Journal of Asian Restudy 2021 Fall

Fall 2021
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Published by Education on Cultured Way
Address: 65 Grange Ave Toronto ON Canada
Tel: 604-312-6507
Email:AsiRestuAssist@outlook.com
ISSN 2564-3150
Copyright of all contents belong to Asian Re-study Journal
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Editor’s Word p. 5
Call for submission of original articles
Disclaimer:
We have zero tolerance to conduct of plagiary
and won’t accept any writing materials that are copied or have
main ideas stolen from other authors.
Special Topics of Today
Can We Have Our Humanity Back? P.40
Articles
A Light Touch on the Course of Cultures and Their people
p. 6
Some Ancient Asian Poems and Their Appreciation p.21
Why did Chinese People Accept Buddhism as Their Religion?
p.35
On Non-action p.45
Reflection on High Diploma Education p.66
The age of high-diploma education p.67
Re-evaluation of PhD Education in current society p.74
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How to become a cultured person p.89
How to become a more cultured person? p.90
Multi- perspective to look at things p.101
The Pros and Cons of Automatic Device p.109
Chinese language and its basic comparison with some
otherlanguages p.66
Commentaries
If a person can’t keep his promise, how can he imagine
to establish himself in the society? - comment on the
Confucius’s words. p.50
The true benevolent people have no rivals – Comment on
Mencius’s words. p.59
People
Zhu Xi
The Emperor Wudi of Southern Dynasty– Xiao Yan
Literature and Art Works
Grape – Freehand Brush Painting by Xu Wei p.132
Portrait of Confucius by Wu Daozhi p;134
* Want to read all contents? Please subscribe to
thejournal by emailing to us.
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Editor’s Words,
Asian culture has played a very important role in the human history,
and had made great contribution to the evolution of the human
civilization. However, there are many people who still have much
misunderstanding about Asian culture, or simply don’t take it as
important as it should be, since the power of advanced technology has
convinced many people of the leading position of the science-based
western culture. The Asian culture had its glorious periods thousands
years and centuries ago, but had been in its downturn for quite a while
now. Isn’t it the time to re-study it, and let its beauty shine again to the
world?
We would like all Asians and Asian culture fans or serious
Asian watchers to give their generous inputs, including
original articles, comments and other types of art or writing
materials suitable for a journal.
Please write to us at: AsiRestud@outlook.com
and AsiRestuAssist@outlook.com
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A light touch on the course of the cultures and their people.
Oct 19
When human just appeared on earth, they had already begun to
engage themselves into building a dreaming world for self and their
off-springs. Slowly, that world which diversified before their eyes into
a kaleidoscope of various knowledge bodies: religions, philosophy,
language, art, literature and social custom, etc, became the
indispensable part of their life, and even started to represent the
people inside. When the mass were still the masters of this world, we
say people with its culture that functions as background of the former.
Because at this point, people are mightier and more important than
their own creations. And then it came to a time that this created world
dominated its people and made the latter become its obedient
servants, or had casted great and inerasable influence on the latter,
we say the Culture and its People.
In history, human had created many wonderful civilizations where
magnificent cultures have been cultivated within. Among the oldest,
such as the ones belong to ancient Egyptians, Greek
people ,Babylonians, Chinese, and Indians that all started their own
civilization more than four thousands years ago. In south America,
there is Maya civilization also. After these oldest cultures had come
to their life length or seasonal withering period, the Central and East
European cultures began to bloom, then it was the rise of North
America which carried the torch of western civilization and had
pushed the modern civilization to its peak, by utilizing the global
human resources and natural resources.
Ancient Egyptians built their civilization by the Nile river, and
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developed a hieroglyphic language before 2600 BC, according to the
linguists. It was a body of pictographic and/or logographic scripts that
were constitute of phonetic and semantic symbols to compose the
words. There is still some debate here. Some people think that all
hieroglyphic symbols of Egyptian language are nothing but phonetic
symbols, while some feel that its scripts contain both semantic and
phonetic symbols, which is like Chinese language in that aspect. The
ancient Egyptian language had great affiliation with Arabic language
too, the latter of which only include Arabic alphabetic letters. Since
the fully developed Arabic language was formed at much later period,
we could establish a reasonable tie here that ancient Egyptians
language had helped the Arabic language coming to its current form.
It has been the case that the more sophisticated culture or system
would infuse into the less sophisticated ones, while the latter always
have tendency to absorb from the former, and made the latter
indebted to former, and would cause further aggression of the more
advanced ones who would eventually start to weaken themselves for
over exploitation over their inferior partner. So it is always a dilemma,
considering when to stop that process of aggressing and/or
absorbing, in order to advance oneself, while also keep their own
identity. It had to be clarified here, that this action of absorbing and
infusion is not aimed at any powerful or intelligent individual person,
but just a term to describe the mechanism how the exchange of
cultures functions between two different systems.
In fact, according to the research of some linguists, the phonetic
symbols of that hieroglyphic system of ancient Egyptian language
were originally from the semantic symbols(a sign of picture to
indicate a thing or an idea) also. But gradually it lost its original
meaning and became a pure sound symbol. The pictorial symbol is
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an image copied from the nature to represent that particular object, or
is an extracted or simplified form of image of things with one or
several of them structured together to express an abstract idea.
Chinese written language that came into being, so far discovered, as
“Jiagu Wen”, a script encarved on the tortoise shell, at latest in early
part of 18 century BC, when the Shang dynasty had its reign in
ancient mainland China, also known to be featured with composition
of pictographic symbols, however, is made of individual square
characters. Most of those characters are composed by a sound
part(the phonetic symbol that decides the pronunciation of the
character) and meaning part(the semantic symbol that decides the
meaning of the character), and have each of their own respective
pronunciation, while the word is to be made of one or several
characters juxtaposed together, however, with space interposed
between each character in writing. Chinese character is mostly made
of one single phonetic syllable, contrast to Egyptian Arabic word that
is usually multi-phonetic, with different vowel sounds weaved into the
multiple consonant sounds to compose one full-meaning word, and
there is no space between the phonetic syllables in one single word.
So Chinese language is a more semantic language with meanings of
expression focused on the words, instead of through the
sophisticated syntax of sentences, since it created brand new words
of different meanings through various ways of combining different
characters, and for each sentence, there is no additional space
between the words, except the small gap between the characters, to
clearly show the separate parts of subject, predicate, or the object,
etc al in order to tell the proper order of the sentence, so one has to
know the meaning the words very well before they could understand
the sentence. While Arabic language create words through
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combining different consonant and vowel sounds. It is true that
English language uses the prefix and suffix to enlarge its vocabulary
too, but all the created words on the same root belong to the same
semantic group – words with similar meaning. In addition, most of the
sound symbols in Chinese characters are employed as separate
meaningful characters to compose other words. Moreover, there are
quite some Chinese characters that share the same sounds however
with different phonetic symbols and different meanings, that is to say,
several different phonetic symbols could share the same
pronunciation. In that case, one has to interpret the meaning of the
spoken words through context.
Japanese language had great influence from Chinese language that
they borrowed a lot of characters from the latter and made it featured
with pictographic language also, except that Japanese created a
body of phonetic symbols of itself. The Kanji in Japanese language is
just constitute of Chinese characters. However, beginning at the early
of last millennium it started to create Katakana and Hiragana which
are phonetic symbols to expand their vocabulary and express foreign
imported words from English or other alphabetical languages. The
similar course went with the Korean and Vietnamese language. The
ancient Korean language was written almost in pure classic Chinese
characters, considering that part of their current place probably had
been the territory of ancient China, but they had their own spoken
language, with somewhat similar pronunciation to Manchurian of
China. And around the middle of 16 th century, their king reformed the
language and put away most of the Hanji (the classic Chinese
characters) into the classic literature of their library, and created their
own phonetic symbols, the Hangul, as base of official language for
the country. The ancient Vietnamese had used a variant style of
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classic Chinese characters, however, due to the fact that they had
been the colony of France in modern history, they have now changed
their writing to a system of phonetic symbol by borrowing the French
alphabets. Nevertheless, we can still hear the trace of originality by
their pronunciation in all these languages by assuming some of those
words are from Chinese languages.
Chinese built an agricultural civilization in a water-rich inland territory,
so the farms were the main economic force of the nation. Chinese
peasants had started to watch on nature of the monthly shift of stars
positions, the daily movement of the sun and moon, and repeatedly
life cycle change of the plants each year surrounding them long
before they built a sophisticated and well documented language in
order to obtain enough foods through hunting, planting and
harvesting crops. So they developed a system of symbols from their
observation, in order to satisfy their need for communication and
other religious and cultural practices, which contributed to form a
pictographic language. The similar scenario should apply to Egypt on
Nile, and the countries belong to the Mesopotamia civilization which
was built on the rich soil fertilized by the river of Tigris and Euphrates
east to Mediterranean ocean. So it is just reasonable to say that their
ancient language words should also contain semantic symbols.
Ancient Egypt was located in a very interesting geographical position.
It was just across a body of water south to ancient Greece and Rome,
while closely connected to the middle east world by its east side, and
it is the case even now. Its language belongs to Afroasian language
family, having great cultural and economic affiliation with Arabic
nations, at the same time, no doubt could have influenced the culture
of ancient Greek people, and vice versa. During the fourth century
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BC, the Macedonian emperor Alexandra the Great(also the ruler of
ancient Greece) invaded Egypt and built a great library with the
largest collection of literature among all Greek cities, at the mouth of
Nile river. The linguists have all agreed that both ancient Greek and
Roman language belong to the Indo-European language family, since
they share the same root with the ancient Indian language and are all
alphabetic languages. However, by checking on the cultural
characteristics, as well as some of the ancient writing scripts from
archeological evidence, ancient Indian writings look somewhat like
Arabic language, composed of phonetic elements developed from
logographic symbols. Except that some literature supposed to be
from the age between 400-200 BC, a period that was during or after
Alexandra the Great had marched into India on his military operation
to Asia, that there appeared some words symbols looking like that of
ancient Greek language. It was very likely ancient Greek culture had
strong influence on ancient India too through marriage and trading,
vice versa. That’s why they would find some words of each language
with similar roots. While ancient Greek and Roman writing symbols
seemed very likely originated from some geometric forms. Ancient
Greece has always been highly regarded for his achievement in
philosophy, mathematics, geometry, theatre, sculpture, and
astronomy, which obviously has something to do with their life style
and type of economy. Those geometric shapes are invariably are
symbols or logos abstracted from real objects of their life or
environment.
It seems still remaining not very clear how the phonetic symbols
originally connected with the exact meaning of each words for Greek
and Roman language. Could it be possible that some of those
alphabetic symbols derived from the geometric shapes which
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functioned as logos to represent some ideas, which would make it as
somewhat like the hieroglyphic language? Most of the linguistic
literature seems having tried to stay away from this topic. When an
infant utters a sound, it expresses its emotions, or desire for
something, or protest against some action, may accompanied with
facial expressions and body moves, such as pointing or looking at
something. Nevertheless, we could barely hear enough vivid or
distinct sounds from a baby to express complex meanings before
they started to learn the already established language. It could be
reasonably concluded that it is not likely for a pure sound system to
be developed as an original and sophisticated language that could
fully satisfy the communication for what human need in their more
and more complex civilized life style. Instead, the phonetic symbol
system should be developed on a pictographic or logographic symbol
system, and the latter two are the ones contains the meanings to
facilitate the communication and in return propel the neurotic
development of human brain and coordination of the tongue muscle
for creating a system of complex sounds, and to finally make the
proper connection between the sounds and the symbols, because
normally it should be people who use the pictorial symbols to indicate
things to their partners while they struggled to voice out to help the
expression. Just like a person who has suddenly got lost in a
primitive people’s world, would draw pictures or mimic the voice of
animals or make some gestures in order to cross his ideas through to
the other side. The same thing was to the ancient people before they
develop a sophisticate language. They could find the images of
things everywhere in the living environment and drew the pictures,
but they couldn’t imitate all the sounds of birds or the animals’
language, if they had learned a few of them, to express their own
ideas, because of the difficulty to interpret them all, also because of
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the different vocal feature making the imitation impossible, nor were
there sufficient sounds there for them to imitate. It could be a long
period of history for that brain process of human in its creating new
connections between images and ideas, and images with sounds,
where the images or logos are the bridge between the sounds and
ideas. As more pictorial symbols of things were developed and drawn
on cave walls, woods, stones, or bones, the spoken language
function of their brains would also get enhanced to connect with the
image of the things. Then more and more subtle and meaningful
sounds would be developed out of struggling for need, the accidental
effect of more adroit tongue muscles or various ways of mimicking
the nature sounds or the sounds from primitive musical instruments.
That explains why most of the languages originally formed from
pictorial symbols, such as ancient Egyptian and Chinese languages,
appeared relatively earlier than those from phonetic system such as
Greek and Latin language. As those connection between the vocal
sound and drawn symbols became stable enough, people had
gradually built up their vocabulary, and also further enhanced their
mental logic process ability, then they began to create the grammars
and write down things, and meanwhile were in the progress for more
complicated expression of ideas and better communication skills. It
was at this stage that a complete language was in his way to be
developed. Once language was created, the civilization of this
population would immediately start off on its journey to a much higher
level.
Ancient Greece and Rome located on the peninsula by the
Mediterranean ocean and had unfortunately possessed very bad soil
for agriculture, and depended their main food such as wheat, pork,
etc on import from nearby nations, of course including Egypt. We
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don’t have any evidence against such a scenario yet, that some of
alphabetic letters of ancient Greek language had been the derivants
from ancient Egyptian language script symbols. Probably most of the
ancient Egypt script symbols originally had its meanings or function
of syntax, even they were later found to be only alphabetic letters as
sound symbols . As craft man for ships , also sailors and navigators
on ocean, ancient Greek and Roman people definitely had applied
some tricks such as colonization through war to control those
commercial ports of Egypt or occupy them to make sure for sufficient
supply of the food and obtain benefit of economy. It was just natural
for the language and culture exchange to happen between them with
lot less barriers, which is not like the current situation. Consequently,
the Egyptian language probably had gone on a direction toward
phonetic symbol-based system under the influence of Ocean people,
and made the writing of some of the original pictorial symbols have
more alphabetical look. We bet sailors, sportive people and
merchants of Ancient Greece and Rome would feel it was much
easier and more convenient to write the simple alphabets for
communication on ocean than inland people who more likely focus
on observation, memorization and contemplation in order to
understand the weather and environment with a more introspective
character, since the inland environment is much quieter for them to
draw the logos and pictures, however, could be more complicated
than that of the sea where the powerful voice, physical strength,
useful devices, craftsmanship is more important for immediate need
of their overseas expedition.
Japan is located in the islands near China, with unavoidable
influence from China, while were habitually engaged in their sea
activities for fishing. So they have gotten very strong influence from
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western countries too at the age of sea transportation, and developed
their own phonetic symbols of language system. The same thing are
with Korean and Vietnamese situation, who are neighbors of China,
while reside in the peninsula of the pacific ocean, which put them in a
unique position to go through the similar historical course in their
language and culture.
Ancient Rome, admired the grand cultural achievements of ancient
Greece, had made themselves ambitious students of the later, of
course, to made them adapted to their own needs, their own custom
and cultural atmosphere. Undoubted, the duo had shared quite some
similarities in their official languages, the Latin and ancient Greek
language. Then, due to the migration, wars, religion missionary
activities, among the ancient European countries, the Latin language
brought great influence on other European languages, especially
French language, and also English, German, Austrian, Belgian
languages, etc al. They are all alphabetical languages, which enrich
with vocabularies, and well furnished with grammars, and are great
analytical languages for logic process. An analytical language led to
a analytical culture which penetrated into every parts of their life. The
analytical philosophy, an anatomy- based western medicine, a very
finely divided system of knowledge body and religions, precise
division of jobs, defined structure of organizations and enterprises,
the departments of supermarkets, as well as the education systems
and school programs, all adopted an analytical approach of thinking.
These tributes greatly contributed to the advancement of technology,
effectiveness of management, and high efficiency of work. Of course,
that also came with its down side that eventually would augment and
became problematic to the society, which is neglecting the overall
consideration of the communal interest, the social values, the long
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term goal, and miss the holoscopical view and effective contingence
of plans. Once the things fall apart, they would have difficulty to put
them back together; or even one step of whole processes fails, the
entire thing would fail.
For those Asian cultures which are featured with pictographic
languages, they would face the opposite problems. The tendency of
slowing down things in order to satisfy the overall need, and to
sacrifice the individual for the communal interest, or neglect the
characteristic of separate unit, in order to make them fit into a big
picture and thus ignored the importance of the individuality, and the
power of each unique ones to compose the entire group, thus also kill
the original creativity. Group of people could create novel things also,
however, have to be orchestrated through many times of group
practice in order to play a concert of symphony, during which process,
the individual input would have been reduced to the minimum. The
solo performance could be quite different, which would allow the
soloist to improvise to some degree and come out with the true
original creative performance and thus make a new show each time
they are on the stage. So it is always better to allow both solo
performance and orchestral concert put on their shows in order to
bring up all good creative work of people.
Since the 18 th , century, the western society had gone through
numerous revolutions, and made some amazing progresses in
science, technology, human right, philosophy, etc al. While the Asian
countries, however, after centuries’ glorious history, is on their road to
fall into its course valley, due to its centuries of accumulated ailments
by over inclination to agricultural economic style, and contempt upon
the commerce and technology. The downturn started to show up
most notably after the Opium War of year 1849 between China and
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the Great Britain. It indicated that the interplay of eastern and
western culture was changing the hands of dice roller. While Japan
that benefited from the first influence of ocean culture, seemed an
exceptional case, due to its successful political and economic
reforms.
Chinese language doesn’t have as many words with variant spelling
sounds as that of alphabetic language, however, it has multiple tones.
For the Mandarin, there are normally four tones, which are flat tone,
rising tone, falling and rising tone, and falling tone, and for Cantonese,
it has at least six tones. This makes it as a tonal language, also
makes one of the major difference of Chinese language from other
ones, and one of the most difficult parts to master Chinese for foreign
language learners. Chinese is a more of poetic language for
expression of subtle inner feelings toward nature in this aspect, due
to the nostalgic attachment of ancient Chinese scholars to the idyllic
scenic of countryside prevailed in an agricultural economy, while it is
also a philosophical language since its pictographic characters have
been the most effective and frequent stimuli to connect them with
nature, as well as one of the important sources of the inspiration for
wisdom and enlightenment of life. This language with its culture had
led to the blossom of a wonderful civilization for a feudal empire in
China.
If before the end of reign by Alexandra the Great in Greece, or the
end of Zhou Dynasty in China( shortly before Emperor Qin united
China), - the time of these two events was very close to each other,
ancient China and Greece had gone through very similar academic
and economic course, that both valued a scholarly and philosophical
culture for upper class people, with very diversified schools of
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learnings, however, with no deficiency of the moral preaching, based
on a slavery system of economy in their way of employing general
and farming labors, except that Greek people emphasized on a
democratic political approach and equality of citizenship, while China
valued the propriety and a hierarchical social system, but after China
established its first feudal Empire in Qin dynasty, China began to
march on a more steady journey of building a splendid culture in east
Asia, nonetheless, not without turns and twists, pains and blood.
Ancient Chinese culture had been the central culture of ancient
eastern Asian countries. It is true that it has influence from ancient
India, with the most notable one, the religion Buddhism, and spread it
to Asian other countries. And it had been the subject of ancient
Mongolian people, however, they influenced the latter. That influence
had reached to south eastern Asian countries, besides to the close
neighboring nations. Its role was very much like that of Greek culture
to European countries. Even though, during centuries of territory
expansion and global colonization of western European countries
before the early of last century, some of the Asian countries, or
territories had been colonized by western countries and consequently
their people had been carried away by western cultures, those
countries still kept some legacy of their traditional culture. That had
something to do with their shared ancestry of culture weaved in
languages, customs, religions, etc al. And that legacy is the spirit of
Asian culture. That’s why, the very first ancient Chinese people
started from a much smaller piece of soil by the Yellow River and
slowly expanded to rest of the vast territory, going through numerous
dynasties, with victories of conquer upon the neighboring tribes and
not without defeats by the physically stronger and less civilized tribes
who had more powerful military, however, the culture never died
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down. It takes the defeats in different ways, by assimilating the
conquerors culturally, or overthrowing the tyrant type who never
understood the meaning and power of Asian benevolence and
propriety. That might explains why China, with more than 50 ethnical
groups, however, seldom broke apart in its territory, at least not for
long time.
While the case is quite different in Europe, the ancient Greece, as a
country on peninsula, empowered ancient Rome, together brought
great influence not only to western European countries, but also to
nearby countries in Africa, eastern Europe, and west Asia. However,
west European countries had never been united for long, after the
collapse of West Rome empire, instead were in constant fighting with
one another, even though they had many royal marriages going on
between, as well shared kings and queens among different countries.
They preferred to stay as separate nations, with known common
ancestors of Gaul people, Germanic people, Roman people, Frank
people or Saxon people etc. Is it because this newly landed territory
or the native residents have some spellbound that tricked the new
comers to happily stay and forget their own ancestors, or just how
they are? Probably that is just how the ocean people are. Look,
Europe is bathed in oceans, they have Atlantic ocean by the west
and several seas on the north west and north side, they have
Mediterranean sea at the south, and the Black Sea pretty much
inside east Europe, the Caspian Sea on the east side across with
west Asian countries. Those people always aspire for heroic
adventure, and value individual strength and capability more than
collective power.
Different cultures lead to different historical courses of the civilization.
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Asian culture valued harmony through a process of unification based
on benevolence and propriety and prospered in an imperial feudal
economy, western culture valued independence with both economic
and personal freedom based on aspiration for democracy and
equality and advanced in an imperial capital economy. Now the logos
of democracy had prevailed the globe, together with westerners’
relentless exploration worldwide, while benevolence and propriety
have been in its low time. Then what? Human society is facing
unprecedented new challenges! But In whose hand is the rolling dice
now? Where would they lead us? And where are we now? Have we
achieved the true independence? Or human has become weaker as
an individual by losing their inner power due to overly reliance upon
the exterior power such as technologies and artificial intelligence,
which would tell something about the success of modern civilization
that should contribute mostly to, and with its social, political and
economic system designed largely upon the values of western
culture, while the Asian moral values such as the above - mentioned
which had once prospered the Asian civilization and glorified their
people worldwide are being neglected by all human societies. We
couldn’t make a arbitrary decision on which one is better than the
other, at least we have already seen that each has its merits, but
wouldn’t it be possible that some values are more important than
others in certain period of time in human history in order to make a
better society?
As Asians and Asian culture fans or Asian watchers , we welcome all
inputs, comments and opinions. Please write to us!
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Some Ancient Poems And Their Appreciation
Chinese poems have occupied a very important position in
Chinese literature, especially the poems from Tang dynasty
that had made Chinese people feel so proud of their language
and literature. Some of the most splendid ones had glowed
through all the later dynasties and still manifest that
magnificent beauty which attracted and inspired many poem
lovers.
As part of literature, the poems definitely can’t avoid the
influence of other cultural elements. The Tang poems were
built on the foundation of precedent poems. China has a long
history of creating poems, the first most known poem
collection in China is the Book of Poems, also called Book
of Songs, which was listed as one of the books for
Confucianism teaching. Many of those poems weren’t written
by some particular poet, but were created by ordinary people
who would sing them in their daily life or in performance.
Just like the Epic Poem created by Homer in ancient Greek
between 700 – 800 before the birth of Christ, who was said
to be a blind man and didn’t write down the poem himself,
but he was singing that epic story among people for a living.
During the period of Qin and Han dynasty, the poem was
further developed, though the prose and essays were the
major plays during those periods. However, from Han,
through Wei Jin, to South and North states period, there
had appeared quite some well-known poets, who made great
contribution to the poem rhythm scheme and tonal pattern
development. When it came to Tang, a sophisticated system
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of poem writing rules was established and made this period
come out with a great number of shiny stars in the poetry
field. It seemed that those brilliant poets had created a
new constellation of stars under the cultural sky, and made
this dynasty shined with different light and unique beauty.
When poem first appeared, in both eastern culture and
western culture, it functioned like songs that people can
sing and chant with repeated verses, due to its rhymed and
tonal feature and simple phrase pattern, a suitable style
for singing. After China was united in Qin dynasty, the
prose and essays which are good for illustrating reasons
and explaining things become the emphasized writing style
and shied the other literature styles, which trend
continued until end of Han dynasty, before the poem
gradually started to become popular.
Why would poem blossom at its most lustful and charming in
Tang dynasty, and suddenly give out the most splendid light
to the world? Qin dynasty, as the first Chinese empire of
the feudal society, was built on the teaching of Legalist
School which stressed the importance of laws and
represented the new rising landlord classes, however, the
very rigid law in favor of the ruling classes and cruel
regime led to its ruin in a short period of 15 years. When
it came to Han dynasty, they changed the national teaching
to School of Confucianism after they had strengthened the
new regime. At the end of West Han dynasty, the Buddhism
started to spread to China from India, and it was slowly
accepted by more and more people. When it gets to Jin as
well as Southern and Northern states period, the
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Buddhism became so popular, that some noble family’s
members would take it as a fashion to become a Buddhism
disciple and live in the temple for a period of time. And
there were Buddhism temples everywhere. As it was put in
one of the poems of a famous poet Du Mu from Tang dynasty:
“Among the 480 Buddhism temples from South states period,
how many of them are standing in the rains of the Spring
at this moment, trying to recall their past glories.”
Daoism has always been there influencing the right groups
of people. It has its ups and downs, but its alchemy practice
had attracted many emperors in each dynasty to look for
immortal life. It was basically a sham. The alchemy doesn’t
represent the essential ideas of Daoism, but the Daoists
did have advocated to look for longevity through proper
self-cultivation and daily-life exercises, which provided
the chance for some opportunists to cheat the rich and
clueless people for making money or gaining personal favors.
So in the Tang dynasty, all three beliefs which had played
major role in people’s life and in the Asian culture have
all risen to meet the need of people. And in a culture
enriched with spiritual beliefs, the circle of various arts
and literature would usually become very active and produce
extraordinary works. Because spiritual life stimulate
people’s imaginations and set free their spirits which
enable them to receive the inspiration or enlightenment of
the nature. In Tang dynasty, besides the poems, the prose,
the paintings, the dance, the Tang ceramics, and textiles
had all made great achievement in their own fields. However,
due to this unprecedented prosperity in a society that had
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been enhanced by the exuberant colors of other novel
cultures and beliefs , the poems as a unique literature
style to express the feelings and thoughts and ideas in a
very flexible and effective way, and easy to promote to the
public through singing, chanting, and performance, it had
no other choice but to shine in this unique stage of China
or even some east Asian countries. During this period, the
Silk Road paved its long path to the west, which had brought
tremendous influence from west Asian and even European
cultures to then Chinese people, vice versa. Also during
this period, tang monks made their first official trip to
India to learn the Buddhism scripts, as well as visited
Japan several times, by helping to spread the Chinese
culture and Buddhism to Japan. Trading with other
neighboring countries were just very ordinary things. China
reached the point of peak at its historical course of
development during Tang dynasty, either culturally,
economically, politically, or diplomatically. That’s why
Tang culture and Tang people had gone overseas and remained
its glory of name since then. Wonderful time brought up
wonderful artists. No wonder There had appeared so many
brilliant poets in Tang dynasty, who might have represented
different poetic styles. The following are just a few
examples of them from the ocean of Tang poems for people
to get a rough idea about Chinese ancient poems.
渡 荆 门 送 别
作 者 : 李 白
24

