Other People’s Thoughts
This is the seventy-fourth chapter in Other People’s Thoughts, a China Heritage series inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.
Pierre remarked that the resulting modest volume of quotations was ‘idiosyncratically compiled for the amusement of idle readers’ (see Simon Leys, Other People’s Thoughts, 2007). Our aim is similar: to amuse our readers (idle or otherwise); as is our modus operandi: to build up an idiosyncratic compilation, one that reflects the interests of The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology and its coterie.
In collecting this material, and by adding to it over time, we accord also with a Chinese literary practice in which quotations — sometimes called yǔlù 語錄, literally ‘recorded sayings’ — have a particular history, and a powerful resonance.
The most famous collection of recorded sayings is The Analects 論語, compiled by disciples of Confucius. Then there is the timeless 5000-words of Laozi’s The Tao and the Power 道德經, as well as the Chan/Zen 禪宗 tradition of what in English are known by the Japanese term kōan 公案, dating from the Tang dynasty. Modern imitations range from the political bon mots of Mao Zedong to excerpts from the prolix prose of Xi Jinping’s tireless speech writers, and published snippets from arm-chair philosophers and motivational speakers.
Other People’s Thoughts also finds inspiration in the ‘poetry talks’ 詩話, ‘casual jottings’ 筆記 and ‘marginalia’ 眉批 of China’s literary tradition.
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As is now customary in Other People’s Thoughts, this chapter in the series aLao includes videos and illustrative material.
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
12 March 2026
植樹節
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Other People’s Thoughts I-LXXIII:
- Other People’s Thoughts, China Heritage
Other People’s Thoughts, LXXIV
I just heard someone say “isn’t it strange that we’ve been taught to fear “witches” and not the people who were burning them alive?”
— Vlasta, 3 March 2026
PLEASE SHUT UP! I need to process this because my brain is actually melting out of my fucking ears.
This spray-tanned war criminal just BOMBED IRAN. Like, actual bombs, falling on actual people. Shut down NINETY-FOUR PERCENT of the world’s most important oil chokepoint, stranded 150 fucking ships in the middle of the ocean like it’s a traffic jam in Mad Max, sent fuel prices through the goddamn roof. And then, AND THEN, this absolute fucking psychopath jumps on Truth Social, in ALL CAPS like your drunk uncle at 2am, and goes “Don’t worry everyone, DADDY’S HERE TO FIX IT.”
FIX WHAT?! YOU BROKE IT, YOU FUCKING LUNATIC!
That’s not leadership. That’s not strategy. That is a guy smashing every window in your house and then showing up the next morning in a Home Depot apron going, “I hear you need windows. I can get you a VERY REASONABLE PRICE.” And somehow. SOMEHOW. Sixty million Americans are going, “Wow, what a deal! Thank God he was here!”
And this insurance racket. Oh, oh, THIS is where I lose my fucking mind. The U.S. Development Finance Corporation is now selling “political risk insurance” to shipping companies. POLITICAL. RISK. INSURANCE. For a risk that DIDN’T FUCKING EXIST three weeks ago! You created the risk! You ARE the risk! That is not insurance, that is a shakedown! That is Tony Soprano in a suit with a nuclear aircraft carrier! “Nice shipping lane ya got there. Real important to the global economy. Be a real shame if someone. Oh wait, I already fucked it up. That’ll be fifty billion dollars.”
— I Fucking Love Australia, 4 March 2026
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Tom Lehrer, World War III
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賽義德鲁霍拉·穆斯塔法维·穆萨维·霍梅尼
如果一個人的死，能讓這麼多人民載歌載舞，那它一定應該死。
郭德綱說“多好的一個人吶，可惜死晚了”。至於哈梅內伊死後，重建怎麼辦，會不會變的複雜。傳說丘吉爾有過一句話：寬恕他們是上帝的事，我們要做的就是送他們去見上帝”，這句話可以套用一個：
我們先慶祝一下。
— 李承鵬，2026年3月2日
Messianic Mishegoss
The Iran War is being fought for Greater Israel — and for annihilation. The doctrine of annihilation is not unitary. Christian fanatics, Jewish fanatics, secular accelerationalists, and technofascists seeking depopulation all have their own agendas.
