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
31 July 2023

***

More Other People’s Thoughts:

• Other People’s Thoughts, China Heritage 

---

Other People’s Thoughts, XXXVII

 

Good and Bad Luck

… are like a pair of chopsticks that you hold in our hand. You need both of them to grasp the full variety of life’s banquet.

— Zhang Yihe, published on Weibo, April 2013 and recorded on paper in April 2016

***

Meubles

Imagine what the Jetsons might have chosen for dining-room furniture, if they’d lived in Prague in 1922, and if their cartoon heads hadn’t been filled with Sputnik propaganda, but instead had been programmed with Kafka.”

— Wayne Koestenbaum, Figure It Out

X Marks the Spot: Elon Musk

He wants very much to be funny, but manifestly is not; he wants to be seen as brilliant and heterodox and fearless, but has the opinions and tastes and politics of a very rich middle-aged man who isn’t especially curious or literate; he sees himself, or anyway sells himself, as a visionary and a pioneer, but has revealed himself time after time to be a classically cretinous capitalist. Musk’s vision for humanity is grandiose and obscure; his impulse to stomp on anyone unlucky to find themselves working under him has always been more clearly and shamelessly expressed. His big ideas unfailingly reveal themselves to be either grubbing for state subsidy or “buy and pave a space, and put up a gate at the entrance.” 

— David Roth, Burning Down the House, 14 May 2023 

Musk, the Ultimate Asshole 

“Most of our experienced factory workers come from unionized environments, and we asked them what benefit did they see in unions,” he added. “They said, ‘Well, if their boss was an asshole, they had recourse.’ ”

“I said, ‘Let’s make a rule: There will be no assholes.’ I fired someone for being an asshole. And I only had to do that once, actually.”

— Elon Musk on worker’s unions, 2009

Exuent Six Emperors 

• “Have I played my part well in the farce of life?” — Augustus, (Suetonius, The Life of Augustus)
• “You leave the setting to court the rising sun.” — Tiberius, (Tacitus, Annals)
• “O dear, I’ve made a mess of it.” — Claudius, (Seneca, Apocolocyntosis)
• “Oh, what an artist dies in me!” — Nero, (Suetonius, Life of Nero)
• “What are you doing, comrades? I am yours and you are mine!” — Galba, (Suetonius, Life of Galba)
• “O dear, I think I’m becoming a god!” – Vespasian (Suetonius, Life of Vespasian)

Prigozhin’s Mutiny

What began as a mutiny morphed into a circus.

— Tatiana Stanovaya, The New Yorker, 27 June 2023

Cats vs. Natives

Of the cats, he said: “We take the side of the kiwi and the kākāpo and the kea and every other species that’s in danger because of these pricks.”

— Chaos at New Zealand feral cat hunting contest as video of children chanting with dead animals emerges, The Guardian, 28 June 2023

A Demonic Suction Tube

‘A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.’

— Martin Luther King Jr., ‘Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?’, 1967

You’re Fired

Trump’s aide says to him, “Sir, I had a dream you got your parade. It was miles and miles long winding through Washington DC. Joyful Americans lined the route, literally in the millions. People were laughing, cheering, playing in the street. You were riding in the most beautiful carriage.”

Trump asks, “Was I happy?”

The aide answers, “I don’t know, sir. The casket was closed.”

Trump discursus

A man is running to run the government he tried to overthrow while he was running it, even as he is running to stay ahead of the law.

— Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 23 July 2023

DJ Trump on Xi Jinping’s X Factor

“Think of President Xi. Central casting, brilliant guy. You know, when I say he’s brilliant, everyone says, ‘Oh that’s terrible’,” said Trump.

Trump added: “Well, he runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. Smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There’s nobody in Hollywood like this guy.”

GOP

If there were truth in advertising, Republicans would have to rename themselves the Opposite Party. They were the party of law and order. Now they want to abolish the F.B.I. They were the party that revered the symbols of the nation. Now they think the Jan. 6 riots were like a “normal tourist visit.” They were the party of moral character and virtue. Now they couldn’t care less that their standard-bearer consorted with a porn star. They were the party of staring down the Evil Empire. Now they’re Putin’s last best hope. They were the party of free trade. Now they’re protectionists. They were the party that cheered the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which argued that corporations had free speech. Now they are being sued by Disney because the company dared express an opinion they dislike. They were the party that once believed that “family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,” as George W. Bush put it. Now some of them want to invade Mexico.

