Other People’s Thoughts is a section in the Journal of the China Heritage site. It is 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.
— Geremie R. Barmé,
Editor, China Heritage
9 September 2022
九月九日去毛日
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More Other People’s Thoughts:
- Other People’s Thoughts, China Heritage
Other People’s Thoughts, XXX
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor
Her death will prompt memories of all that has passed these last 70 years, and all those others who we loved and lost. There is grief contained within grief. Today we mourn a monarch. And in that very act, we also mourn for ourselves.
— Jonathan Freedland, 8 September 2022
Her manner of speaking was indelible, her accent one of such rarified antiquity that it surely dies with her. But for such a prominent public personage she leaves behind remarkably few memorable words, so careful was she with avoiding the off-the-cuff remark, and so sparing was she with her public voice. Apart from her regular Christmas greeting, broadcast on television in the post-turkey hours every December 25th, she addressed the nation in her own words only a handful of times during her reign, usually at a moment of crisis or sorrow or, every so often, of celebration: on the occasion of the first Gulf War, in 1991; after the death of Princess Diana, in 1997; upon the death of her own mother, in 2002; on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee, in 2012. She spoke so seldom that even people who didn’t care what the Queen said cared what the Queen said.
— Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 8 September 2022
Salman Rushdie
Pen America chief executive, Suzanne Nossel, said: “When a would-be murderer plunged a knife into Salman Rushdie’s neck, he pierced more than just the flesh of a renowned writer.
“He sliced through time, jolting all of us to recognize that horrors of the past were hauntingly present. He infiltrated across borders, enabling the long arm of a vengeful government to reach into a peaceful haven. He punctured our calm, leaving us wide awake at night, contemplating the sheer terror of those moments exactly one week ago.
“He shattered our comfort, forcing us to contemplate the frailty of our own freedom. Today, we gather to stand with Salman, our stalwart leader and comrade who is enduring agony wrought by a 33-year-old vendetta, a death warrant that refuses to die, a declaration of a never-ending war on words.
“We stand with Salman in an effort to boost his spirits but also in a determination to stiffen our spines.”
— Maya Yang, ‘Salman Rushdie: writers gather in New York to read author’s works in solidarity’, The Guardian, 19 August 2022
Liz Truss is a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain. It must all come crashing down.
More than six years ago I wrote on this page about an expanding star in the Tory sky. “Steadily,” I said, “almost imperceptibly, an absurd idea has crept upon us.” The idea, I said, was that Boris Johnson might prove fit to be prime minister. Laughable, I wrote, “. . . yet still the idea has grown: shrewdly, assiduously, flamboyantly puffed by its only conceivable beneficiary. Where else in politics can such self-validating, self-inflating nonsense be found?” My column teetered between indignation and incredulity. It described him as “a blustering, bantering hole in the air”. It drew embarrassed attention to his moral carelessness.
— Matthew Parris, ‘There’s no more to Truss than meets the eye’, The Times, 9 August 2022
Diversity and Inclusion
One of my favourite modern curiosities is the “diversity and inclusion” page on the official website of the British royal family. “We are proud to champion diversity throughout the organisation,” this auto-satirical cri de coeur runs. “… Our approach to recruitment and selection is fair, open and based purely on merit.”
On what, sorry? If your reflexive response to this is to cackle “BUT YOU’RE LITERALLY A HEREDITARY MONARCHY, YOU MAD BASTARDS”, then please: just relax. Simply allow the sentiment to splash on to you, like royal urine into a sample bottle that a valet is holding, and realise that we live in times where “diversity” can mean whatever the firm talking about it wants it to mean. In this case, a commitment to getting more black servants. (You may recall that the House of Windsor did have one mixed-race senior manager, but she and her husband left the organisation last year to take up a position with Netflix.)
— Marina Hyde, The Guardian, 8 September 2021
Jade
‘I would prefer to be a flawed piece of jade rather than a flawless stone.’
