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
21 September 2023

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More Other People’s Thoughts:

• Other People’s Thoughts, China Heritage 

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Other People’s Thoughts, XXXVIII

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Airbnb 

I’d be worried when she asks “How do you like your eggs in the morning?”

— Stuart Heritage, The Guardian, 2 August 2023

Wellness

Wellness has been a tried-and-tested way to make a lot of money by claiming that holding people upside down and shaking the change out of their pockets does wonders for their chakra alignment. …

My schedule for happiness involves a couple of hours volunteering a day, a couple of dirty martinis of an evening and a lot of laughs 24/7.

— Julie Burchill, 10 May 2023

The Time of Orgies

“In cultural studies there’s a concept of the time of carnivals, and the time of orgies. Carnivals are when everyone puts on a mask and plays by the rules. Orgies are when everyone goes crazy. We’re in the time of orgies. And it very much looks like it’s not going to end well. …

“It’s pointless to talk about good and evil, because it all depends where you’re looking at it from. This is a time when the masks are off, and everyone is going wild.”

— Andrey Melnichenko, a Russian oligarch, quoted in The Financial Times, 31 August 2023

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s High Altitude Defenestration 

‘Not a plane crash — a special landing operation.’

— comment on X/ Twitter

Prigozhin’s rise and fall contains a certain gangland banality: a killer on the make, hired by other, more powerful killers to commit more of the same, at larger scale, is ultimately offed by those same killers. This is a story in which all the parts are played by bad guys.

— Joshua Yaffa, The New Yorker, 24 August 2023

Putin khuylo!

“He has three advisers, Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great.”

— Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, quoted in The Financial Times, 23 February 2023

Amadán

While Trump goes for the long con, or the long coup — rap sheet be damned, it’s said that he worries this will hurt his legacy. He shouldn’t. His legacy is safe, as the most democracy-destroying, soul-crushing, self-obsessed amadán ever to occupy the Oval. Amadán, that’s Gaelic for a man who grows more foolish every day.

— Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 5 August 2023

Some place in an era of disposable thought

The digital age has done nothing to dim the popularity of Shakespeare. But what about the Bard’s book-mates stacked on shelves of antique wood here in Saint-Omer? Who still listens to voices from the European literary cradle, slowly fading away in this nursing home of geriatric books? Who reads Latin calligraphy, or Old English? Who has any sense of what these books are trying to say? At one time, nearly every word in this library was dictated truth, passed on in the copying of scribes.

Gutenberg’s printing press made a mockery of that monopoly. Anyone’s word could be dictated truth, and so it was, with new versions of the Bible customized for various sects. In our time, the chaos of the internet reduced truth to a near worthless commodity. But surely all that medieval meditation on God has some place in an era of disposable thought.

— Timothy Egan, A Pilgrimage to Eternity, 2019, p.47

Shit beamed down from the mothership

In fact, a top adviser warned about the efforts to overturn the election quite clearly: “I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership,” an unnamed senior campaign adviser wrote in an email on December 8, 2020, referring to Trump’s “Elite Strike Task Force” led by Rudy Giuliani.

— The New Republic, 23 August 2023

Crazed, Crazy, Crazier

Count One, Conspiracy to Defraud the United States: “From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 20, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant, Donald J. Trump, did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government.”

— quoted by David Remnick, The New Yorker, 1 August 2023

“The un-American witch hunts will fail and President Trump will be re-elected to the White House so he can save our Country from the abuse, incompetence, and corruption that is running through the veins of our Country at levels never seen before.”

— Trump Campaign on truth social, 1 August 2023

So far, tens of millions of Americans are willing to overlook not only the multiple criminal indictments of Donald Trump but also his lethal mismanagement of covid-19; his inhumane handling of children at the border; his myriad statements of bigotry and misogyny; his assaults on the free press and the rule of law; his indifference to national security and the climate emergency; his affection for autocrats around the world; his impeachments; his many schemes to enrich his family. According to the Times poll, Biden and Trump are tied in a hypothetical rematch at forty-three per cent. Sooner or later, a great reckoning is coming.

— David Remnick, The New Trump Indictment and the Reckoning Ahead, The New Yorker, 1 August 2023

“He might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife’s underpants and you can’t be a man anymore,” David Green, 69, a retail manager in Somersworth, N.H., said of Mr. Trump. “You got to be a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump’s my guy. He’s proved it on a national level.”