— Bret Stephens, The New York Times, 24 July 2023

Style

‘Men have 3 hairstyles: parted… unparted… and DEPARTED.’

— sign in a barbershop in Mechanic Falls, Maine

Wu Ningkun and Li Zhengdao / T.D. Lee, the Nobel laureate 

Six years my junior, T.D. had been the youngest in our group of Chinese graduate students at the University of Chicago in the late 1940s; we used to call him Kid Brother. 

Now in his early fifties, the Nobel Prize winner still looked young, with a baby face and smooth skin, though visibly balding. We faced each other in two big armchairs across a tea table. As I briefly answered his questions (I did not want to outstay my welcome) about what I was in Beijing for and what I and some of our mutual friends had been through over the years, he showed no signs of strong interest or emotion. Dignified and self-assured, he looked the eminent scientist and scholar par excellence. I quickly sensed we were living in two different worlds, across an unbridgeable gap. Staying behind in America, he was able to reap successes and honors and live a happy life in security and affluence. Returning to China, I struggled through trials and tribulations and barely made it to this day of rehabilitation. Secure in the “imperialist fortress of America,” he was hailed as a patriot in Communist China, feted by every top leader of ‘the party and the government and whisked about in a chauffeur-driven Red Flag limousine as an honored guest of the state. Recalled to serve the motherland,  I  was  denounced  as  an  enemy  of  the  people  and  had  survived  labor  camps,  starvation,  and proletarian dictatorship. Even while we were chatting, my ribs ached from the jabs they had received from robust young men of the generation of Red Terror, who had ruthlessly elbowed their way onto the bus to the hotel. An amusing thought flashed through my mind: what would have happened if I had been the one to see him off back to China on that July afternoon in San Francisco? Would I perhaps be sitting in his armchair and he in mine? Oh, no, I decided right there and then, I would never have exchanged my bitter cup of lifetime reeducation for the salutatory toasts from the masters of proletarian dictatorship. No, I would not sit  in his armchair and, God forbid he should ever have been in my accursed shoes. When I was ready to say goodbye, his wife went into their bedroom and came out with a paperback edition of James Thurber’s Fables for Our Time and handed it to her husband, who inscribed it to me. T.D.’s interest in literature and fables at that was something new to me, and I was glad for it. Once when we had chatted deep into the night at the International House in Chicago, before he took his Ph.D. and went to work in San Francisco, I recalled, I had been dismayed to hear him call the Chinese classic  Dream of Red Mansions “unscientific,” because the hero of the novel was born with a “precious jade’’ in his mouth. I might have taken after Hamlet and said to him, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Now if someday Li were to read my life story, hopefully he might not say, “This can’t be true. Ningkun must have made it all up as a fable of patriotism for our time.”

— Wu Ningkun, A Single Tear, 1993, pp.238-239

有錢人每天都在幹什麼

資產＞100億，整天想著長生不老
資產1~100億，整天想著如何財務規劃，同時到處播種，賽馬機制
資產1千萬~1億，整天忙著應酬，漢子局，華山論劍，封號武林盟主；妹子
局，時間管理大師，標準成功人士
資產200~1千萬，學區房資深用戶，雞娃職業玩家，游走於高端飯局與一線奢侈品牌之間
資產50~200萬,°整天想看看世界，今天馬爾代夫，明天西雙版納，小資代
言人，朋友圈最美的風景
資產＜50萬，整天想著搞錢，資深房
奴、卡奴、乾飯人、打工仔，內卷專家，007候選人
7，資產＜10萬，俄烏戰爭、亞太戰路世界
局勢一覽無余，一切盡在笑談中；全球變暖、難民問題縱談國際風雲，熟知名人逸事。一盤花生米，一瓶二鍋頭，話盡江湖恩怨，閱盡人問冷暖。最強王者段位

