The Man With The Scissors.

"Let me tell you two things you don't know about Shih Huang Ti", said The-Man-With-The-Scissors as he grinned.

I looked up at the mirror, gazing at the reflection of the man standing behind me, a pair of scissors in his right hand, a little comb grasped between the fingers of the other.

"Do you know Shih Huang Ti?" The man asked. Unable to contain his impatience, he blurted out. "He was the emperor who united China."

Encouraged by my smile, The-Man-With-The-Scissors, the tool of his trade frozen in mid air, began. "Not many people know his real name. Do you?" 

A name came to mind - Ying Zheng. However, I could not be sure because ancient Chinese were known to have all sorts of names. There was the personal name, the courtesy name, the official name, and the name they get after they kick the bucket. Not entirely sure which name he meant, I shrugged and beckoned him to continue.

"His real name is Kublai Khan." said The-Man-With-The-Scissors .

"No!" I exclaimed in utter disbelief, looking up at the mirror. The scissors froze.

"Yes! That's his real name. Very few people knew that he was the son of Genghis Khan."

"But they were from different timeline."  I protested.

The scissors resumed its merry snipping as the man explained, "It was written in my history books in school. I may have forgotten much but this is the one fact I remembered."

I looked at the man in the mirror. He was in his mid fifties so there's a whole lot of years between his school books and the scissors now in his hands.

"I think his real name is Ying Zheng. He was probably one of the princes of the Zhou kingdom before he became the king of Qin. Kublai Khan belonged to the Yuan Dynasty which came much later in the timeline.", I explained.

"Oh no! You are mistaken. He was not of Manchurian descent. The Manchurians came later."

"Qin and Qing were two separate dynasties, you know?"

The-Man-With-The-Scissors dismissed my argument with a decisive mid-air scissor snip. "Anyway! ... he was also the one who built the Great Wall."

I looked at the scissors poised over my head, it's pointed end at the start of a trajectory which bodes me ill. History or what we know of it was written by the victors. And where's the harm in letting Shih Huang Ti be Kublai Khan just for today? 

Then again, was he the one who built the Great Wall? Nah... Consolidated several smaller walls into the great one, perhaps. He should not claim credit for building the wall in its entirety. And Kublai Khan? Wasn't he the grandson of Genghis Khan instead of the son?

I nodded agreeably at the man in the mirror as he gathered his thoughts and expounded on his views regarding little green men watching us from clandestine quarters right here, in our neck of the woods.