解大紳曰寧為有瑕玉勿作無瑕石。
— Xie Jin 解縉 (1369-1415), trans. Duncan Campbell
Giving Away A Throne
Yuan Xian lived in the state of Lu, in a tiny house that was hardly more than four walls. It was thatched with growing weeds, had a broken door made of woven brambles and branches of mulberry for the doorposts; jars with the bottoms out, hung with pieces of coarse cloth for protection from the weather, served as windows for its two rooms. The roof leaked and the floor was damp, but Yuan Xian sat up in dignified manner, played his lute, and sang. Zigong, wearing an inner robe of royal blue and an outer one of white, and riding in a grand carriage whose top was too tall to get through the entrance to the lane, came to call on Yuan Xian.
Yuan Xian, wearing a bark cap and slippers with no heels, and carrying a goosefoot staff, came to the gate to greet him. ‘Goodness!’ exclaimed Zigong. ‘What distress you are in, Sir!’ Yuan Xian replied,
‘I have heard that if one lacks wealth, that is called poverty; and if one studies but cannot put into practice what he has learned, that is called distress. I am poor, but I am not in distress!’
Zigong backed off a few paces with a look of embarrassment. Yuan Xian laughed and said,
‘To act out of worldly ambition, to band with others in cliquish friendships, to study in order to show off to others, to teach in order to please one’s own pride, to mask one’s evil deeds behind benevolence and righteousness, to deck oneself out with carriages and horses—I could never bear to do such things!’
— from Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, pp. 315-16; romanisation altered).
原憲居魯，環堵之室，茨以生蒿，蓬戶甕牖，揉桑以為樞。上漏下濕，匡坐而弦歌。子貢聞之，乘肥馬，衣輕裘，中紺而表素，軒車不容巷，往見原憲。原憲冠桑葉冠，杖藜杖而應門。正冠則纓絕，衽襟則肘見，納屨則踵決。子貢曰：「嘻。先生何病也。」原憲仰而應之曰：「憲聞之，無財之謂貧，學而不能行之謂病。憲，貧也，非病也。若夫希世而行，比周而交，學以為人，教以為己，仁義之慝，輿馬之飾，憲不忍為也。」
— 莊子·讓王
偷著樂
— a comment left on 華夏奇聞異事, a ‘reaction video’ channel on YouTube, 8 September 2022
Amazing China
Amazing China may well boast of opulence nowadays, but it lacks substance; its vulgar fireworks may dazzle some but the tenuous light of meaningful culture is fading. Make no mistake: these are not the workings of Fate, they are the machinations of Man. This era of misrule betrays both the true betterment of China and the greater weal of humanity. It debilitates the spirit and suffocates the soul. This is the way it is, and this is why it is. And this is how we now find ourselves in a state of frustrated disbelief.
— Xu Zhangrun, A Farewell to My Students, ChinaFile, 9 September 2021
Trout on Ideas
And here, according to Trout, was the reason human beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: “Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity.
“The ideas Earthlings held didn’t matter for hundreds of thousands of years, since they couldn’t do much about them anyway. Ideas might as well be badges as anything.
“They even had a saying about the futility of ideas: ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’
“And then Earthlings discovered tools. Suddenly agreeing with friends could be a form of suicide or worse. But agreements went on, not for the sake of common sense or decency or self-preservation, but for friendliness.
“Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead. And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness. So they were doomed. Homicidal beggars could ride.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
The Mechanic
This book is like a tour of a once majestic 18th-century wooden house, now burned to its foundations, that focuses solely on, and rejoices in, what’s left amid the ashes: the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox. Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.
— Dwight Garner, ‘Jared Kushner’s “Breaking History” Is a Soulless and Very Selective Memoir’, New York Times, 17 August 2022
Choices
If you really want to hurt your parents and you don’t have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.