洗脑/ 洗嘴

毛澤東時代是一個完全封閉的時代，那麼今天你想是個信息爆炸的時代，以及進入了一個後真相的時代，所以這個，就是我們這附近，也算是我不遠的鄰居吧，就是加州大學河濱分校的講座教授林培瑞先生啊，也有一個觀點：他說毛澤東時代的洗腦是真的是洗腦，而現在習近平時代的洗腦呢，恐怕絕大多數是洗你的一張嘴。這什麼意思呢？這什麼意思？就是說他把你的嘴管住了，讓你不准妄議中央、不准亂講話，他能達到的效果呢，大抵也就如此了。也就是說，洗不了你的腦，我還洗不了你的嘴啊，對不對？所以習近平主要是洗嘴。

— 宋永毅，習近平和毛澤東為什麼搞個人崇拜？，《不明白播客》，2023年6月14日

Vale Sinead O’Connor

Sinead O’Connor, the Irish singer who sadly passed away last week. She basically blew up her musical career in the United States when in 1992 she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live” in protest of the church’s cover-up of clerical sexual abuse. …

O’Connor was calling attention to hideous facts about the church a decade before The Boston Globe’s Spotlight stories put it on the national agenda. She used her musical celebrity in exemplary fashion to call out monstrous evil. She went directly after one of the most beloved public figures of the time, now canonized, and she did so at heavy cost to her career. It was an exemplary use of free speech and an extraordinary act of courage.

Nothing compared 2 her. Rest in peace.

— Bret Stephens, The New York Times, 31 July 2023

民營經濟

需要我們是無奈的選擇，消滅我們是崇高的理想。

— 向松祚， 2019

翩翩

誰不是錯過了四下報更的鼓聲
總有人偷偷撥弄鏡月的指針
罌缶的酒瓶化來綺紈與樓閣
綠芭蕉紅櫻桃孑然一身的過來人
未曾走到絕境路彼岸花不開
辛酸只為長安遠倒臥在瓊台
小心那流射的海市售賣開花杖
遼遙的天河啊紛紛流淌的輓歌郎
藍採和啊 醉酒當歌
紅顏易老轉眼桑田泛清波
她也曾是越過了銀河萬里的荒原
他也曾是划破了絢爛流落在人間
唯有那不眠的憑欄與情仇依捨
是雲搖是雨散都在同一個搖籃
邯鄲夢啊古今同
榮華易去青山處處英雄冢
藍採和 醉酒當歌
紅顏易老轉眼桑田泛清波

— 刀郎，“翩翩”

學會與黑暗和解

復旦大學陳果：「要學會與黑暗和解，當你與黑暗和解的時候，黑暗已經不那麼黑了。」
崔永元：「當你和黑暗和解的時候，你就不知道什麼是光明瞭。」

Mr Kissinger Goes to Beijing, again

This trip is a reminder of Kissinger’s one true innovation throughout his career: inventing the for-profit third act of a career in public service. … For at least a day, however, Chinese officials could reminisce about the era when the watchword was engagement, and Kissinger can smile that he has maintained his relevancy for yet another news media cycle.

— Daniel W. Drezner, Politico, 22 July 2023

Oppenheimer: Sex & Sanskrit

Uday Mahurkar, Information Commissioner, Government of India, wrote an open letter to Nolan, terming the scene a “disturbing attack on Hinduism.” 

‘We urge, on behalf of billion Hindus and the timeless tradition of lives being transformed by revered Geeta, to do all that is needed to uphold the dignity of their revered book and remove this scene from your film across the world. Should you choose to ignore this appeal it would be deemed as a deliberate assault on Indian civilisation. Eagerly await needful action (sic)” Mahurkar, founder of Save Culture Save India Foundation, wrote.

— Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ sparks social media controversy, The Hindu, 23 July 2023

 Baghavad Gita, chapter 11, verse 32:

Original

Transliteration

Translation

Martini of Theseus

Consider the paradoxical thought experiment known as the Ship of Theseus: If Athenians removed and replaced every plank of Theseus’s ship so that none of the original wood remained, would it still be Theseus’s ship? Or would it become a different ship entirely?