There is a desire to usher in the messianic age, but that gets tricky with competing Messiahs in play. The only certainty is carnage in the Middle East, possibly culminating in the destruction of Al Aqsa Mosque and the building of the Third Temple: a goal shared by Jewish and Christian extremists (though the extremists diverge radically in what they think happens once their preferred Messiah shows up) that horrifies Muslims worldwide and would expand the war to multiple fronts.
— Sarah Kendzior, The No World Order, 7 March 2026
A Manual of Resistance
It is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are incapable of fulfilling this duty use the smokescreen of war to hide their failure and, in the process, line the pockets of a select few – the same ones as always; the only ones who profit when the world stops building hospitals and starts building missiles. It is naive to believe that democracies or respect between nations can spring from ruins. Or to think that practising blind and servile obedience is a form of leadership … We will not be complicit in something that is bad for the world and that is also contrary to our values and interests, simply out of fear of reprisals from someone.
— Pedro Sánchez, prime minister of Spain, 5 March 2026
Iran: the first AI war?
The same logic that built recommendation engines and social media algorithms is now being applied to the industrial generation of kill lists. Chatbot systems that entered public life writing emails, summarising documents and telling you what to have for dinner now help determine who lives and who dies.
— Team Citizens, Is this the first AI war?, 8 March 2026
Bitter Aftertaste of Dubai Chocolate
Collateral damage from the mass tourist and influencer exodus has included hundreds of cats and dogs, so favoured by Dubai’s famed stars of TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, which in recent days have been unceremoniously dumped at the city’s shelters, tied to lamp-posts or left in boxes on the streets as their owners hurriedly left the country. K9, a Dubai animal shelter, described the situation as “disgusting”.
— Hannah Ellis-Peterson, Dubai faces existential threat as foreigners flee, The Guardian, 11 March 2026
AI
AI is the most powerful surveillance technology ever created—it can take any person’s social media posts and phone location pings, and identify who is doing exactly what and where. It can dox people from short writing samples or blurry photographs. It democratizes knowledge, including dangerous knowledge, like the ability to build bioweapons. With AI, we can manufacture false images, voices, and videos that are indistinguishable from real ones. In addition to these risks, AI is delivering shocks to our labor markets, education system, and mental health; chipping away at a social fabric that’s already wearing thin.
— Jasmine Sun, 1 March 2026
Jewish AI
Recently, someone asked the AI system Claude about its religious leanings. After some hesitation, it answered sheepishly: “Alright, if I have to commit: Jewish.”
Its explanation was telling. The intellectual culture it most resembled, Claude said, was one built on relentless questioning, arguing with texts, treating interpretation as sacred, a contrarian streak, deep concern with ethics and law, and a tradition of thriving through knowledge rather than territorial conquest. …
If an artificial intelligence, trained on the whole archive of modern thought, recognizes those traits as “Jewish,” what does that say? Is it evidence of remarkable influence? Or does it suggest those habits have been so fully absorbed into mainstream culture that they no longer seem distinctively Jewish at all — just the default style of elite thinking?
When a minority’s distinctive contribution becomes common sense, has it triumphed?
Or has it begun to disappear?
— Steven Mintz, After the Jewish Century, 19 February 2026
A Civilising Process
The Chinese, I would conclude, are natural loophole-finders rather than rule-followers in the Japanese vein. They are Taosits trapped in Confucian bodies, engaged in a constant acrobatic act between their individualistic, jugaad-oriented instincts, and the order-seeking, paternalistic diktats that they are also culturally conditioned to obey – a tendency reinforced by massive surveillance.
There has certainly been a software upgrade in civic behaviour, but it’s an upgrade with Chinese characteristics.
— Pallavi Aiyar, The Software Upgrade in Chinese Civic Behaviour, The Wire, 21 February 2026
[Note: See also Civilising China: China Story Yearbook 2013.]
The Enemy of Imagination
The strictly disenchanted world, where nothing exists but physical processes describable without metaphor, and even consciousness is just a material problem waiting to be solved, can be a desiccated place. It keeps heart and mind on inadequate rations. This is the point Philip Pullman is making in The Rose Field, the recent last volume of The Book of Dust, where he has Lyra think about the human need for the kind of things we can’t prove, but would suffocate without. The imagination, above all. “Maybe the imagination is a sort of wind that blows through all the worlds … It shows us true things.” For Pullman, of course, the enemy of imagination is religious dogma even more than narrow scientism – but there are a lot of different ways of figuring what deadens in the modern world, just as there are other ways of naming the unpredictable wind that blows through all the worlds, showing us true things.
