Chinese Cultivation Quotes

Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge.

Stephen spared her a look that was part patience and part condescension. “I’m a Chinese American, so of course I spend all my free time in a secret monastery learning kung fu and practicing spiritual cultivation. Because one day a demon king shall descend onto Houston and only my Ninth Level Thunder Fist Punch will stand in his way.

Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.

Men want a woman who is a virtuous wife, a good mother, and can do all the housework like a maid. Outside the home, she should be attractive and cultivated, and be a credit to him. In bed, she must be a nymphomaniac. What is more, Chinese men also need their women to manage their finances and earn a lot of money, so they can mingle with the rich and powerful. Modern

True imagination and creativity don’t come from thinking outside the box or letting ourselves go wild, just as true spontaneity does not come from dancing on a table on the weekend while you remain in your tedious job. They don’t come out of great disruptive moments that break forth from an otherwise ordinary, drab life. They are part and parcel of how we live our every day; all moments can be creative and spontaneous when we experience the entire world as an open and expansive place. We get there by constantly cultivating our ability to imagine transcending our own experience.

Look, doctor, China, the country without religion. The Chinese have no religious ideas, only a kind of philosophy. In the Middle Kingdom no grain has been cultivated for thousands of years. Only rice.

Tea first came to Japan in the sixth century by way of Japanese Buddhist monks, scholars, warriors, and merchants who traveled to China and brought back tea pressed into bricks. It was not until 1911, during the Song dynasty, that the Japanese Buddhist priest Eisai (also known as Yosai) carried home from China fine-quality tea seeds and the method for making matcha (powdered green tea). The tea seeds were cultivated on the grounds of several Kyoto temples and later in such areas as the Uji district just south of Kyoto. Following the Chinese traditional method, Japanese Zen monks would steam, dry, then grind the tiny green tea leaves into a fine powder and whip it with a bamboo whisk in boiling water to create a thick medicinal drink to stimulate the senses during long periods of meditation.

If my typical man wishes to live fully and completely he must, in his mind, arrange a day within a day. And this inner day, a Chinese box in a larger Chinese box, must begin at 6 p.m. and end at 10 a.m. It is a day of sixteen hours; and during all these sixteen hours he has nothing whatever to do but cultivate his body and his soul and his fellow men.

13.  He wins his battles by making no mistakes. [Ch’en Hao says: “He plans no superfluous marches, he devises no futile attacks.” The connection of ideas is thus explained by Chang Yu: “One who seeks to conquer by sheer strength, clever though he may be at winning pitched battles, is also liable on occasion to be vanquished; whereas he who can look into the future and discern conditions that are not yet manifest, will never make a blunder and therefore invariably win.”] Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated. 14.  Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy. [A “counsel of perfection” as Tu Mu truly observes. “Position” need not be confined to the actual ground occupied by the troops. It includes all the arrangements and preparations which a wise general will make to increase the safety of his army.] 15.  Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory. [Ho Shih thus expounds the paradox: “In warfare, first lay plans which will ensure victory, and then lead your army to battle; if you will not begin with stratagem but rely on brute strength alone, victory will no longer be assured.”] 16.  The consummate leader cultivates the moral law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is in his power to control success. 17.  In respect of military method, we have, firstly, Measurement; secondly, Estimation of quantity; thirdly, Calculation; fourthly, Balancing of chances; fifthly, Victory. 18.  Measurement owes its existence to Earth; Estimation of quantity to Measurement; Calculation to Estimation of quantity; Balancing of chances to Calculation; and Victory to Balancing of chances. [It is not easy to distinguish the four terms very clearly in the Chinese. The

The Right Man, and especially the Violent Man, is then, according to Wilson's theory, simply turning off even more signals than is neurologically normal. Specifically, he has been conditioned or imprinted, or has conditioned himself, to suppress as "irrelevant" or "meaningless" the kind of signals that usually evoke compassion, charity or tolerance, in most of humanity. In his reality-tunnel, the only signals that reach the cortex are those confirming his thesis that People Are Rotten Bastards who need to be punished. This mental "set," however appalling socially and historically, is no more "peculiar" neurologically than the mental "set" that allows an artist to see what others ignore while simultaneously ignoring the social Status Game signals that others notice so painfully and acutely, or the "set" which makes certain art works comprehensible (because we have learned to decode their symbolism) while it sees other kinds of art as "meaningless" jumbles. Sometimes it takes quite a while to see a new type of signal: which is why even "cultivated" Europeans once saw Chinese painting as "crude" and heard Chinese music as "weird.