Alternatively, take a dirty martini: gin, vermouth, olive brine and a garnish. But swap the traditional dry gin for one washed with mirepoix. Use Manzanilla sherry in place of the vermouth, a solution of chicken bouillon and MSG instead of brine, and garnish with a drizzle of olive oil. Is it still a dirty martini?

— Becky Hughes, The Martini Has Lost Its Mind, The New York Times, 13 July 2023

Churchill on The Bomb 

Our Germans were better than their Germans.

Oppenheimer’s wife

Oppenheimer: I am become death, destroyer of worlds 

Kitty Puening: The brat is down! Where are the martinis?

Barbie 

Watching the first half hour of this movie is like being waterboarded with Pepto-Bismol.

— Anthony Lane, How “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” Bring Monumental Figures to Life, The New Yorker, 31 July 2023

Barbie, II

Because it’s “A Mattel Production,” as the opening credits inform us, it wants to have its cake, eat it, mock it, smear it on the faces of the manufacturers, and still sell a shitload of dolls—or, as a recent piece in the Times suggested, “drive near-infinite brand synergies,” the sort of phrase that makes me want to move to Bhutan and raise goats. …

Maybe the movie is for Greta Gerwig. And, by extension, for anyone as super-smart as her—former Barbiephiles, preferably, who have wised up and put away childish things. Nobody else would even attempt to meld a feminist colloquium with a plug for a chunk of plastic, and, if the result is a deep disappointment after “Little Women,” perhaps depth is the wrong thing to ask for. Think of the kid in Charles Baudelaire’s essay “The Philosophy of Toys,” who shakes and bangs a toy in exasperation, before finally prizing it open. “But where is its soul? ” Baudelaire says, adding, “This moment marks the beginnings of stupor and melancholy.” Sometimes the shiny surface is enough. Or, as Barbie’s beau would say, Kenough.

— Anthony Lane, How “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” Bring Monumental Figures to Life, The New Yorker, 31 July 2023

Barbie

‘I was disappointed that they cut the scene where Oppenheimer and the Pointer Sisters do the neutron dance.’

— Dave, Wisconsin, 29 July 2023, a reader’s comment in The New York Times

他她它祂牠怹: Chinese Pronouns

‘If we don’t get our act together, 25 years from now, school children in this country are going to be forced to learn 37 different pronouns in Mandarin and we cannot let that happen.’

— Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), at a campaign event, 17 July 2023

Putin’s End

But the fact remains that he is the principal author of the entire mess. The pity is that if Putin’s entourage bites the bullet and removes him or claws down his presidential status, it is far from clear that they will put Putinism entirely into reverse gear. They are drugged with the delights of his vision of Great Russia. Recommended Chris Donnelly Comment & analysis: Prigozhin’s insurrection propels Putin’s reign into its final act Ultimate power in Russia, moreover, lies with the Russian army and the FSB. All the ministries and big business are infiltrated by secret policemen. Corruption and malfeasance pervades every regional and city administration. Liberal politicians are hardly known outside educated circles, and the extra-parliamentary far-right groupings have never been more brazen. As the great poet Boris Pasternak wrote: “Getting through life is not a stroll across a field.” For nearly 24 years under Putin, Russia has been hauled back into a barbed-wire condominium from which reformers such as Gorbachev and Yeltsin struggled to liberate it. We may well discover that a coup brings an era to its end without solving its problems — and without the televised spectacle of a race of rebel military trucks along the Russian M4 highway. 

— Robert Service, A New Road for Russia, Financial Times, 1 July 2023

秦刚：Going, Going, Gang

秦剛事件尚末完全落幕。但唯一倒霉蛋名單已經揭曉 — 王毅。

明明已功成名就吃香喝辣
不得不重新披掛再上前線

另外說明瞭這一個月時間的拖延都是在找接任外交部部長的合適人選。最後實在找不到，不得不請王毅再次出馬。

— 何岸泉 He is Anquan, 25 July 2023

Tradition

Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people, William.

