Hermit: North Korea’s Enemies spread Ugly Rumors

Hermit the Soothing Taoist Dragonfly criticizes Hostile Foreign Media

Hello Children,

in case that the sabotaging news about North Korea doing something that the Chinese people don’t want them to do has managed to upset you, let me tell you that all the talk about our dear friend Kim Jung-il testing more missiles is an ugly rumor spread by hostile media such as CNN. In fact, North Korea’s dear leader has commanded his mighty forces to display fireworks in a cordial gesture towards imperialist America (even though the Yanks are very undeserving of such a gesture) to congratulate them on their national holiday. Our cruel enemies are pursuing a double-strategy here: they want to make the world believe that Kim Jung-il is very ill in his head, and that we, the Great Chinese People, were somehow unable to control our vassals Korean friends and allies. Do you really think they’d ever do something which we don’t want them to do?

Kim Jung-il isn't ill. He's harmonious and happy.

Sheesh. You still have a lot to learn, children. Don’t be to CNN, and become ever more patriotic.

Got to skyrocket now. Zaihui.

P.S.: Go to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and see for yourself how happy and harmonious and peaceful it is. The Korean Friendship Association gives the chance to know about the country, its people and culture plus attend the biggest extravaganza in the modern era, the Mass Gymnastics ARIRANG performed by more than 100.000 people.

Taoism and the Dialog of Civilizations

A number of contemporary New Confucian scholars are to some extent aware of the Second Axial Age, writes Wang Zhicheng (王志成), professor at Zhejiang University’s Humanities College, in an article on his blog. The axial age was a term coined by Karl Jaspers, a philosopher and psychiatrist who taught during the 20th century. A second axial age is what Wang Zhicheng believes is coming. More generally, he advocates a dialog of civilizations, in which Confucianism should play an adequate role.

What strikes me is the degree to which Wang equates Confucianism and Chinese civilization, and how he leaves other defining Chinese religions and philosophies out. Taoism and Buddhism aren’t mentioned in his essay at all.

One might go too far by saying that Confucianism is totalitarian – although another Confucian, Tu Weiming,  seems to view traditional Confucianism this way:

Tu believes that a thoroughly politicized Confucianist society would be more into persecution and coercion than a purely Legalist society, because Confucianism didn’t only dominate peoples’ body, but also wanted to control peoples’ minds, whereas Legalism only wanted to control those who didn’t obey the law.

Either way, a move from Confucianism to Confucianness – becoming ready for dialog, just as Confucius himself was ready for dialog – doesn’t look convincing to me if it doesn’t include an awareness of Chinese civilization’s own diversity. Wang Zhicheng and Tu Weiming both seem to attach a lot of importance to ecological awareness and religious plurality. This is where Taoism comes into play. Dialog with Confucianism is great, but it isn’t enough if we want a dialog with Chinese civilization.

More than half a century ago, Lin Yutang, himself a Taoist, started a dialog with the American public, and soon, it would become a dialog with a wider Western public. In The Wisdom of Laotse^*), he explains the difficulties in understanding the Dao De Jing, which leaves a lot of room for different interpretations in Chinese already. Lin’s approach to make understanding easier is add a matching Chuang Tse text (Zhuangzi) to each Lao Tse (Laozi) aphorism, topic by topic. This was apparently quite a new approach, and as Chuang Tse is very lively prose, Lin Yutang’s combining it with the Lao Tse aphorisms helped readers to get a more palpable idea of Lao Tse.

The whole history of Taoism looks like a struggle to remain as open and metaphysical as possible, while making itself understood to a more general public at the same time, and to become applicable for politics. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Confucianism and Taoism were once competing schools. When Confucianism became China’s dominant doctrine and religion, Taoism became the “night side” of Chinese thought and feelings – many mandarins, or so the saying goes, were “Confucianist during the day and Taoists at night”. But Taoism isn’t just a hidden ecological or scientific pulse generator for Confucianism. Taoism is a system of thought in its own right.

During the coming weeks, I’d like to indicate how Taoism served as a bridge between China and the West – how it apparently helped Chinese people to understand Western thought, and how it had been in place long before Western scholars came to conclusions similar to Taoism’s. Taoism goes far beyond discussing inter-personal relationships. It tries to explain the world. Such thoughts aren’t bound to a given kind of society with a given local, civilizational tradition.

Traditionally, Taoism seems to be reluctant to answers questions. Even the Huainanzi, a rather practical and political Taoist guide, tells us about the – though unavoidable – shame of entering worldly affairs. And Bertolt Brecht put an old legend into a poem, about an ordinary borderpost asking Lao Tse questions, and getting answers in written.