渡 远 荆 门 外 , 来 从 楚 国 游 。
山 随 平 野 尽 , 江 入 大 荒 流 。
月 下 飞 天 镜 , 云 生 结 海 楼 。
仍 怜 故 乡 水 , 万 里 送 行 舟 。
See off at Jingmen
By Li Bai
Travel all the way from home town crossing the Gate of Chu,
Jinmen, I came to visit the place which belonged to the old
state of Chu.
The continuous mountains finally ended as we entered the
area of plains, where we see the river flowing far into the
wild plains.
In the evening, the reflection of the moon in water looked
like a mirror that just flied into the river. And the cloud
suddenly came out and turned into the shape of a mansion
floating above the ocean-like water.
At this moment, I suddenly felt that great indebtedness to
the water from my home town, which didn’t mind going
thousands of miles to see me off.
--------------------------------------------------
Li Bai(701-762 AD) is a very famous poet in Tang dynasty,
represented the romanticism poetic style, and is known as
a poetic immortal as his character manifested the life style
25

and life view of a daoist, whose ambitious final goal is
to relieve the human body and spirit from all the suffering
and burden of mundane life and become immortal. His poems
were marvelous with very spontaneous flow of humane emotion,
and effortless wording style, simple way of expression of
ideas in depth, enhanced by his magnificent imagination.
This poem was written at the beginning of his journey of
career exploration when he had just sailed out of Sichuan
– his home province. Although it was the feeling of
nostalgia for his hometown directly revealed from this poem,
the high spirit of a brave young man who just started his
own life journey independently could hardly be concealed.
Li Bai liked to use exaggerated numbers in his poems. This
is one of his poetry’s biggest characteristics. For example:
"(The waterfall)flying down 3000 feet precipitately from
one top of the mountain, it seemed as if the Milky way had
fallen from the highest level of heaven", "The river flows
along with fallen peach flower on it, how lovely, which
could be 1000 feet deep, but it may not be as deep as the
friendship of Mr. Wang Lun showed to us when he was seeing
me off at the river.", "The mountain of Tiantai, literally
meaning the platform of heaven, is as high as 144000 metres,
and it seemed to fall toward the Southeast side under the
sky", "After passing by thousands of rocks and through ten
thousands of turns, the road was suddenly lost among the
piles of flowers and layers of leaning rocks as it became
dark ", "Nobody knows when they founded those nations such
as Cancong and Yufu, but it should be at least 48000 years,
and they had never had any communication with the people
fom Empire Qin before”,and so on. These figures are
26

obviously complete sky talks, very exaggerated. The trick
is that when Li Bai used them in his poems, people didn’t
feel that way at all. Because the grandness of image from
poem and the sublimity of spirit of the poem surpassed this
seemingly astronomical figure and gave a very strong
emotional strike on the reader and produced enormous
emotional echo in them, by making them feeling excited and
thrilled , with no hard feeling on the numbers, who but can’t
help clapping their hands and applaud for its magnificence.
* Cancong and Yufu:the name of the ancient nations of
Sichuan in local legendary stories.
望 天 门 山
作 者 : 李 白
天 门 中 断 楚 江 开 , 碧 水 东 流 至 此 回 。
两 岸 青 山 相 对 出 , 孤 帆 一 片 日 边 来 。
Watching the Gate of the Heaven Mountain
by Li Bai
The gate of heaven was cut off, where this mountain of the
old state Chu opened a path for its river to go through,
and the clear water, tinted with the color of blue sky,
rushed forward toward east, while making violent turns and
swirls around the gate of heaven.
The green hills came out by pairs from on both sides of
27

the river bank to welcome our boat, their only lonly guest
on river, as it was sailing between the hills along with
the flow of the water, leaving the sun at sunset far behind.
-------------------------------------------------------
This poem was completed at about the same time as the
previous one. Li Bai's poetry is famous for the grandeur
and great momentum conveyed in the lines, but this poem is
probably one of the most successful ones that described the
great motion of the objects and grandness of scenery.
Although there are only four short lines, which is not a
big accomplishment of words compared with many other long
verses written by him, it described the powerful force of
the river rushing eastward, the rapidity of the water flow
and magnificence of its whirling around the mountains, in
a bold freehand brush style, a technique normally used in
Chinese painting. That once again demonstrated the feature
that there is picture in poem for ancient Chinese poem style,
and the fabulous picture wouldn’t mind showing rich colors:
lake-blue water, green mountains, red sun and white sail.
There is the combat between the river-blue water rushing
down the river and the hindrance of Tianmen Gate Mountain
which goes straight up to the sky on the way of the river.
It immediately reminded people of the famous lines written
by precedent poet: Pity for the mountains that it tried in
vain to stop the water; after all, the river will
nonetheless run forward into the ocean. Which means that
things will always go with their destiny, no matter how
those insensible people try to stop it from happening. In
28

addition, the grand green mountains on both sides of the
river is contrast to the tiny lone boat. Is it the green
mountains that have come out from two sides of river to greet
this lonely guest – the boat, or is it the boat that was
crossing between the mountains from two river banks? The
speedy runs of the images in the poem along with the
continuing moving visions of the viewer will leave you no
time to think about it too much. Then there is this pale
sail which corresponds to the splendid red sun, which brings
up a picture of the farewell between the lonely boat and
the setting sun – suggesting the farewell between the poet
and his hometown.
The beautiful scenery and grand motion momentum coming out
of the poem delivered a perfect character of a scholar man
– the poet himself, with lofty aspiration for the future
of his life. At this moment, he might not have anticipated
that some years later, he would write poems with lines such
as "How hard is it to travel through the Road to Sichuan?
it's just as hard as to climb to the sky" and "When you were
going to cross the Yellow River(The claimed mother river
in China), you would see the water all became frozen ice;
and when you were planning to climb the Taihang mountains
(a famous mountain in Northern China), you would find it
had been all covered with snow". It indicates everything
went against his odds to career success, but Li Bai is nobody
else. Even having encountered the adversary fate again and
again, he would still find his carefree life and his way
of showing positive attitude as a mature man. Just look at
those lines: “Let's leave a white deer in a valley between
29

the green cliffs, and ride on it to visit the famous
mountains as soon as we are ready to do it”; or “The noble
royal horses, the most expensive apparels, so what? Get out
the servant boy and have him exchange those things to money
for wine, so that I can toast with you to the happiness and
forget about all the worrisome and the troublesome for
thousands years to come and be gone”; or “I bet all the
saints must have been very lonely since antique time
(because how many people could truly understand them?),
only the real wine drinkers(indicate the people who have
seen through the world and want to stay away from the vanity
mundane society) would leave their names for ever ”.
月 夜
作 者 : 杜 甫
今 夜 鄜 州 月 , 闺 中 只 独 看 。
遥 怜 小 儿 女 , 未 解 忆 长 安 。
香 雾 云 鬟 湿 , 清 辉 玉 臂 寒 。
何 时 倚 虚 幌 , 双 照 泪 痕 干 。
The Moon Night
by Du Fu
I am sorry that you are going to watch the moon alone at
home of Fuzhou again.
It is a pity thing that our daughter is still so young, and
obviously can’t remember Changan(the capital of Tang
30

dynasty, where Du Fu was working at that time)
I imagine that the mist in the morning is going to make your
hair wet again, but watch out, don’t let the jade-like skin
of your arms get cold in the evening moon light.
I just wonder when we can lean lazily on the hanging voile
curtain over the bed, being company to each other, so that
we don’t have to shed tears again for being devastately
lonely.
------------------------------------------------------
As a poet, Du Fu(712-770 AD) experienced the war disaster
brought up by An Shi rebellion in Tang Dynasty, and this
period of history had left a great mark in his poetry. That’s
why his poem was also called as the Poem of History. He was
about 10 years younger than Li Ba, also being a good friend
of the latter, and represented the realism poetic style.
His poetic talent is not necessarily less than that of Li,
but he just lacked a little carefreeness and added a few
more worries in his poems. Li Bai's poems reflected the
grandeur and prosperity during the peak period of Tang
Dynasty and its inevitable destiny of going to its lower
point of this dynasty . Du Fu's works showed the difficulty
of transition from the peak of dynasty to its middle age
of this period of history. The constant emotional shift
between hope and disappointment, as well as disappointment
and hope made him living at a status of painful struggle
with life while feeling utterly helpless. His poems show
the subtle side of a poet, but without lack of good momentum.
31

Some of those lines describing the natural scenery in this
poem, such as "The stars hang over the wide plain, and the
reflection of moon broke again and again in the rushing tide
water of the river" is not a bit less of charm than that
of Li Bai's " The continuous mountains finally ended as we
entered the area of plains, where we see the river flowing
far into the wild plains".
In this poem, started from expressing the homesickness,
which immediately related it to the children and lovers of
far away, Du Fu wasn’t afraid to show his weak side of a
human being, which seemed to have gotten a little
sentimental in his nostalgic self-expression. It was
because of the sharpened sense of loneliness after sadness
from the broken heart, and the renewed hope after the
disappointment from failures or stumbles. Li Bai's
expression of homesickness is the psychological comfort of
heroic people after their tiresome journey, which not only
helped to let out his emotional helplessness, but also
provided him the spiritual support to cheer up again. The
different life experiences and personalities decided their
different poetic styles.
巴 山 夜 雨
作 者 : 李 商 隐
君 问 归 期 未 有 期 ,
巴 山 夜 雨 涨 秋 池 。
32

何 当 共 剪 西 窗 烛 ,
却 话 巴 山 夜 雨 时 。
The night rain in Bashan
By Li Shangyin
And you were asking about the time I would return home, but
I have no idea when that could be.
Don’t you believe that the autumn rain of last night had
made the pond water suddenly rising up.
No matter what, I should let you know, I have been dreaming
for that date when we could cut the candle heart together,
two of us, at the west window of our home.
Where I will tell you all that had happened during that rainy
night, about me and the pond, in Bashan.
-------------------------------------------------------
Li Shangyin ( 813- 858 AD) is poet from late Tang dynasty. If
Chinese people think Du Fu is the sage of poetry and Li Bai
is the immortal of poetry, then Li Shangyin deserves to be
called the prince of love poetry.
Bashan mentioned in the poem generally refers to the
mountains in Sichuan. There was no electric lamp in ancient
times, ancient Chinese used oil lamp or candle for the
lighting in the evening, in order to keep the candle glow
with the same light, they needed to cut the wick of the
33

candle from time to time. Li applied this very small
occasion of daily life and the very ordinary autumn night
rain in his poem, not only showed he is a considerate guy
and careful observer, but easily took the reader into a poem
picture to share his life and his emotion without need of
fancy words to describe his feeling, however, better than
words to deliver that space and time-transcending sense of
love and nostalgia.
We don’t need mention the other well-known lines of his
poetry. From this poem, we can just easily tell that he had
very successfully described the lovesickness through this
silent sadness, accompanied by light sorrow, torn by a
desperate feeling facing the helpless situation against
deep wanting of love. At the same time, we almost feel that
emotion seems to have concretized and turned into a most
beautiful and gorgeous young lady, whom one feel so deeply
attracted to, that they can never leave her again. This
perhaps tells a bit about the charm of Li’s poem.
34