— Laura Greenwood, Fangs For Nothing (The Vampire Detective, #1)

Not Sportsmanlike

Sportsmen are singularly ill-suited to pontificating about politics because sport is as cut-throat and greedy an industry as entertainment; it’s a cross between mediocre showbiz and bad religion. …

These Empathletes are not only paid for what they do but haul in huge amounts from advertising; Lineker in particular has pocketed millions of pounds over the past 25 years urging the nation to neck as many units of salt, fat and sugar that we can manage to consume in the shape of Walkers crisps.

If in the future those who have grown filthy rich from sport could only put their money where their mouths are, the air-polluting, hot-air carbon dioxide levels which worry the likes of Andy Murray so much would surely fall.

— Julie Burchill, Andy Murray and the unstoppable rise of the sporting bores, The Spectator, 5 July 2023

Zhou Duo on Yan Mingfu

閻明復走出統戰部大樓，兩邊是夾道歡送的人群，不少人還在抹眼淚，頗有「風蕭蕭兮易水寒，壯士一去兮不復還」的悲壯氣氛！閻是個很重感情的人，看了這番情景也很受感動，竟然冒出一句大逆不道的話 ：「豁出去了，我當一回中國共產黨的納吉！」我就在他身邊，聽得清清楚楚！

[Note: 納吉 is the Chinese name of Imre Nagy, a leading Hungarian communist who led a rebellion against the Soviet Union in 1956. He was tried and executed on Moscow’s orders.]

— 周舵

Lei Yanhong on China’s Autocrats

雷艷紅，女，副教授，出生於1975年，廈門大學歷史系畢業，獲歷史學學士、碩士，北京大學政府管理學院博士學位。2006年7月至今在中國廈門大學公共事務學院任教，主講課程 《公共財政學》、《領導科學》、《發展管理》、《科學研究與社會實踐》、《制度財政學》。

對古代帝王尊重、熱愛，是對所有戰死、鬥死、冤死、餓死靈魂的侮辱，如果我的這句話導致朋友圈中崇拜者的不快，請把我拉黑。

帝王粉是這個國家最頑固的污跡，是這個國家黑心的永久添加劑。面對他們，我感到深深的無助與悲涼，因為他們，時間淘汰不了，真相教育不了，歷史接受不了，教育解決不了。因為他們，我不敢奢望正義，只能祈禱仁慈。

他們是人類文明史上永遠無法磨平的傷痕，是人類文明價值的絕佳反襯。

江山自古以來就在那裡擺著，不需要誰來打：帝王將相的後人中有的人，請閉上你的嘴，不要一開口就是”我們父輩打下的江山」。告訴你，沒有哪座山哪條河是你們父輩打下來的，自從盛古開天地，就有了長江黃河崑崙泰山。你們的父輩只是佔山為王的強盜，讓你們坐享榮華，你自豪什麼？幾千年的專制史就是一部奴役史！無論其夢想構建的多麼宏大，也無論其口號包裝的如何精美，概括起來無非就十二個字：打天下，坐金鑾，睡女人，搶財產。

Famous Last Words 

‘This will be the last sentence spoken by a human. One scientist will say to another scientist: “Let’s try it the other way”.’

— physicist and astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson on the end of the human race

Party Purity on the Menu

「虛頭巴腦」又出新花樣！完校推出「清廉工作餐」（附菜譜）

近日，陝西一家黨校舉辦黨支部書記培訓，期間推出了一種別具特色的餐品，被稱為「清廉餐」。這一舉措旨在通過飲食文化的方式，強調「儉以養德，廉以立身」的理念，並傳達廉潔文化的重要性。這種「清廉餐”並非像焦裕祿書記那樣簡樸，而是由幾道獨特的菜品組成：

「黑白分明」：山藥炒木耳，色彩鮮明；
「清清白白」：素炒白菜，清新可口；
「清廉本色」：清拌蓮藕，保持原汁原味；
「一清二白」：小蔥拌豆腐，簡單美味；
「拒腐防變」：皮蛋拌腐竹，充滿創意；
「憶苦思甜」：苦瓜拌甜菜，寓意深遠。

— @zhanglifan, menu at a provincial party school, July 2023

Fail. Fail again. Fail better.