If the old sages don’t offer their advice without our asking these days either, we should keep asking questions.

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^*) “The Wisdom of Lao Tse”, edited by Lin Yutang, New York, 1948; Frankfurt, 1955

Searchwords: “why should young children learn mandarin”

Counter question: Should they? And if so, yes, why should they?

There is no such debate about English in Europe, and if the unanimous support for English as a mandatory foreign language is due to globalization, this globalization must have been with us for more than three decades (some argue that it started when the Spaniards learned the art of blood donation from the South Americans, but seventy years ago, a second language was hardly mandatory at German elementary schools).

I had to learn English from the age of ten, and there was no question about the need for a child to do so. But then, if there is a global language, it’s English, and it will remain English. For a lot of European kids, that’s demanding enough.

Chinese as an optional second or third foreign language can make perfect sense, but not for every child. The Three Eight Hundreds aren’t for everyone. Even among university students, many learners drop out. Out of more than 2,000 of those who enroll in Sinology annually in Germany, only some 100 actually complete their studies, the Federal Statistical Office says, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. One reason may be that many students get hired by a chinabound company or organization ahead of their final exams or graduation. But the paper also quotes disillusionment after a first stay in China as reasons, as well as frustration with the learning process – students usually start at zero, and Chinese is a very foreign language -, and when classical Chinese is part of the curriculum, its alleged pointlessness might add to the frustration, too.

Children may find the learning process easier. But they are also easily frustrated. And while grown-up learners will be well-behaved (as a rule, anyway), minors are a different story.

For one, unruly pupils may pose a threat to Mandarin projects and its often unprepared teachers. If Westerners go through a culture shock when working in China, many Chinese nationals teaching in Europe may be going through outright hell. (JR isn’t sure if he should blame the Chinese teachers, the school managers who hire them without preparing them, both, or someone else. It sure shows that teaching is no bed of roses here.)

Even if the kids were all happy learners, some parents would still impair the process. A Chinese blogger describes how it may go:

A Chinese teacher a taught first-form primary school student Chinese. Her father, an educational service official, took a strong interest in his daughter’s learning progress and had hired the Chinese teacher as a home tutor. He heard her teaching his daughter this line: “他有3个苹果，你有四个苹果，你比他多多少？” He asked the tutor what it meant. “Oh,” she cheerfully replied, “that’s easy. It’s how many apples do you have more than he has?” The educational official, on hearing this string of Chinese-style English, almost fainted. “What? Such a difficult question? Even an adult’s brain needs to take several bends to understand that – how can you teach that to a child?”

Oh my God! My child’s brain might catch wrinkles!!

Something is being done about the problems with Mandarin at school, hoped Richard Spencer, who until recently was the Telegraph’s correspondent in Beijing.

But one of the most important measures is this: make sure that only pupils with a) a lot of interest in learning Chinese, b) the proneness to learn it (there are different types of learners), and c) an established record of patience and perseverance are allowed to join Mandarin classes.

In that case, you may not even need a culturally prepared teacher. If the curriculum should be left to the Hanban (Chinese Language Council International) which is after all a CCP-controlled organization, is still a different question. Personally, I think that native speakers teaching Chinese can be very helpful, so long as the school management makes sure that there is no open or discreet political manipulation in the classroom.

Sure, it’s nice to imagine how the offspring of some ecologically aware, Dalai-Lama-loving, well-off holistic treehuggers spoils a neighborhood garden party by proclaiming that “Han Chinese and Tibetans are a harmonious family”. If the parents are no babbitts, they may even savor the magic of such a moment. But if the same child says and believes the same bullshit after having grown up, say a decade and a half later, it will probably have become [indefinite article] [adjective] [noun]. And in such a case, you might correctly blame school for that.

Summer

Bremen - It’s been summer for some ten days now, with temperatures usually above 20 degrees C. around noon (27 degrees C. yesterday), a few rainy days in between, often windy, but mostly sunny. Summer vacations have begun in Bremen and Lower Saxony on June 25, and will end on August 4. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that everyone will be idle for six weeks. But it’s the summer vacations when parents spend time with their children, and when many families go on a holiday. The global economic crisis isn’t really biting here yet, but more people than usual  stay at home, or make short trips to regional destinations like the North sea islands, rather than spending three weeks on Mallorca, the Canary Islands, or in Turkey.

summer

The nights are short now. It’s not like in Northern Scandinavia, where the sun doesn’t set at all, but in Northern Germany, there is a dark red glow on the northern skies even during the hours around midnight. The landscape turns into a pitchblack mass, which seems to swallow all roads, houses, and trees, in front of luminescent skies.