— Kurt Vonnegut
All Clear
美式清零安全
People cry at airports all the time. So when Jai Cooper heard sobbing from the back of the security line, it didn’t really faze her. As an officer of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), she had gotten used to the strange behavior of passengers. Her job was to check people’s travel documents, not their emotional well-being.
But this particular group of tearful passengers presented her with a problem. One of them was in a wheelchair, bent over with her head between her knees, completely unresponsive. “Is she okay? Can she sit up?” Cooper asked, taking their boarding passes and IDs to check. “I need to see her face to identify her.”
“She can’t, she can’t, she can’t,” said the passenger who was pushing the wheelchair.
Soon, Cooper was joined at her station by a supervisor, followed by an assortment of EMTs and airport police officers. The passenger was dead. She and her family had arrived several hours prior, per the airport’s guidance for international flights, but she died sometime after check-in. Since they had her boarding pass in hand, the distraught family figured that they would still try to get her on the flight. Better that than leave her in a foreign country’s medical system, they figured.
The family might not have known it, but they had run into one of air travel’s many gray areas. Without a formal death certificate, the passenger could not be considered legally dead. And US law obligates airlines to accommodate their ticketed and checked-in passengers, even if they have “a physical or mental impairment that, on a permanent or temporary basis, substantially limits one or more major life activities.” In short: she could still fly. But not before her body got checked for contraband, weapons, or explosives. And since the TSA’s body scanners can only be used on people who can stand up, the corpse would have to be manually patted down.
“We’re just following TSA protocol,” Cooper explained.
Her colleagues checked the corpse according to the official pat-down process. With gloves on, they ran the palms of their hands over the collar, the abdomen, the inside of the waistband, and the lower legs. Then, they checked the body’s “sensitive areas” — the breasts, inner thighs, and buttocks — with “sufficient pressure to ensure detection.”
Only then was the corpse cleared to proceed into the secure part of the terminal.
Not even death can exempt you from TSA screening.
— Darryl Campbell, ‘The Humiliating History of the TSA’, The Verge, 31 August 2022
Mushroom Song
Gorbachev vs. Putin
Gorbachev was that rare sort of politician who acted on the belief that the world and the people in it—including himself—can be better than they often appear to be. The ultimate tragedy of his political life is that, for the past twenty-three years, Russia has been ruled by the opposite sort of politician. Vladimir Putin believes humanity to be rotten to its core, and all of his acts, in one way or another, are designed to validate this world view.
— Masha Gessen, ‘Gorbachev, the fundamentally Soviet Man’, The New Yorker, 31 August 2022
Vale Gorbachev
“Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev gave us 30 years of sunlight,” said Maksim, 20, a political science student, who carried a large sunflower to place before Mr. Gorbachev’s body, which was lying in state in the building’s grand hall.
“Unfortunately, this time has passed, and there is no more sun, only darkness,” Maksim said. “But I am deeply grateful to him for these 30 years.” …
“He gave us freedom, and peace, and music — everything that is most dear to us,” said Ekaterina, 75, who was crying as she exited onto the central Dmitrovka Street, which was cordoned off by law enforcement.
“Condolences to all of us because this also concerns you,” she said, referring to the West and reflecting on how Mr. Gorbachev had opened Russia up to Europe and the United States.
— ‘Russians Mourn Gorbachev in Silent Protest Against an Absent Putin’, New York Times, 3 September 2022
關於打人問題
‘黨的政策不主張打人。但打人也要進行階級分析，好人打壞人活該；壞人打好人，好人光榮；好人打好人誤會。今後再不許打人。要擺事實講道理。’
— 毛澤東，一九六六年八月一日
Christmas 1996
’In difficult times, it is tempting for all of us, especially those who suffer, to look back and say “if only”. But to look back in that way is to look down a blind alley. Better to look forward and say “if only”.’
— Elizabeth R
The Future
Be patient. Your future will soon come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.
— Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five