This is the eighty seventh 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 also includes short videos and illustrative material.
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
22 September 2026
With the arrival of spring, flowers blossom,
in autumn fruits fall of their own accord.
Why then such unwarranted anxiety?
— because I too have come this way.
— the height of spring, Jihai Year of the Pig
— 老樹 ，宜格物，《老樹日曆》 ，2026年 9月11日
trans. GR Barmé
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Other People’s Thoughts, LXXXVII
In the afterlife, we’ll sit around talking about the good old days, when we wished that we were dead.
— Samuel Beckett
The worst thing about death must be the first night.
—Juan Ramón Jiménez
Zhang Jie Encounters Allen Ginsberg
We are all going up to Malibu for dinner; Zhang Jie [张洁] and Allen Ginsberg are sitting in the back of the van. Between them, by chance, sits an interpreter. Zhang Jie is dressed to the nines, in a severely tailored blue dress.
How did it get started between them? I witness only the climax: “Mr. Ginsberg!” Zhang Jie is leaning forward fiercely over the interpreter’s knees. Her slender shoulders are squared. “You should not think only of yourself! You must live and work so as to fulfill your obligations! Have your goals firmly in your mind. You should not take drugs! Think of your responsibility to society. As for myself, my goals are always clear. My mind is never confused!”
Ginsberg smiles his intelligent, vulnerable smile, and tilts his head like the Cheshire cat.
“My mind,” he says, with the tiniest shrug, “is always confused.”
— Annie Dillard, Encounters with Chinese Writers, 1984
一笑出門去，千里落花風
淳熙丁酉，自江陵移帥隆興，到官之三月被召，司馬監、趙卿、王漕餞別。司馬賦《水調歌頭》，席間次韻。時王公明樞密薨，坐客終夕爲興門戶之嘆，故前章及之。
我飲不須勸，正怕酒樽空。別離亦復何恨。
此別恨匆匆。頭上貂蟬貴客，苑外麒麟高冢，人世竟誰雄。
一笑門外去，千里落花風。
孫劉輩，能使我，不為公。
余發種種如是，此事付渠儂。
但覺平生湖海，除了醉吟風月，此外百無功。
毫髮皆帝力，更乞鑒湖東。
— 辛棄疾，《水調歌頭·我飲不須勸》
吃貨
1. 吃苦: Endure hardship.
2. 吃虧: Suffer a loss.
3. 吃透: To master thoroughly.
4. 吃香: Be in high demand.
5. 吃得開: Thrive in any crowd.
6. 吃不開: Struggle to fit in.
7. 吃不準: Can’t tell exactly.
8. 吃苦頭: Learn the hard way.
9. 吃老本: Coast on past success.
10. 吃軟飯: Be financially dependent.
11. 吃白食: Freeload off others.
12. 吃狗糧: Watch unwanted PDA.
13. 吃青春飯: Rely on looks or age.
14. 吃霸王餐: Skip the check.
15. 吃香喝辣: Living the High Life.
陰翳 いんえい
Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway.
— Junichiro Tanizaki 谷崎潤一郎, ‘In Praise of Shadows’ 陰翳礼讃, 1933
暮れ行く秋
鳴く虫の
こゑも哀れや
つくすらむ
暮れ行く秋の
けふをかぎりに(How sorrowful, the voices of the chirping insects;
they too must be exhausting their cries,
with today being the very end of this fading autumn.)
— Ki-no-Tsurayuki (紀貫之, 872-945)
Painting Samuel Beckett
To paint him I went to do drawings whilst he was directing Waiting For Godot. I felt a little awkward constantly disturbing him. It was difficult for him to do his work whilst I was doing mine. There was one session where I sat behind him and thought it might be quite good to do his portrait from behind, it would be just as, if not more, distinguishable and Beckett’s majestic ears are seen to good advantage. They are, after all, the most sensitive ears for language alive. He liked the idea; he thought it was funny but also serious in a way.