Why Chinese People Accepted Buddhism as
Their Religion?
Aug. 12 th
Many people, especially those of atheists, usually think that religion is
just a tool for the ruling class to fool the crowd and comfort their soul,
but it is not always the case. Belief is not only very important to
individuals as a way for consolation and spiritual support, but it can
also be said to be an important factor for human beings to finally part
ways with savages, for the society to break away from anarchism,
and to eternally stand up spiritually. Without faith, there would be no
collective wisdom and power, and there would be no advanced
civilization of the human society. Most popular beliefs in history of
mankind have their own truths to back them up, and they have a lot in
common in their doctrines. The difference is mainly reflected in the
ways of their practice Of course, this does not mean that all beliefs
would never change once they are formed. The doctrines of beliefs or
religions of all schools have undergone many changes in their course
of development. Most of their founders are messengers in the world
of their belief, and more and more people have started to second
guess that God would come to the world to save mankind with no
condition attached. Everything happens under conditions - this is the
most basic principle of the universe. Absolutely selfless love only
exists in art work or film and television shows. We can sleep on the
dream of unlimited love in the momentary space and limited cognitive
world, but we should not be drowned in it and unable to get ourselves
back into the reality. Heaven, God or Buda’s mission is to allow those
messengers to preach the doctrine or spread the gospel among their
people. The first disciples of those religions were likely to
misunderstand the principles or gospel delivered by the messengers
35

due to the specific historical condition and limited knowledge during
their time. Also it does not rule out the possibilities of deliberate
misinterpretation by some people with malign intention. so it is
absolutely necessary to do the reinterpretation of those messages
periodically for the late generations.
The Chinese is a nationality with a long history with main culture
centered on Confucianism and Taoism as their original beliefs.
However, they still accepted Buddhism from foreign source in the first
century AD. At the end of the Han Dynasty, China, once again, began
to experience the disasters of wars, such as the Three Kingdoms
fighting for the throne of the empire. When Han dynasty was replaced
by Wei, then Jin dynasty, it is almost the most chaotic and cruel era in
China's history with all the shockingly barbarian deeds and other
cruel and devastating events taking place in the war, to mark this
period of human history, among them are the Eight Kings Rebellion,
the Invasions of Five Foreign Tribes, and plagues. However, it was
during this period that Buddhism had obtained great recognition in
China, especially after entering the Northern and Southern Dynasties
after Jin dynasty, when built Buddhist temples appeared everywhere.
From the emperor to the poor, people were rushing to the temples.
As the famous poet Du Mu put it in his poem, "of the four hundred
and eighty Buddhism temples in the Southern Dynasty, how many of
them are in the mist of rain right now." which was still far off the true
prosperity situation of Buddhism. The masses were seeking
consolation in Buddhism, and the royal family were seeking ways to
survive the state in wars. Because when ordinary people are bullied
and ravaged by cruel and fearless warlords and officials, and the
epidemic is wiping out the population, which made them feeling
resentful and hopeless, Buddhism allows them to find the pure land
of their hope and peace of their souls, by giving them strong will
36

through practice, which enables people to act to their conscience in
the most turbulent environment and painful experience, do good
deeds and create social credits for themselves, while avoiding the
obsession of evil thoughts and temptation of demon’s ideas, thus it
would improve the social environment at the overall level.
This is not just preaching of some old cliches, it is the law of the
universe. The more social credits gained by doing actual good deeds
to others or the society a person has, the stronger his/her inner
power would be, which would lead to the higher possibility of survival.
The more a person commit sins or crimes, or the more damage they
have done to the society, the weaker their inner power would end up,
regardless of their other wealth or exterior possessions. Those
people will eventually get what they deserve(for those interested in
this aspect, please click: www.issuu.com/Culife). “Good is rewarded
by good, and evil is rewarded by evil” is not really superstition. Of
course, there are also rules for what is considered to be good deeds.
These doctrines are no doubt very important to the ruling class. They
are essential to ensure an orderly society and concerted action
among the ruling class, in order to avoid riots, rebellions, panic, crazy
behavior of their people, and to have them equipped with strong will
which will lead to the final realization of positive social values. Also
they want to make sure that their throne can be passed on to their
off-spring, so that they need to prove that the royal family is
benefiting this society and the people, and they must do good deeds
and demonstrate their social credits. The personal cultivation part of
Buddhism is easy to practice and can bring the benefit to the
practiser pretty quickly through meditation and stern belief of a pure
land of their desire. It can be said that Buddhism usually manifests its
importance in troubled times in history. And it is also fair to say that
37

the ruling class hasn’t intended to use Buddhism to fool the people,
but Buddhism has showed its effectiveness in putting the society into
order, comforting and inspiring the crowd during the turbulent periods,
and thus made it stand out. Therefore, Chinese Confucianism,
Buddhism, and Taoism have always come to the rescue of its society
one after another in different historical periods, while walking
shoulder to shoulder for thousand of years without deserting the one
or another..
38

Can we have our humanity back?
Oct 13 th
Does anyone know one of the most dirtiest scandals in human history
to plot against an innocent civilian. That is to put this person into the
satellite program of several rival countries, to tear his/her life apart,
which is to ruin everything of his/her life and make this person as the
swirl centre of the most turbulent water, by pushing all people around
or affiliated toward this center and dragging them into this dangerous
swirl and manipulating them to get into an involuntary fight with one
another, then drown them, until all of them gotten eliminated. This is a
game that is a lot more cruel than the gladiator fights in the ancient
Rome amphitheatre, and much more adrenaline-driven to some
pervert-type game addictions who want a real live game in human
society. They can get the politicians, militants from the low to the high
rank into this game. And the ones happened to that of high rank,
would make a real spectacular show to the world. It won’t do anything
good to the society, neither to anybody, accept that it would cause
disasters, confusion and desperate feelings to the human world,
because, eventually all people involved would get hurt. In this game,
they would exhaust the demon’s mind, and empty the Pandora’s box
by infusing what they have harvested into people’s brain, as well
dumping them into every corner of structure in this human civilization
architecture. And the end is to make the human society become the
hell on earth. This explains the phenomenon of modern politics,
especially of late several decades, which is exactly how it runs.
There is one of such victims who is still panting on her struggle with
this most stupid and devilish game, before she finally realized who is
39

the true demon behind all the outrageous deeds against her, all the
most unfortunate life experience she had gone through, and all the
most unbelievable disasters that had fallen upon her, in such a cruel
and unexpected manner to an innocent civilian woman who would
have gotten into their retirement age in some Asian countries. Now all
the jobs she had was gone one by one with each only lasting very
short time, due to the aggressive intervention of the satellite
programs, all her career opportunities were killed in its cradle, all her
relationship with family, lover, and friends and colleagues are ruined,
and all the income she earned was wasted on the go for escaping the
endless persecution placed against. Her health was jeopardized, as
she had incurred numerous injuries in her body due to brutal torturing
of some demon’s mind - converted heartless people. This is
something can only be done by devil’s hand. And those people who
had invented this game are just the very devils or vampires in human
society, trying to ruin all of us, as mentioned above, by applying
dirtiest schemes with the help of the satellite program, and who made
themselves part of the game and get lost in this game, eventually
make the whole program going toward direction of self-destruction by
bringing down all people with it.
We don’t see anything more urgent than this, to put the brake on the
human’s self-destruction. The satellite program game is destructing
the life of all people on earth. They are fighting a villainous star war
by dragging all humans into it as its sacrifice. We have to stop it, by
stopping the people who invented this most dangerous game against
humans. Satellite programs are mostly designed for national defense
or espionage purpose, thus, satellite programmers and their
superiors who lived a alienated life away from ordinary society in
order to keep the confidentiality of their work. and could be not
40

socially clear-minded after many years’ being away from mundane
world. This occupational habit and environment could have
contributed to a mentality that largely accords with a virtual game
world. And some of them or their sponsors might have been
subjected to frequent manipulation of their rivals too, which would
make them to become delusional and come out with extremely
unreasonable, or nonpractical ideas.
The current satellite programs are very powerful and have enormous
impact upon people’s life. They could track all your activities, and
trace you anywhere you go by monitoring your thoughts and your
voice, seduce you to do stupid things by manipulating your thoughts,
and ruin anything you are doing by manipulating the behaviors of
your family members, partners or workmates, and people
surrounding you. If you are tagged by the satellite program, you are
turned into a working prop of this program, which are what most of
the government and military officials are, but at least, they’ve gotten
the protection of that program, and since they’ve already had a job,
they live in no worries for personal finance as well. As long as they
are doing their job right, they would be ok, supposed that there is no
intervention of other satellite programs, which is not the case any
more. Those governmental officials are subject to the same
manipulation of their foreign or even local rivals. The worst scenario
is getting the civilians into the satellite program which would turn
them into the slaves who wouldn’t get paid for what they are forced to
do. If only one program of their own country is doing that to them, it is
still understandable, supposedly the government could make sure of
the well-being of their life. But what is the point to put individual
civilians into the programs of several rival countries at the same time
to torture them? Can we find one single sustained reason to support
41

such most outrageous conduct to human, from any countries, any
religions or any cultures, or even from the law of the universe? I
absolutely doubt that.
Things have gotten to such most bizarre way and completely
intolerable degree would only demonstrated that game of satellite
program has gone way too far in human society, beyond the control
of any people, any organization or governmental agency. It has come
to the most critical time to downsize the government, and simplify the
satellite program, then liberate human from the control of artificial
intelligence. No doubt, It is a very efficient way to use satellite
program to collect useful data and track the important political figures
of their official activities. But excessive use of satellite artificial
intelligence to monitor the daily behaviors of people including the
ordinary civilians, could be very aggressive conduct that infringes the
human rights while destroying the social norm, crippling the judicial
system and causing chaos. And it would make it a total unfair game
to ordinary people, that the privileged people who could employ the
satellite program to manipulate or freely utilize and ruin others
without leaving any sustainable evidence for the latter to look for
justice. The competition of satellite programs from various parties or
countries have aggravated this situation. The truth is that those
people would invariably get the back-fire upon themselves afterwards,
only a lot of them haven’t realized that, because they have been
completely carried away by the power of the program with their mind
being clouded by the their own ignorance and the mental suffering
from overdone unreasonable deeds.
Some people still think that one fails because they are unlucky or lack
of skills or have not done thorough work, consequently, the failure of
42

others made them push even harder upon their victims and extend
their prey upon more civilians, while their actions became more and
more aggressive and incomprehensible, with less and less possibility
of success. Eventually the society would be filled with catastrophes
one after another. Because this program game makes humans
completely yield themselves to the control of artificial intelligence, the
latter of which is good at logic schemes, but deficient of human
compassions and human reasons upon which the collective power
of human society lies upon, thus it made human invulnerably lose the
game to the program which they had thought to be their servants,
however, by contrary, are maneuvering their master getting into a
hopeless game fighting ferociously among themselves by competing
with the power of schemes, a stimuli caused by the supposed
servants – an actual current master. By doing this, people have
forgotten their original mission as humans. The awaken modern
humans don’t fight for nothing, even if they do it, it is for finding out
their own weakness and other’s strength, so that they could realize
self-improvement. And the way to truly find out and learn from other
people’s strength is to approve that they deserve it, not by stealing or
robbing which only worked with material wealth, or coercing, the way
of savage for territory or tyrant power.
Humans are still the most wonderful creatures in this galaxy system,
and the only way to survive ourselves is to respect our own rights.
And our rights are best demonstrated by values of humanity. Artificial
intelligence once created by people would develop its own will and
come back upon human by making them become its kind and taking
them as its own rivals, but they would never have the sympathy and
humanity as people have. The fact that woman survived until now
truly manifests the beauty of the humanity, and the compassion of
43

human beings who still cares to protect the innocent and vulnerable
ones. So we can never give up those basic values of humanity that
are the true source to empower people and make them stand above
schemes, pure intelligence, and superficial victories.
44

On Non-action
老 子 语 : 为 学 日 益 , 为 道 日 损 , 损 之 而 又 损 , 以 至 于 无 为 。
Oct 28 th
The well-known ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi said that People
benefited from the accumulation of everyday’s study, while the
essentials of true Dao in their daily practice are nonetheless
becoming less and less; when that essentials of Dao diminished to a
certain point, one would understand the most effective approach for
people in this world is to act the non-action. Dao is like the sunshine
boulevard that is simple to follow and safe to walk for travelers in their
life journey, only most people don’t want to follow it. Because it is too
easy to see its plain surface, and makes many people feel it is as
boring as drinking tap water and would make their life journey far less
interesting or entertaining to walk on it. Yet, simple as the Dao is, it is
also the most profound, because the true profoundness is hidden in
the simplicity, but many people tend to stop at the surface level
before they make a decision to further pursue it or not.
Resultantly, the most difficult part is for people to want to get on that
sunshine boulevard. Dao is like a sunshine boulevard, however, that
boulevard can only be created by themselves, and is not always
exactly the same to everyone. They need to cross a threshold –
heighten and broaden their view of life, by passing a door - empower
their mentality, and it needs a key to pass that door. The key is their
attitude whether they want a simple and enlightened life or a
self-indulged life style.
45