The government has to pretend it knows what it’s doing. Hell, it’s not as if it is doing anything else. You have to keep alert to avoid the tumbleweed in the corridors. This is a Potemkin administration. Nothing more. Existing only to look as if it is existing. It has no ideas. No plans. Just the hope that if it waits long enough then things will somehow mysteriously get better. Hold your nerve and all that.

— John Crace, Cometh the hour, cometh the halfwit, The Guardian, 11 July 2023

NATO on China

‘The People’s Republic of China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values. The PRC employs a broad range of political, economic, and military tools to increase its global footprint and project power, while remaining opaque about its strategy, intentions and military build-up. The PRC’s malicious hybrid and cyber operations and its confrontational rhetoric and disinformation target Allies and harm Alliance security. The PRC seeks to control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, and strategic materials and supply chains. It uses its economic leverage to create strategic dependencies and enhance its influence. It strives to subvert the rules-based international order, including in the space, cyber and maritime domains.’

— press release, NATO Summit, 12 July 2023

The Faces of Wang Meng 王蒙 (矇 mēng)

這個摯熱的革命文藝進步青年，從藝四十餘載從未生產過一部膾炙人口的作品，沒有塑造一個記得住的形象，他甚至沒有說過一句完整的真話，卻莫名其妙官至作協主席、文化部長，略等於文淵閣大學士、禮部侍郎。這是中國文壇一樁奇案，世界文壇一項奇跡。所以我說王蒙的蒙此處讀一聲meng，是有道理的。…

王蒙指出：「中國文學處於它最好的時期。不管你們對中國文學有多少指責，我只能說，中國現在有上百種文學刊物，諸多作家在從事純文學創作，全國每年發表的長篇小說有上千部之多，中國可算是全世界的文學大國。」王蒙進一步強調：「有些在新中國歷史上曾被嚴厲批評過的作家，如今不僅作品接連出版，還受到當下讀者的喜愛，比如梁實秋、徐志摩、沈從文、張愛玲。上世紀八十年代，中國有出版社想出版胡適的文集，曾經引起過不同意見，但現在各種各樣的胡適文集已出版很多，他甚至還有一張照片掛在文學館裡。」

看到這段話我第一時間懷疑他其實是在說反話，看了視頻才知道不是，彼時他一臉真誠，真誠的容積率之高以至於把五官都擠得有些變形，動情之處好像還準備流一下淚，只是考慮到余含淚才生生收了回去……那個表情即使從專業表演也相當具有挑戰性。所以在中國修到文壇大家其實就修成了表演家，泰斗們窮經皓首數十年要做的事，就是把真話說成假話，假話說成屁話，屁話說成鬼話，還特別感動的樣子。…

王蒙是中国文学的一个缩影，大家在酒局里互捧臭脚，咖啡馆里对发奖杯，哇，你这真是后现代意识流派，啊，你这个才是新解构主义……开始是自摸，后来变成互相自摸，开始也不信，演着演着竟真信了。要知道，自摸不可耻，互相自摸才可耻，互相自摸也不是很可耻，互相自摸都能达到高潮才可耻，互相自摸达到高潮也不是最可耻，唯有彼此互相自摸，才能达到高潮，这才最可耻。

可见，中国文学不是最好的时期，是最好蒙的时期，王蒙也不是王蒙，而是王mēng（此处读一声）。

— 李承鵬, 老而不死是為蒙

Your Choice

For anyone who still clings to the illusion that dictatorships are likely to be prosperous, strategically wise, or internally stable, I propose a simple test. Imagine that someone wrote down the names of all the countries in the world on little slips of paper and then separated them into two hats: one for democracy, one for dictatorships. You would select one of the two hats, draw a slip of paper from it, look at the name, and then spend the rest of your life living in that country. Who knows, maybe you’d get lucky and end up in an authoritarian regime that seems stable and is producing steady growth. But I know which hat I would choose. And even if you fantasize about finding the unicorn that is a benevolent strongman, I suspect you do too.

— Brian Klaas, The Dictator Myth That Refuses to Die, The Atlantic, 26 July 2023

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