GHS208-05 Fall 2019 China and the Islamic Middle East

I thought that section “H” from the reader in Chuang Tzu’s part was very interesting and related to the tree section we talked about in class. In the tree section, we talked about how the lack of perfection of the tree allowed it to live a long peaceful life rather than being cut down and used for something “useful” (according to us humans). In the turtle excerpt, Chuang Tzu was asked by the king, through his officials, whether he would like to serve on the administration. Chuang Tzu brought up the story of the ancient tortoise that was said to be thousands of years old and kept in the palace. He asked the officials if they thought the turtle would rather be kept in the palace to be admired for years to come or out living its own life in the mud of the pond. The officials answered that the tortoise would probably prefer to be left in the mud, and Chuang Tzu said, “Go away! I’ll drag my tail in the mud!” (86). Chuang Tzu would rather continue on with his peaceful life that he had chosen for himself, rather than take part in the honor of advising the king. This connects directly to conversations we had in class about would we rather be happy with a life that may be considered less, or be stressed out with a higher title and more honor. Something for us to continue to think about and discuss.

As I was scrolling through Netflix looking for something to watch, I stumbled upon the show “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj.” This show is very reminiscent of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” or “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.” I decided to take a look at the episodes to see if there was anything interesting, and, lo and behold, there was an episode about Censorship in China. I originally decided to watch it because I knew it would be great material for a blog post, but I found myself very engaged an interested with the material, and even learning new things. One of the things that I found most interesting was how far-reaching censorship is in China. I knew that their internet was censored, but I didn’t realize the extent of it. Most websites that we use on a day-to-day basis are unreachable, and the Chinese Government has even figured out ways to scrub certain messages from the internet altogether. For example, the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 are entirely gone from Chinese internet, and are not even taught about in high school. In the show, Minhaj shows a clip of two millennial-aged Chinese people being asked if they learn about Tiananmen Square, and they say that it is not mentioned. This shocked me, because the Tiananmen Square protests are something that I learned about in high school, and it didn’t even happen in my country. Minhaj makes the comparison/joke that someone in China not learning about Tiananmen Square is like someone in America not learning about 9/11. I was also surprised at how little the people of China seem to mind the constant monitoring. Many common sites that are banned in China, like Facebook or Twitter have Chinese alternatives that make life with censorship more tolerable. Many citizens to not mind the constant monitoring because of these kinds of websites. This was especially shocking to me, because of the outrage when it was found out in America that the NSA was monitoring internet activity. Though now constant monitoring has become a sort of joke, with memes and tweets about having a ‘assigned FBI agent’ that reads everything you post, I know that if this was a reality in America, it would be a big deal to the citizens.

When I was reading “Flame” not that many scenarios stood out to me as different than in previous stories that we had read. I found the situation of revenge and presentation very comparable to today’s society. We tend to “put on a show” to those around us especially through social media. Nimei was experiencing the same pressure to make her life seem perfect and put together in front of her past “flame”. The idea of revenge also translates into our culture. The concept of “getting back at someone” is not foreign and is portrayed in many American television shows, movies, and books. Overall, I saw more cultural connections in this story than in previous ones!

I went to the lecture featuring Dr. Douglas, Dr. Jett, and Dr. Logan on Tuesday night because I am in Dr. Bauman’s class that is associated with the lecture series. We had the opportunity to have dinner with the speakers beforehand, and it was really nice to have personal one on one conversations with them. The lecture itself was so interesting too, partly because Dr. Bauman had us read Dr. Douglas’s book, Stand your Ground in the few weeks leading up to this event. It was so cool to be able to listen to them talk about things that I knew were going on in the world. Obviously, I hear all about the discrimination of Blacks in America all the time just by reading books and keeping up with current events, but it felt so much more real listening to a panel of experts talk about it, and it was especially interesting that they are all Black, so they have that firsthand knowledge about the topic that I, or even Dr. Bauman, may not have. I am not going to do a super in depth reflection on the talk here, because I already have to write one for Dr. Bauman, but hopefully this is interesting so far, and I am more than willing to talk more about it to anyone else interested!