— Tom Phillips on painting Samuel Beckett
Florus on Emperor Hadrian
Ego nolo Caesar esse,
ambulare per Britannos,
latitare per Syriscos.
Scythicas pati pruinas.I don’t want to be Caesar:
walking among Britons,
hiding among Syrians and
enduring Scythian frosts.And Hadrian’s reply:
Ego nolo Florus esse,
ambulare per tabernas,
latitare per popinas
culices pati rotundos.I don’t want to be Florus:
walking through the inns,
hiding in the brothels and
enduring fat mosquitoes.
9/11
The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now—with somebody—and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. …
The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. […] The last half of the 20th Century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what’s coming now. The party’s over, folks.
— Hunter S. Thompson, 12 September 2001
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Prepare for the Water Wars
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Executive Brainrot
An 80-year-old president is spending a ridiculous amount of time consuming and reposting endless A.I. fan fiction portraying him as the biggest, strongest and most important person alive. It feels like we’re genuinely watching his brain rot in real time.
— Sarah Matthews quoted in 60 Posts in 10 Hours: How Trump’s Social Media Reflects His Version of Reality, The New York Times, 9 September 2026
The Hunger
You know what truly breaks my heart? It’s not that America fell for a brilliant con-man. He isn’t. And they weren’t fooled.
What I find devastating is how many people were absolutely desperate to believe the lies. How many ached for permission to dress their cruelty in patriotism. How many clung to racist. Homophobic. Transphobic.
Ethnocentric stereotypes. Because they thought the lies were promising them a shortcut to power. A way to profit.
Personally and politically. From the suffering of millions of absolutely innocent people.
The tragedy isn’t the con. It’s the hunger for the willingness to trade compassion for the cheap thrill of feeling superior. The way hate sells because too many people show up already desperate to buy.
— Kalen Dion, 20 January 2026
Posthumous
Trump died and got buried at Mar-a-lago. A man in New York went to LaGuardia airport and told the agent “I want to piss on Donald Trump’s grave.” The agent said “Yes sir, here’s a ticket to Los Angeles.” The man said “Los Angeles? He’s buried in Florida.”
The agent said “Correct. Los Angeles is the back of the line.”
— Internet humour
Better and better
I think about this quotation a lot: “the technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it’s gonna get easier and easier, and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. Which is all right. In low doses, right? But if that’s the basic main staple of your diet, you’re gonna die. In a meaningful way, you’re going to die.”
— David Foster Wallace (1996), as quoted in Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself,(2010)
We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.
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Join the Club
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日復一日
白天搬磚，晚上養磚。
— 2026年網路流行
Harmony as a New Kind of Poverty
For a long time, I felt trapped in my mother tongue after I left China at the age of 17. More precisely, I mean a particular kind of language born out of China’s enclosed internet. It is a strange language that sticks with you — long since severed from the depth and philosophical richness of Chinese — tamed and flattened by years of shrinking space for discussion and infested with algorithm-favored brevity.
Out of self-mockery and sympathy, people coined a term, the “Simplified Chinese Internet” (简中互联网). It is a phrase that immediately suggests crippled thoughts, one-dimensional topics, evasively coded slang that dodges censorship yet means nothing, alongside advanced infrastructure and intense scrutiny. It was the Simplified Chinese internet itself that I wanted to escape. And the language used on it can be understood as the product of a long reward-and-punishment environment that resembles today’s LLM training. Over time, even the most creative and rebellious minds are tamed and overfitted, until they can only produce “acceptable” continuations — for public “safety.” Of course, precisely because the “Simplified Chinese Internet” is constrained and censored, it can sometimes inspire strange, ingenious ways of expressing discontent. The 2022 “White Paper” protests are a perfect example: Demonstrators opposed Zero-COVID by holding up blank sheets of paper, because the state (and the algorithms) can’t censor emptiness. But such cleverness is not a credit to censorship itself, or evidence that authoritarian control doesn’t suffocate creativity and self-expression. That conclusion would be utterly wrong. In reality, most of those who are “unsafe” simply left the “Simplified Chinese Internet” long ago or became idle. …
— Afra, A New Kind of Creative Poverty, NOEM
Hasta la vista
On one side are those of us who have no escape plan, no bunker in the sky or underground, and who therefore are committed to staying right here, in the complexity of our earthbound reality, with one another. We know we need to do what is necessary to make “here” – this planet and all of its ecologies and communities – and safer for the multitude of beings who rely upon them, fully aware this is our one and only home.