Immediate experience requires that the concrete particulars themselves are the objects of knowledge. Such particulars are not mediated but are grasped immediately in the sense that the experience of them is simply had. The structures that permit the having of experience and that determine its significance are the cultivated habits that dispose one toward that experience. The language of taste and of appreciation is relevant. The notion of Being that implies a contrast between essence and existence privileges mediation and, therefore, conceptual, generic, and essential knowledge. An aesthetic perspective, as opposed to a rational or logical one, involves experiencing the world in a relatively unmediated fashion. Mediated experience requires one to grasp or comprehend the essence of a thing, while the unmediated aesthetic experience is simply had as lived experience. A comparison with the analytical epistemic language of “getting,” “grasping,” “comprehending” is important here. Rather than a language of mediation in which the essences of things are abstracted through concepts, the Chinese language tends to be dispositional in that it promotes the “having” of the unmediated experience through a correlating and focusing of the affairs of the day. The important contrast here is between a cognitive and discursive knowing that abstracts from experience and felt experience as the concrete content of knowledge.

He wanted somebody to give him a chance of asserting himself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried to break into their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking about the fishing industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion? What did they know about the fishing industry? Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him, could she not see, as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs and thigh bones of the young man's desire to impress himself, lying dark in the mist of his flesh--that thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break into the conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her Chinese eyes, and remembering how he sneered at women, "can't paint, can't write," why should I help him to relieve himself? There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her own occupation might be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube97 were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there 96 Cheated or frustrated himself. 97 The London subway. 64 smiling. "You're not planning to go to the Lighthouse, are you, Lily," said Mrs. Ramsay. "Remember poor Mr. Langley; he had been round the world dozens of times, but he told me he never suffered as he did when my husband took him there. Are you a good sailor, Mr. Tansley?" she asked. Mr. Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realising, as it descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an instrument as this, said only that he had never been sick in his life. But in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder, that his grandfather was a fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had worked his way up entirely himself; that he was proud of it; that he was Charles Tansley--a fact that nobody there seemed to realise; but one of these days every single person would know it. He scowled ahead of him. He could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that was in him. "Will you take me, Mr. Tansley?" said Lily, quickly, kindly, for, of course, if Mrs. Ramsay said to her, as in effect she did, "I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to the anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man there, life will run upon the rocks--indeed I hear the grating and the growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings. Another touch and they will snap"--when Mrs. Ramsay said all this, as the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the experiment--what happens if one is not nice to that young man there--and be nice.

Arts of energy management and of combat are, of course, not confined to the Chinese only. Peoples of different cultures have practised and spread these arts since ancient times. Those who follow the Chinese tradition call these arts chi kung and kungfu (or qigong and gongfu in Romanized Chinese), and those following other traditions call them by other names. Muslims in various parts of the world have developed arts of energy management and of combat to very high levels. Many practices in Sufism, which is spiritual cultivation in Islamic tradition, are similar to chi kung practices. As in chi kung, Sufi practitioners pay much importance to the training of energy and spirit, called “qi” and “shen” in Chinese, but “nafas” and “roh” in Muslim terms. When one can free himself from cultural and religious connotations, he will find that the philosophy of Sufism and of chi kung are similar. A Sufi practitioner believes that his own breath, or nafas, is a gift of God, and his ultimate goal in life is to be united with God. Hence, he practises appropriate breathing exercises so that the breath of God flows harmoniously through him, cleansing him of his weakness and sin, which are manifested as illness and pain. And he practises meditation so that ultimately his personal spirit will return to the universal Spirit of God. In chi kung terms, this returning to God is expressed as “cultivating spirit to return to the Great Void”, which is “lian shen huan shi” in Chinese. Interestingly the breathing and meditation methods in Sufism and in chi kung are quite similar. Some people, including some Muslims, may think that meditation is unIslamic, and therefore taboo. This is a serious mis-conception. Indeed, Prophet Mohammed himself clearly states that a day of meditation is better than sixty years of worship. As in any religion, there is often a huge conceptual gap between the highest teaching and the common followers. In Buddhism, for example, although the Buddha clearly states that meditation is the essential path to the highest spiritual attainment, most common Buddhists do not have any idea of meditation. The martial arts of the Muslims were effective and sophisticated. At many points in world history, the Muslims, such as the Arabs, the Persians and the Turks, were formidable warriors. Modern Muslim martial arts are very advanced and are complete by themselves, i.e. they do not need to borrow from outside arts for their force training or combat application — for example, they do not need to borrow from chi kung for internal force training, Western aerobics for stretching, judo and kickboxing for throws and kicks. [...] It is reasonable if sceptics ask, “If they are really so advanced, why don't they take part in international full contact fighting competitions and win titles?” The answer is that they hold different values. They are not interested in fighting or titles. At their level, their main concern is spiritual cultivation. Not only they will not be bothered whether you believe in such abilities, generally they are reluctant to let others know of their abilities. Muslims form a substantial portion of the population in China, and they have contributed an important part in the development of chi kung and kungfu. But because the Chinese generally do not relate one's achievements to one's religion, the contributions of these Chinese Muslim masters did not carry the label “Muslim” with them. In fact, in China the Muslim places of worship are not called mosques, as in many other countries, but are called temples. Most people cannot tell the difference be