— ‘Trump Crushing DeSantis and G.O.P. Rivals, Times/Siena Poll Finds’, The New York Times, 31 July 2023

方斌，《卜算子. 盼團圓》

賢妻戲嬌兒，相歡兩不厭，
一時氣急若上腦，轉眼又和好。

無事看熱鬧，兩個都是寶，
默不做聲滿臉笑，一家團圓好。

— 注：我妻子馮蘊青從1999年以來多次被關押勞教，
這次又被判刑7年半，我與她聚少離多，
這次我出獄回來後，獄方又不讓我與她會見，
因思念她而作卜算子.盼團圓，2023年8月27日

對權力的恐懼

疫情過後，對市場影響最深的並不是什麼「疤痕效應」，而是對權利的恐懼。大家深刻地意識到了，監管是毫無邊界的，政策的長期預期是極不確定的。

這種預期下，任何行業，都不存在持續經營假設，一個監管新規，可以推翻任何長期估值模型。這是缺乏信心的重要原因，也是「好話說盡，市場不信」的根本原因。

—章立凡，2023年9月9日

Ruling Ideas

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.

— Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach

New York Narcissus

Mayor Eric Adams’s exuberant self-regard stops just short of biceps-kissing. He has talked in public about the warmth of his own smile. Describing “Healthy at Last,” a book that he published in 2020 about his disciplined response to a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes, Adams told a podcast host, “Every time I read it, I find another nugget, and say, ‘Wow! This was a good point that I made.’ ” Adams once told an audience, “I get out of the shower sometimes and I say, ‘Damn!’ ” He has said that he is the face of a new Democratic Party.

— Ian Parker, The New Yorker, 7 August 2023

Spat out by the stars

The story that the data tell is that all of the elements in our bodies, except for the hydrogen in water molecules, were made in stars. All the oxygen, all the carbon, all the nitrogen, all the iron: all of that was made in stars, and then spat out through multiple generations of stellar explosions, supernovae, and then that debris coalescing into new stars. So we’re part of the story, literally. Carl Sagan said, profoundly, that we are made of star stuff, and it is really true, except for the hydrogen that’s left over from the big bang. Even the iron that’s carrying the energy around your body was made in a stellar explosion involving what we think is a Type 1A supernova—an old star. The carbs that you’re eating, the oxygen you’re breathing—all of that was made in massive stars that blew up really fast. And so, literally, this is our origin story.

— Jane Rigby in David W. Brown, What the Webb Space Telescope Will Show Us Next, The New Yorker, 6 August 2023

耳目

間諜的四個特徵：

第一，有接觸機密的能力。一般人就算想洩密，也沒那個能力。
第二，有大量灰色收入不能解釋其來源。極有可能就是間諜經費。
第三，子女、資產、親屬，大部分都在國外。這樣他們當間諜就沒有後顧之憂。
第四，喜歡贊美、喜歡歌頌、喜歡說好聽的。因為如果不這樣就難以潛伏下來。

— X

Dorian G. Turnbull’s Official Portrait

Malcolm Turnbull’s portrait is close to being formally commissioned, and must assume the noted art collector will be discerning in his choice of painter.

Archibald Prize-winner Lewis Miller was working on a portrait of the future PM back in 1994 but – in a fantastic yarn spun by the late, legendary Sydney art dealer Ray Hughes – he cut it to shreds when Turnbull complained it made him “look like a big, fat, greedy c—”. Turnbull has always said the tale wasn’t true.

— The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 August 2023

On March 11, 889 CE, 22-year-old Emperor Uda wrote

‘On the 6th Day of the 2nd Month of the First Year of the Kampo era: Taking a moment of my free time, I wish to express my joy of the cat. It arrived by boat as a gift to the late Emperor, received from the hands of Minamoto no Kuwashi. The color of the fur is peerless. None could find the words to describe it, although one said it was reminiscent of the deepest ink. It has an air about it, similar to Kanno. Its length is 5 sun, and its height is 6 sun. I affixed a bow about its neck, but it did not remain for long. In rebellion, it narrows its eyes and extends its needles. It shows its back. When it lies down, it curls in a circle like a coin. You cannot see its feet. It’s as if it were circular Bi disk. When it stands, its cry expresses profound loneliness, like a black dragon floating above the clouds. By nature, it likes to stalk birds. It lowers its head and works its tail. It can extend its spine to raise its height by at least 2 sun. Its color allows it to disappear at night. I am convinced it is superior to all other cats.’

— Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship With Cats, Smithsonian Magazine

The Asian Games in Hangzhou

— A.C. Graham, trans., Poems of the West Lake: Translations from the Chinese (35) &
Chinese Media Censors Poem, The Guardian, 12 September 2023

GET THE F*** OUT

MANILA (REUTERS, BLOOMBERG) – The Philippine foreign minister on Monday (May 3) demanded in an expletive-laced message on Twitter that China’s vessels get out of disputed waters, marking the latest exchange in a war of words with Beijing over its activities in the South China Sea.