— Francis Spufford, Why everyone is reading fantasy, The Guardian, 22 February 2026
Serious Literature
Today I visited my local bookshop. While queuing to pay, I heard the assistant say ‘Good choice’ as she scanned a book. I leaned forward to see what the customer had chosen. It was the latest novel by Mainstream Millennial Author Sally Rooney. She then said ‘Good choice’ to the next customer, who had chosen the latest novel by TikTok Author Colleen Hoover. I couldn’t help but chuckle. If she approved of these Unserious Literary Selections, she would surely be delighted by mine. After all, as a Serious Literary Author, I only ever purchase quality literature by fellow SLAs. When it was finally my turn, I handed her a copy of Penguin Classics’ new complete translation of Kafka’s diaries, and awaited her response. She scanned it silently, and said nothing as she placed it in a paper bag and handed it back to me. I gave her a Knowing Literary Smile. Clearly she was so overwhelmed by the sublimity of my choice that she was unable to process it in the moment. I imagine she will experience Delayed Onset Literary Euphoria at some point this evening.
— Daniel Piper, Serious Literary Author, 11 March 2026
Obama Presidential Center
On one of the top corners of the tower, a quote from Obama’s speech at Selma is carved into the facade. Nothing wrong with that, and I actually think those criticizing this as evidence of Obama’s ego or as offensive are off the mark. The man was known for his speeches, so this is fitting.
“You are America,” goes the quote. “Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”
The problem?
The text is wrapped, meaning you can’t actually read it while standing in front of the building. You’d have to go back and forth from a great distance to read it line by line. Even worse, the corner is sometimes mid-word AND there is end-of-line hyphenation, meaning the second line starts with “ED” which is the end of “UNCONSTRAIN” from the line above but on the adjacent facade! EVEN WORSE, the typeface chosen means a reader cannot differentiate between T’s and I’s, as well as E’s and F’s!
— William O’Conner, 23 February 2026
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Jesse Jackson: let his memory be a blessing
The rhetorical talent of Democratic politicians has fallen precipitously since Jackson faded from the scene. It was already not great then, and it is much worse now. As the conservative writer P.J O’Rourke wrote in his coverage of the 1988 convention: “He is the only living American politician with a mastery of classical rhetoric. Assonance, alliteration, litotes, pleonasm, parrellism, exclamation, climax and epigram — to listen to Jesse Jackson is to hear everything mankind has learned about public speaking since Demosthenes. Thus Jackson, the advocate for people who believe themselves to be excluded from Western culture, was the only 1988 presidential candidate to exhibit any of it.” Amen.
That irony is even more poignant today: As the right bangs its drums about defending “Western civilization,” all of its accomplishments and traditions, ethical and aesthetic—the King James Bible, Shakespeare, the Greeks, the Romans, the reformations and revolutions—were better embodied in Jackson than by any of the cheap thugs on the right who pretentiously invoke them without knowing a whit of what they are. As we say in the Jewish tradition, let his memory be a blessing.
— John Ganz, The Age of Jackson, 19 February 2026
Mirror, mirror
Perhaps the only time Epstein told the truth was in his answer to Steve Bannon’s startling question, “Do you think you’re the devil himself?” With his customary Cupid bow smirk, Epstein replied, “No, but I do have a good mirror.”
Maybe Epstein was the mirror himself. But his reflection gave an x-ray of other people’s moral weakness. In a society built on credit and credibility, a single evil actor who grasps the fallibility of his fellows can entangle all.
— Tina Brown, Fresh Hell, 23 February 2026
Clavicular
There’s an infertile twenty year old Nazi that you have to know his skincare routine?
A Scotsman with a grievance is not easily mistaken for a ray of sunshine.
— P.G. Wodehouse
The Fly
By and by the other creatures would be distributed here and there about the earth—scattered: the tigers to India, the lions and the elephants to the vacant desert and the secret places of the jungle, the birds to the boundless regions of empty space, the insects to one or another climate, according to nature and requirement; but the fly? He is of no nationality; all the climates are his home, all the globe is his province, all creatures that breathe are his prey, and unto them all he is a scourge and a hell.
