Happy Chinese New Year!

2014 (roughly) is the year of the horse. I say roughly because the Chinese New Year depends on the moon's cycle, so the new year doesn't begin and end every year on the exact same day (same reason Easter always seems to hop around).

Anyway, what's so special about Horse people? Well, according to tradition (and this very nifty article here) people born under this sign are generally "energetic, bright and intelligent ... have excellent skills and enjoy being in the limelight [as they are] cheerful, popular, talented and enjoy entertaining" (dangit, why couldn't I have been born in the year of the horse?). These people are also thought to be rather "impatient and hot-blooded. Failure can lead to pessimism [and they are generally] bad at managing their finances" (OK, never mind, I don't mind being a horse then).

Aha! The article even says that those people who were not born in the year of the horse will find the year ahead to "bring health and prosperity." I'm likin' this prediction very mucho!

Happy New Year everyone!

Serious Thoughts On New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve--you'd think I could go home early

But official business keeps me.

I hold the brush and face them with tears:

Pitiful convicts in chains,

Little men who tried to fill their bellies,

Fell into the law's net, don't understand disgrace.

And I?  In love with a meager stipend

I hold on to my job and miss the chance to retire.

Do not ask who is foolish or wise;

All of us alike scheme for a meal.

The ancients would have freed them a while at New Year's--

Would I dare do likewise? I am silent with shame.

~Su Dungpo (1037-1101)

from An Introduction to Sung Poetry by Kojiro Yoshikawa, 

transl. by Burton Watson

Ancient Chinese Secret Road To Wealth

Sima Qian (d. 85 BCE) was a Chinese historian who, like Herodotus with the Greeks, decided to write down the history from the most ancient times all the way down to the age of the emperor Wudi.  He was quite prolific in this task, for his Historical Records consisted of 130 chapters (over 700,000 Chinese characters) divided into Basic Annals, Chronological Tables, Treatises, Hereditary Houses and Biographies.

Wealth

In his Biographies, Sima Qian describes a number of wealthy people and how they got there:

Thrift and hard work are without doubt the proper way o gain a livelihood.  And yet it will be found that rich men have invariably employed some unusual scheme or method to get to the top. Plowing the fields is a rather crude way to make a living, and yet Ch'in Yang did so well at it that he became the richest man in his province. Robbing graves is a criminal offense, but T'ien Shu got his start by doing it. Gambling is a wicked pastime, but Huan Fa used it to acquire a fortune. Most fine young men would despise the thought of traveling around peddling goods, yet Yung Lo-ch'eng got rich that way. Many people would consider trading in fats a disgraceful line of business, but Yung Po made a thousand catties of gold at it. Vending sirups is a petty occupation, but the Chang family acquired ten million cash that way. It takes little skill to sharpen knives, but because the Chih family didn't mind doing it, they could eat the best of everything. Dealing in dried sheep stomachs seems like an insignificant enough trade, but thanks to it the Cho family went around with a mounted retinue. The calling of a horse doctor is a rather ignominious profession, but it enabled Chang Li to own a house so large that he had to strike a bell to summon the servants. All of these men got where they did because of their devotion and singleness of purpose.
From this we may see that there is no fixed road to wealth, and money has no permanent master. It finds its way to the man of ability like the spokes of a wheel converging upon the hub, and from the hands of the worthless it falls like shattered tiles.

(From Records of the Grand Historian, Burton Watson)

Source:

The Heritage of World Civilizations

The Seven Womanly Virtues

According to Ban Zhao (45 CE-116 CE), sister of the historian Ban Gu, the Chinese woman of the Han dynasty era had to exhibit seven traits to be considered virtuous:

1. Humility.
2. Resignation.
3. Subservience.
4. Self-abasement.
5. Obedience.
6. Cleanliness.
7. Industry.

Boy am I glad to be living in modern times.  Being a woman back then sounds like no fun at all!

OK, so Mulan did not satisfy most of those requirements. But I just found this painting by Heather Theurer just too pretty to pass.

Embracing Life

Tang poet Li Bai,
as imagined by the Song artist Liang Kai.

I'll wrap this Mighty Mudball of a world all up in a bag 

And be wild and free like Chaos itself!

~Li Bai (701-762)

The Art Of Propaganda

"To defeat the enemy we must rely primarily on the army with guns. But this army alone is not enough; we must also have a cultural army, which is absolutely indispensable for uniting our own ranks and defeating the enemy."
~Mao Zedong (1942)

A tactic that goes back centuries, if not more.  The Romans liked to assimilate their conquests' cultures to theirs so people wouldn't feel like rebelling.  And the use of TV and cartoons now is still used all over the world for propaganda (or brainwashing)--for "proving" a cause's "justice," or keeping people tame and happy while the government does its dirty business, for example.

North Korean Comic that shows Americans being devoured by
alligators after the later complained about human rights
violations.

References:
www.mhpbooks.com

The Mandate Of Heavean

China's history is long and, if anyone's familiar with Disney's Mulan, includes a number of dynasties, the most famous of which are the Qin dynasty (where the word "China" comes from), and the Han dynasty.

Some Confucian scholars have depicted a dynastic cycle that seems to repeat in every dynasty, otherwise known as the Mandate of Heaven:

Room 5 History

It appears to me that this cycle could be applied to many other rules and countries.  I wonder if it's still relevant nowadays...