Sad Chinese Quotes

About time, what I really learned from studying English is: time is different with timing. I understand the difference of these two words so well. I understand falling in love with the right person in the wrong timing could be the greatest sadness in a person's entire life.

In China, we say: 'There are many dreams in a long night.' It has been a long night, but I don't know if I want to continue the dreams. It feels like I am walking on a little path, both sides are dark mountains and valleys. I am walking towards a little light in the distance. Walking, and walking, I am seeing that light diminishing. I am seeing myself walk towards the end of the love, the sad end. I love you more than I loved you before. I love you more than I should love you. But I must leave. I am losing myself. It is painful that I can't see myself. It is time for me to say those words you kept telling me recently. 'Yes, I agree with you. We can't be together.

If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures...

Inside the store, a young man in the sadly appropriate red Target shirt walked very slowly to the locked door that was all that protected him from the horde. “He’s going to die.” Jesse sounded a little worried. The crowd started undulating, like a Chinese New Year dragon, as he reached up and slowly turned the key.

Just at the moment he's writing a book on famine - goodness! it's sad - and there's a dear little Chinese comrade who comes and tells him what famine is like, you never saw such a fat man in your life.

But her greatest assets were her bound feet, called in Chinese "three-inch golden lilies" (san-tsun-gin-lian). This meant she walked "like a tender young willow shoot in a spring breeze," as Chinese connoisseurs of women traditionally put it. The sight of a woman teetering on bound feet was supposed to have an erotic effect on men, partly because her vulnerability induced a feeling of protectiveness in the onlooker.

The next morning I told Mom I couldn't go to school again. She asked what was wrong. I told her, “The same thing that’s always wrong.” “You’re sick?” “I'm sad.” “About Dad?” “About everything.” She sat down on the bed next to me, even though I knew she was in a hurry. “What's everything?” I started counting on my fingers: “The meat and dairy products in our refrigerator, fistfights, car accidents, Larry–” “Who's Larry?” “The homeless guy in front of the Museum of Natural History who always says ‘I promise it’s for food’ after he asks for money.” She turned around and I zipped her dress while I kept counting. “How you don’t know who Larry is, even though you probably see him all the time, how Buckminster just sleeps and eats and goes to the bathroom and has no ‘raison d’etre’, the short ugly guy with no neck who takes tickets at the IMAX theater, how the sun is going to explode one day, how every birthday I always get at least one thing I already have, poor people who get fat because they eat junk food because it’s cheaper…” That was when I ran out of fingers, but my list was just getting started, and I wanted it to be long, because I knew she wouldn't leave while I was still going. “…domesticated animals, how I have a domesticated animal, nightmares, Microsoft Windows, old people who sit around all day because no one remembers to spend time with them and they’re embarrassed to ask people to spend time with them, secrets, dial phones, how Chinese waitresses smile even when there’s nothing funny or happy, and also how Chinese people own Mexican restaurants but Mexican people never own Chinese restaurants, mirrors, tape decks, my unpopularity in school, Grandma’s coupons, storage facilities, people who don’t know what the Internet is, bad handwriting, beautiful songs, how there won’t be humans in fifty years–” “Who said there won't be humans in fifty years?” I asked her, “Are you an optimist or a pessimist?” She looked at her watch and said, “I'm optimistic.” “Then I have some bed news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon.” “Why do beautiful songs make you sad?” “Because they aren't true.” “Never?” “Nothing is beautiful and true.

Approaching the Start of Civil Exams Perhaps I was once a young Chinese scholar approaching the start of civil exams, my mind grown weary and sad from seclusion with books on syntax and poetic style. All that I knew were the mist-covered mountains and sweet white blossoms of mountain apples that grew in the valleys of my province. But I had been gone over six years busy with studies in the Heavenly City empty and thin despite my work. I showed my verses to an older poet who told me a truth I longed to believe: all knowledge is futile and barren which does not open the love of your friends.

We continued dancing as a swift gale wheeled through the hills of Santa Cruz. Xuan leaned down to whisper into my ear, his lips lightly brushing the helix. “Once upon a time there was a boy, and he loved a girl very much. He was sad because he didn’t think the girl noticed him. Until one day the uni- verse intervened and a beautiful comet brought them together after a tragic accident occurred that day. The boy and the girl found comfort and friendship in each other that night. And something new and extraordinary began to blossom under the heavens, something that would burn with such bright- ness that all the stars would be in awe. And the boy fell madly in love with the girl and promised to always find her, in this life and the next.” “That’s my favorite story.” Xuan smiled. “It’s the best one I’ve ever told, Ms. Steel.