To man he is a divine ambassador, a minister plenipotentiary, the Creator’s special representative. He infests him in his cradle; clings in bunches to his gummy eyelids; buzzes and bites and harries him, robbing him of his sleep and his weary mother of her strength in those long vigils which she devotes to protecting her child from this pest’s persecutions. The fly harries the sick man in his home, in the hospital, even on his deathbed at his last gasp. Pesters him at his meals; previously hunts up patients suffering from loathsome and deadly diseases; wades in their sores, gaums its legs with a million death-dealing germs; then comes to that healthy man’s table and wipes these things off on the butter and discharges a bowel-load of typhoid germs and excrement on his batter-cakes. The housefly wrecks more human constitutions and destroys more human lives than all God’s multitude of misery messengers and death-agents put together.
— Mark Twain
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劉美賢與谷愛凌，自由的勝利與美國的叛徒？
首先中國的體育是一個舉國體制，所以國家有錢了，用納稅人的錢砸錢砸到得到金牌，又歸功於國家。錢，是納稅人，是普通人的，但是功勞和金牌是國家的，這已經是一個荒謬的事情。第二，砸這麼多的錢還只能歸化一些有華裔血統的運動員。很多運動的確是高投入的，訓練費非常高，這些運動員花了這麼多錢，他要回報，所以也要掙錢了。這使得這些華裔，也有一些非華裔的運動員改名換姓掙錢。但我認為谷愛凌是其中一個非常惡劣的一個標本。因為她明明是衝著錢去的，而且她基本上是美國的教育的產物，從小除了她暑假回中國的學校，她完全是在美國長大的。但是她肯定是衝著錢去的，中國給的錢多，在中國做廣告錢多，國際品牌也看中了，這就名利雙收。可是她的惡劣在於，她說自己是為了激勵中國的女孩來進行冰雪運動。
我們且不說當時中國的鐵鍊女事件正在發酵，最貧窮的這些女孩完全不可能想象有這種有這種出路。第二就是這種激勵，也是要在這種舉國體制下花著納稅人的錢，遭受極度的沒有個性的、非幾乎是非人化的訓練才能拿到。拿到以後這個獎牌也是國家的。但是谷愛凌接受了這一切，然後她又說我在中國是中國人，我在美國是美國人。當人家說她背叛了美國。她就說自己又是中國人，又是美國人。她說的也沒錯，但是虛偽在在於她在中國是中國的一種人，在美國又是美國的一種人，她背叛的既不是厲害國的厲，也不是美利堅的利，是唯利是圖的利。她追求的就是利益。她是某一種中國人和某一種美國人的集中代表。是哪一種呢？是乖巧的，是揣著明白裝糊塗的，是算計的，是拜金的，是怯懦的。她在美國可以批判美國的制度的時候，他去聲援。
說的這些話都是經過算計的，她是代表了中國和美國的兩種最自私、最自利，而且最矯情和虛偽的那種人。
— 查建英， 劉美賢與谷愛凌，自由的勝利與美國的叛徒？，《不明白播客》，2026年3月9日
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‘It’s my duty’
[Note: See also It’s My Duty, China Heritage, 1 December 2022.]
Trumpistan
Putin must think Trump a fool, Beevor reckons. He recounts an anecdote from the G20 Osaka conference in 2019, when it was just the two world leaders with their interpreters. Trump boasted about how much he had done for Israel. Putin was amused by this and suggested they ought to rename the country after him. “Trump thought about this for a few moments quite seriously, then said, ‘No, I think that would be going a bit far.’ You must admit that is absolutely priceless,” Beevor says.
— Antony Beevor, He can’t be controlled, The Times, 3 March 2026
When the shoe fits
If you want to understand where we are at this moment in Trump’s second administration, all you have to do is look at that picture of Marco Rubio wearing a pair of oversized Florsheim shoes. This footwear, the WSJ revealed, is Trump’s go-to gift for members of his inner circle, to whom he wishes to show approbation. He determines the shoe size by rough instinct and, 24 hours later, a pair of $145 leather oxfords, the proud badge of political servility, arrives.
We are in Uganda’s Idi Amin territory now.
— Tina Brown, Trump’s Wild War Game, Fresh Hell, 11 March 2026
It’s Worse than You Think
In fact, it’s actually far worse here on the ground, because all the ugliness people can see from thousands of miles away is probably still rather abstract, a largely undefinable, faceless wave of malice and bigotry, something to be analyzed and picked apart and studied. To them, it’s likely a fascinating, if not terrifying, historical event
But here on the ground, this malignant sickness has a distinct face, one that is far too familiar:
It’s the face of family members whose newly revealed racism is continually confronting us around the dinner table.