On the other are those with rapturous plans to shield themselves and their families from the political and ecological fires burning our planet, whether those plans take the form of heavenly ascension, earthly bunkers and fortressed nations, or fantasies of colonizing space and merging with machines. Instead of improving conditions for actual people on Earth (or even pulling back from pouring fuel on the fires), end times fascists are plotting their escape, indifferent and oblivious to all that’s worth saving.
— The end times fascists are plotting their escape from our world. Our mission is clear.
Elon Musk
So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates – scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter [X] may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the most wealthy person in the world.
— Joyce Carol Oates
Mao Zedong, dead fifty years
他是一個懷疑狂，虐待狂，他整人哲學是一不做二不休。他整每一個人都要把這個人置於死地而方休。一旦得罪就得罪到底，而且把全部壞事嫁禍於別人… 今天拉那個打這個，明天拉這個打那個。今天甜言蜜語那些拉的人，明天就加以莫須有的罪名置於死地 …在他手下一個個像走馬燈似垮台的人物，其實都是他的替罪羊。… 他不是一個真正的馬列主義者，而是一個行孔孟之道，借馬列主義之皮，執秦始皇之法的中國歷史上最大的封建暴君。
— 《五七一工程紀要》，1971年3月23日
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Beatniks
From the start, the Beat writers were dissidents. They were outsiders.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti said this in 1995, when asked about the Beat Generation by a reporter from the San Francisco Examiner. He continued:
“Beat is far from a dead movement. Many of the writers and artists are still producing. […] It’s a continuing movement, and the art often has this primitive, visceral quality, but it’s part of a revolt. In the ’50s, it was a revolt against the deadening times of the McCarthy era, and those times were similar to what we have today in a lot of ways with the reactionary government we have now.”
Like Michael McClure sometimes did, Ferlinghetti went on to claim that other apparently distinct groups were in fact merely wings of a wider Beat movement:
“Beat is the only revolution around. I don’t see any other movement still alive. The feminists are part of Beat, and in a way the environmentalists. It’s sad to say that the intellectuals are otherwise strangely absent.”
Finally, he says something more relevant now than ever. It is a quote that could well have been uttered in 2026 rather than 1995. He says:
“The Beat mind is already looking at the next Cold War, the war against computers. It’s a war by humans against the nonhumans.”
— David S. Willis, Beatdom, 14 September 2026
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Sino P(doom)
We have to build Al that murders us, because if we don’t, China will build it first, and I don’t want to get murdered by a computer that speaks Chinese. That would be ridiculous.
— Ray Kump • @RayKump, 9 September 2026
2050
Should Xi’s global strategy come to fruition, the world as we know it will be relegated to history. Although its strategic goal, as expressed in ‘Xi Thought’, is formally limited to enjoying preeminence, as the premier state of the world China would, in effect, become the global hegemon. To the rest of the world, the distinction between preeminence and hegemony means little. A new world order dominated by China, which puts the interests of the Chinese Communist Party and its supreme leader at its core, is a world hostile to democracy, individual rights and human dignity, at least as they are understood in vibrant democracies.
— What the West fails to grasp about China’s strategy to lead the world, Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank
耍起
This September, as schools across China started the new semester, one word exploded online: “shuǎqǐ” (耍起).
It means “playing around,” “hanging out”/“having fun,” and it’s an ordinary expression in Southwestern Mandarin, especially used in Sichuan and Chongqing speech.