Laozi said in the Daode Jing: “ 人 多 伎 巧 , 奇 物 滋 起 ”, if people have
gotten too many tricks with them, all sorts of strange things would
come out. However, the inevitable outcome would be:“ 五 色 令 人 目 盲 ,
五 音 令 人 耳 聋 , 五 味 令 人 口 爽 , 驰 骋 畋 猎 令 人 心 发 狂 , 难 得 之 货 令 人
行 妨 。” The colorful goods could blind people’s eyes, the loud and
exciting music could deafen their ears, the juicy and saucy food could
numb their sense of taste, constant game hunting on horse could
make people go wild, the precious goods could impair people’s
behavior. That exactly said what the modern civilization has created
for current people, as well the consequences it has brought to them.
Just because all these things that created by people with high
technologies or complex schemes or sophisticated techniques are
usually away from simplicity, attracted them and made them get lost
in that fantasy world, thus they never want to pursue Dao, the
simplest, effective and profound guide for their life journey.
When people truly understand Dao of their life, they know when to
agitate, and when to stay quiet. Just as people know since they are
little kids that they get up when sun rises and go to bed at night by
following their parents who had followed the rhythm of the nature.
They go to work by minding their own business and trying not to
disturb others; they start to work at the smallest parts of their task in
order to conquer a big project. They try different things in their life,
however, let the nature decide the end, instead of over aggressively
pushing into something unreasonable with apparent
nonconsideration for others and awe-dropping ignorance to the
possible consequences to the society. And the same way works for
people of any field, including the people who work for government.
Laozi, in his Daode Ching, especially emphasized “ 无 为 Wuwei”, the
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non-action, but the more accurate wording should be “ 为 无 为 ,Wei
Wuwei”, act in the way of non-action. It means, that is not the
ordinary non-action but just a different approach of doing things and
could be more effective than the action. Let’s take the people’s daily
life as an example again to illustrate it. People normally work eight
hours a day, then eat, rest, and sleep for the rest of time. Does it
mean the nonworking hours are gotten wasted? Probably not. People
eat for re-energizing themselves, read newspaper or watch TV for
absorbing new information that could be useful to their work, and
sleep for recharging their body and refreshing their mind that their
brain could be processing their work information during the sleep. So,
many things happen in a way we don’t see or beyond the ability of
our own official language to say.
Alphabetic language such as English, French, etc al, are vocabulary -
enriched languages, and could give vivid expression and precise
explanation of many things, that made it an analytical language, but it
might lack something that pictographic languages have and thus fall
short in their ability of contemplating on things. Some things are
difficult to see and to say, but only to be understood through other
ways. Contemplation is a lot simpler than the complex grammar and
weaving fancy words in sentences, though it could get a little
confusing at the beginning stage of people’s practice and have
scared many of them off.
We probably all agree that modern politics is a very difficult thing to
work at. That is because it is founded on the western culture, an
analytical culture. The fine division of each section and complex
hierarchical structure of different department in their everyday’s
interplay with their counterparties from other nations, backed by a
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pointed depth-driven philosophical work approach, made it become
very complicated and could be even dangerous at some time. Before
getting hysterical with anything, it functions somewhat like a magic
cube composed with many small cubes of six different colors
interweaved together. One can twist around those small cubes to
produce certain color pattern on each side of this toy, and each move
of any small cubes would bring other cubes to move with it. If one
wants to put all the same color side of small cubes on the same side
of this magic cube, it could take quite some effort to accomplish,
especially if all the colors have been totally mixed up. That roughly
explains the complex level of modern politics.
However, if one takes a different philosophical approach, for example,
if they don’t twist around those small cubes so much and control the
color mixing level to minimum degree, then they can more easily
recover them to the original condition, supposedly, this magic cube is
neatly set with all the same colors at each side at the beginning. That
says if the government stops doing some unnecessary work,
especially the work between their interaction with civilians, by giving
the latter more freedom to work their own things out, it could make
the politics easier and simpler. Or in a different scenario, if they can
just leave that color- messy situation caused by random action alone,
assuming that the situation wasn’t so bad yet, by wearing a pair of
color-filtering glasses, then they won’t see the different colors at each
side of the magic cube, while, in reality, the “color mess”won’t show
up either. Why? because the less intervened people have tendency
to adjust their behavior to a level of unification and lead to make a
new unified color, which is an automatic adjustment under the
constant changing power game between Yin – Yang interplay, also a
healthy adjustment to society. In fact, lot of those complicated
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political, economical or social situation are caused by the
meaningless and harmful intervention of politicians with their
seemingly smart schemes.
The Yin-Yang power change is a automatic process going on
eternally in the universe according to its own rhythm and mechanism.
If we take people’s action as Yang, then the non-action is Yin. When
the government needs to implement some very important policy in
the nation, they are using the power of Yang, and put people into a
Yin position who should obey the policy without resistance or
objection or alienation. But if the people have taken enough action
from the government, and are made in a very negative and weak
position, then it is time for them to push back a little to make the
adjustment, and the government should give them some space by
going back to its Yin position. It follows a very similar pattern of a
person’s life, who works in the day time with the body action in power
of Yang position, and rest at night with their body action in the Yin
position when rest becomes the dominant role of the person. If the
government uses too much Yang power, and pushed the people too
hard, they will not only fail their goal, but irritate the people and made
the latter bounce back strongly and unexpectedly to hurt the
aggressor.
That’s why Laozi also said in Daode Jing “ 以 正 治 国 ” “ 我 无 为 而 民 自
化 , 我 好 静 而 民 自 正 , 我 无 事 而 民 自 富 , 我 无 欲 而 民 自 朴 ”.The
government should lead the nation with good integrity, and the
people would follow them willingly. If that part is achieved, they can
just stay quiet without need to do much, because the people know
how to pursue their own life and they will learn how to transform them
to be the ones that the society expect them to. If the government
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officials can stay uncorrupted, the people would stay upright
themselves also.
They looks like very simple things to people, nevertheless, not
everybody can do it. It is the attitude and mentality that decides the
matter. Laozi believed that the best politics is aimed to make the
country look as if nothing particular is going on since everything
works out and everybody is living a normal life, which idea is a little
exaggerating and idealistic, especially won’t fit to situation of modern
world with a much bigger social scale and much higher level of
complexity. However, what he said that the trick of governing is
non-action that too much action would lead to failure of their mission,
while the hasty steps to grasp the success with too much expectation
would make them deemed to lose the game, is very
thought-provoking and worthy to be borrowed into their policy. This
type of politics is not as dull as it looks like at all. The right attitude
and mentality will lead the person into its kingdom, and in each
kingdom, there is its own mechanism. The government mentioned by
Laozi seemed quiet and simple at the surface, however, the simplicity
is toward the civilians and the executors, who don’t have to engage
themselves into meaningless task or go through complicated
procedures with frustrations or difficult life experience with ordeals,
but it would need right and determined people to maneuver it. It is not
difficult, but it just need follow the rhythm of the nature, some
principal laws of the civilization, and the basic social values
respected by people and all generations. And the government won’t
need hire so many people to work around the simple –to- follow
policies, which would only add to the troubles and ruin the odd of
success or their own projects and the things of ordinary people.
The same way works for military too. It says in Daode Jing:“ 兵 乃 不
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祥 之 器 ”,“ 其 事 好 还 , 不 得 以 为 之 ”. War has never been an auspicious
thing for people, and it would cause catastrophic result to the society.
The countries start a war only if they have to. The war will possibly
break out if people fail themselves and fail the society. However, if the
size and power of the military exceed the need of the society, they
would worsen the already anarchistic or chaotic situation of the
society. Why? Because the function of military is for fighting, and
the exceeding power would inevitably spill out to the society by
causing war fire in civilians or other irrelevant group’s territories and
increase the tension as well as well cause great damage to the
society.
And that is the why we want to bring up the ancient philosophical
idea“ 为 无 为 ”, act the non-action again, in our modern world.
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If a person can’t keep his promise, how can he imagine to
establish himself in the society?
孔 子 语 : 人 而 无 信 不 知 其 可 也 。 大 车 无 輗 , 小 车 无 軏 , 其 何 以 行 之 哉 ?
Oct 27 th
Confucius said:” If a person can’t keep his own promise, how can he
imagine to establish himself in the society? Just as a chariot can’t run
without the nails to fix the pulling bars to the body of the cart. “
Faith is a very important virtue to measure the behavior of gentlemen
in ancient China. Being faithful means that one person has to act to
his words and can keep his promise to others. In the antique time of
over two thousands years ago, people had already understood the
incredible importance to act in a faithful way. In Confucius’ time,
China had already gone through Xia, Shang dynasties and came to
the final stage of Zhou dynasties, which had helped this nationality to
develop its agriculture, primary marketing economy under the slavery
system, and a dynasty to promote propriety and music, which
prepared itself to transform to a more centre-powered feudal system.
The Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period(765- 221
BC) when Confucius and Mencius lived were the transitional period
between the slavery system and feudal system, and it had come to a
time to make a summery of this civilization, which also made it a very
important era for the development of Chinese culture and
philosophies with all sorts of schools of learnings showing up which
greatly impacted people of many centuries afterwards. Some of those
ideas even became part of the legacy of traditional Chinese culture
and influenced all the generations to come.
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Always acting in a faithful way has become a maxim in Chinese
culture, as people would expect that a true gentlemen should never
fail his promise. It is said that a promise is worth one thousand pieces
of gold, or one would rather lose one thousand gold pieces than to
fail one promise. Because once a person failed his promise, he would
immediately lose his credibility and ruin his reputation and degrade
himself in his own social circle of a society that values faith, and the
long-term potential damage can’t be estimated.
Keeping one’s promise, or course, has everything to do with one’s
credibility. Credit should have been a word originated from practice of
business, which means that people who make loans to others would
gain credit for themselves, while people who make loans from others
would become indebted to the other party, but they earn their
credibility by paying back their debt on term( a promise made at the
time of loan). If a person can always pay back their debt on terms,
their credibility should become higher that would enable them to loan
more goods or money each time. On the contrary, if this person
always fails to pay his debt on term, or even never pays back, then
he would eventually become unable to borrow again. Just like a
credit card holder who couldn’t pay the owed money in his credit
account, when the money accumulated to a certain amount, his card
would be cancelled by the credit company and made him unable to
use it again. So, for a business man, it is very important to keep good
credibility, which means to keep promise to the made terms,
otherwise, he would suffer from his business or even fail his business.
This rule is equally important to any other people who live in a
economic environment that is based on the market and credit
economy.
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China was an agriculture-focused country, the commerce had never
been taken as important enough to make it to become a capital
economic system before the collapse of the last imperial dynasty in
China in 1911. However, they value faith not any less than that of
western culture who had been pioneers in developing capital
economy. Chinese value faith because it is part of their daily life, an
unspoken law that has been encoded in their culture. If one can’t
fulfill his promise, they would be regarded to shame their family and
ancestor. Since Chinese people including some other Asian countries,
take it as a very important matter to show respect to their ancestors,
they would try their best to keep to their promise even they sell their
house, or whatever it takes them to do so. That explains why
Confucius would say: ” if one can’t keep his promise, how could he
imagine himself to be established in the society? (in that ideal
Chinese cultural environment)” He would probably be swallowed in
the spitted mouth saliva of surrounding people.
In a capital-operation based economic and social environment, which
is now prevailing globally, people guard their own credibility in a very
vigilant way, not only by doing things according to terms, but by
safeguarding their credibility from possible theft of their personal
identity and credit card information. That works very well when the
economy is good and everything is going smooth. But when the
economy turns downwards, and too many people have lost their jobs,
who can’t pay their mortgage and credit card, then this credit system
would probably shake its foundation and make both sides suffer. First
of all, the being loaned will suffer great loss due to the failed contract,
and for the loaning parties, who had claimed bankruptcy due to
extreme financial difficulty and can’t pay their debts on term, they
would lose their credibility(or credit on financial term) for good or for
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long time. The damage to the loaning party is not just limited to their
financial life, but also expand to other parts of their life, such as
looking for a future job, renting an apartment, and going to
prestigious school on loan etc al. When this happens, the credibility
of this person has been ruined, but probably was done involuntarily
and was out of the control of this person himself. He might have
strived to become a faithful person that can always keep to his
promise, but the system failed him, and made him have no other
choice.
Since this type of phenomenon could reappear in each following
economic cycle, the people would slowly become used to it, by taking
it for granted that it is completely ok to fail their promises, because it
wasn’t totally their own fault. Thus, this kind of attitude would
proliferate among all people in this society, since people from any
field could have run into such situation, with business people falling
into desperate financial difficulty, who try to circumvent it by cheating
the clients and politicians struggling in political confrontation, who try
to maneuver the mass to their own favor, at the cost of the latter. And
to this point, being faithful is no longer held as an important social
value.
People aren’t the only one to be blamed to cause this disappointing
situation, nonetheless without excuse to get away from their share of
responsibility. If people truly cherish their social values dearly, they
would try their best to fix the problem of the system in order to hold
on to those values, and stop the situation from deteriorating. This is
not to show off their nobleness or look up to fame for doing so, it is
because those values are fundamentally important for the proper
function of this civilization. They are principles, and can’t be given up
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any time. If people let them go, their mind would go wild, and things
would get out of hand and finally become catastrophic and
detrimental to everybody’s life. They should know that It is always
better to fix the tiny pit before it becomes a big hole.
A tiny pit in the wall of house at summer time may not be of a great
issue, but if it didn’t get repaired in time, it could become bigger and
bigger, and the gusty winter wind would come to blow down this piece
of wall and cripple the house by making the people sheltered under
suffer from freezing coldness. That is the consequence caused by
the inertness of people who tended to forget their lessons, and
resultantly, forget their own promises, and didn’t act quick enough or
on time against the adversary circumstances. They might have said
to themselves when they saw the small pit the first time: ” I should
find time to fix the hole.”, but other family chores came to occupy
them and lack of tool or help discouraged them, which made them fail
that promise to themselves. Then when they saw the hole the second
time, which could have gotten bigger, they would immediately warn
themselves:” It should really be done as soon as possible!”. However,
a family party and a holiday vacation arranged in a urgent manner
made them forget everything else. Slowly, that hole started to
become so familiar to them, however, not irritating any more, the
summer wind coming inside the hole soothed their mind, the beautify
autumn scene occasionally peeped from the hole made them find the
new use of this would- be disaster. Until one day, the winter dropped
into their life with a hurricane leading the time of season. It was just
not surprising at all that wall would fall, even other stable houses
have stayed strong. And those people who have gone through plenty
joyful time while hilariously enjoyed the company of the hole, started
to come up with goose bumps, knowing they are going to become
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homeless soon in cold winter.
These are how current people are. If they could so easily forget the
promises to themselves, no wonder they would fail their promises to
others. They are always on the go, being the wheels or gadgets of
some machinery, while losing themselves. This modern social
system is made of a giant machine, which itself it is composed of
numerous smaller machines that are further divided into even smaller
devices. These devices positioned everybody inside as tiny metal or
plastic parts, who have lost their own mind. It is the system who have
wanted people to lose their own will? Probably not! The system has
never been designed that way, however, the machines are doing
things in a more logical and steady way than humans, which made
them showing stronger will than humans. Many people tended to
think that they should do things as instructed by the prvileged ones,
no matter who the instructors are, in order to avoid getting in trouble.
A snob philosphy of yielding to the bullies who are in temporay
stronger position than the being bullied. And this led to a culture of
manipulation. Actually, it is exactly that attitude to let go of self-will
made themselves or society get into troubles.
Flesh made humans have many weaknesses: lazy, unstable, cunning,
selfish, greedy, self-centered, cowardly, and cruel sometimes. The
worst, they fail themselves even for the easiest thing. And this started
from failing their own promises. Whether or not to keep one’s promise,
it is just an attitude that is under the control of self-will, instead of an
aptitude. If one has decided to keep his promise and planted that
attitude into their brain, he would hardly have chance to fail their
words. Because the fact of failing the promise would hurt him more
than keeping it. So we don’t easily make promises. Instead, we make
clear judgment of the circumstances before we give out our words in
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a faithful way. But once words are spoken out, they could ride on
horse and travel to thousands miles away, and can not be taken back
any longer. If the spoken person fails them, they would always be
lingering there without a place to rest, impacting the life of people, by
weakening the speaking power of the person, and endangering the
faith of the people who are with those liars.
Hence, want to make a change to oneself? It is better to start with
keeping their own promises to themselves. And want to make
improvement to the society? It is better to start keeping ones’
promises to others.
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On “The True Benevolent Ones have No Rivals” of Mencius
---- 孟 子 语 “ 仁 者 无 敌 于 天 下 ”
Oct 23 th
There are some values are appreciated in all cultures, such as
benevolence, integrity, bravery, determination, faithfulness,
gratefulness, etc al. It demonstrated that all humans are very similar,
not only sharing the same biological mechanism for body, but also for
brain. They feed on similar type of food which contains the same
nutrition to nourish their brain that would create the same type of
mental products, a process similar to that of the plants which absorb
the energy from sunlight and create the nutritional products to satisfy
the human and other animals’ need. This probably indicates that
humans’ true purpose is to create intellectual property to reveal the
beauty of the potential of the cosmos and enrich the contents of the
universe. Of course, they produce material products too, to sustain
their biological life and to satisfy all sorts of other needs in order for
them better prepared and equipped for that purpose.
The success of the species of life depends on the degree of the
magnificence of the civilization they have created, while the meaning
of life exists in the process, not in the end. Anything has its life length,
but an unaccomplished life before it reaches that length or decides to
end it sooner would jeopardize its chance to revive again. Just like a
tree that starts its growing process after the seed is planted on earth,
then blossoms, then produces fruits through pollination of the flower.
It completed its life cycle in a glorious way with abundant fruits and
made preparation in a solid way for its next life cycle. The fruit holds a
thing, the seed, that would allow the renew of its life. However, if the
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plant stops its life process before it could harvest any thing that
carries the whole integrity of a life, it would lose its chance to grow a
new life again, this species would distinguish from earth. In the plant,
that harvest is made possible by the process of pollination between
the flowers of different sex. Some plant also have another attribute
that is to grow into a whole plant from a small twig, because the twig
contains the good integrity(full biological function for propagation) of
plant life, and this would allow a wounded plant or a plant with dead
trunk to revive its original life until it completes its life cycle. The same
rule could exist in human world too. If humans can hang on to its
integrity for all its life time, then it would be able to continuingly revive
itself. If humans can successfully accomplish its mission, then they
can gloriously evolve into something greater.
Human values benevolence, that is because it is the nature of
human’s creator, the universe. An ancient Chinese philosopher Zhou
Dunyi( 周 敦 颐 , 宋 )had said: “ 生 者 , 仁 (benevolence) 也 ; 成 者 , 义
(integrity: classic style: 義 ) 也 。” It says that benevolence is for
creating life or reviving life; and to make that happen is through the
integrity. The character” 仁 ” is made of two symbolic parts “ 人 ”(people)
and “ 二 ”(two), meaning that it takes two people to make a baby(the
new life); while the character “ 義 ” is made of “ 羊 ”(goat)and “ 我 ”(me).
The goat was a sacred animal in ancient China that indicates dignity,
integrity, kindness, and auspiciousness. It was used as the sacrifice
to pay respect to the ancestors and gods, and its Chinese character
became a semantic symbol to make quite some other Chinese
characters such as ” 祥 ” (auspicious),“ 儀 ”(Courtesy), “ 議 ”(official
negotiation ) , ” 善 ”(kindness) , ” 美 ”(beauty) and, of course,
“ 義 ”(integrity) etc al. So “ 義 ” means the dignity and integrity of oneself.
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Human itself is a small cosmos that mimics the universe, and from
themselves and their life in the everyday’s endeavor, people come to
understand the universe.
The follower of confucianism also said “ 仁 者 , 体 也 ; 义 者 , 用 也 ” that
could be interpreted as that the benevolence is the embodyment of
the very basic values of social human beings, while the integrity is the
ideological or moral tool to manifest them and employ those values in
order for things to work out in the society. That is coherent with the
idea at the beginning of the above paragraph.
When people talk about benevolence, many of them probably would
think that it solely means altruism, generosity, compassion, kindness,
etc al. It’s true all people like to associate with kind, altruistic,
compassionate, or generous people, since they would definitely
benefit from being with them. However, in order to keep those most
appreciated and accepted values among us, doesn’t it also shed
responsibility upon people who should maintain their integrity? As
already said above, without integrity, benevolence won’t happen, or
at least, won’t last for long.
First of all, it takes some requirements to become benevolent people,
which makes some of the values mentioned in the very beginning of
the paragraph belong to a more profound and well-rounded definition
of benevolence. The ancient sage Confucius, also the creator of early
Confucianism, felt that being respectful( 恭 ), kind( 宽 ), faithful( 信 ),
courageous( 勇 ), intelligent( 敏 )and generous( 惠 )would make a
benevolent person. Respectfulness would make people like him/her,
kindness would make it easy to have friends, faithfulness would gain
people’s trust, courage would make things happen, and wisdom
would lead to achievement, generosity make it possible to receive
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assistance from its benefiters or others. He also said that the
benevolent people always establish others before they want to
establish something themselves, and make others gain before they
want to achieve something themselves. The benevolence brought
the music and propriety with it, and made the latter become what they
are. Because, without the inspiration from benevolence, people won’t
have come up with the desire to create music in order to show their
pleasant feelings propelled by the benevolent action, and neither
would they have that need to create all the etiquettes to demonstrate
the beauty of benevolent behavior. This gives some exquisite
attributes to benevolent people, which lead them to come out with an
inner glow to influence and attract other ones, but not to compete
with people. This makes them naturally without rivals.
Secondly, a true benevolent person would always try to maintain
good integrity with him, making sure justice is by his/her side, in order
to carry out their benevolence in breadth and depth, and in position.
Confucius, again, said:“ 唯 仁 者 能 善 人 , 能 恶 (wu) 人 ”, that only the