Living in a capricious world means accepting that we do not live within a stable moral cosmos that will always reward people for what they do. We should not deny that real tragedies do happen. But at the same time, we should always expect to be surprised and learn to work with whatever befalls us. If we can continue this work, even when tragedies come our way, we can begin to accept the world as unpredictable and impossible to determine perfectly. And this is where the promise of a capricious world lies: if our world is indeed constantly fragmented and unpredictable, then it is something we can constantly work on bettering. We can go into each situation resolved to be the best human being we can be, not because of what we’ll get out of it, but simply to affect others around us for the better, regardless of the outcome. We can cultivate our better sides and face this unpredictable world, transforming it as we go.

Pages 85-87: Lower Burma when first occupied … was a vast deltaic plain of swamp and jungle, with a secure rainfall; when the opening of the canal created a market for rice, this wide expanse of land was rapidly reclaimed by small cultivators … Formerly, the villager in Lower Burma, like peasants in general, cultivated primarily for home consumption, and it has always been the express policy of the Government to encourage peasant proprietorship. Land in the delta was abundant … The opening of the canal provided a certain and profitable market for as much rice as people could grow. … men from Upper Burma crowded down to join in the scramble for land. In two or three years a laborer could save out of his wages enough money to buy cattle and make a start on a modest scale as a landowner. … The land had to be cleared rapidly and hired labor was needed to fell the heavy jungle. In these circumstances newly reclaimed land did not pay the cost of cultivation, and there was a general demand for capital. Burmans, however, lacked the necessary funds, and had no access to capital. They did not know English or English banking methods, and English bankers knew nothing of Burmans or cultivation. … in the ports there were Indian moneylenders of the chettyar caste, amply provided with capital and long accustomed to dealing with European banks in India. About 1880 they began to send out agents into the villages, and supplied the people with all the necessary capital, usually at reasonable rates and, with some qualifications, on sound business principles. … now the chettyars readily supplied the cultivators with all the money that they needed, and with more than all they needed. On business principles the money lender preferred large transactions, and would advance not merely what the cultivator might require but as much as the security would stand. Naturally, the cultivator took all that he could get, and spent the surplus on imported goods. The working of economic forces pressed money on the cultivator; to his own discomfiture, but to the profit of the moneylenders, of European exporters who could ensure supplies by giving out advances, of European importers whose cotton goods and other wares the cultivator could purchase with the surplus of his borrowings, and of the banks which financed the whole economic structure. But at the first reverse, with any failure of the crop, the death of cattle, the illness of the cultivator, or a fall of prices, due either to fluctuations in world prices or to manipulation of the market by the merchants, the cultivator was sold up, and the land passed to the moneylender, who found some other thrifty laborer to take it, leaving part of the purchase price on mortgage, and with two or three years the process was repeated. … As time went on, the purchasers came more and more to be men who looked to making a livelihood from rent, or who wished to make certain of supplies of paddy for their business. … Others also, merchants and shopkeepers, bought land, because they had no other investment for their profits. These trading classes were mainly townsfolk, and for the most part Indians or Chinese. Thus, there was a steady growth of absentee ownership, with the land passing into the hands of foreigners. Usually, however, as soon as one cultivator went bankrupt, his land was taken over by another cultivator, who in turn lost with two or three years his land and cattle and all that he had saved. [By the 1930s] it appeared that practically half the land in Lower Burma was owned by absentees, and in the chief rice-producing districts from two-thirds to nearly three-quarters. … The policy of conserving a peasant proprietary was of no avail against the hard reality of economic forces…