While this is not technically related to China, I still thought I would share my input on the discussion not only because it is interesting, but because the next lecture in October will be focusing on Islam, and I am pretty sure we will have wrapped up the China unit by then and have moved on to Islam.

The transformation of things paragraph is interesting. Is he really a butterfly dreaming or himself dreaming he is a butterfly? It makes us question what reality is really. I also like how in section A they talked about beauty. It reminded me of the Tao Te Ching poem on the perception of beauty. What I may find beautiful, someone might find ugly. In section C, I like the example of the cook. How if you take care of something, if you are patient and take your time, something can last awhile. Then in D, he talks about how to guide and influence someone in power. If you disagree with them, do not rebel but instead try to teach and guide the person. That is what I got out of this paragraph. In section G, the writer is mocking Confucius.

I guess Hsu got revenge on Nimei. She had spent so much money on trying to make the house look good and spent money on fish. She was trying to show that is successful and happy, when she isn’t. We can relate this to American culture also because we do this on social media. She did all these things to impress Hsu, but he stood her up. He even flaunted his money in Nimei’s face. It was an interesting story with a twist at the end. Nimei’s husband shows characteristics of Daoism because he never asked for nothing in return and was submissive. This story shows views on marriage: arranged marriage. Nimei’s mother was actively involved in her romance life. There is Fidel Piety which is a Confucius ideal because Nimei married her husband to “save her mother” from starving.
How would you find your significant other?

While exploring the different philosophies that we have studied so far I immediately found myself drawn to the beliefs and morals of Daoism because they represented an ideal life of peace that begins with an inner sense of morality shared by everyone. I noticed that almost everyone has a similar opinion and idealizes this philosophy.

I think that the entire world reflects a mixture of implementing all of these philosophies in everyday life. There seems to be a balance of Confucius’ ideals of order and piety, Lao Tzu’s belief of Wu Wei, and Han Fei’s strict and orderly ideals. It seems that when one of these approaches overpowers all of the other ones and there is an imbalance that disorder arises.

Out of the selections that we were reading from Chuang Tzu, I found selection “E” quite interesting. The selection was about the tree that was known as the town shrine, that had no good uses. The carpenter in the story said about the tree “It’s a worthless tree! Make boats out of it and they’d sink; make coffins out of and they’d rot in no time; make vessels out of it and they’d break at once. Use it for doors and it would sweat sap like pine; use it for posts and the worms would eat them up. It’s not a timber-tree there’s nothing it can be used for. That’s how it got to be that old!” The carpenter is talking about how unuseful the tree is, but in a dream, the tree spoke to the carpenter. The tree said that it should not be compared to other trees. His use isn’t to be made into things, but to be a shrine and that is its purpose. It should not be compared to others because it has a completely different use.
I found this selection to be interesting because of the lesson it gives and how that lesson is taught in many different ways today. It reminds of the saying “don’t compare apples with oranges” and even something like “don’t judge a book by its cover” the story contains wise lessons that we learn and think about today, but just in a different context. And that is a pattern that I have been seeing a lot during this class, there are lessons coming from very old Chinese lessons. Even though I never knew that these lessons were rooted in Chinese history, I still have learned them and it’s interesting finding their possible roots.

Throughout this reading, as well as past ones, I have been surprised at the amount of metaphors that these ancient philosophers used. All of their teachings seem to be up for interpretation by the reader. This was interesting to me, because in some other more convoluted speculative texts I have had to read for other classes, while the meaning may be hard to distinguish at first, once read through a couple times the point is nearly plain as day. However, with these ancient Chinese philosophers, most everything seems to be set up in a metaphor or set up through parables. In this article I found (https://web.uri.edu/iaics/files/06-Su-Lichang.pdf) it talks about how many of these metaphors eventually worked their way into everyday Chinese vernacular, with some even influencing the language. The article also talks about how the common use of the metaphor is culture bound, which probably explains why I had never seen anything like it before. The article concludes that this integration of these metaphors of the ancient philosophers into the Chinese language shows that language is culture-driven and a social phenomenon, since many of the more common metaphors have a specific set of characters in the language that people then come to understand and equate to that specific story or parable.