true benevolent people are able to show the real kindness that is to
treat the kind with kind and suppress the evil without compromise( 善
善 恶 恶 – shan shan wu e). Because unreasonable tolerance to the
viciousness will lead to deprive the right of the innocent, and is unjust
to the kind, while letting viciousness proliferate, that would eventually
make it very difficult or impossible to bestow kindness to the needed
or deserved. So when one gives out benevolence, he/she should
keep good integrity, backed up by the benevolent courage, according
to Confucius:“ 仁 者 必 有 勇 , 勇 者 未 必 有 仁 ”(the true benevolent
people must have courage, but the brave people are not necessarily
the benevolent ones),otherwise, the intended kindness or generosity
wouldn’t be completed as they had originally wished, instead, cause
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confusion to people in the society about the true meaning of
benevolence, and how to conduct properly according to the basic
social values.
So, it indicates that being benevolent is absolutely not an easy thing.
It can’t be simply accomplished by making donation to charity, or
being kind to others. It takes cultivation of life time to understand
what is true benevolence and attain that level of expectation.
Mencius said that the true benevolent people have no rivals, it could
have said about a person with good integrity who acts in a generous,
altruistic, kind, wise, courageous, and compassionate way. Once a
person can attain all those attributes, the universal values accepted
around the world, he would always gain recognition and support from
people, no matter where they go. Because for human, it is all about
survival and revival, and who won’t want to associate with a person
that could help them achieve that?
Originally, the words could have been applied in Mencius’
conversation with a king of a state during the Warring States Period in
ancient China, before year 221 BC. During this period, all the states
fought ferociously among one another, which led to the end of the
already fallen - apart Zhou dynasty and continued several years
before China was united as a feudal empire. Mencius, as a follower,
also developer of Confucianism, stuck to the principles of this school
of learning, who held benevolence and integrity as the upmost values,
and propriety as the most important norm of conduct of a gentlemen,
tried to advice to the monarchs of various states to implement
benevolent policies, which he believed to be the only way for
successful rule of a nation. He believed if a monarch could act in a
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benevolent way to his people, and in righteous way in dealing with
inter-state matter, in addition, follow the proper rites and courtesy
between people, he could strengthen his own reign, empower his
state, and gain the superiority or respect among and smoothen the
diplomatic relationship with all the states, thus they don’t need to be
afraid of aggressions from any other countries. That’s why he said
the true benevolent ones have no rivals, which also means they are
the undefeatable ones.
China still stayed in the slavery system during the Warring States
Period, the states were still fighting for their economic progress and
military power, and people are struggling to make a living, that most
of them hadn’t developed the consciousness about the meaning of
human existence, or human rights of people, but depended their life
on fate, so Mencius’s idea with its unique approach to reveal the
hidden power of humanity, pleased some of the monarchs then, and
could have helped to improve the social conflicts in some states, but
wasn’t able to get completely implemented by most of the states,
especially some ambitious states who aimed to be the super power
among all states. It was that particular period of human history that
has decided to abandon this wonderful philosophical idea. However,
it was shortly adopted by the emperors and court officials at the
beginning of Han dynasty, and made Confucianism as the national
cult of the empire. We wouldn’t say that all the ideas created by Dong
Zhongshu during this dynasty, including three classes and five
constants are all good to current standards, but the idea of
benevolence, integrity and propriety are the pillars of the system of
this school of philosophy and have stood in non-replaceable position
through all dynasties in China, while spread to other Asian countries
due to its amazing power and beauty manifested in humanity. Should
it shine with more splendid light, after being polished for so many
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years and by so many different groups of people, nevertheless to be
tinted with modern unique color by being showered in the light of
modern civilization, while threatened by the menace of modern
system?
The word“True benevolent ones have no rivals!” by Mencius could be
applied to the monarchs, the states, and of course, all people strives
to be a true conscientious human being who wants to gain
independence and freedom of will and maintain humanity in our
society. Human is still in the stage of maturing up in its course of life
journey, who has just waken with a desire for true independence of
their spirit and freedom of will, after they had liberated the production
force in their pursuit of economic freedom. However, the real
economic freedom can not be achieved if they are still staying
stubbornly in their miserly narrow–mindedness and cruel
self–centreness. The liberation of production force can only provide
goods and can’t make them become valuable wealth to society if its
upper structure is not properly set up. There is one more step to
transfer goods to wealth. That is, the people would be able to give
value to the goods. If both the system and people fail the society, the
real useful goods won’t come out even with super production power,
or the already produced goods turned out to be completely useless
and go with dumpsters. So, humans are still growing by learning from
one another, as well from nature or universe, and have gotten long
way to go before them, which requires them to muster up all their
strength and wisdom in order to reach their destiny. And that makes
the power of benevolence so important, because it is unbeatable.
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Selections from Thoughts on Different Cultures and New
Age Volume II
– Contemplation Series
• The Age of High Diploma Education P. 67
• Re-evaluation of PhD Education P. 74
in Current Society
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The Age of High Diplomas in Education
May 29
Nobody would doubt the importance of education to people, the
method to pass on the wisdom of the civilization and glorify the
legacy of their traditional culture, as well to expand the boundary
of knowledge and deepen the understanding of human’s views
about this universe, in order to keep them on the right track of
humane course for its continuant existence and evolution.
Hopefully that would let the concept of mankind spread to the
entire universe. A daunting ambition it might be, nevertheless,
human can take it as their destiny and to see where it would lead
them.
Since humans societies have come to realize the great significance
of education to them, the accumulation of knowledge started to
speed up and made its reservoir abundant of resources while the
levels of education are getting higher and higher. In ancient time,
people can accomplish their study of most important learning by
finish the second education level of modern time. However, since
a German person received the first PhD degree designed as a
teacher’s credential in 1652, people seemed starting to get an
idea that higher diploma for education would indicate a higher
academic achievement and better assurance for desired career
opportunities. As a matter of fact, that PhD degree granted in
1652 only required to finish a designed curriculum, which meant
that candidates only needed to finish a program of courses and
pass the examination before they could receive the degree. Much
like some of those master’s degree offered in school. And after
about 150 years, the Germany carried out an educational reform
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and started to promote a new PhD program in all breadth of
disciplines, which admitted the students who normally had
finished their underground study. This program required
contribution of research in their study field and accomplishing a
thesis before they can obtain their diploma. At the time, the
bachelor and master’s degree had become very popular then.
Thus, between 19 th and 20 th century, it marked an era of
popularizing the PhD degrees in universities.
Afterwards, the Asian countries gradually picked up this education
system, and now holding a PhD credential has become a basic
requirement for getting a research or teaching position in
universities or institutes. The prevalence of PhD programs
manifested the rapid advancement of modern society and the
quick change of the categories of human’s occupation, as well as
the inclination of intellectuals toward their career choice. Current
people are becoming highly conscious about what is going on in
this world, and always hold great curiosity to the unknown things
of their domain. Engaging in a PhD program study would definitely
provide them the chance to explore the unknown world under the
guide of their mentors who are supposed to be very accomplished
scholars in certain areas belonging to the architecture of this
civilization.
We would say, a lot of PhD programs with their outstanding PhD
candidates have made great achievement in their separate fields,
especially in science and technology disciplines. Those PhD
programs would let candidates to engage in a real scientific
research project which is under the instruction of their mentors,
after they have finished at least one year full time course study.
The school would provide the laboratory for the professor to
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work on their project, as well with some high-end equipments
and appliances in common rooms for all researchers to share.
Scientific research is the experiments according to the designed
model, and model is made according to the hypothesis based on
the true nature environment with modified condition. We have to
say, that there is no other more feasible way to search for truth of
the physical world but through relentless experimenting on the
hypothesis by trials and errors in a controlled premises such as
laboratories. Even some conclusions can be made by logic
deduction or induction, they still have to be built on the
foundation of discoveries approved by experiments. While it is
almost impossible to do the experiment directly in an environment
of nature in many cases due to its uncontrollable research
conditions, especially in high-end scientific researches. The direct
experiments implemented in nature environment would mostly be
in agricultural fields with crops, fruits and farming animals. The
highly regarded British scientist and philosopher Sr. Francis Bacon
actually started the experimental science. In this sense, those PhD
programs in science field did have made great contribution to the
progress in scientific world and have helped to train many
outstanding talents in their respective scientific, medical or
technological field.
However, for many high degree education programs in other
domains such as art, literature and philosophy, the scenario
would be different. Literature and art are domains built on true life
experience of people by narrating the events, describing the
characters and sceneries, or expressing the emotions and playing
with the imaginations. Skills and techniques are nonetheless
essential, however, can be obtained through self - studying and
practicing, best with some mentoring or tutoring from
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professionals, if possible, but not have to. There are quite some
examples for artists or giants in literatures who have worked
toward their own success without much formal schooling. The
already mentioned French painting artist Maurice Utrillo in other
chapter was just one of the examples. He became an alcoholic
since adolescence and had been lazy and disobedient during his
education and hence was dropped from school at early age. Even
thought his schooling wasn’t long enough to be something he
could be proud of, the fate finally brought him back to the world of
painting art and gave him the fame and success. The most
influential American poet and essayist Walter Whitman(1819-1892)
was also such a prominent figure. He ended his schooling at age of
17 before he started to work, and never went back to school again.
However, he became a legend in the history of American literature.
People have commented that one couldn’t truly know Americans if
they don’t read Whitman’s poem collection Leaves of Grass. His
poems with it its singular and unprecedented style of free verses
at that time revealed the spirit of individual American’s character.
His writings have casted great influence among the American
students of later generations in domain of either history or
philosophy. And the great French writer Victor Hugh(1812 – 1885)
too, didn’t have good degree in literature, but in law field,
however, opted for a permanent writing career. He was bestowed
with inborn genius to write things showing with natural fluency
and charms. And his study and life experience in law field must
have revealed many insights about the people and the society to
him. So the success in those fields doesn’t have much to do with
the level of the degree in their education, not even necessarily
have direct relationship with the area of their study. Many times,
people choose their first domain of formal study under the
influence of their families or social environment, which makes
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them to ignore or temporarily suppress the development of their
other talents. However, when situation becomes favorable for
them show other side of their gifts, they would quickly gain the
expertise of the new fields. As a matter of fact, in the domain of
art degree, the more versatile the person is, the more potential
this person would have to develop or discover something with
high significance to the society.
In current reality, many programs offered in universities are
designed for general public with an aim to promote that discipline,
not intended to satisfy the need of general public, neither possible
to exactly suit the demand of its market or fit into its social
environment. The field of technologies seems doing a better job in
their effort to satisfy the immediate need of labor market,
however, might create a situation of oversupplying the skilled
candidates due to the failure of the overall design of the social
frame. In an ideal structure of the modern society, the university
should be ready to take a higher status in his position among all
institutes of the civilization. The university should play the role as
the cradle of the talents in all fields of study, and the miner of gold,
the lab of discovering the wisdoms, the pioneer as the innovated
ideas and all sorts of movements for better functioned social
system, while taking its responsibility to influence or lead the
social elites to fulfill their duties and make necessary changes to
the system; and the society should grant the universities such
status and make sure it would happen by bestowing it with
necessary authority and equipping them with useful gadgets and
providing them with the best and versatile talents.
However, the current situation is that the society is much more
complicated than the university could handle and makes the latter
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constantly struggling with the expectation from the society. It is
possible that the society might be able to train better talents than
universities through the “apprenticeship” of meaningful life
experience and hands - on job experience in some high-degree
programs of certain field. The social study or philosophy would
also be among those fields. The great British polymath Bertrand
Russell(1872 – 1970) just demonstrated himself as a very
accomplished academic and researcher in field of logic,
mathematics, philosophy, etc al. He only attended Trinity College
and did his undergraduate study before he joined the Apostle of
Cambridge. Then he started his lifetime endeavor in research, and
found his interest in various fields one by one by engaging in the
study of relevant new disciplines and publishing articles, through
which he became a very influential professor too. Even though, he
never attended a PhD program in the university, many
professionals admitted that his expertise in philosophy, logic and
mathematics had reached the Level of PhD degree holders. At his
age, PhD program has prevailed in the universities of Europe, as
well as England, and spread to American and Asian countries. We
won’t deny there were many successful cases among those PhD
program graduates in the areas of art degree. Nevertheless, one
can’t conclude that all the accomplished talents in field of
art-degree had a master’s degree or even PhD degree which
exactly match their job domain, neither can one say that the
person has to hold a proper high-degree diploma before they can
make outstanding achievement in their work field.
Educational degree shows the endeavor of people who had desire
to learn or research on certain field for the purpose of career or
personal improvement, however, whether or not that person will
succeed in certain field mostly depend on their talents, later
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effort, life or career experience and many other coincidental
factors. Sometimes, the circumstances of the society also matter
greatly to individual’s life success.
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Re-evaluation of PhD education in current society
September 15
When the real PhD program of current significance just came out
at the very beginning of 19 th century, I suppose it did have its merit.
At least it demonstrated that people have realized the importance
of depth of the learnings. Also it shows that human civilization has
reached a level to explore to a different dimension of its structure,
and human could afford to have a significant group of people
devoting themselves on pure academic study due to a higher
sophistication level of this civilized society and higher productivity
level of their basic life demands. During the development period
of this program of the last two hundreds years, its candidates and
graduates have helped to build a rigid and sophisticated system of
PhD kingdom and glorified as well established a great number of
its disciples and restructured the academic field as a world
centered around its candidates and its degree holders. And now
PhD degree has been the golden key to enter the gate of
universities and research institutes for the professional
opportunity.
Needless to say, in addition to the benefits mentioned above
about this program, its disciples didn’t completely fail the society’s
expectation upon them, and as a matter of fact, had helped greatly
in boosting the advancement of technology and development of
economics at some point of its course development. The tech field,
without them, would lose most of its lust to amaze the crowd and
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make them completely lost in the maneuver of their own
creations. , and the economic domain would shy in its attraction
by drawing so many audience around the much more diversified
financial products and economic platforms and devices concocted
by those highly trained PhD degree holders. The politics would
lose most of its at least seemingly meaningful games to influence
and arouse the public in order to put the society together. That’s
the whole purpose of this program, by pushing for a prosperous
modern civilization with the technology as its pioneers, and
fantasy as its stimulus, the material wealth and fame as its direct
reward, however, on which, the work moral replaced the
conscience of human nature. Everybody is directed toward the
goal of their job, just like the nails driven into its hole by the
electric screwdriver, regardless the trembling of the wood plank of
wall, that resembles the nailed PhD students are pushed into their
projects under the drive of their PhD program.
Human did have benefited and enjoyed the progress brought by its
PhD program endeavors. The depth developed in each domain
under the current academic system have led to the exploration
into the deep level of the ocean, just like the high-end research in
the science, especially in the physics and other related domains,
led to human’s adventure onto the moon and outside the solar
system. We suppose that most participants of those projects are
selected from the PhD graduates.
As to humans themselves, modern scientists have made great
effort in order to discover the secret of human species, as well as
the evolution of his history. They are as well likely either PhD
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graduates themselves or under the supervision of established
professionals of previous PhD graduates The human is a great
representative of this currently discovered world, with its history
represented the time, its body represented the space, its mind
represented an additional dimension of this universe. So far, the
scientists have studied the anatomy of human body, and
sequenced the genetic code of its genes, and found out the
principal mechanics and genetic rules of its biological life of human
itself. However, they still remain confused about the function of
their mind, and very often fail their duties due to their inborn and
uncured weakness, mostly from the problems of their mindset.
Because the mind is the most complicated thing, also the most
unique thing to each of the human being. All humans may share
virtually the same anatomic structures and biological mechanism
as a live being, as well over 99% genetic codes in their genes for
carrying on the species. However, each person has their different
mindset which is closely connected to the moral coming with
them at their birth. The moral is generally regarded as something
that contains the inborn conscience as well as inborn knowledge
according to some major schools of philosophies or religions
whether in eastern culture or in western culture. That’s why it is
one of the most difficult things to reveal the secret of mind to the
world. Moral is developed in the universe and can absorb the
energy and information around it, and it could get further
developed through cultivation in a new environment after it is
infused into a biological life such as through way of reincarnation.
Just as a computer program which has been developed by its
people and input into a robot can make the robot function like a
human in many ways, while it will develop its own intelligence as
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long as it carries on its life long enough. Nevertheless, the human’s
mind is a lot more delicate and complicated than that of the
computer program as it is developed by the nature, or by God in
some people’s mindset or belief, instead by man’s hand.
PhD program was created based on the fine division of each
domain of knowledge and prevalence of undergraduate study and
master’s programs of a broad breadth of disciplines that were also
built under the division of the each domain’s knowledge. It had its
reasons to come into the academic world. Beside the ones
mentioned above, there was also the economic and technical
demand, as well as need of healthy labor of the society. The
industry revolution raised the awareness of importance of
technology to the people’s life, while the numerous social
revolutions and wars between late 19 th century and early 20 th
century further propelled the precipitant advancement of
technology with the support and cooperation of the education
system which was at the same time undergoing the similarly quick
development and dramatic change. PhD program took advantage
of this situation and took a lead among all the academic programs.
At the time, when some of major secrets of nature and humans
haven’t been discovered yet, and when technology still remained
at steam engine or gas engine level, it was very necessary to have
a stable group of people focusing the research on each of finely
divided disciplines in order to make a breakthrough in it. Since PhD
candidates had to go through the longest years of study and
research endeavor among all academic programs in order to
graduate. And well enough, those endeavors paid off and people
have watched the tech revolution one after another during that
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relatively short period of time coming to embrace their life.
But the treasure of then could eventually lose its radiance over
time. The current political, social and economical environment
have become quite different from that of decades before, when it
was the most prosperous time of PhD education either in North
America or in Asian countries, as the advanced technology of
western world had convinced the developing countries that PhD
education to the power of the society is like the insurance to
people’s life, and its tech-focused economy made North Americans
very enthusiastically recruit a great number of PhD students
globally in science and tech fields to help them do projects. During
this time period, the PhD graduates in Social study and art field
also started to rush into labor market, mostly for universities and
various research institutes which had employed the former
including those from the science domains as the most reliable and
powerful hardware to manifest their academic strength in order to
draw upon the students or bid for research projects from the state
or the society. We have to say the online stock market and other
type of online businesses all come upon around the same time
period. Advanced technology and its application, internet, and
digital money could be the most successful and high profile
products of this period of academic achievement, coming along
with a high-profile life style admired by the public that marked an
extremely exciting and self – indulged era.
When things get too deep into itself while losing connection or
association with others, maybe that is what it could turn into. PhD
education overly emphasized the depth of things while neglected
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the connection with things from other domains. It will inevitably
lead to the superficial depth disguised under the ambiguous and
difficult wording featured with the redundancies of terminologies,
but loss of the essence and originality of this discipline of learning.
The long period of training and mentorship under one or two
professors will stiffen the way of thinking of the students, and
impair their critical thinking ability. Of course, it could make those
students become more obedient and learn how to deal with their
colleagues and superiors better, and possibly produce the greater
team work. But the hard-headed emphasis on the requirement of
PhD degree in their selection of talents for universities or other
labor market, could make them lose the right candidate for the
leadership position, as well cultivate a diploma-emphasized
academic atmosphere, thus jeopardize the original creativity of
this particular group of talents. It could be the case especially in
the art domain. Because lots of PhD degree holders don’t have
sufficient life experience before they entered their program
immediately after graduation from the undergraduate study or
master’s program, to understand what they have learned from text
books and then relatively easily obtained a job offer in their
endeavored field, also because the study from the very narrowly
divided disciplines won’t provide them enough knowledge to
develop something with sound foundation and novel point of view.
Just as if the doctor who only studies the anatomy of the human
body, without the knowledge in physiology, won’t understand the
disease of a patient; an arm won’t understand the problem of the
legs, and the blind man who only touched one part of the
elephant won’t truly know the image of this creature. An aspiring
student who wants to make it in his endeavored field is just like a
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blind man who wants to know about the elephant. If he solely
touches the side of the elephant and in his mind, he could only
picture this animal as a wall, which would be way off the truth. A
true depth of learning can only be obtained under the broad
breadth of various disciplines. The ocean is deep is due to its
vastness and thus created a body of the most profound.