If you use a chariot and horses, your feet have not improved one bit, but you can travel a thousand li. If you use a boat and paddle, you haven’t learned to swim, but you can still cross the rivers and seas. One who is cultivated is no different from others at birth; he is simply good at making use of

Feinstein has been a China-booster from the early 1990s, often backing pro-Beijing legislation in the Senate. Her husband has strong business links in China, which she denies have had any influence on her. In 1997 she compared the Tiananmen Square massacre to the shooting of four students at Ohio’s Kent State University in 1970, and called for a joint US–China commission on the two nations’ human rights records.35 Lowe left Feinstein’s office after the FBI warned her about him. China’s intelligence agencies also target Westerners not of Chinese heritage for information-gathering. In 2017 a long-serving State Department employee, Candace Claiborne, was indicted for accepting money and gifts from Chinese agents in exchange for diplomatic and economic information.36 She had been targeted by the MSS’s Shanghai State Security Bureau after she asked a Chinese friend to find a job in China for a family member. Claiborne maintained secret contact with MSS agents for five years, supplying them with information in return for help with her ‘financial woes’. She was sentenced to forty months in prison. In the early 1990s Britain’s MI5 wrote a protection manual for businesspeople visiting China; the advice remains relevant today: ‘Be especially alert for flattery and over-generous hospitality … [Westerners] are more likely to be the subject of long-term, low key cultivation, aimed at making “friends” … The aim of these tactics is to create a debt of obligation on the part of the target, who will eventually find it difficult to refuse inevitable requests for favours in return.

I once asked Master B.P. Chan if the ancient qigong and martial arts masters had superior abilities to those of the present. He said, "In general, yes. But only because they were more patient." ... Most students abandon the practice and look for a new form of "entertainment". But it is precisely at this stage that the most lasting benefits are cultivated.

HH Dalai Lama: Some forms of meditation are very difficult. One of my close friends was a very good meditator who attempted to cultivate single-pointedness of mind. He had the experience of spending a few years in a Chinese prison, and he told me that the meditation was actually harder than being a prisoner. The point is that he had to be constantly aware and attentive without losing his attention even for a moment. A constant vigilance was required. One factor that needs to be taken into account is the intensity and quality of the meditator’s motivation. In the traditional Buddhist context, meditators are highly motivated individuals who have a deep appreciation of the framework of the Buddhist path and an understanding of its causes and effects: If I do this, this will happen. They understand the nature of the path and its culmination. There is a deep recognition that the fulfillment of one’s aspiration for happiness really lies in the transformation of one’s undisciplined state to a more disciplined state of mind. These individuals take into account all of this context, so when they engage in meditation, they have a tremendous sense of dedication, joy, a very strong motivation, and sustained enthusiasm. But if you just tell a child, with no context at all, to start meditating, there will be no incentive, no inspiration. Robert, you made the comment that in small doses, stress can actually raise dopamine levels, which we assume corresponds in the rat to a heightened sense of well-being or pleasure. I wonder whether there might be an analogue in meditation, specifically in the training of single-pointed attention, or samadhi, which is not uniquely Buddhist. As one trains incrementally in developing attention, a quality arises that is described as suppleness or malleability of the body and mind, and is often conjoined with a sense of well-being, perhaps even bliss. It happens very strongly when one achieves a high state of samadhi, but even incrementally along the path, there are many surges of this type of malleability together with a kind of bliss. This may be an interesting area of research, to see from the neurophysiological perspective what some of the unexpected events are that come out of such attentional training.

What then did wheat offer agriculturists, including that malnourished Chinese girl? It offered nothing for people as individuals. Yet it did bestow something on Homo sapiens as a species. Cultivating wheat provided much more food per unit of territory, and thereby enabled Homo sapiens to multiply exponentially.

The man had books on Chinese and Vietnamese history, possessed skill as a photographer, and practiced ink-and-brush Chinese calligraphy. Evidence of a cultivated man.