The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance. There seemed nowhere to hide my lack of correct emotion except the shoulder of the woman in front of me, one of the student officials, who was apparently heartbroken. I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately. As so often in China, a bit of ritual did the trick. Sniveling heartily she made a movement as though she was going to turn around and embrace me I pressed my whole weight on her from behind to keep her in her place, hoping to give the impression that I was in a state of abandoned grief. In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had led to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery to which the Chinese population had been subjected. For what? But Mao's theory might just be the extension of his personality. He was, it seemed to me, really a restless fight promoter by nature, and good at it. He understood ugly human instincts such as envy and resentment, and knew how to mobilize them for his ends. He ruled by getting people to hate each other. In doing so, he got ordinary Chinese to carry out many of the tasks undertaken in other dictatorships by professional elites. Mao had managed to turn the people into the ultimate weapon of dictatorship. That was why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB in China. There was no need. In bringing out and nourishing the worst in people, Mao had created a moral wasteland and a land of hatred. But how much individual responsibility ordinary people should share, I could not decide. The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance. Because of his calculation that the cultured class were an easy target for a population that was largely illiterate, because of his own deep resentment of formal education and the educated, because of his megalomania, which led to his scorn for the great figures of Chinese culture, and because of his contempt for the areas of Chinese civilization that he did not understand, such as architecture, art, and music, Mao destroyed much of the country's cultural heritage. He left behind not only a brutalized nation, but also an ugly land with little of its past glory remaining or appreciated. The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. Weeping for Mao was perhaps just another programmed act in their programmed lives. Yet the mood of the nation was unmistakably against continuing Mao's policies. Less than a month after his death, on 6 October, Mme Mao was arrested, along with the other members of the Gang of Four. They had no support from anyone not the army, not the police, not even their own guards. They had had only Mao. The Gang of Four had held power only because it was really a Gang of Five. When I heard about the ease with which the Four had been removed, I felt a wave of sadness. How could such a small group of second-rate tyrants ravage 900 million people for so long? But my main feeling was joy. The last tyrants of the Cultural Revolution were finally gone.

OK, so this is the story of a Chinese father and son and their best horse. The horse runs away, for no reason, and lives with some nomads across the border. The son is very upset that the horse has gone, and the father says to him, "What makes you so sure this isn't a blessing?" Then the horse comes back, a few months later, with a beautiful nomad stallion. The son is thrilled, but the father says to him, "What makes you so sure this isn't a disaster?" The son loves riding the new horse, but one day falls and breaks his leg. Everyone is sad for him, and his father says, wait for it, "What makes you so sure this isn't a blessing?" At some point the nomads invade, and every able-bodied young man has to go off to battle. The nomads basically wipe out all the men, but the son is safe because he is lame, and so he and his father live on and look after one another.

CROWS CALLING AT NIGHT Yellow clouds beside the walls; crows roosting near. Flying back, they caw, caw; calling in the boughs. In the loom she weaves brocade, the Qin river girl. Made of emerald yarn like mist, the window hides her words. She stops the shuttle, sorrowful, and thinks of the distant man. She stays alone in the lonely room, her tears just like the rain.

once took a Chinese ambassador in London to a high-end French restaurant in the hope they would repeat Prime Minister Zhou Enlai’s much-quoted answer to Richard Nixon’s question ‘What is the impact of the French Revolution?’, to which the prime minister replied ‘It’s too soon to tell.’ Sadly this was not forthcoming, but I was treated to a stern lecture about how the full imposition of ‘what you call human rights’ in China would lead to widespread violence and death and was then asked, ‘Why do you think your values would work in a culture you don’t understand?

There is an old Chinese tale about the woman whose only son had died. In her grief, she went to the holy man and said, 'What prayers, what magical incantations do you have to bring my son back to life?' Instead of sending her away or reasoning with her, he said to her, 'Fetch me a mustard seed from a home that has never known sorrow. We will use it to drive the sorrow out of your life.' The woman set off at once in search of that magical mustard seed. She came first to a splendid mansion, knocked at the door and said, 'I am looking for a home that has never known sorrow. Is this such a place? It is very important to me.' They told her 'You've certainly come to the wrong place,' and began to describe all the tragic things that had recently befallen them. The woman said to herself, 'Who is better able to help these poor unfortunate people than I, who have had misfortune of my own?' She stayed to comfort them, then went on in her search for a home that had never known sorrow. But wherever she turned, hovels and in palaces, she found one tale after another of sadness and misfortune. Ultimately, she became so involved in ministering to other people's grief that she forgot about her quest for the magical mustard seed, never realizing that it had in fact drive the sorrow out of her life.

