Back to the Homepage

"Only those who take leisurely what the people of the world are busy about can be busy about what the people of the world take leisurely."

- CHANG CH'AO

The constant care of the Chinese artists is: Leave something for the imagination!

"I have seen a few examples of European Buddhists monks, who talk altogether too loudly and too vehemently to conceal the tumultuous passions in their souls. In particular, I have seen one who, in his energetic denunciation of the West, is willing to call down fire and brimstone from heaven to burn up all Europe. When Europeans put on Buddhist gowns and try to look calm and passive, they merely look ridiculous."

– Lin Yutang (1895-1976)

"I am sitting alone in an empty room and I am getting annoyed at a mouse at the head of my bed, and wondering what that little rustling sound signifies - what article of mine he is biting or what volume of my books he is eating up. While I am in this state of mind, and don't know what to do, I suddenly see a ferocious-looking cat, wagging its tail and staring with wide open eyes, as of it were looking at something. I hold my breath and wait a moment, keeping perfectly still, and suddenly with a little sound the mouse disappears like a whiff of wind. Ah, is this not happiness?"

__________

"A book about China, worthy to be about China, can be none of these things. It must be frank and unashamed, because the real Chinese have always been a proud people, proud enough to be frank and unashamed of themselves and their ways. It must be wise and penetrative in its understanding, for the Chinese have been above all peoples wise and penetrative in their understanding of the human heart. It must be humorous, because humor is an essential part of Chinese nature, deep, mellow, kindly humor, founded upon the tragic knowledge and acceptance of life. It must be expressed in flowing, exact, beautiful words, because the Chinese have always valued the beauty of the exact and the exquisite. None but a Chinese could write such a book, and I had begun to think that as yet even no Chinese could write it, because it seemed impossible to find a modern English writing Chinese who was not so detached from his own people as to be alien to them, and yet detached enough to comprehend their meaning, the meaning of their age and the meaning of their youth."

- Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)

_________

"I remember that when I was a child, I could stare at the sun with wide, open eyes. I could see the tiniest objects, and loved to observe the fine grains and patterns of small things, from which I derived a romantic, unworldly pleasure. When mosquitoes were humming round in summer, I transformed them in my imagination into a company of storks dancing in the air. And when I regarded them that way, they were real storks to me, flying by the hundreds and thousands, and I would look up at them until my neck was stiff."

"Again, I kept a few mosquitoes inside a white curtain and blew a puff of smoke round them, so that to me they became a company of white storks flying among the blue clouds, and their humming was to me the song of storks singing in high heaven, which delighted me intensely. Sometimes I would squat by a broken, earthen wall, or by a little bush on a raised flower-bed, with my eyes on the same level as the flower-bed itself, and there I would look and look, transforming in my mind the little plot of grass into a forest and the ants and insect into wild animals. The little elevations on the ground became my hills, and the depressed areas became my valleys, and my spirit wandered in that world at leisure.

One day, I saw two little insects fighting among the grass, and while I was all absorbed watching the fight, there suddenly appeared a big monster, overturning my hills and tearing up my forest - it was a little toad. With one lick of his tongue, he swallowed up the two little insects. I was so lost in my young imaginary world that I was taken unawares and quite frightened. When I had recovered myself, I caught the toad, struck it several dozen times and chased it out of the courtyard. Thinking of this incident afterwards when I was grown up, I understood that these two little insects were committing adultery by rape."

"The wages of sin is death.' so says an ancient proverb, and I wondered whether it was true of the insects also. I was a naughty boy, and once my ball (for we call the genital organ a "ball" in Soochow) was bitten by an earthworm and became swollen. [Believing that the duck's saliva would act as an antidote for insect bites,] they held a duck over it, but the maid-servant, who was holding the duck, accidentally let her hand go, and the duck was going to swallow it. I got frightened and screamed. People used to tell this story to make fun of me. These were the little incidents of my childhood days.”

__________

"The man on water buffalo" typifies what is of China.

"The man on water buffalo", typifies what is of China, I think. To interpret it , one may have to open wide a Judeo-Christian eye so as to look into the heart of it, that is of one Taoist monk; for, as in the supposition: only if one stands higher he would have a clear picture of it:

Lo, what’s in his hand is not an Aaron’s rod, but a twig. For he thinks he enjoys being so as close to the natural world. “Why should I use sewed fig leaves to cover, or garments of skins to cleanse? For I’ve never eaten of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden. Nor have I ever touched it.” He might have so said. Mounted not on a donkey but on a water buffalo, – its tail haphazardly in swing as in patting its back, he is carefree, as much as can be; and he's in his dreamland as in a countryside, seeing miles and miles away a red light in the sky, about the size of a big basket, bobbing up and down upon the high sea, and the horizon reddened as if illuminated by a great fire, he is not in awe of it and would not have a humble image thereafter. For his world is already part of that world. He is merely and simply carefree. He sees no need to triumph, either. Yet the whole scene is aromatic, thus triumphing the most, and it is irresistible. This is an image of a perfect Taoist monk in the spirit.

- Interpreting the Eden in September, 2009

Laozi, the author of Tao Te Ching: whose authorship is widely accepted already.

A scroll of Tao Te Ching, the first chapter.

__________

Chinese puzzle: 1: an intricate or ingenious puzzle. 2: something intricate and obscure. Chinese wall: a strong barrier, especially: a serious obstacle to understanding. - From Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th Edition)

Is there anything that dispels the mystique of the Chinese puzzle and pulls down the Chinese wall? For, perhaps, they are meanwhile the very shackles that have chained people not only in the world but also outside of it.

__________

Efforts made in cross-cultural affairs management:

A suggestion for the UK pavilion for the Expo 2010 Shanghai

★★★

Heading for the Australian Pavilion Expo 2010 Shanghai

Ideas

Ideas that are used as some reflection of the West and are supposed to touch subtlety of the Far-East involve understanding of both.

__________

Back to the Homepage