This week practice peace: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace” (Col. 3:15 NIV). How do you practice peace? How do you let the peace of Christ rule in your heart? I leave you with these instructions given by the apostle Peter: Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing. Whoever wants to embrace life and see the day fill up with good, here’s what you do: Say nothing evil or hurtful; snub evil and cultivate good; run after peace for all you’re worth. God looks on all this with approval…but He turns His back on those who do evil things (1 Peter 3:8-12). If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world. —Chinese Proverb

Besides robbing us of health and vitality, emotions constitute the greatest obstacle to spiritual cultivation by diverting energy and attention from internal development to external distractions, and by provoking behavior that contradicts our best intentions. Our emotions constitute our own worst enemies, yet not only does Western medicine overlook the severe pathological consequences of emotional imbalance, Western philosophy romanticizes emotions as heroic impulses to be indulged rather than recognizing them as primitive instincts that must be controlled by the higher sentience of human awareness. Herein lies one of the most fundamental differences between Eastern and Western tradition, for Eastern philosophy clearly identifies emotions as obstacles to spiritual development, pollutants to mental clarity, spoilers of human relations, and enemies of intent and reason. When Asians remark that Westerners have 'hot feelings', what they mean is that they overreact emotionally, thereby 'overheating' human relations with unrestrained emotional energy.

The next pair is inspired by my hometown of San Francisco, where I often searched for rare spices and teas in Chinatown. My Chinese tea collection begins with a dark chocolate truffle infused with Lapsang Souchong tea. Cultivated in the Wuyi mountain region in China, the tea leaves are dried over pinewood fires, which give the leaves a smoky, aromatic flavor." Finding Lauro in the crowd, Celina echoed his description. With a smile tugging at her lips, she added, "You might find it reminiscent of the rich earth around Vesuvius, moist with morning dew." Bringing his hand to his lips, Lauro sent her a happy kiss across the crowd. "Also from the Wuyi Mountains of northern Fujian comes oolong tea, which can be fruity, green, or sweet. This oolong is a sweet, roasted woody version.

Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India by J. S. Furnivall Quoting page 85-87: Lower Burma when first occupied … was a vast deltaic plain of swamp and jungle, with a secure rainfall; when the opening of the canal created a market for rice, this wide expanse of land was rapidly reclaimed by small cultivators … Formerly, the villager in Lower Burma, like peasants in general, cultivated primarily for home consumption, and it has always been the express policy of the Government to encourage peasant proprietorship. Land in the delta was abundant … The opening of the canal provided a certain and profitable market for as much rice as people could grow. … men from Upper Burma crowded down to join in the scramble for land. In two or three years a labourer could save out of his wages enough money to buy cattle and make a start on a modest scale as a landowner. … The land had to be cleared rapidly and hired labour was needed to fell the heavy jungle. In these circumstances newly reclaimed land did not pay the cost of cultivation, and there was a general demand for capital. Burmans, however, lacked the necessary funds, and had no access to capital. They did not know English or English banking methods, and English bankers knew nothing of Burmans or cultivation. … in the ports there were Indian moneylenders of the chettyar caste, amply provided with capital and long accustomed to dealing with European banks in India. About 1880 they began to send out agents into the villages, and supplied the people with all the necessary capital, usually at reasonable rates and, with some qualifications, on sound business principles. … now the chettyars readily supplied the cultivators with all the money that they needed, and with more than all they needed. On business principles the money lender preferred large transactions, and would advance not merely what the cultivator might require but as much as the security would stand. Naturally, the cultivator took all that he could get, and spent the surplus on imported goods. The working of economic forces pressed money on the cultivator; to his own discomfiture, but to the profit of the moneylenders, of European exporters who could ensure supplies by giving out advances, of European importers whose cotton goods and other wares the cultivator could purchase with the surplus of his borrowings, and of the banks which financed the whole economic structure. But at the first reverse, with any failure of the crop, the death of cattle, the illness of the cultivator, or a fall of prices, due either to fluctuations in world prices or to manipulation of the market by the merchants, the cultivator was sold up, and the land passed to the moneylender, who found some other thrifty labourer to take it, leaving part of the purchase price on mortgage, and with two or three years the process was repeated. … As time went on, the purchasers came more and more to be men who looked to making a livelihood from rent, or who wished to make certain of supplies of paddy for their business. … Others also, merchants and shopkeepers, bought land, because they had no other investment for their profits. These trading classes were mainly townsfolk, and for the most part Indians or Chinese. Thus, there was a steady growth of absentee ownership, with the land passing into the hands of foreigners. Usually, however, as soon as one cultivator went bankrupt, his land was taken over by another cultivator, who in turn lost with two or three years his land and cattle and all that he had saved. [By the 1930s] it appeared that practically half the land in Lower Burma was owned by absentees, and in the chief rice-producing districts from two-thirds to nearly three-quarters. … The policy of conserving a peasant proprietary was of no avail against the hard reality of economic forces…

