with both arms stretched out. Who knew whom Lockhart had asked to make it, but the picture pinned to the blackboard was even an animated GIF.
In other words, one of the wizards' moving pictures.
The jiangshi hopped and hopped with its arms outstretched, occasionally stopping to open its mouth at the young wizards as though it meant to bite them.
The young wizards, who had never seen anything like it, recoiled in fright, then couldn't resist taking another curious peek. They were scared, but they still wanted to look.
Malfoy watched for a while, frowned thoughtfully, then turned and asked quietly:
"Zhang, this looks like something from China, doesn't it? Those clothes look like Qing official robes."
Little Ma had indeed read Five Thousand Years of Chinese History (Illustrated Edition). He could actually recognize something from the Qing dynasty.
Incidentally, Malfoy held "Qing" in utter contempt. Zhang Xiao had initially thought it was because of those two wars.
He had even been ready to teach him what "the Chinese people have stood up" meant.
But Little Ma's answer had astonished him. In Malfoy's view, "Qing" had never gone through a struggle for supremacy-a contest in which rival powers rose across the land, like the Three Kingdoms, the Sui and Tang, or the Yuan and Ming.
He thought Qing was more like a thief. As he understood it, Qing had been Ming's House-elf, stealing its master's home while Ming was weak and then taking its place. That was very un-House-elf-like.
His conviction had only deepened after he read that Qing had been beaten by British Muggles leading an allied