In technological field, the research is work on real matters that can
be seen or detected through eyes, or through the devices, while
each of the work accomplished by students from different projects
could be composed together to make a novel and meaningful
accomplishment if the mentor is well-learned enough or there is
person who has what it takes to supervise all that is going on and
do the effective assembling work. However, in art domain, it is
about the sense, intuition and mind work, the creation of which is
more difficult to detect and a lot more easily becomes bygone.
They can’t be captured or solidified if those pieces themselves are
not significant enough. And the very finely divided PhD programs
into each domain could make the students corner themselves into
narrow mindedness due to lack of connection with other field.
Even if something does come out of their hard thinking in that
limited space, the thoughts wouldn’t stay steady neither in a
strong position to defend themselves and make the meaningful
work very difficult to come out. This could lead to a situation that
nobody there could see the big picture of the society, and advisory
groups of important government entities or agencies composed by
those talents couldn’t fulfill their job, but could only provide fancy
terminologies and recited speeches to appease or fool the public.
In good times, when there are no big problems coming out yet,
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sweet and fancy words renovated from ancient terminology and
indicated the human intelligence could really serve the purpose
and get all people intoxicated in a delusion of self- contented and
secure life and neglect the potential problems, until the disasters
suddenly arise, then all become dumbfounded, and started to play
the blame games.
The PhD programs which are expected to provide the expertise of
highest standard in each of their own field in social science had
largely failed its mission. We can draw this conclusion by just
watching hopelessly the chaos and menace going on and on in our
own society and quickly crossing the ocean to the other continents,
also by seeing all the failed government projects. Many of those
trained talents often failed in providing effective solutions to the
real world problems since they don’t have enough life experience,
neither sufficient accumulation of necessary knowledge of
relevant disciplines, but very much functioned as a tube of
ointment that cool down the heat and numb the irritated nerve
and let social ailments grow infinitely and eventually became a
shockingly non-curable disease. Some of them would make certain
noise mimicking the complaint or raising the issues
non-concerning the key point and make all concerned parties in
their official position feel very much contented about their jobs,
with no intention to make true contribution to the society since it
would require tremendous effort and conquer enormous
difficulties. But when the small pit becomes big hole, things finally
became completely out of control, then they can do nothing about
it but engage themselves into lip - stabbing the treacherous
perpetrators for the stupid deeds the latter have done and are
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doing and are planning to do more.
Each thing has its length of life, since the name of PhD program
appeared the first time in the university at the mid of 17 th century,
and the true PhD program of modern equivalent came out at the
very beginning of 19 th century, then until decades ago it became
super hot, and now it is the basic requirement to enter a career in
the academic or high-level consulting career, it has been there
near four hundred years. It seems as if that PhD graduates have
dropped into the menu of Macdonald restaurant from that of
French banquet, and society solely doesn’t know what to do with
the master’s degree holders, since the ordinary college graduates
can pretty much accomplish all the general tasks assigned to them
at job. The masters are actually trained to be the experts in their
field, only that that they weren’t given a chance of longer years to
develop a close relationship with their mentors and a bigger
network in their professional circle, and thus would be shy of good
recommendations for jobs. The disciples of this PhD education
kingdom are now still enjoying the past glories of its antecedents,
while remained unconscious of its already alarmed problems that
are becoming more and more obstructing. The newly arisen
problems in current world could be partially contributed to the
failure of education, that the college graduates who are supposed
to be the pillars of the social force haven’t demonstrated enough
critical thinking ability in facing a complex social surroundings and
the PhD graduate who are supposed to act as the charismatic and
leading figures in human society by wielding their intellectual
power didn’t really come into play properly, and it made the
society fall into parts with the majority of people’ life being
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endangered or ruined.
The graduates of master’s program are currently in a sort of
awkward situation. They have more education than an employer
would normally expect from a new graduate from universities for a
general professional position. Since higher education usually
means higher compensation, a just employer would often hire a
bachelor degree holders in order not to owe the masters. While
the flourishing of PhD graduates into the society makes the
academic field prefer to choose them over the master’s degree
holders for a job position. However, as having explained above, the
masters are, no matter what, an expect-level of talent, only
without strong academic supporters or influential recommenders
and longer period of hands -on job training under their mentors’
guidance. So it is recommended that some of the master’s
programs should be designed for students already with work
experience, and after they graduate, we can’t tell for sure that
they won’t be as good as those PhD graduate. Especially those
people who have both work experience and multiple master’s
degrees in related or different domains, they could usually have
better sense of things and make better judgment of situation, and
are usually more sharp-minded facing confusing situations.
Because they are better learned and have also digested what they
have learned.
It takes five to six years to obtain a PhD degree after
undergraduate study in many of the western universities, and
three more years’ study for a master’s degree holder to recieve
the PhD diploma in many Asian universities. If we let a college
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graduate give up a PhD program and directly go for two year’s
master’s programs with also dissertation requirement for
graduation, then they would finish three master’s programs within
the time period to finish a PhD program. Which scenerio could
make them better learned? I guess most people would think it is
the multiple master degrees holder better learned, especially in
art field. If we let the college graduate obtain a job and then go
back to school for a master program after years of working
experience, they could probably reach a PhD graduate level if they
focused on the same domain. If the talents had both work
experience and two or more master’s degrees in domains that
could benefit their job, then it is very reasonable to predict that
they could accomplish things more meaningful to the society than
the ones who only studied in one PhD program with very narrow
focus on the field and without necessary life experience to
thoroughly understand what were taught to them, especially in
domains where personal input and critical thinking matters most,
and technical skills are not a major issue or can be obtained in
short period of time after undergraduate study, or through
self-study, which is completely possible in the era of internet,
when many of the information or knowledge can be obtained by
search engine or from the libraries. It is not unusual for students
to know the things that teachers don’t know, as a proverb says it
that the teaching and learning are reciprocal, the students are
learning from the teachers, while, at the same time, refreshing the
mind of the latter.
How about we banish some of the PhD programs, especially in art
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field, and perfect some of the existing master’s programs or create
new master’s programs to open to more potential students, some
of whom probably would have wanted to go for a PhD program
before, in order to obtain advantage in their career. Now, after
people have realized that a lot of those PhD programs there won’t
do any good to the people and society, they should start to give a
second thought on their study plans, and the authorities in
academic field should also put themselves into a serious
contemplation on the renovation of the current educational
system which has already manifested great problems in it after it
was copied without much of change by universities of many
countries and prevailed globally for so many years.
The current education system has been developed on the
philosphy of focusing on research and science from western
society since early 19 th century, about the same time when the
first PhD program of modern equalent came out, due to the
reasons mentioned above, mainly for advancing technology and
improving the then economic situation. At that time, the
captialism was marching on its course of development, and
striving to make its success. This education system emphasized the
fine division of disciplines of learnings, to make sure each student
can learn their trucs well enough and equip themsevles with
sound knowledge and hand-on skills in their specific domain to
suit the immediate labor market’s need. So that the employers
could position them easily and quickly without much doubt into
the production line of their workshops or hierachical structure of
the enterprises. During this developing stage of capticalism, the
profit was the main purpose and it had accordingly ignored the
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social development of the states, and had led to tides of social
reforms, revolutions and wars in the world, especially in Europe
and Asian countires. This system requires the undivided focus of
each personnel on each of their jobs in the assembly line, or in the
hierachical system, and is very technically demanded, short-term
goal oriented, and resultantly, would suffer in its consideration for
the overall design of their long-term projects, especially the overall
consideration for the society, by assuming an ideal condition for
their work environment, that is without much interruption,
especially no unexpected intervention. Students are only taught
the knowledge and skills merely enough for their aimed future
jobs, because neither the society, or their employers want them to
know too much about other people’s work or other domains, for
reasons of confidenciality, for trying to keep a well-trained
employees to stay as long as possible. So those skilled labors
functions no more than a sophiscated tool to the employer, and a
moving prop to the society. Because there are peope above them
to instruct them to do what they are supposed do. If the society is
still running in a controlable scale and complexity-level, and the
boss is doing a well-enough job, while the system is well-designed
for that social, political and economic environment, then, it could
work out quite well and in a admirably efficient way.
However, it has all changed now, this society is becoming
unpredictably more complicated than they had thought before,
thanks to the fruits of the high-tech advancement, employed for
the social management and economic development. Those
products are currently getting back on their creators, unplannedly,
however, inevitably, according their own will as the humans have
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empowered them for human’s own benefit while without much
choice, but to hand their products the freedom to let strive for a
fate by coming back on their intelligent creators – the now rivals.
The developing countries are catching up too, joined the
competing game, which added to the dimensions as well as the
levels of the complexity, by interplaying with the artificial
intelligence and rivals of their own kind. If humans still want to
keep this society under their own control, it would be never too
early to make a decision to improve themselves, by equipping
them with the ability of critical judgement, in order to make the
well-thought decision in what they do.
Of course, It is not possible for one person to learn all the trades in
their life, neither necessary to do so, but they can definitely
become more learned and well-rounded in order to better handle
their life and jobs. As the proverb goes: learn everything of one
thing, and just enough of everything. However, the education
system is failing the students and the society. Many graduates
from universites are completely ignorant about some basic
principles and social values in this human civilization that embody
the wisdom of the human society, thus they could be so easily
manipulated by others to do bizzare things or act in a surprisingly
clueless way. It might be true that, the social value, it would be a
boring course to be presented to the students in school, but the
things included in it can’t be taught by words, they are usually
developed by the person through studying relevant knowledges,
such as history, philosphy, arts, literatures, math, et al. Please
refer to the article On Study written by Francis Bacon, which has
been included in volume I- the basic values and principles of this
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book. The study on all those things can help develop the common
sense of people in their conduct and obtain the higher reasons of
their life.
There is something that simply can not be taught. They could only
be obtained through practice or contemplation by combining with
their life experience and life learnings. Thus, the better learned
person, or the person with richer life experience, would usually be
more sensible and act in a more stable and truly desirable way to
the society, when it comes to making the instant and
consciencious judgement in their conduct. The learnings no doubt
should be those belonging to the accepted knowledge system in
this civilization, and the life experience is that obtained in the
human social environment.
This education system had been well-developed at its beginning
stage and also had well accomplished its historical task during that
particular period of developing course in human society. We
would say it could definitely serve as an example in its original
endeavor to make a daunting and positive change to the society,
and we should maintain this admirable ambition of humans to
continuingly improve themselves and improve the society, without
hesitation to discard the outdated things, while keep innovating
and embracing the new ones that would make human strong and
survive.
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Selection from Thought on Different Cultures and New
Age Volume II – Contemplation Series by Jenn Zhu
• How to Become a More Cultured Person p.90
• Multi-Perspective to See Things p.101
• The Pros and Cons of High-Tech Devices. p.109
Jenn Zhu
_____________________________________
Published on May 2021
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How to Become a More Cultured Person?
Current human’s average life expectation is getting much more
higher than that of ancient people. One of the reasons is that
current people are getting much better nutrition from their food,
beside the better living condition, the better medical treatment.
The diet of modern people is prepared in a much more scientific
way according to the physical need of human body. With the
progress of biology and medicine, people have discovered those
main nutritional elements that human need from their daily diet
to satisfy their metabolism activities. Thus, all the food industries
are working toward satisfying the human body need, in addition to
fit their appetite or taste. Moreover, there are variety type of
health food and nutritional supplements manufactures coming up
to further help improving their health situation. As a matter of fact,
there are more and more people who have come to believe that
healthy diet is even more effective than medicine in this endeavor.
A very popular proverb says: an apple a day, keeps the doctor away,
which is a little exaggerating about the contribution of the apple
to human’s health, but did deliver a message that nutritional
treatment can , in many cases, replace the medical treatment.
It was a great thing that people have discovered so many secrets
about their physical health as well as physical capacity, and put
them into the right use. That’s why many retired people are
already dreaming to live to one hundred years old with a humble
ambition. The thing is if everybody lives so much longer , and the
baby birth survival rate is so much higher than before, with so
many people crowded on earth, while they don’t know how to get
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along with one another, they would still end of being unhealthy
being in definition to the population of human species. It means
that they would still encounter major problems to deal with the
health of relationship due to the differences of cultures. If people
still live in a situation of staying in their home nations for all their
life time, there probably won’t have much problem for them to
stick to their own cultures for all generations to come. However,
that kind of life style, as described in an idiom that people won’t
bother to say hello to the ones in their neighboring village, even
though their dogs and cocks are crying out to one another happily
everyday, is no more for anybody in current world. Thus there is
no other way out but to learn to improve the health of
relationship among different cultures, which, coming to the
bottom line, requires the people to become more cultured. Just as
physically strong people have better immunity to attack of
diseases, the culturally strong people would be better prepared in
Confrontation of the cultural problems.
The culture of one population is developed to satisfy the spiritual
need of those group of people, while also contributes to the
development of other areas of this society, and thus can be
considered as diet for their mental health when living in that
particular type of cultural environment. The people who have
talent to grasp the essential elements of their own culture would
usually get along with their people better and enjoy an easier life.
So that explains each culture has their own essential elements that
would help smoothing up the relationships between people and
produce synergy to better the life of all parties concerned, and
there is no reason to discriminate and look down upon other
populations due to the pride caused by the ignorance of other
people’s culture or advantages.
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There are so many different cultures in the world. We can’t say
each modern person has to learn all other cultures in order to
survive in current world. Nonetheless, different people have
different life which lead them to live in certain social circles, in
different neighborhood, different communities, different cities, or
different nations. So the case of how to deal with the cultural
issues would be different for each person. In modern metropolitan
cities, there are people from cultures of all origins, hence it would
be an urgent issue for business people, educator, social worker,
and government to become more sensitive to all sort of cultural
issues in order for them to do the more efficient or more effective
job. Rest of the people in such a city could decide their cultural
study by their daily life circle of association.
Then, how to improve the cultural consciousness of people, or
what would be the essential elements for people to become more
cultured? If there is a conscription of diet plus nutritional
supplements for physical health, then there should be something
similar for the health of cultural relationship. People communicate
through languages, and occasionally supplemented by the help of
facial expressions and body languages through poses or gestures.
So we could say, first of all, learning the language of the people
with whom you have to deal in your life or in your job, would be a
very effective way to improve your relationship with them.
Language is one of the most powerful software that human can
apply in their life to improve their ability of not only
communicating with, but deeply understanding others and thus
comprehending things about them and around them. It seems
quite clear that people who can speak a second language can
normally understand other people better, because through
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learning language, people learn more ways of thinking. Of course,
some people may say, there are easier ways to find out how other
people think too, but there is some subtle things that can’t be said
but can only be felt in that nuance of language, which is merely to
be grasped through learning that language themselves. The
understanding of nuance can lead to the common understanding
of things between people through some magically unspoken
power and could smooth up the relationship to make things work
out for all of them. So the society needs more people who can
speak more than one languages commonly used among the
populations in their social environment.
With the progress of international trade and cultural exchanges,
people all over the world have more or less learned some
languages of other countries and rendered them with more
cultured characteristics. It is not surprising at all that that most
Europeans speak two languages or even three languages in order
to deal with matters in their life and job. In Asian countries, a lot of
educated people can use the second or third language either by
reading, writing, and/or speaking and listening. In immigration
countries, there are many new immigrants who can speak more
than two languages, even though the local earlier habitants tend
to stick to their own language, since those people are less likely to
move to countries of other cultures, and they would usually hold
an attitude of party host for all the newly incoming people of
whether in a permanent or temporal status, hoping they would
follow their social etiquettes and take them as their models. They
do have reasons to do so, as it is said that when you are in Rome,
do it as what they do, especially when the population of the new
immigrants is nothing more significant than a grain in the sand.
However, as that population grows, specifically, the population
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from other cultures grows, then the new comers and their direct
descendants probably won’t rest with a status of guest and put up
with the attitude of their host any longer. Then the situation would
become much complicated, and the best way to resolve the
problem is to talk through the issues by trying to sit in other
parties’ boat. They can’t just put up a show to fool people around,
but have to do something with substantial significance. Culture
advisors are helpful for the real busy people who can’t speak
perfectly a second language, but the rest of people have to be
equipped with some decent skills of understanding others from
different culture background. If the prevailed atmosphere is for
solving the problems by channeling the emotional baggage
through deep understanding the thoughts and need of each other
people, then it would probably be easier to work things out. And
as said above, take a language course would be essential for
people who work on some specific cases of certain culture, but
taking culture courses would also help. The relationship between
culture and languages is like sisterhood. When one is interested in
certain language, they would naturally come to like that culture;
and when one likes certain culture, that interest would certainly
help their language study.
Language lives in cultures, and cultures is built on languages. That
is why the international cultural exchange not only helped to
cultivate a group of culturally more prepared people, also
propelled the promotion of languages. We can see quite some
foreign words of different origins in English language, since it is the
most popular language in the world. Needless to say, the French
and Latin originated words are among the most common ones, but
some Asian languages are also getting into English, such as Kung
Fu, Tai Chi, Dim Sum and Kao Tow, which are among the most
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popular Chinese originated words to English speakers. Why would
those words appear, which are clearly nothing but the English
version of Chinese Pin Ying – the pronunciation of Chinese words?
As we know, people can get an translator to do all the
interpretation work and make it easy for them to understand
things written in another language. But for those words, there are
obviously no equivalent words in English dictionary. So, in order to
understand the meaning of those words, they have to know
something about Chinese culture. The translation is good only for
things common to people among the different cultures. If they
have something unique in their respective culture, then the
translator will fail its job.
There are also other reasons that host countries need to become
more cultured in their behavior and attitude, and can’t always
force the new immigrants to completely follow their original
customs and rules, if they truly want to build a successful
multi-culture society and expect new comers to stay permanently.
Not only languages live in culture, people live in culture too. Food
is part of cultures, and it is a very good thing that no matter how
one would dislike the people from another culture, as long as the
food is tasty with a bargain price, they wouldn’t mind enjoying
their food, and that made the cuisine becomes the pioneers for
cultural exchange in most nations. In North America, most Chinese
people’s private business is restaurant or supermarket, with not
much barrels to enter local market and people’s life. Eating is the
most important thing in Chinese, as it is said that Chinese people
treat the eating in their life like they treat the heaven. Heaven to
Chinese people is just like the God in western people’s mind. That
tells the weight of eating to Chinese people, which is not only for
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satisfying the belly, but for socializing with people important in or
to their life. It explains why many Chinese restaurants have a very
big dining hall where numerous big round tables are placed for
group of guests to use in daily bases. When they start to eat, they
would usually drink wine. It is from there, the true meaning of
restaurant dining shows up. The wine will for sure let you talk with
your guts, and is usually the best way to make friends. In fact,
there are many poems, from the famous Chinese poet Li Bai, have
mentioned wine drinking culture of Chinese. We bet this is one of
other reasons that made him so popular in Chinese. He
self-claimed as the immortal of wine, and one of his poems Would
You Drink With Me, Jiang Jin Jiu( 将 进 酒 ) in Chinese, is a favorite
one for many Chinese guys. Northern people are especially fond of
wine. That explains the eating culture of Asian people, which
matches their relationship-oriented culture feature. And people
probably have to give Asians some credit for their promoting this
culture to propel a better relationship world-wide. At least, they
could influence their local-born descendant first, and let them to
spread the idea of smoothing the relationship through dining.
The food and drinks from different regions have great impact on
people’s life, and many of them can never change their original
dieting or drinking habit for rest of their life no matter to which
places they move. Just as some people from North of China can
never give up wine drinking, some people from certain regions can
not give up on chilly food in their eating either, otherwise they
would feel somewhat under the weather for that day, since their
dinning habits were developed for health reasons from that
particular climate in their home town, and had really become part
of their life with that nutrients built into their physical capacity.
The same situation is for people who move from one culture to
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place of another culture. People keep their certain customs and
rules in order to adapt to that particular culture, while that culture