To live well, it is important to cultivate a happy relationship with your thoughts. The following five ideas are a wonderful recipe for sanity and joy: 1. Your thoughts are not real. Your thinking is not reality; it is an interpretation of reality. No thought has any more authority than what you give it. 2. All thoughts are passing thoughts. Thoughts are transient. They are like leaves in the wind. The only thoughts that stay are the ones you hold on to. 3. You choose your thoughts. No one else does! You can elect to change any thought. You can also choose whether or not to act on any thought. 4. Thoughts have no power. Thoughts are literally electrical mental toys that are powered by you. They have no power of their own. 5. You do not have to take any of your thoughts seriously. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it.

He inquired one evening about the crunchy white disks in his chop suey. A man told him they were tubers called water chestnuts, although they weren't nuts. They were an aquatic vegetable with the rare culinary quality of never getting soggy, even when cooked. "Worthy of consideration as a plant for cultivation in the swamps of the South," Fairchild scrawled. His shipment of water chestnuts indeed made it to the South. But they never caught on. They had to be grown in muddy swamps, which wasn't a fatal flaw, but it was inconvenient and dirty, all for a small food with little flavor. If the United States had had more land or been at a point in its history when it valued more efficient use of land, farmers might have begun producing water chestnuts just because. But as with many of Fairchild's crops, the timing just wasn't right, and thus, water chestnuts remained an Asian food. The best evidence of this may be that in America ten decades later, water chestnuts tend to play little more than a humdrum role as supporting actors in Chinese takeout.

He didn't know it, but America had a need for David Fairchild. The bare agricultural landscape at the beginning of his life would transform by its end into a colorful portrait: yellows from tropical nectarines and Chinese lemons, reds of blood oranges from Mongolia, greens from Central American avocados and grapes from the Caucasus, even purple from dates, raisins, and eggplants that sprouted first in the Middle East.

I’m a Chinese American, so of course I spend all my free time in a secret monastery learning kung fu and practicing spiritual cultivation. Because one day a demon king shall descend onto Houston and only my Ninth Level Thunder Fist Punch will stand in his way.

Tillerson eventually went to work, of course, as the U.S. secretary of state, and his boss, Donald Trump, was the perfect example of just how well the company’s PR strategy had succeeded. Trump, his news diet centered on the Fox News cable network that the climate deniers had so assiduously cultivated, believed that global warming was a “hoax invented by the Chinese” to cripple American manufacturing. (He further believed that polar ice caps “are at a record level.”)15 As a result, he pulled America out of the Paris climate accords,

Before 3000 BCE, this tilling of the land was done by hand, with a form of pick or hoe. The Chinese, however, discovered that a fixed blade could be attached to a frame, and pulled through the earth, allowing a much greater area of land to be cultivated for significantly less effort and time.

Like the Chinese, they considered those who lived outside of its seamless web to be by definition barbarians. When the Vietnamese conquered peoples of other cultures — such as the Chams — they included these people within the structure of empire only on condition of their total assimilation. The peoples they could not assimilate, they simply surrounded, amoeba-like, and left them to follow their own laws. The various montagnard tribes that lived beyond the zone of wet-rice cultivation retained their own languages, customs, and governments for thousands of years inside Vietnam. But with the arrival of the French forces in the nineteenth century the Vietnamese confronted a civilization more powerful than their own; for the first time since the Chinese conquest in the second century B.C. they faced the possibility of having to assimilate themselves.

What China cannot ignore is how the narrative of the CCP as the champion and redeemer of a victimised China could dangerously narrow China’s options if an accident with the US or Japan should occur. War is not in China’s interest, and Beijing may for all the reasons I have earlier set out, want to contain the incident. But Beijing could be trapped by its own historical narrative, and the highly nationalistic public opinion that the CCP both cultivates and fears may force China down paths it does not really want to travel. I think Chinese leaders are aware of this danger but cannot abandon or tone down the narrative they have chosen to legitimate their right to rule because they have no convincing replacement.