I have again been asked to explain how one can "become a Daoists..." with all of the sad things happening in our world today, Laozi and Zhuangzi give words of advice, tho not necessarily to become a Daoist priest or priestess... " So many foreigners who want to become “Religious Daoists” 道教的道师 （道士） do not realize that they must not only receive a transmission of a Lu 籙 register which identifies their Daoist school, and learn as well how to sing the ritual melodies, play the flute, stringed instruments, drums, and sacred dance steps, required to be an ordained and functioning Daoist priest or priestess. This process usually takes 10 years or more of daily discipleship and practice, to accomplish. There are 86 schools and genre of Daoist rituals listed in the Baiyun Guan Gazeteer, 白雲觀志, which was edited by Oyanagi Sensei, in Tokyo, 1928, and again in 1934, and re-published by Baiyun Guan in Beijing, available in their book shop to purchase. Some of the schools, such as the Quanzhen Longmen 全真龙门orders, allow their rituals and Lu registers to be learned by a number of worthy disciples or monks; others, such as the Zhengyi, Qingwei, Pole Star, and Shangqing 正一，清微，北极，上请 registers may only be taught in their fullness to one son and/or one disciple, each generation. Each of the schools also have an identifying poem, from 20 or 40 character in length, or in the case of monastic orders (who pass on the registers to many disciples), longer poems up to 100 characters, which identify the generation of transmission from master to disciple. The Daoist who receives a Lu register (給籙元科, pronounced "Ji Lu Yuanke"), must use the character from the poem given to him by his or her master, when composing biao 表 memorials, shuwen 梳文 rescripts, and other documents, sent to the spirits of the 3 realms (heaven, earth, water /underworld). The rituals and documents are ineffective unless the correct characters and talismanic signature are used. The registers are not given to those who simply practice martial artists, Chinese medicine, and especially never shown to scholars. The punishment for revealing them to the unworthy is quite severe, for those who take payment for Lu transmission, or teaching how to perform the Jinlu Jiao and Huanglu Zhai 金籙醮，黃籙齋 科儀 keyi rituals, music, drum, sacred dance steps. Tang dynasty Tangwen 唐文 pronunciation must also be used when addressing the highest Daoist spirits, i.e., the 3 Pure Ones and 5 Emperors 三请五帝. In order to learn the rituals and receive a Lu transmission, it requires at least 10 years of daily practice with a master, by taking part in the Jiao and Zhai rituals, as an acolyte, cantor, or procession leader. Note that a proper use of Daoist ritual also includes learning Inner Alchemy, ie inner contemplative Daoist meditation, the visualization of spirits, where to implant them in the body, and how to summon them forth during ritual. The woman Daoist master Wei Huacun’s Huangting Neijing, 黃庭內經 to learn the esoteric names of the internalized Daoist spirits. Readers must be warned never to go to Longhu Shan, where a huge sum is charged to foreigners ($5000 to $9000) to receive a falsified document, called a "license" to be a Daoist! The first steps to true Daoist practice, Daoist Master Zhuang insisted to his disciples, is to read and follow the Laozi Daode Jing and the Zhuangzi Neipian, on a daily basis. Laozi Ch 66, "the ocean is the greatest of all creatures because it is the lowest", and Ch 67, "my 3 most precious things: compassion for all, frugal living for myself, respect all others and never put anyone down" are the basis for all Daoist practice. The words of Zhuangzi, Ch 7, are also deeply meaningful: "Yin and Yang were 2 little children who loved to play inside Hundun (ie Taiji, gestating Dao). They felt sorry because Hundun did not have eyes, or eats, or other senses. So everyday they drilled one hole, ie 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, one mouth; and on the 7th day, Hundun died.