The reason why shuaqi, as an everyday dialect word, went viral in the first place is mostly thanks to the Sichuan comedian Li Boqing (李伯清). Years ago, in one of his píngshū (评书, storytelling) performances, he delivered this little rhyme about the “happy economy” of Sichuan people:
Have fun while making money,
Make money to have fun,
Combine work and play,
But always put play first.
(耍中找钱，找钱来耍，找耍结合，以耍为主)
— Manya Koetse, The Rise of “Shuaqi-ism”, Eye on Digital China, 18 September 2026
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Remigration
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Cast Off
One of the worst things about getting older is not the stiffness, the medication organizer, the sudden importance of knowing where the nearest bathroom is, or the fact that every useful object now comes with instructions printed in a typeface designed for laboratory mice. It is being cast aside. It is the slow, unmistakable sense that the world has begun clearing the table while you are still eating. You have not died, declined into incoherence, or wandered into traffic wearing bedroom slippers. You are still thinking, noticing, contributing, laughing, arguing, learning and occasionally being right, which is apparently the most unforgivable thing an older person can do. Yet society begins treating you as though you are surplus furniture, still technically functional but inconveniently occupying space that might otherwise be used by somebody with tighter skin and a LinkedIn profile full of words like disruption. …
We are told to age gracefully, which means to become old without looking old, needing anything, complaining, occupying resources or reminding younger people that their future contains knees.
— Hans Casteels, Cast Aside, The Oncology Underground, 27 July 2026
Like Siri reading out a pasta recipe
As you will no doubt be aware, one Anthropic researcher claimed there is a greater than one in 10 chance that AI will end all of humanity as we know it within the next decade. However, now that I’ve given it some thought, I think this statistic might actually be a little conservative. This is because I have just watched an episode of a sitcom created by AI, and if I ever have to do it again I’m genuinely going to die of boredom.
The show is No Big Deal, and it premiered on YouTube on Friday. I was apparently only the 376th person to watch it. This is by no means a recommendation that you become the 377th, more a warning to avoid it if your algorithm ever decides it hates you enough to suggest this. …
The most tragic thing of all is that nobody involved can see that this is just a stepping stone to the endgame. Dickinson [the writer] thinks he can get away without human actors or crew, but we are a nanosecond away from the technology deciding that it doesn’t need human writers, either. By capitulating even a jot to AI-created content, all Dickinson is doing is nudging himself further towards extinction.
And me, too, because if this is the future of entertainment then I’d rather die than write about it. If we really do only have a decade left, every second should be precious. Please don’t spend any of it watching crap like this.
— Stuart Heritage, No Big Deal review – is this how AI ends humanity, The Guardian, 15 September 2026
Australia’s Portrait of Dorian Gray
Now, we are not allowed to criticise politicians for their looks or joke about their dead mothers spinning in their graves like rotisserie chickens … but at what point is a line crossed? I’d argue it’s when one man seems to be wearing the ungodly hideousness of this hateful country on his wretched unthinkable face like a serial killer squatting in a share house toilet. When you’ve become living image of the Australian Grotesque, something must be said. …
Of course, just about every Australian politician there has ever been has had the mug of a Depression era bare-knuckle boxer or the receding jawline and skull slopage of a lesser Hapsburg, but Barnaby’s ugliness is somewhat unique in how it has grown alongside the nation’s own, the two in concert with each other like a kobold jam band. …
Does this ugliness matter? Well, other than his face being a rough thing to experience whenever you turn on the news, there is, no doubt, some reckoning taking place within the bowels of each Australian’s unconscious as they watch this man rot in real time as he stares back at us, the nation’s very own Portrait of Dorian Gray — a necrotic embodiment of Australia’s soul as it too begins to puke up on its pants on its thorny spiral into self-inflicted decline.