Of course, different people focus on different aspects of the private. For example, in America, conservatives often try to keep the government’s hand out of citizens’ pockets, while at the same time – in the case of moral conservatives – wanting it to get into people’s bedrooms; whereas liberals, on the other hand, strive to keep the government’s hand out of people’s bedrooms, while urging it to dip into people’s pockets. In spite of their different foci, both the Republic and many modern Western thinkers concentrate almost exclusively on conflicting aspects between the private and the public. Early Confucians also saw these, but they understood that the division between the two realms is not sharp, and that aspects of the private can be constructive in relation to the public interest. In particular, the family belongs to the private realm if we compare it to the community, but it belongs to the public realm when held against the mere self. Thus, to cultivate familial relations does not necessarily lead to the dominance of private interests over public. With this fundamental insight, the early Confucians’ solution to the conflict between the private and the public was not to suppress the private completely, but to cultivate its constructive aspects so as to overcome the ones in conflict with the public. The remedy for familialism is not abolition of the family, as the Republic appears to suggest, but cultivation of familial care, thereby extending the familial boundary and turning familial care into fully fledged compassion. It is interesting to note that the apparent ideal in the Republic is to make the whole city-state a big family by, paradoxically, abolishing the traditional family; in this big family, everyone is ‘a brother, or a sister, or a father, or a mother, or a son, or a daughter or their descendants or ancestors’ (Republic 463c; Bloom 1991: 143). But it is in China that this ideal has been realized. A sense of community and the perception of the state as a big family are deep in the Chinese psyche, due in large part to Confucian thought.

Living in a capricious world means accepting that we do not live within a stable moral cosmos that will always reward people for what they do. We should not deny that real tragedies happen. But at the same time, we should always expect to be surprised and learn to work with whatever befalls us. If we continue this work, even when tragedies come our way, we can begin to accept the world as unpredictable and impossible to understand perfectly. And this is where the promise of a capricious world lies; if our world is indeed constantly fragmented and unpredicatable, then it is something we can constantly work on bettering. We can go into each situation resolved to be the best human being we can be, not because of what we'll get our of it, but simply to affect others around us for the better, regardless of the outcome. We can cultivate our better sides and face this unpredicatble world, transforming as we go.

For example, the Chinese invented gunpowder. But for some reason these perennial warriors and kung-fu fighters weren’t savvy enough to use their invention as a weapon of war. The ancient Indians are widely credited with inventing the numerical system we currently use. But they certainly didn’t invent calculus like Newton and Leibniz did. Most uncomfortable for egalitarians and their ilk is that there are vast landmasses—sometimes entire continents—where the indigenous inhabitants have invented virtually nothing. Sub-Saharan Africans are not known for contributing much to rocket science, and black Americans are so underrepresented as inventors that everyone has heard a gorillion times about the mulatto who improved blood-storage methods and George Washington Carver’s wondrous dalliances with the magical peanut. The so-called “Native Americans” are credited with inventing the spinning top, which somehow proved incapable of defending them against the white man and his guns. And Australia’s aborigines? Well, let’s not talk about them, because they’d be embarrassed. Peruvians can take pride in developing the art of potato cultivation. And I’ve already covered the Mexicans and their nachos.

Poems, Documents, rites, music, goodness, self-cultivation, benevolence, uprightness, argumentativeness, cleverness: when the state has these ten, superiors cannot induce [the people] to [engage in] defense and fighting. If the state is ruled according to these ten, then if the enemy arrives it will surely be dismembered, and if the enemy does not arrive, the state will surely be impoverished. If the state eradicates these ten, then the enemy will not dare arrive, and even if he arrives, he will surely be repelled; when an army is raised and sent on a campaign, it will surely seize [the enemy’s land]; whereas if the army is restrained and does not attack, the state will surely be rich.

In fact, a religion has two aims: one is to really make those who are good and go up through cultivation obtain the proper way; the other is to maintain the morality of human society on a quite high level.

If they employ men to make music, then these men must abandon their work of ploughing, planting, and cultivation.