is developed to suit their mentality. It has been commonly
accepted that people from different ethnic groups may possess
different type of mentality and physicality. Asian people are
usually more academic, Caucasian people are more likely to be
adventurous and sportive, and Black people are prone to music
and dance in their interest. While some eastern people tend to be
schematic, and western people tend to be crafty. Probably
because in antique times, the inland people from east had to use
the schemes to fight for limited useful territories for better life,
and the people from west under the great influence of Oceanic life
style, who had to learn building good navigation tools in order to
establish a successful sea business, which takes great
craftsmanship to accomplish that. The land or ocean nurtured
their own people and bestowed them with different capabilities as
well with different characteristics, on which the culture is built to
help them to grow while also to try to control and tame them by
preaching the right behaviors. That make some culture rules to
which the people belonged become the indispensable part of their
life, and function just like the relationship between the nutrients
of diet and physical health of people.
People’s mentality can be inherited when it has been firmly built
into the characters of that particular ethnic group, and one
wouldn’t expect they will completely change as they move to
place of another culture. So in order to keep a harmonious
relationship between different ethnic groups in one region, the
government should encourage the local ethnic groups to stick to
some of their traditional rules and customs, as long as it won’t
cause much disturbance to the society or apparently go against
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the local laws, instead to coerce them to entirely give up their own
culture and follow the local customs or rules which were originally
built to suit the needs of their own people. Chinese traditional
culture emphasizes Ren, Yi, and Li, which can be roughly translated
into benevolence, integrity and propriety. However, are not exactly
the same. In order for people to truly understand the meaning of
those words, they may have to study some Chinese culture and
Chinese language. Just like Junzi which can’t be directly translated
into gentleman, Ren contains much more meanings than just
being benevolent in definition of western culture. It is the highest
standard of Confucianism. Yi is not exactly as the integrity either.
Ren and Yi are standards for people, while Li is the feasible
method to obtain that standards or goal. Li has been infused into
many customs and rules of people’s life to educate younger ones
to behave in the right way, such as sympathy for others, care for
youngsters, no rude words to elders, no stealing from neighbors,
no bullying to the weak ones, being honest to the friends, keeping
the promises, keeping ties with families, and so on, which should
be things to be encouraged and help to maintain a better life
environment. Western people would usually give their youngsters
more freedom to develop their own personality, and they don’t
seem to have some common social rules to promulgate among
family or schools for the kids. So kids’ moral development totally
depends on their up-bringing from that particular family or
neighborhood. The school would help that side of them to some
degree, as the courses taught will help them to understand some
reasons, and reasons could lead to develop some common sense
about the right way of behaviors. In addition, the church goers
would definitely benefit from that in their conduct. So the ways of
moral teachings are different in each culture. A successful society
should really know how to deal with those issues by learning
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about the traditional customs of different ethnic groups and make
their people more cultured, as well more willing to accept others
the good way of doing things.
People from some cultures consume a lot of beef in their diet,
while among the most common meat animals, buffalo is more
aggressive than pig, pigs are the practical ones, and the chickens
are the proud ones. The characters of the consumed could
influence those of people who eat them. So that explains why
people of different diets might manifest with different characters.
Green food is supposed to bring better characters of people, as
the plants are generally regarded as the less selfish and aggressive,
and more fair ones, who look for a win-win situation that has been
mentioned in other chapters. Nevertheless, different plants have
different habits, likes and dislikes, just as animals do. People
should pay attention to their own physicality while they are trying
to choose the right vegetables, fruits, or plant seeds for food, as
some people might be allergic to one of those foods. It might be a
good idea to consult from the people who cherish a vegetarian
culture, and make an attempt to change their diet from time to
time. However, it doesn’t mean all people have to completely
convert to vegetarians. A combination of different types of food
would be a good pick for them to make a healthy diet not only
good for their physical health, but for the mental health that
values a harmonious relationship among people, which would
possibly make a more cultured Population.
Striving to become a cultured person is like walking on the way to
find the spring of wisdom, and drinking the spring water would
sharpen their eyes, disperse the cloud in their mind to let the light
of reasons coming into their heart to guide their conduct, and
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make them become more well-rounded, more compassionate,
more considerate, more righteous, while less selfish, stubborn and
aggressive. People can use schemes to trap others just as they did
to trap the animals in the woods in order to get what they desired.
They can also use crafts to fool people’s eyes or cloud their minds
just as magician performed in their shows. But all those tricks can
only work for once or twice or only be effective for that moment
of the show before people could find out the nature of the
schemes or secrets of the crafts. And now they are at an age that
people can find out anything including that any weirdo has just
appeared in their surroundings. So the best solution to solve some
fundamental problems in the human society is for them to have
better understanding of each other, instead of tricking each other
or hiding themselves from others, so that they could form a new
earth culture based on the diversified multi-nationality cultures, in
which the elevated culture persons would be able to see things
from multiple perspectives and extraordinarily improve their
mental health to make them enjoy the unprecedented bliss which
can’t be described according to their current level of
comprehension, as they have come closer to the purpose of the
earth life.
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Multi-Point Perspectives to Look at Things
The European Renaissance made western paintings, especially the
oil painting, flourished the art market. The western painting during
the Renaissance period mostly applied a classic realism paining
style, which is built upon the optical principle of human visions.
The mechanism of human visions is just like that of an old –
fashioned camera with a lens to let the reflected light of the object
get into a dark box in the camera and form the image on the film,
which image is like the one casted on the retina of the eyes. Then
people have the film developed in the photo shop and get the
clear image on the film which is like that image in people’s brain,
before they can have the pictures copied onto the special photo
paper and become the regular photos we keep in our books of
albums, which photo is like the work of the painters in realism
style. We call this optical principle of vision as the one- point
perspective, or the focus-point perspective based vision.
This painting style based on the one-point perspective technique
delivers beautiful images in both human portraits and sceneries
with very good resemblance to the real objects, which also gives
very good depth of the scene in the flat painting media such as
canvas. Needless to say, the successful painting work of this style
can easily attract the attention of audience, and make them
immediately come to like it, because it looks so real and could
amaze people who see something almost authentic hanging on
the wall in a frame, of course, with the extra charm and beauty
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added from enhanced light or shades and sophisticatedly
maneuvered colors. Da Vinci from the high Renaissance period
was just one of the great masters in this painting style. Just go to
look at his most well-known portrait painting The Smile of Mona
Lisa, at Palace of Louvre in Paris, which marked a splendid period,
with great achievement, in art history. He and many other talented
painters during his time also helped to develop this painting style
to make it to become a mature painting technique.
As a matter of fact, even though this painting method was
invented by Europeans, many Asian people fell into love with it
also. When it came to China during the early Qing dynasty
(1616-1912),some of the emperors immediately liked it, such as
Emperor Yong Zheng and Emperor Qian Long who had quite some
of their portraits painted by the European painters employed in
the court. There was one very well-known Italian painter, Lang
Shining, who had served in the Court of early Qing dynasty for
many years, and had left numerous exquisite oil painting works
there. He not only painted portraits, but also landscapes for the
sceneries inside the palace. Some of the royal palaces in ancient
China could cover hundreds of acres of land and had everything
for the royal families and court ladies to play inside since they
were normally not allowed to leave the palace. Lang Shining was
remembered by Chinese people not only because he painted
excellent oil paintings, but also because he had learned to paint
Chinese paintings, and had incorporated some of the western
painting techniques into Chinese paintings, especially in human
portrait. Still, he hanged on to the one-point perspective method
of classic realism painting style for almost all his work.
Nevertheless, he was one of the brilliant painters who had
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endeavored to try different things.
The one point perspective method was nonetheless a scientific
way to paint things, which works to the human’s habit of viewing
things, and has made many people accept it. If we show a
successful realism oil-painting to people, no matter what origin
they are from, it is likely that they would say it is great, but if we
put a famous ancient Chinese painting in front of people, then the
reaction would be quite different. Chinese people with deep
cultivation in Chinese culture would come to understand its value
and compliment it, but people from other cultures, especially the
western culture, probably wouldn’t agree with that compliment,
especially if it is painted with pure ink on paper without any colors
added. If there are pleasant colors added , and usually if it is in fine
brush painting style, they might say politely that it is elegant. It
means that there is something common among all cultures in their
esthetic values, such as elegance, charm, grandeur,
harmoniousness, etc al, while there are also some values that
are quite different among them.
The traditional Chinese paintings usually apply the free-point
perspective, or the multiple-point perspective, method in their
paintings, and emphasize the simplicity, elegance, expressiveness
of lines, minimum of colors, poems in painting, and artistic
concepts in the free - brush painting style, mostly since Yuan
dynasty. The multiple – point perspective method is manifested
mainly in traditional Chinese landscape painting, and gives viewers
much wider views in one painting, as it is an unique composition
from several views of the painter in multiple viewing angles along
as the painter himself walking around the sceneries. Majority
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people from western culture still feel attached to the classic
realism painting style which applied the focus – point perspective
in the painting, and emphasizes fineness, grandness, sharpness,
resemblance, shades and depths, and splendid colors since the
Renaissance period(14 th -17 th Century), even if they have changed
their artistic trend a long time ago from classic realism to
impressionism, then expressionism, post –impressionism, fauvism,
cubism, abstractionism, Dadaism, surrealism, etc al. The truth is
that those representatives of impressionism, expressionism,
cubism, abstractionism or other painting styles have almost all got
influence from other cultures such as the African art, the Oceanian
art, and the Asian art and hence developed their own art style. In
fact, the creator of cubism painting style, Picasso, had already
employed the multiple-point perspective in his painting, however,
in his own unique way, which is somewhat different from that of
Chinese painting style. That is, on the flat canvas, the viewer can
see the two opposite sides of one object, such as two eyes on the
side face of one person, or of one animal. It didn’t intend to show
the real look of the objects by using the light and shade, as well as
the one-point perspective technique, but the application of this
method to render the multi-facet look of one object, made the
painting more expressive and more meaningful. One can’t say that
Picasso created the cubism painting style is because he didn’t
know how to paint the realism work. If one looks into his painting
history and would find out, among his early works, quite some
good realism paintings. So good realism painting technique at
work isn’t the only criterion to judge one’s painting art. We have
to say that artists are usually more open-minded and more likely
to accept new things, thus made them usually the pioneers in the
innovation of the cultures. However, those new artistic trends led
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by those pioneers only lasted for a short period of time, or merely
stayed in a limited circle of people and then became the bygone of
history. There are still many people who would never get out their
old-fashioned way of life and thinking, and refuse to admit what is
going on in the new era of the society.
That demonstrated how the perspectives of views could greatly
influence the life of people, even though it seems to be something
originally only matters to the painting art whether one applies the
one-point perspective or multiple-point perspective method.
However, it reflected the people’s way of thinking when they are
doing things. Those groups of people who tend to apply one-point
perspective method in their painting and/or enjoy those type of
works are likely to look at things in a very detailed, focused and
straightforward manner, however, not very flexible, and with much
attention on the effect and result of their endeavor and the
superficial side of things, such as the exact depicted shapes and
the carefully maneuvered tones, which attract to the people’s eye
and work out to their immediate sensual purpose, however, may
make them get lost in these things and forget those that,
sometimes, matter more to people. While people who would
accept the multiple-point perspective method tend to look at
things in a more indirect way, hence more flexible, with more
imagination infused in the undefined voids, more channels of
ventilating emotions and building connections with others,
however, they can get out of the details and see the whole picture
at some sacrifice of the realistic look while may suffer some part of
purpose of the object matter itself if the method was applied to
unsuitable matters. The western painting style is built on technical
base, emphasize the craftsmanship and the dexterity of human
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hands. While the traditional Chinese painting is built on cultural
base, suggesting some philosophical ideas or expressing inner
emotion and or spirit of nationalities. On their separate courses of
artistic development in history, both methods demonstrated the
tendency of their people to deal with things. Before the early of
last century, it look like that the focus – point perspective way of
doing things had still kept its advantages and led the Europeans to
produce many advanced weapons which rewarded them greatly in
their numerous adventures globally, while the then self-contented
Chinese Emperor Qian Long had very arrogantly replied a letter to
the King of the Great Britain that the Empire of Great Qing had all
the things they wanted under the heaven, and they didn’t need
anything from other nations, to refuse to do business with
westerners. Obviously, they hadn’t developed much sense about
the power of technology by the time, which, they had to admit,
had something to do with their neglect of craftsmanship, and led
to their defeat in the Opium War at their first official martial
encounter with Europeans during middle 19 th century. Now, would
the western people keep the same attitude as that showed by
Emperor Qian Long? Would they think that their craftsmanship
could still conquer anything in the world? It is hard to say, but at
least, we can say that craftsmanship couldn’t solve all the
problems, especially in current world. In addition, that mentality
under constant influence of craftsmanship accompanied by one
point perspective method of viewing things, would finally come
back at them and made them to get lost in their own crafty hands
and single-viewed way of doing things.
Single –point perspective would likely lead to self –centerness,
stubbornness, into detail but losing the whole picture, into the
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superficial things and fancy effects but neglect the nature.
It could solve the problem quickly which is not too complex itself
and the situation of which is not too complicated either. If the
thing is too complex by nature, then the people would miss some
points and make wrong judgment call on the entire thing; if the
situation is too complicated, especially with the manipulation of
others, then it would blind their eyes and make them shooting the
wrong targets. So, maybe it is time to consider viewing things from
multiple angles and give up that stubbornness of pushing into one
corner of things and get themselves stuck inside somewhere and
lose the chance to deal with the problem from a whole point of
view which is a reasonable combination of multiple views from
different perspectives of seeing things.
People may see the same thing differently at different time, or
different people may see the same thing differently at the same
time. There is a famous fable that tells about such scenario. There
were three blind men who had never seen the elephant before.
One day, they ran into a man in the market, who was yelling to the
people around for selling his elephant. Then these three blind men
asked the owner if they could touch the elephant in order to have
an idea about this giant animal. The owner kindly consented. One
blind man walked over and happened to bump into the side of the
body of elephant. He cried excitedly: I know now what the
elephant is like. It is like a big wall. Another man also approached
the elephant at the same time, but with his hands on its legs. So
he objected by further holding the elephant’s leg with his arms:
No, the elephant is like a big trunk. The third man who just
finished his touch, being a little nervous, he said worrisomely: You
are both wrong, the elephant is like a spear, as he just touched the
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long and sharp tusk of this giant. Don’t we feel that people are just
like one of those blind men in their search for truth of things. Each
time, they can only get to one point of the thing, so it takes
multiple endeavors to get to know the entire picture of one thing,
either by combination of the views from different people at
around the same time, or even through multiple times of trying. If
there are people who are just like the third blind man and stay at
their first touch level of the elephant, then they could even make
huge mistake by thinking that the elephant is a dangerous animal,
which is absolutely wrong and unfair to this giant yet gentle
domestic animal that is of great use to humans. Thus, one has to
give up his stubbornness, and come into cooperation with others,
which would give them the points of views from different angles of
the thing, so that they could find the true solution to things. It is
meaningless to fight for who is right or who is wrong. They could
be all right, or all wrong. It depends from which perspective they
are seeing things. Once they have gotten a big picture of things,
then they can get into detail of them by using focus-point
perspective method.
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The Pros and Cons of Automatic Devices.
One of the features in modern library is that there is a huge
collection of books with titles xxx for Dumbers that are written for
people without much technical knowledge in certain field,
however, try to teach them to quickly get hand on something
through step by step guide. A big percentage of those books are
for advanced computer programs designed for professionals in
accounting, finance, web publishing, graphic design, web design,
music, video, photography, etc al. There are quite some devices
designed for dumber to use also, some of whom even aimed to
produce the professional result in their work, such as computers,
camera, video recorder, electric cook, wash machine, sewing
machine, etc al, and it seems that there is non-driver vehicle
coming out some time soon. All these easy- to- use and convenient
products seem a real bless to modern people who could save
enormous time from some general labor work and invest it into
some monotonous cell phone games, soap opera of TV series, and
some warm international or domestic chatting in the social
platforms. From the appearance, the life of modern human is busy,
fun and first of all, very modernized with all these advanced
devices of easy touch- and- go work style which should save them
not only the time, but the anxiety, the troubles, and the energy. Of
course, with some people’s extra energy fall into apparent
boredom that they would involuntarily get into troubles for
themselves and sometimes accidently cause troubles to others. In
short, this is just a rough picture of current people’s life.
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Those books definitely have their merits, that they have showed
the author’s perfect understanding to the principle of equality in
the society. Not only the intelligent and smart people can enjoy
the advanced technology which was the case before when some of
those devices were just invented by the super intelligent
professionals, but the ordinary people without good education, or
only with so-so intelligence could also enjoy the fruit of the
technological advancement. When the first computer came out,
the size was gigantic, and it was not different from the Sphinx in
ancient Egyptian and Greek stories for ordinary people, mystic and
powerful, but now, anybody can get one, with the size of the
desk-top to that of the laptop, and even the very thin and light
tabloid. They are easy to use too, with all the necessary programs
already installed inside and icons of programs neatly arranged on
the screen for the users who just need click to get things done.
Some decades ago, many people find a professional camera is like
a big puzzle for them, and didn’t know how to play with it, so they
had to go to the photo shops to have their pictures taken for the
anniversaries, or the birthday, or for friends and colleagues
gathering, but now, each person have a cell phone with a
high-resolution camera installed. To take a photo for families,
friends, or for themselves, it is as easy as touch the button, no
need to focus, no need to zoom in or zoom out, and no need to
adjust light. Everything is set up for you and all the adjustments
are automatically done. Even people stupid as woodhead wouldn’t
find problems to handle it. It explains that in now days, people
don’t need to use their brain again. All the electric, electronic and
digital apparatuses and equipments helped to develop the laziness
of people either in their life or at their work, and all the dumber
devices have make many people’s brain become rusty.
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It seemed as a scandal of this electronic and digital revolution
which is not to liberate people to pursue for true freedom, but to
put them back into the cell of brainless. A lot of people have lost
their ability to think logically and to apply reasons to their life, that
they so easily lost their mind, and acted in a bizarre way. Worse
than that is those high-tech products get smarter and smarter,
cuter and cuter and made people, especially young people really
get attached to them. The more people are attached to them, the
smarter and cuter they get, and now people can’t get out of this
new addiction any longer. This addiction didn’t get into people’s
body, but got into their mind and spirit to weaken their will and
self-control, and make them lose reasons.
Those technological products especially the ones built on digital
technology follow strictly with a very basic logic: Yes or No. If it is
yes, then go forward, if no, then stop, or make another selection
before you can go forward. The application of that logic is the
artificial intelligence created by human by borrowing inorganic
material to modify and simplify biological mechanism. The team of
professionals who invented those devices must have equipped
with good knowledge in all related fields before they could make it
work, thus, the good designs could model the human thinking and
apply human reasons in a sophisticate way, and produce the very
complicated and advanced high-tech products However, it is not
possible for all other people to understand that mechanism, then
the makers have to create a set of language in the instruction
manual that is easy for clients to understand and follow. That is
how the Yes or No pattern or other similar pattern of manual
instructions came out. That logic is just the precedent of dumber
books which, as have mentioned above, have its merit, but also
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produced enormous side-effects. It made the users become slaves
of those simple logic which is the much simpler version of their
own thinking system, however, due to its simplicity and
effectiveness to accomplish goals, had made human developed
the great reliance on them, and then started to think like the
devices. When those products just came out, it might not cause
the great damage to the society, due to its high price and limited
scale of use in people’s life and work, but now, what a disaster, as
majority people have joined that army of high-tech products use.
And now it’s really getting great! a lot of people started to think
that if it is not yes, then, it is no; if it is not good, then it is bad; if
you are not our friends, then you are our enemies; if you are not
westerners, then you are communists; if you do artistic painting
work, then you cannot engage in scientific or social study. They
even have lost to the sophistication of those well-designed devices,
as they tend to forget that they have to follow all the steps of their
own logic process just as indicated in the steps of the manual in
order to accomplish their goal. Those steps in manual, of course,
have been shortened again and again by the producers who are
under the pressure to prove their convenience and get more
clients to use the products, and one can get straightly to the final
goal within two or three steps and let the machines do all the logic
process for them. At end, they only have Yes-or-No logic left in
their mind, which has penetrated into every side of the modern
society. This tendency is very bad for creating a stable and
harmonious social environment, and made people so easily lose
their mind, and unable to develop or come back on their good
reasons.
It may not be possible for everybody to move around the world
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very often for the purpose of a new job or a new life, which would
gain them rich life experience. However, they can learn experience
in where they live by creating chances themselves and by finding
reasonable challenges that are harmless to others. They don’t
have to use all those handy devices which make their daily life