And at daytime, the landscape turns almost black and white in the sunglast, or rich in colors and shades when it’s overcast or rainy. I like all its modes of weather. Summer is a cheerful and lively season.

Besides, it’s also a comparatively relaxing season.

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Related: Sheep’s Cold, June 9

Petition for Liu Xiaobo, CCP refines Harmony Tools

Dozens of China’s most prominent writers and scholars, among them Li Datong (李大同), are calling for the release of a dissident Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波) who was arrested after co-authoring a bold manifesto urging civil rights and political reforms, Associated Press reported on Friday. Abroad, Nadine Gordimer, Salman Rushdie, and other authors, have signed an open letter to China’s chairman Hu Jintao urging Liu’s release.

Meantime, Liu Xiaobo met with a lawyer, Shang Baojun, writes Underthejacaranda. His previous lawyer, Mo Shaoping (莫少平), has been disqualified to represent his client for signing the Charter 08, which was co-authored by Liu.

Yitong, a law firm with a high profile (and apparently some success) in defending human rights activists has reportedly been shut down.

Formally, there is no crackdown; no police are swooping in to seize files or send attorneys en masse to labor camps. Instead, Beijing is simply using its administrative procedures for licensing lawyers and law firms, declining to renew the annual registrations, which expired May 31, of those it deems troublemakers,

the Washington Post reported, also on Friday.

Underthejacaranda is keeping track of news about Liu Xiaobo.

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Related: Liu Xiaobo formally arrested, June 24

Dalai Lama on Global Financial Crisis

Dalai Lama in an interview with the German paper Die Welt, June 20

Welt: The market doesn’t settle it, but you don’t believe in regulation either. Then what do we need?

Dalai Lama: I call it a responsible free market economy. In the end it depends on the individual. It depends on the individual sense of moral responsibility, self-discipline, values. The financial crisis is no crisis of the market economy itself, but a crisis of values.

Is he right? It is probably true that people who put profit above everything else (including reasonable risk management) will always find ways around regulation. And there weren’t only bigwigs involved. A lot of “ordinary people” showed an incredible faith in incredible returns on investment, too. A kind of faith that may justifiably be labeled greed, and demand generates supply.

The crisis is a reminder that things can’t be left to the market alone, but also a reminder that regulation alone won’t do.

Common Ground and Differences

Zeng Jinyan was at the Film Festival and Art Exhibition of Sexual Diversity (多元性别艺术展) in Songzhuang Art District earlier this month. She was there with friends, but also ran into some familiar state security people, such as the head of the Tongzhou District Public Security Bureau. State security had three pictures removed for being “too nude”, and made sure that no posters were placed outside the venue. A member of the Songzhuang Art Association briefly mistook Zeng for a plain-clothed member of state security.

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Related: Is China quietly coming out?, Chronicle Herald, June 18

Iran: In Dire Need of Foreign Enemies

American governments have experienced it in the past: your enemy refuses to continue a lucrative arms race, or you have him hanged and he’s no longer around. The bitter fruits of victory always seemed to come as a surprise.

The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime was actually a nice service rendered to Tehran. For a while, a Shi’ite rule similar to Iran’s looked likely, at least to uninitiated news readers like me. And after all, the West did see Saddam Hussein as a bulwark against theocracy all around the Gulf, during the 1980s, didn’t it?

But Iran’s supreme leader and his followers have a problem now. On June 6, a German Islam expert was interviewed by Iran’s foreign radio station and commented on Barack Obama’s Cairo speech:

“The response by Muslims in Germany is very divided. The more west-oriented Muslims, or those who aren’t west-oriented but who, in the final analysis, somehow have an inferiority complex to the West, have reacted positively, have emphasized the aspects which they consider hopeful. On the other hand, my personal assessment, and that of many Muslims, is that Mr Obama is really one of the greatest actors of our times, who will be worse than Bush, because Bush was an open enemy who clearly said, I’m waging war against the Muslims, a crusade against Islam and Muslims, and he has done that. That was an open hostility, but it was open.“

Oh, happy days!

I’m not trying to make my mind up about the authenticity of the presidential elections earlier this month. But apparently, Iran’s theocracy fears losing its greatest enemy. After the war waged against Iran by Iraq with a lot of international backing (no, not only Western) and after years of uninspired Western antagonism, a bit of breathing space has apparently started a period where Iranians can think of their own future, rather than worrying about how enemies abroad might try to shape it. Now, the threats to keep the Iranian people down may have to come from Iran’s government. That’s a feature Tehran traditionally liked to attribute to the governments of Egypt or Saudi-Arabia.

Mourning the loss of a Great Satan

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