To watch Barnaby croak on about reducing Australia’s immigrant intake by a frighteningly stupid 750,000 people — and to agree with it — is to slice a slither of skin cancer off that crimson skull of his and gobble it down like a communion wafer. His ugliness is a part of you now — a part of all of us — and it will begin to show Australia-wide in the same way it has on him, red and tumescent and unloveable, a squat orc mask, announcing a country as unfuckable as it is fucked.
— Patrick Marlborough, Barnaby Joyce, Australia’s Ugliest Man, Yeah Nah Review, 15 September 2026
لا شكر على واجب
I’m not sure how to start this. So I’m going to speak from the heart and share the truth. Ed Sheeran and his team have made the decision to remove me from The Loop tour.
But before I get into it, I want to say something that should be obvious. In this moment I think it matters. I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim. We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families.
The victims are the Palestinian people. The men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone. People are being killed today, and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don’t lose sight of that.
Ed is my friend. I’ve known him for 13 years. We’ve shared late nights, studio sessions and stages. He has this infectious magic about him that I’ve grown to love. I consider him a brother. And because of that, we’ve had some difficult conversations this past week. The type of talks rooted in love and respect for one another that still end in a place of fundamental disagreement. Nothing I’m writing here is out of spite or because I want to tear down his character. But as I told Ed multiple times on the phone, our friendship can’t change my responsibility to tell the truth about what happened.
Last Monday, in the middle of all the media attention surrounding Pink and what I said at MetLife, Ed told me that Robert Kraft called him. We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft Group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium. Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.
Ed was in a fucked up position. He knew it. His typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before. He told me that the words “Free Palestine” and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with. I told him that if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood. But he couldn’t get past his public facing, “ don’t take sides.”
And I get why people don’t. Taking a side can cost you. Money, brand deals, sponsorships, festivals, private shows, relationships and access. I’ve lost all of those things. But there is no neutral position between the oppressor and the oppressed. When one side has the bombs and bottomless financial and military support from America, refusing to take a side doesn’t leave you in the middle.
What I said at MetLife I have been saying on stages around the world for almost three years. So why is it an issue now? Because now I’m sharing a stage with one of the biggest artists in the world, in some of the biggest stadiums in America. At a certain level of exposure, “Free Palestine” becomes too much of a risk. If I kept doing the shows, saying Free Palestine, with Ed implicitly supporting it, the crowd getting loud and showing undeniable support for Palestinian liberation, what artist might speak out next? The stage becomes resistance. Maybe that’s why this time it became so important to silence me.
And one of the most effective ways to enforce that silence has been to weaponize the accusation of antisemitism. Antisemitism is real. And that is exactly why the word matters too much to be used as a shield against criticism of the Israeli state. When criticizing Israel, opposing Zionism or saying “Free Palestine” gets conflated with hatred of Jewish people, it doesn’t protect Jewish people. It protects Israel from accountability.
I hope this isn’t the end of my relationship with Ed.
Thirteen years of friendship doesn’t disappear because of one painful disagreement. I hope we both continue listening, studying what is happening in Palestine and wrestling with what neutrality means in a moment like this. My door will always be open to continuing that conversation.
When my brother Omar was doing the subtitles for the video I posted from MetLife, I thanked him. He told me there’s a phrase in Arabic:
لا شكر على واجب
“La shukra ala wajeb.” There is no thanks for a duty.
That stayed with me. Because that’s what this has become for me and millions of others around the world. A duty. Not something deserving of praise or gratitude. Not brave. Human.
Who is winning the internet, who is getting canceled, who gets to play the stadium and who doesn’t, all of it becomes so small when held against what we are actually witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank. An entire people being displaced, starved and killed while the world debates which words we are allowed to use to describe it, how those words make us feel, and whether our discomfort matters more than the people living through a genocide.
I didn’t need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2. Two chances to stand in front of 90,000 people and say the words that somehow became too dangerous to say.
Free Palestine.
But if those words cost me the stage, while turning the conversation back to Palestine, then it was the most successful tour I’ve ever been on…..
— Macklemore, 14 September 2026
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