Ritual is obviously different from law and even from what we normally call morality. Law restrains people by setting external limits to action. The penalty for breaking a law is imposed on the individual by a designated power. People may break the law but escape being detected, and they may even feel proud of themselves or complacent if they succeed. Morality is sustained by public opinion. If you do something immoral or scandalous, people will ostracize you, and you will be shamed. Ritual is even more exacting than morality. If you act in violation of rituals, your action is not only immoral but incorrect, and it will not bring about a desired result. Rituals are sustained by personal habits. It is as if there were ten eyes watching you and ten fingers pointing at you all the time. You cannot help but follow the ritual, even if you are all by yourself. Following rituals is the right way to act. Actually, it is a habit formed in the process of cultivating oneself. One learns to conform to tradition on one’s own initiative. On the surface, “a rule of rituals” seems like a self-generated form of social order in which people’s actions are unrestrained by laws. Actually, “self-generated” is the wrong word here, because a rule of rituals implies that one uses one’s own initiative to follow conventional rules. Confucius often used the words restrain (ke) and bind (yue) to describe the process of ritual cultivation. These words suggest that “a rule of rituals” does not occur in the absence of society, does not stem from natural human instincts, and does not depend on directions from heaven.

Do you ever read annual reports, paying particular attention to the CEO’s comments? No? That’s a pity, because there you’ll find countless examples of this next error, which we all fall for at one time or another. For example, if the company has enjoyed an excellent year, the CEO catalogues his indispensable contributions: his brilliant decisions, tireless efforts and cultivation of a dynamic corporate culture. However, if the company has had a miserable year, we read about all sorts of other dynamics: the unfortunate exchange rate, governmental interference, the malicious trade practices of the Chinese, various hidden tariffs, subdued consumer confidence and so on. In short: we attribute success to ourselves and failures to external factors. This is the self-serving bias.

Belgium is an easy target for China’s spying and influence because of its fractured political system and lackadaisical attitude.45 And the government wants to cultivate Beijing for greater investment. If Italy is Beijing’s southern entry point into Europe, Belgium is its northern gateway. Some of the CCP’s most unapologetic supporters are found in the EU-China Friendship Group of the European Parliament in Brussels. In 2019 the group claimed a membership of forty-six MEPs from some twenty countries, making it the parliament’s largest friendship group.

CCP analyst Jichang Lulu has explored the localisation of united front influence activities in the Nordic countries, where local officials with considerable decision-making power are targeted for ‘friendly contact’ because they are insulated from strategic debates in the capital cities and do not have the expertise to understand Beijing’s intentions and tactics.1 He notes that Beijing has been actively cultivating political influence in Greenland, which Beijing sees as important for resource supply and for being an Arctic state. The strategy includes investments, an attempt to acquire a derelict naval base, and political work on Greenland’s elites, activities that have rung alarm bells in Denmark.

For me, Robertson’s cultivation of Feng Bo peeled back the curtain on the inner workings of a political system that mouthed Communist slogans while the families of senior officials gorged themselves at the trough of economic reforms. These sons and daughters functioned like an aristocracy; they intermarried, lived lives disconnected from those of average Chinese, and made fortunes selling access to their parents, inside information, and regulatory approvals that were keys to wealth.

Port investments are viewed as vehicles with which China can cultivate political influence to constrain recipient countries and build dual-use infrastructure to facilitate Beijing’s long-range naval operations.’139 The shift in strategic landscape is most advanced in the Indo-Pacific, but good progress is being made in the Mediterranean. In Chinese-language sources, PLA Navy experts put the strategy this way: ‘meticulously select locations, deploy discreetly, prioritise cooperation, and slowly infiltrate’.

It is found in the "Great Learning": "Search into the nature of things, extend the boundaries of knowledge, make the purpose sincere, regulate the mind, cultivate personal virtue, rule the family, govern the state, pacify the world.” This calls upon a man to develop from within outward, to begin with his inner nature and not cease until the world is at peace.

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Therefore, the affairs of sages are limited and easy to manage; their requirements are few and easy to satisfy. They are benevolent without trying; they are trusted without speaking; they gain without seeking; they succeed without striving. They perceive reality alone, embrace virtue, and extend sincerity. Everyone follows them like echoes of sound, like reflections of form. What they cultivate is fundamental. WHEN POLITICAL leaders ruin their countries and wreck their lands, themselves to die at others’ hands, a laughingstock of all the world, it is always because of their desires. IN