The Search for the One Who Knows Everyone
What the Chinese Want
What do the Chinese people want out of life? Many have tried to determine this, but no pattern has immediately appeared from the mass of contemporary literature or from the key phrases in the public forum that sufficiently defines the Chinese desire for a lifestyle direction in Chinese terms, apart from those without context, like “Modern” and “Contemporary”, which are derived more from China looking at other nations than looking at itself. The concept itself seems so abstract that many on the outside have been daunted by the possibility of finding it, but the tendency towards high abstraction is a characteristic of the Chinese people as a whole, and something to be admired rather than scorned. Like the figures in a painting, which suggest nature but retain their unnatural proportions, or like the meaning of a Chinese character, which is only a suggestion of a previous hieroglyph, so the abstractions of the Chinese dream cannot take form by compiling lists of contemporary manifestations. It is a compound idea that can only be grasped by those who can hold the qualities of Chinese philosophy on one hand, and balance the realities of an economically charged and internationalized China on the other. It is far subtler and more rewarding for those who find the silken strands of the Chinese cultural pact between man and nature pulled through two thousand years of literature, and tangled in the free-form bonsai trees of great philosophers’ thoughts, like strings that lead to the tales of shattered kites. When these strands are followed to the end, they lead to their source in an otherworldly paradise in an immortal’s peach garden.
Return to the Peach Blossom Spring
Jin stared at the motorcycle blankly, trying to think about what he was going to do… he needed to change the snapped drive chain, but he also didn’t want to touch the stupid machine. As he pretended to look at the parts, his mind wandered. He had heard that his friends who went to the city to get construction jobs were paid in a month what he was able to make in a year in the country. His mother needed medicine, coming home from her job in a factory when she couldn’t work the long hours that were required of her, but they were desperately short of cash. He wanted to see the world, too, to get out of this little farming hole and see how people lived, like in the Korean series where everyone wore white pants and colorful sweaters, drove nice cars, and lived in sparkling apartments. Visions of a misty, big-city skyline haunted his dreams and made it hard to focus on work at home, scraping a living out of the yellow earth, feeding the pigs, or working for his uncle in the tiny machine shop. As he eased into work, he set his cell-phone on an old tire, and pop music blared from its tiny speakers, helping him to loose his thoughts in a pink-haze of love lyrics sung in a monotone Taiwanese accent.
He was glad he had his phone. Since he didn’t have a girlfriend and had been left behind by all the older kids, who worked in coastal towns, his cell-phone was his only joy, his only connection… it was his life.
Propagating the Mandate
King Wen’s Example
Inspired by the stories of the founding of China in the Zhou Dynasty, the people of peaceful dynasties set themselves to the serious work of imitating King Wen’s lifestyle in the minutest detail. Zhou Wen’s reproductive prowess was legendary, fathering 100 sons in his long lifetime. Even after the Chinese forgot to worship Wen as an emperor, they continued to venerate him as the “God of Sons” or “Bed God”. The Chinese were inspired by the idea of the “Round Family” that Wen presented in the Book of Changes, and aspired through his lifestyle and theory of life to the ideal of the “Big House” and the “Full Gate”, where the maxim “the more the merrier” was literally the only rule.
Happy Chinese New Year!!!!!
The fireworks are blaring in the village as I write this post! Men are red-faced and bleary, yelling at each other to dry their glasses… children scream in terror and glee, playing with red-envelopes and new toys… and women sit at the tables, gnawing on sunflower seeds and gossiping about relatives. I sit in the midst of all of this, overwhelmed with the beauty and bliss of this moment, wishing that I could send this feeling of warmth and love to all my friends in the West. It reminds me why I love China, what I can learn from China, and what the Chinese have yet to teach us all!
Happy Chinese New Year! May everything that you set your mind to become a reality! May you be a success in study and business! May ten thousand wonderful things happen to you this year!
新年快乐，心想事成，事业成功，恭喜发财，万事如意！
- Will
The Collapse of the Village Ethic
The cultural paradigm of a villager exists in every culture, creating a kind of universal archetype that fuels California shopping malls with courtyards and fortune five companies with “mixing areas for the open exchange of ideas”. Man does not like to be alone, and his best work is often accomplished communally. This does not begin to explain, however, the Chinese idea of the “Community Conscience”, which is so vital to the understanding of the concept of face, and is a phenomenon unique to the Chinese cultural evolution.
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