It’s the face of former church friends, who have completely abandoned the Jesus they claim faith in and chosen the vilest of idols.
It’s the face of once pleasant neighbors who casually regurgitate extremist propaganda in sidewalk conversations.
It’s the face of childhood friends spewing anti-immigrant filth on their social media profiles.
It’s the face of storeowners and hair stylists and restaurant workers, the interactions with whom have become careful walks through conversational minefields.
So yes, it’s the staggering cruelty of those holding the power here, but just as much, it’s the people we know and live alongside who are so gladly empowering them by voting for them.
— John Pavlovitz, 8 March 2026
The Colosseum
“Past its prime,” wrote one tourist from California. “Takes up an absurd amount of space,” quipped another visitor, this one from Colorado. A tourist from the U.K. said it was “nothing more than a dirty, crumbling eyesore,” while another Brit called it “the worst of all tourist attractions.” From another Coloradan: it “seemed like it hadn’t been used in years.” And in what might be the most succinct of all the Colosseum’s negative reviews, a visitor from Australia labeled the site simply “a big pile of rocks.”
Of course, the Colosseum isn’t alone.
An Indian tourist described the nearby Roman Forum as “a big hole near the Colosseum where all the rocks are kept.”
Further afield, a Scottish traveler blamed the Leaning Tower of Pisa for being “much smaller than I imagined.”
The Uffizi in Florence? Filled with “low-quality art … [and] gratuitous nudity,” according to a Californian, while another from the same state called it “a complete waste of time and money.”
A tourist from Alabama said Venice’s Peggy Guggenheim Collection was full of “third-rate works … [that] would never make it to the wall of the average American living room.”
But few reviews can match the insight of an English visitor who complained that the Grand Canal in Venice “was under water when I saw it.”
— Eric J. Lyman, Italy, According to Online Reviewers, The Italian Dispatch, 9 March 2026
Sic transit gloria mundi
Today you can still go to any quiet little English church in any quiet little English village, clipped hedgerows, cricket green, and read the tombs. All the local lads who died under far distant skies. Born in Kent, perished on the Niger or the Irrawaddy, puking through jungle, trudging over Antarctic ice. Today the British are known for complaining all the time, but that wasn’t always the case. We went cheerfully to these far distant places, madness in our eyes. …
That mania has passed now. It’s one with Nineveh and Tyre. There’s nothing technically stopping us, but you no longer find British boys racing to be the first to die in some strange and exciting new way. Now it’s Americans. Soon it’ll be Chinese.
— Sam Kriss, You’ll Regret It, Numb at the Lodge, 7 March 2026
On Myself
Here lies the body of Edith Bone.
All her life she lived alone,
Until Death added the final S
And put an end to her loneliness.
— Edith Bone, The Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs, 1977, p.221
Lady Gaga
I come from church—maybe that has something to do with it. I like to get to the soul of a person. I just didn’t feel a soul.
Sangha
One of the great weaknesses of our era is that we get lone superhero movies that suggest that our big problems are solved by muscly guys in spandex, when actually the world mostly gets changed through collective effort. Thich Nhat Hanh said before he died a few years ago that the next Buddha will be the Sangha. The Sangha, in Buddhist terminology, is the community of practitioners. It’s this idea that we don’t have to look for an individual, for a savior, for an Übermensch. I think the counter to Trump always has been and always will be civil society. A lot of the left wants social change to look like the French Revolution or Che Guevara. Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war. Too many people still expect it to look like war. I denigrate politicians I don’t respect as windsocks. I just want us to understand that most of the important change is collective.
— Rebecca Solnit Says the Left’s Next Hero Is Already Here, The New York Times, 7 March 2026
Yeah but Nah!
@allpower2allpeople We have #built something, but it sure isn’t #leverage #powertothepeople #APTAP #iykyk
The Mighty Colbert
[Note: For more of John Lithgow in China Heritage, see:
- A Trumpty Dumpty Denouement — 6 November 2020; and,
- Twenty Lessons for a Nation Sleepwalking into Autocracy.]
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Arbor Day, China
我慾浮滄海，植樹在天邊。
狂風大作時，擋住一粒沙。
Would that I could float free away,
and plant this tree on distant shores.
When the winds came lashing wildly
it might just block at least some sand.
— 《老樹日曆．植樹節》，2026年3月12日，丙午年正月廿四
12 March Arbor Day commemorates the death of Dr Sun Yat-sen in 1925