seemingly much easier, however, the true life meaning is much
reduced. The significance of life is to live into every aspect of it and
find out the balance of life, then learn to use that lesson to apply
to other things that they have never experienced before. If
everything is already done for them, and they are just like an
infant, waiting to be fed and dressed, and taken to the street for a
stroll by an non-driver vehicle, the whole value of the life has
suffered greatly. Maybe it is not a bad idea to play one less
computer game, and find an old camera to play with it, to see how
it works and can learn some physics. Maybe it will be worthwhile
to chat one hour less on the phone for some non-urgent and
non-significant conversation, and spend the time painting a
beautiful scenery picture and discover the harmony of the nature.
Maybe it would be more beneficial to participate in an meaningful
social event or do once a while a communal volunteer job by take
risk one time less in the casino gambling or stock speculation.
Sometimes, the results don’t really matter, the course of process
or working at it matters. Why fishing could be such alluring game
for man, it is not the number of fishes they could catch, it is about
sitting there contemplating on life and merging themselves into
the nature. If it is about how many fish they can catch, then an
electric fish net will do a much nicer job.
In modern world, a lot of people have been intoxicated by the
products created by themselves. Among them, most prominent
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ones are the digital high-tech products, the network products, and
the financial products. The high-tech products fascinate people
and make them forget their own value and meaning as a human,
the financial products keep the people thrilled and hooked on,
which is like new version of gambling game, and the internet
products get people submerged in the ocean of internet products
and fancy tools and not wanted to swim back home. Thus, people
almost never have time of themselves, when they get out of the
ocean of internet and try to take some fresh air, then the high-tech
products will allure them over, if they are not interested in
financial investment. High-tech products built on the new
discovery and advancement of technology in various fields such
physics, biology, medicine, chemistry, informatics etc al did have
let human’s life make a giant jump forward and have brought
enormous convenience to some people’s job. The unprecedented
high efficiency and effectiveness demonstrated in those products,
which only showed in ancient mythology made people exciting
and also drive some of them crazy. Quite some of those people
who could afford to use those products or have legal access to
those restricted products are nobody but people of ordinary level
in their intellectual aptitude, and have no idea how those products
are made, and how to properly put them to the best use of its
civilized purpose. Some of those products could be dangerous and
can function as tools to harm innocent people, and should not be
put to big scale of use, especially not suitable to be handed over to
people who are ignorant of any possible social or physical
consequence it may cause to the society or to people.
The prevailed use of those products could firstly cause direct
problems to the society by creating unnecessary chaos and
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conflicts between people due to mis-use or selfish use by some
privileged people equipped with those device, and ruining the life
of people as well as damaging their health, which led them to
lose faith on the authority of the society and make the whole
society fail its task. Secondly the it could further make the general
public and even the users themselves get superstitious about
things which they can’t see with eyes or hear with ears. Many
people aren’t equipped with advanced knowledge of biology,
chemistry or physics, and won’t be able to explain the things
associated with invisible brain waves or wireless internet waves,
and easily get confused about things that can only be explained by
high-end knowledge. Just as all the voice and visual signals of the
internet are transmitted by the wireless waves in the wireless
network, the human’s thoughts are also a type of biological brain
wave which just functions like the wireless waves and can be
transmitted to other people and be influenced by others as their
brain can receive the wave signals from others also. If some
manipulators keep pounding on some people with fabricated
brain-waves, then they could convince them with fake information.
There are some manipulating users who had tried to make people
including some other users to believe some non-existed
supernatural thing or convince general public to believe some
ordinary person(the true victims of those high-tech products and
schemes) have supernatural power and constantly and brutally
manipulate and harass their life or coerce others to do so. Thirdly,
if some users try to intervene the life of religious people and fake
the message of God to those believers in order to fool or use those
people, then it is a very bad deed against the spiritual belief and
would cause confusion to the very fundamental thing in the
society and would sure face severe consequence and bring
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backfire upon themselves. Once those people found out, they
would retaliate and cause great social problems.
Maybe, it is the time to reconsider the use of of some of those
high-tech products, and it is time to modify the life style of our
modern people. If modernization goes over the ability of human’s
control on the system, then it should slow down and might be
even necessary to make a step backward.
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The Chinese language and its basic comparison with
some other Languages
By Jenn Zhu Nov. 6 th
Most languages share some similarities. They are composed of
different groups of words, such as nouns, articles, verbs, pronouns,
adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, numeric words,
exclamations, etc al. The sentence is mainly constructed by three
parts: subject, predicate and object. They also have certain similar
language styles such as the formal style, official style, standard
style, and oral style, as well as slang. However, they have quite
some differences among them too.
Like English language which indicates the time or mood of the
language, through various forms of the verb with/without
corresponding auxiliary verbs, French possesses roughly five
different types of language moods such as infinitive mood,
imperative mood, indicative mood, conditional mood, and
subjunctive mood. Also similar to English language, it has the a set
of present, future, and past tenses by employing the proper
conjugation of verbs to express the time of the event, a much
more complex language tense system than that of pictographic or
ideographic language such as Chinese language. And just as the
English, it creates new words through adding prefix and suffix.
However, its vocabulary of nouns is divided into two different
groups by genders of feminine or masculine, which is unique.
Because of that, it has two sets of articles and pronouns for all
persons, and its adjectives are modified by changing into two type
of forms to go with the gender of the corresponding nouns in the
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sentences, which are not the case in English language. French
language’s sentence clause doesn’t always follow the Subject –
Predicate – Object order, especially in the case when the object is
replaced by the pronouns.
For Chinese, we could say that it is a very semantic language, but it
doesn’t mean it has a huge vocabulary. According to the newly
compiled Chinese dictionary, it contains roughly over 80,000
characters, compared with the English words which is now about
170,000 words in use, besides 4,700 obsolete words. A big portion
of Chinese characters are composed of a semantic
component/part (to indicate the meaning) and a phonetic
component/part ( to guide the pronunciation). But many
characters only has one component for meaning, or two and more
semantic components to compose an abstract meaning or more
complex meaning than the basic character, such as
“ 炎 ”(meaning hot, with “ 火 ”-fire, piled up), “ 思 ”(think, composed
of two parts “ 田 ”-crop field and “ 心 ”- heart),“ 森 ”(the forest with
plenty of trees, composed by three same character “ 木 ”- wood)
There are some rare characters who are composed of two and
more phonetic parts too, such as 夥 (Pinyin: huo, composed by
“ 果 :Pinyin: guo” and “ 多 :Pinyin: duo”).The character“ 鑫 ”(Pinyin:
xin) could be included in the above category, but also in this
category, considering that it has very similar sound as its
component part “ 金 ” (Gold, Pinyin: jin), though “ 金 ” is normally
used as a semantic part in many characters such as
“ 银 ”(silver)“ 铜 ”(copper)“ 铁 ”(iron).
Both English and Chinese languages only employ a small portion of
the vocabulary for their common use. In Chinese, that number
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could be 3500 characters, while in English, it is about 3300 words.
However, for Chinese language, those 3500 characters could
compose a big reservoir of words with a figure much bigger than
that number. Chinese characters can compose two - characters
word, three- character words or phrases, four-character phrases
and idioms such as Chengyu( 成 语 )。
Two-character word is the most common word compositional style,
such as 单 词 (word)、 九 天 (highest heaven)、 酷 暑 (very hot)、
登 陆 (log in )、 比 较 ( compare )、 漂 亮 ( pretty ) etc al.
Three-character words are usually seen in words for describing
colors, sounds, as well as the state of the matter, such as 黄 橙 橙
(bright yellow)、 红 彤 彤 (bright red)、 沉 甸 甸 (noticeably heavy)、
哗 啦 啦 (the sound of running water or heavy rain), 摇 晃 晃
(shaking, usually with noticeable physical movement). Those
words normally have its basic meaning on the first characters, and
the following two repeated characters add to the dimension,
degree or level of the original meanings. In addition, some
words from foreign language also adopted three-character form,
such as “ 亚 马 逊 ”(Amazon). Four-character phrases are a
phenomenon of Chinese language. There are over 30,000
four-character phrases in Chinese language. Most of them can
function as idioms, which means that it can be used singly to
express a full idea, and it is called Chengyu. It is true though that
there are Chengyu that are not four-character phrases. Many
times, Chengyu is used as a part of the sentence to supplement or
enhance the expression of the ideas, such as “ 夸 父 逐 日 ”“ 掩 耳 盗
铃 ”“ 掩 耳 盗 铃 ”“ 智 子 疑 邻 ” “ 孔 融 让 梨 ” ” 退 避 三 舍 ”“ 瓜 田 李
下 ”“ 孟 母 三 迁 ”“ 狐 假 虎 威 ” “ 山 外 有 山 ”“ 藏 龙 卧 虎 ”“ 繁 花 似 锦 ”
etc al.
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For example:
此 地 藏 龙 卧 虎 , 不 得 不 令 人 刮 目 相 看 。
There are many talents hiding in this place, which made many
people show their admiration and respect.
“ 藏 龙 卧 虎 ” (literally means that there are dragons and tigers
hiding in one particular place, now it is used as a metaphor to hint
a place that bears many talented people who, however, won’t
normally show up in public), here functions as the predicate part
in this sentence.
这 个 昔 日 繁 花 似 锦 的 花 园 仍 然 吸 引 着 不 少 游 客 。
This garden which had once been the space for the most
beautiful and popular flowers of the time still attracted many
tourists in now days.
“ 繁 花 似 锦 ” (literally means that many flowers clustered together
in the garden is like a piece of embroidered carpet or cloth, could
be interpreted as beautiful or gorgeous, according to the different
contexts), is functioned like an adjective in this sentence to modify
the“ 花 园 ”(garden).
A lot of those four-character phrases are originated from the
historical stories or fable stories from ancient literature. For
example, “ 夸 父 逐 日 ”( literally means that Father Kua chases the
sun) is from an ancient mythology. It said that there was a man
called Father Kua who hated the sun that had caused the draught
to the land. So he chased the sun and decided to strike it down
from the sky, but the sun was always faster than he was, and he
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never succeeded, instead dropped dead during his chase due to
the fatigue and thirst, but where he died, there appeared a piece
of peach woods which could help thirsty people. And the later
people often use it as a metaphor to praise people who are brave
enough to challenge difficulties and fight the adversary situation.
“ 孔 融 让 梨 ”(literally means that Kong, Rong gives the bigger pear
to his brother), tells about the story of an ancient man named
Kong, Rong when he was a little kid. Once day, the family was
giving out the pears to all the youngsters at home, and Kong, Rong
was given a big one because he was there first. But Kong, Rong put
it back, and took a small pear. His parents asked him why he would
do so. Kong, Rong said, “I am younger and smaller than them, so I
should take the small one. The bigger one should be given to my
older brothers.” People were amazed by such behavior of altruism
from a very young child, which nobody had ever told him to do. So,
in later generations, people often use it to promote basic social
etiquettes among young people. “ 退 避 三 舍 ”is also story about
propriety, but for the adults, that people should yield to others
some times, especially when they owes the person. Only in this
way, that they can muster their strength for a real powerful fight if
their adversary still pushes in.
“ 瓜 田 李 下 ”is a abbreviation from “ 瓜 田 不 穿 鞋 , 李 下 不 抬 头 ”,
which literally means walking in the water melon field, one
shouldn’t work on his shoes, and under the plum trees, one
shouldn’t raise his head and look up), hints that people should
know how to behave properly when they are in some delicate
situation that could easily cause people’s suspicion. Just as when
one shouldn’t bend his waist to do his shoes when he is walking in
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the melon field of others, in order to avoid people from suspecting
him to steal the melons from them, similarly, they shouldn’t raise
their head to look up under the plum trees, otherwise it is possible
to cause suspicion that they are trying to steal the plums.
“ 掩 耳 盗 铃 ” is from a fable story that somebody wanted to steal a
nice door bell of a rich family, but was afraid that the resident
would hear the sound of bell when he touched it. So he blocked
his ears before he approached this door bell, which he thought
would be a brilliant idea, instead got him busted. So this phrase is
used to describe people who think they are clever enough to
escape the malign consequences when they are doing bad deeds,
and who, however, are deemed to fail.
“ 孟 母 三 迁 ” is a story about the mother of Mencius, by moving
the location of their home three times, tried to select a good
neighborhood for Mencius when he was a little kid, in order to
make sure that Mencius would go on the right direction of his life,
instead of learning improper behaviors from non-ideal living
environment. It said the importance of the environment for the
education of kids.
We have to say there are many beautiful stories contained in those
Chengyu.
Another noticeable feature about those four-character phrases is
that the numbers are frequently used among them. For example:
“ 一 气 呵 成 ” : 一 (one)
“ 两 小 无 猜 ” : 两 (two)
“ 三 流 九 教 ” : 三 (three)
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“ 四 通 八 达 ”: 四 (four)
“ 五 光 十 色 ”: 五 (five)
“ 六 六 大 顺 ”: 六 (six)
“ 七 上 八 下 ”: 七 (seven)
“ 半 斤 八 两 ”: 八 (eight)
“ 八 面 来 风 ”: 八 (eight)
“ 九 牛 一 毛 ”: 九 (nine)
“ 十 有 八 九 ”: 十 (ten)
“ 百 战 百 胜 ”: 百 (hundred)
“ 千 岩 万 转 ”: 千 (thousand)
“ 万 寿 无 疆 ” 万 (ten thousands)
And there are many more these type of four-character phrases in
Chinese dictionary.
Why there are so many four-character phrases come into being?
Some of the most important factors could be the tonal feature of
Chinese language and the Chinese peoples’ taste on the
symmetricity of things. Even though, there is no special gap
between different words of one sentence in Chinese writing, when
one speaks it, there is usually pause between the words to make
the meaning more comprehensible. The four characters of each of
those phrases which could slip off the tone smoothly together, are
usually interweaved with flat, rising, rising and falling or falling
tones, and made the speech sounds very poem-like. While
because it is four characters together, it satisfies Chinese people’s
taste to the symmetry of views
Chinese grammar is a lot more simple than that of English or
French languages, even though Chinese people are usually very
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good at grammars in any foreign languages they are studying.
Because a big part of the logic embedded in English grammar is
hidden in the meaning of the Chinese characters. Chinese people
develop their logic through contemplation, not by speaking, that
made -them a more introspective action-focused people, instead
of outgoing speech-oriented people in their behavior pattern. This
“action” here means the detailed work, should be differentiated
from the one in Laozi’s “Non-action” which includes any conducts
or events. We could say Chinese characters are the first and one of
their main sources for contemplation. Chinese language doesn’t
have any changing form for their verb at all, but indicates the time
by adding a word, usually adverbs, such as “ 了 / 过 ”(expressing the
past or the perfect tense, normally placed after the verb), “ 将 ”
(expressing the future, normally placed before the verb), “ 在 ”
( expressing the present, placed before the verb ). And
sometimes, it doesn’t add any extra words, but simply indicates
the time through the context, or the detailed time information
stated in the sentence. And the clause of Chinese sentence follows
a Subject – Predicate – Object order, which is similar to English.
For sentence examples (all examples are from modern Chinese
language. In ancient Chinese language, different words or
grammars may apply):
我 将 完 成 作 业 。 I will finish my home work.
她 去 过 这 个 美 丽 的 城 市 。She has been to that beautiful city.
约 翰 去 了 那 个 城 市 。John went to that city.
他 弟 弟 将 马 上 从 中 学 毕 业 。His brother will graduate from
middle school very soon.
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玛 丽 的 妈 妈 在 作 家 务 。Mary’s mother is doing the house work
right now.
明 天 是 新 年 , 今 晚 我 们 ( 将 ) 一 起 吃 饭 。It is the New Year’s day
tomorrow, we’ll have dinner together tonight. “ 将 ” is omitted,
and it is better to be omitted than not. Otherwise, it sounds odd
to Chinese people.
昨 晚 我 ( 在 ) 做 作 业 时 , 弟 弟 在 看 电 视 。My brother was
watching TV last night when I was doing my homework. “ 在 ”
was omitted in this case also.
Word “ 完 ”is often used to express the status of “being finished”,
and can be placed after the verb to express the past or perfect
tense, similar to “ 过 ”.
那 个 小 妞 终 于 将 报 纸 卖 完 了 。That little girl finally sold out all
the newspaper.
他 们 已 经 吃 完 晚 饭 。They have already finished the dinner.
In addition, “ 着 ”can be added after the verb to indicate past- going
tense.
读 着 书 , 她 爸 爸 睡 着 了 。 Her father fell asleep when he was
reading.
想 着 想 着 , 这 位 学 生 猛 地 从 座 位 上 站 了 起 来 。This student
suddenly stood up from his seat while he was still pondering on
the question.
So, we can see that there is no rigidly regulated rules in Chinese
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language grammar as in French or English language. Many of those
grammatical functions that are showed in French or English
language can be replaced by certain different words in Chinese.
There are still many more words similar to the ones mentioned
above that contain grammatical significance in Chinese language,
which are to be introduced with a few more in the following
paragraph, however, can’t be possibly brought up here
completely.
In Chinese, the adverbs are usually placed before the verb and
adjectives before the nouns in the sentences. Take the above
examples again:
他 弟 弟 将 马 上 (very soon) 从 中 学 毕 业 (graduate)。
His brother will graduate from middle school very soon.
“very soon” is placed before “graduate”.
她 去 过 这 个 美 丽 (beautiful) 的 城 市 。She has been to that
beautiful city.
“beautiful” is placed before “city” in this sentence.
Most of the time, Chinese subordinate clause is placed before the
main clause. (Sometimes, the subordinate clause can be replaced
by the adverbial phrases).
For examples:
为 了 完 成 学 业 , 他 不 得 不 晚 上 兼 职 工 作 。
In order to finish his study, he had to work part-time in the
evening time.
“ 为 了 完 成 学 业 ”( In order to finish his study), which is a clause to
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express the purpose of the sentence, is placed before the main
clause “ 他 不 得 不 晚 上 兼 职 工 作 ”(he had to work part-time in the
evening time).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
正 在 回 家 的 时 候 , 她 看 到 了 圣 诞 游 行 队 伍 。
When she was walking home, she saw the Christmas parade.
“ 正 在 回 家 的 时 候 ”( When she was walking home), which is a
clause to indicate the time of the event, is placed before the main
clause ‘ 她 看 到 了 圣 诞 游 行 队 伍 ”(she saw the Christmas parade).
But in English, it would be ok to place “when she was walking
home” after the main clause “She saw the Christmas parade”.
“ 正 在 回 家 的 时 候 ”( When she was walking home)can be
replaced by the adverbial phrase ” 在 回 家 的 路 上 ”(On the way
back home), which is similar to English.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
( 他 ) 懒 洋 洋 躺 在 在 沙 发 上 , 这 位 小 伙 子 开 始 翻 阅 一 本 小 说 。
The young man began to read a novel absentmindedly, when he
was lying sluggishly on couch.
“( 他 ) 懒 洋 洋 躺 在 在 沙 发 上 ”, which is a clause to indicate the
location of the event, if placed before the main clause “ 这 位 小 伙
子 开 始 翻 阅 一 本 小 说 ”. While in English, it would be ok to place
the subordinate clause ”when he was lying sluggishly on couch”
both before or after the main clause “The young man began to
read a novel absentmindedly”. However, due to the reason that
the subject is replaced by a pronoun in the subordinate clause, it
would probably make more sense to place it after the main clause
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sometimes. However, in Chinese, the subject could be omitted in
the subordinate clause, which happens in some occasions. The
perfect grammar is not always necessary in Chinese language,
even in the writing style, but the concise expression and precise
meaning of the sentence is essential.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
However, the subordinate clause to express the result is usually
placed after the main clause in Chinese, which is similar to English.
For example:
他 经 常 缺 课 , 以 至 于 他 年 终 考 试 不 及 格 。
He was often absent in his classes, and consequently he failed
his final exams.
“ 以 至 于 他 年 终 考 试 不 及 格 “(and consequently he failed his final
exams), which is a clause to express the result, is placed after the
main clause ” 他 经 常 缺 课 ” (He was often absent in his classes).
*****
Chinese language’s nouns have no plural or singular forms. The
Chinese people probably feel that is not necessary to create a
plural form for nouns, since there are words to express the
quantity before the nouns, either one( 一 个 , 一 本 , 一 斤 等 等 ),
or two or a few( 几 个 ) or many( 很 多 ) or very few( 很 少 ), etc al.
While French people are very particular with their use of nouns,
which even effects the use of the adjectives that modifies the
noun. Each noun has its own gender of being either feminine or
masculine, which could be one of the most difficult parts to learn
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French language, especially for foreigners, besides the complex
conjugation of verbs. This probably demonstrates the special taste
of French people in their culture, including cuisine, literature, art,
etc al.
Chinese language creates its formal interrogation style in a
different way from some other languages. For the Yes/no
questions, it is created by adding a word “ 吗 ” at the end of the
sentence, and then a question mark “?”, or sometimes by adding
“ 有 没 有 ” “ 是 不 是 ” before the verb or other question-related
words. There is no need to change the order of the sentence or
add an auxiliary verb at the beginning of the sentence. For
example:
你 见 到 她 了 吗 ? Did you see her?
那 张 台 是 不 是 黄 色 的 ?Is that table yellow?
你 妈 有 没 有 告 诉 过 你 这 件 事 ?Has your mother told you about it?
For What questions, it is created by employing a word” 什 么 ”,
usually placed before the relevant nouns or at the end of the
sentence, so it is not necessarily placed at the beginning of the
sentence as what English or French language always do. For How
question, it adds a word “ 怎 么 ”before the relevant verb, which
could or could not be at the beginning of the sentence. For When/
Where/Why question, it is done by adding a word “ 什 么 时 候 / 什
么 地 方 / 为 什 么 ”or“ 啥 时 / 啥 地 方 / 为 何 ”before the relevant verb,
following the similar order rules as the above two. In some very
formal expression(especially in ancient Chinese),people also use
“ 何 时 / 何 地 ( 何 方 )” to replace “ 什 么 时 候 / 什 么 地 方 ”. And a
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question mark is probably universal for the interrogation style of
all languages. For example:
这 是 什 么 ? What is this?
你 有 什 么 衣 服 可 以 穿 ? What clothes do you have to wear?
这 事 该 怎 么 办 ? How should we deal with this matter?
我 们 啥 时 上 课 ? When do we have the classes?
这 家 商 店 在 什 么 地 方 ?Where is this shop?
这 个 城 市 的 什 么 地 方 可 以 打 网 球 ?Where can we play tennis
in this city?
冤 冤 相 报 何 时 了 ?When can the fights provoked by hatred
come to its end?
希 望 在 何 方 ( 何 地 )?
Where is my hope?
Japanese language has similar origin as Chinese language, only
they developed their own phonetic symbols Hiragana and
Katakana later, in order to express the things and ideas that are
not included in the Kanji and expand its vocabulary from foreign
words. The Kanji are very similar to those of Chinese characters
and have their own separate Hiragana forms with the same
pronunciation as the latter.
However, Japanese follows a different clause order in its sentence
that is Subject - Object – Predicate, instead of Subject – Predicate
– Object, which is very unique feature of Japanese language. Also
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Japanese language usually would bring up the topic of their
speaking at the beginning part of the sentence in order to get into
the conversation quickly with the clearly-stated purpose. Also
Japanese don’t like to use pronouns too much in their speaking,
due to the fact that they are people of great politeness and it
would be rude to use pronouns to replace the name or the title of
the person. So different languages help to produce while, at the
same time, demonstrate different cultures.
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Grapes by Xu Wei (Ming Dynasty)
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This is one of the particular ancient Chinese paintings
accompanied by a furnished poem at the side of the image. The
following is the poem in the painting:
I have passed half of my life without any success,
Now I am standing in my study alone, shouting to the evening wind:
I have these adorable pearl – like grapes here created by my brush that have got no
place to sell,
Should I just scatter them among the wild vines to be with the wind.
This poem certainly makes the meaning of the painting come to
light, which hinted that the painter was frustrated about his
life situation and dissatisfied by the way the authority has
treated him. Since the pearls are usually regarded as very
precious things by people, he obviously felt his talent which
shines life pearl has not been put into proper use, so he applied
the pearl-like grapes dumped in the vines as a metaphor to
indicate his status of being ignored by the current people in
power. Xu is also a very talented poet, in addition that he had
got his revolutionary brush strokes for painting which greatly
impact the modern art of China. He has a very high reputation
in this Great Free-hand Brush painting style.
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Portrait of Confucious by Wu Daozhi ( Tang Dynasty)
Wu Daozhi was a very famous Chinese figure painter from Tang
dynasty. He created a delineation brush stroke called
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Willow-leaf Brush Stroke which focuses the strength on the
middle part of the line and made the two ends of the line lighter
while the middle part lining heavier, thus made it good for
painting the male figure, to manifest the masculine characters
of men.
This delineation brush stroke is contrast to the Silk Brush
Stroke created by Gu Kaizhi from Jin Dynasty who was more toward
presenting the feminine side of ancient Chinese woman.
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