The comments by Mr Teodoro Locsin, known for making blunt remarks at times, follow Manila’s protests for what it calls the “illegal” presence of hundreds of Chinese boats inside the Philippines 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

“China, my friend, how politely can I put it? Let me see… O…GET THE F*** OUT,” Mr Locsin said in a tweet on his personal account.

The President’s Son and the Prince

‘He grabbed my hair in a way that made me understand the difference between rugby and football.’

— Alex (Taylor Zakhar Perez) on Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine) in Red, White & Royal Blue

Uma Thurman’s Southern Drawl

… I have to push back when people start complaining about Thurman’s accent. Can something that brings us this much pleasure possibly be “bad”? Thurman adds a jolt of oh-you’re-really-going-for-it gusto to each of her scenes in “Red, White & Royal Blue,” and the performance is a hoot; though her lines may be as Southern-smothered as grits, I found them every bit as tasty. Others may nitpick, but all I know is that I was gaga for it — and I don’t mean “gaga” as in enthusiastic, I mean “gaga” as in whatever Lady Gaga was doing in “House of Gucci.”

Some people complain that an over-the-top accent takes them out of the reality of the film, but I find it pulls me into the pocket of surreality that every movie must muster. For instance, I have no idea if Benny Safdie’s jarring Hungarian accent in “Oppenheimer” is realistic, and frankly, I don’t care: That focus-pulling voice feels right for the physicist Edward Teller, an overweening character who refuses to mesh with the other scientists. Some critics quibbled with the Italian accents in “House of Gucci,” but I can’t imagine those two and a half hours without them. If Lady Gaga and Jared Leto weren’t talking like Wario by way of “Moonstruck,” the movie would have been sapped of all its fun!

— Kyle Buchanan, There’s No Such Thing as a Bad Movie Accent, The New York Times, 18 August 2023

The British Museum

‘How on earth does an institution that made such a virtue of its ability to safeguard world heritage come back from the news that it has been stealing from itself?’

— Dan Hicks, Professor of Contemporary Archaeology, Oxford university

指明方向

有人問路:大爺您好!住建部大廈咋走?答：從「擼起袖子加油幹」往左轉，看見「不忘初心」向右轉，遇到「牢記使命」再往左轉，直奔「社會主義核心價值觀」，離「中華民族偉大復興」大概有五十米，有「中國夢」的那個大樓對面「老鼠蒼蠅一起打」那棟樓旁邊掛著「房子是用來住的，不是用來炒的」標語的那個地方就是了。

— X

中國特色

世上有一個
九千萬黨員的組織
讀德國人寫的共產黨宣言
唱法國人編的國際歌
對著俄國人設計的鐮刀錘子旗宣誓
把錢存瑞士銀行
把老婆孩子送美國
對自己治下的老百姓說
不搞西方那一套

— X

Grand Unity across the Ditch

Every time I visit Australia I often ponder the thought, ‘Will we ever become one country, Australia and New Zealand?’

My personal view – and it’s only a personal view – is that New Zealanders shouldn’t rule that out. There would certainly be economic benefits, economies of scale in the private and public sector, opening Aldi stores on our shores. In fact, technically the option remains open for New Zealand to join Australia under their constitution. The main problem I foresee though is: how do we integrate the Australian cricket team? But we conquered Everest, so you never know.

— New Zealand should consider joining Australia, MP urges in valedictory speech, The Guardian, 24 August 2023

Portrait parle

Although Donald Trump’s booking record at the Fulton County Jail lists him as 6’3” and 215 pounds, no one can seem to believe that the former president has a comparable build to athletes like Muhammad Ali. That includes adult film star Stormy Daniels, who, considering she and Trump allegedly slept together, perhaps would know best. She cast her own doubt on Twitter on Friday. “Mmmkay! And I’m 110lbs and a virgin 😂!” she wrote. “I’m not a scale or a doctor but I have spent some time beneath 215lb men and Tiny was not one of them.”

— Stormy Daniels on Donald J. Trump’s stats

Tee off

So deeply the story of our era that a former president charged, in effect, with attempting to overthrow our democratic form of government would respond by selling a mug shot T-shirt.

— Gail Collins, 28 August 2023

Slow Fade

“China’s decline will be gradual,” Yi wrote in yet another commentary. “It will remain the world’s second- or third-largest economy for decades to come. But the huge gap between its waning demographic and economic strength and its expanding political ambitions may make it highly vulnerable to strategic misjudgments. Memories of past glory or fear of lost status could lead it down the same dangerous path that Russia has taken in Ukraine.”

— Yi Fuxian, Project Syndicate, February 2023

You need a showstopper.

‘A song so irresistible, it’s like a syringe that shoots from Broadway straight into the neck of Debbie from Duluth, who becomes an addict from the first second she hears it during girl’s night out at the Calorie Pit. And an addict will do anything, anything, to get her fix, even take a middle seat on a red-eye to New York City, where for the low, low price of everything she’s got, Debbie can have the privilege of sitting in the finest rear balcony seat in all the land to finally, finally see that show with that song she can’t stop belting out all over fucking Duluth.’

— Donna in Only Murders in the Building, Season 3 Episode 3

盛世、安史

經濟學家高善文曾經說過一句話很火的話：「我老了，也財務自由了，靜觀其變。30歲以下的年輕人最可憐，如果國家這一次走錯了路，這輩子就可以洗洗睡了」。一代人自有一代人的命運，成長於開元天寶時期的人，以為盛世是常態，誰又能想到，他們大多數人會死於隨後的安史之亂。

— X

Fuck off

When Elon Musk posted a personally crafted 280-character “peace plan” for the war in Ukraine last October, a Ukrainian diplomat offered a carefully considered review. It ran to a full two words: “Fuck off”. This week’s allegations that Musk shut down his Starlink system (on which the comms-shattered Ukraine relies to defend itself against Russia) right in the middle of a counteroffensive last year — apparently deliberately to neuter it — forces a new question. When he does finally make it there in his big space rocket, will even Mars be far enough for Elon Musk to fuck off to?

— And then Elon Musk said there’ll be no more war – not via his satellite. Aren’t we lucky to have the world in his hands?, The Guardian, 8 September 2023

Queen of Oz

‘I despise pomp and crave circumstance.’

— Catherine Tate as Queen Georgiana in the BBC series Queen of Oz

Immigrants from the Global South in the Unwelcoming North

‘We are here because you were there.’

— Abdulrazak Gurnah, By the Sea

傷害中華民族感情

傷害中華民族感情法」——你吃特供時，想不起和我們是一個族，你住高幹病房時，想不起和我們是一個族，你把子女弄到長青藤住爾灣豪宅開法拉利時想不起和我們是一個族，平民穿件和服拍照，買個日系車代步，誇一句日本食品安全，你忽然就想起我們是一個族。這很難不讓人認為你在用「感情」牌鐮刀想深化割韭菜。至於傷害，我認為最傷害中華民族感情的，難道不是那些揣著瑞士銀行黑金卡、美國綠卡，人模狗樣坐在人民大會堂舉手決定著中國人命運的那些外國人爹媽嗎？末了還愛說那句「我一生的追求就是為人民服務」。

— 李承鵬，2023年9月9日

Ghost in the Machine

‘The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.’

— John Maynard Keynes

On the High Seas

There’s something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that’s unbearably sad. Like most unbearably sad things, it seems incredibly elusive and complex in its causes yet simple in its effect: on board the Nadir (especially at night, when all the ship’s structured fun and reassurances and gaiety ceased) I felt despair. The word “despair” is overused and banalized now, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. It’s close to what people call dread or angst, but it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable sadness of knowing I’m small and weak and selfish and going, without doubt, to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard.

— from David Foster Wallace, Shipping Out, Harper’s Bazaar, January 1996

Chairman Emeritus Murdoch

A legacy of deceit, destruction, and death

Wherever his media properties exist across the globe, they disregard basic journalistic practices and pump venomous misinformation into the public discourse.

In Fox News, Murdoch created a uniquely destructive force in American democracy and public life, one that ushered in an era of division where racist and post-truth politics thrive.

Rupert Murdoch’s media properties helped reshape the Republican Party into a Trumpist authoritarian death cult. Rupert Murdoch allowed Fox News to fuel the insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol, letting his stars intentionally and knowingly lie to undermine our democratic elections.

Rupert Murdoch’s media outlets, especially Fox News, spread dangerous medical misinformation that not only worsened the global pandemic but also resulted in countless needless deaths — including those of many of the network’s own viewers.

Given the unparalleled global scale of his media footprint, no one on the planet has done more to spread lies denying climate change and undermine efforts to address the crisis than Rupert Murdoch.

The world is worse off because of Rupert Murdoch. No one should sugarcoat the damage he caused. …

Making matters worse, his parting act — handing the reins to Lachlan Murdoch — is akin to tossing a match onto the kindling he stacked.

Lachlan certainly is a less competent leader than his father, but his worldview is considerably more brutal. His leadership will likely just intensify the misconduct, misinformation, and malevolence that have come to define Murdoch media.

— Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters for America, 21 September 2023

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