As I finished my rice, I sketched out the plot of a pornographic adventure film called The Massage Room. Sirien, a young girl from northern Thailand, falls hopelessly in love with Bob, an American student who winds up in the massage parlor by accident, dragged there by his buddies after a fatefully boozy evening. Bob doesn't touch her, he's happy just to look at her with his lovely, pale-blue eyes and tell her about his hometown - in North Carolina, or somewhere like that. They see each other several more times, whenever Sirien isn't working, but, sadly, Bob must leave to finish his senior year at Yale. Ellipsis. Sirien waits expectantly while continuing to satisfy the needs of her numerous clients. Though pure at heart, she fervently jerks off and sucks paunchy, mustached Frenchmen (supporting role for Gerard Jugnot), corpulent, bald Germans (supporting role for some German actor). Finally, Bob returns and tries to free her from her hell - but the Chinese mafia doesn't see things in quite the same light. Bob persuades the American ambassador and the president of some humanitarian organization opposed to the exploitation of young girls to intervene (supporting role for Jane Fonda). What with the Chinese mafia (hint at the Triads) and the collusion of Thai generals (political angle, appeal to democratic values), there would be a lot of fight scenes and chase sequences through the streets of Bangkok. At the end of the day, Bob carries her off. But in the penultimate scene, Sirien gives, for the first time, an honest account of the extent of her sexual experience. All the cocks she has sucked as a humble massage parlor employee, she has sucked in the anticipation, in the hope of sucking Bob's cock, into which all the others were subsumed - well, I'd have to work on the dialogue. Cross fade between the two rivers (the Chao Phraya, the Delaware). Closing credits. For the European market, I already had line in mind, along the lines of "If you liked The Music Room, you'll love The Massage Room.

Manette looked up from her paper. “I’m beginning to think that I’ll see men on the moon with my own eyes.” “Your own eyes? You’ll make the journey?” asked André, with laughter in his voice. “You know very well what I mean. I shall know they are there. And it’ll be the Russians, my boy. The Yankees missed by a mile, with their pure oxygen.” “Yes, Mama, you’ll see the Russians on the moon,” said André affectionately. “And to think we began in caves,” went on Manette meditatively, "with no more than our ten fingers to help us. And we've reached this point: you must admit it's heartening." “The history of mankind is very fine, true enough,” said André. “It’s a pity that that of men should be so sad.” “It won’t always be sad. If your Chinese don’t blow the world to pieces, our grandchildren will know socialism. I’d happily live another fifty years to see that.” “What a woman! Do you hear that?” he said to me. “She would sign on again for another fifty years.” “You wouldn’t, André?” “No, Mama: frankly I wouldn’t. History follows such very curious paths that I scarcely feel it has anything to do with me at all. I have the impression of being on the sideline. So in fifty year's time... “I know: you no longer believe in anything,” said Manette disapprovingly. “That’s not quite true.” “What do you believe in?” “People’s suffering, and the fact that it is abominable. One should do everything to abolish it. To tell you the truth, nothing else seems to me of any importance.” “In that case,” I asked, “why not the bomb? Why not annihilation? Let everything go up and there’s an end of it.” “There are times when one is tempted to wish for it. But I prefer to hope that there can be life, life without suffering.” “Life to do something with,” said Manette pugnaciously.

My Voice by Paul Stephen Lynch Why was I born? What is my purpose here on this earth? Is there more out there after this life ends? At some point we all ask ourselves these questions. I can tell you with absolute certainty that for me, the answer to all three of these questions is… “I don’t know”. However, what I do know is that while I am here I am meant to learn from my mistakes, to grow through my pain, and to evolve. What will I be changed into? Again, I do not know. Perhaps I will become someone who is more courageous, more charitable, more peaceful, more dignified, more honest and more loving. I am very hopeful but nothing in life is guaranteed. Although, I have discovered that speaking from my heart and telling my truth is an integral part of my transformation. It is my voice. In those times in my life when I have experienced great pain – sadness, loss, conflict or depression – those have been the times that have brought me closest to this transformation. I recently realized that pain is one of the few things that seems to really get my attention and that I have spent a lot of my time just coasting down life’s path. Perhaps this is the reason why I seem to grow the most during the hard times, even though it often takes all the energy I can muster just to get through them. Quite a few years ago, while I was visiting a friend who was dying from AIDS, I saw a tapestry on the hospital wall that read: The Chinese word for “crisis” has two characters. One stands for danger; the other for opportunity. The times in my life that have been the most difficult have quite often proven to be my best opportunities for growth; to get closer to becoming the person I am meant to be. Of course, this doesn’t mean that painful circumstances ~ like HIV and AIDS ~ are good things or that they are in any way “all for the best” ~ or, that they even make any kind of sense. It just means that I know that there is always the possibility that something positive can ultimately come out of that which is incredibly bad. However, change does not happen in seclusion and I will likely need help from friends, family, teachers and even from people I do not know at all For me to continue moving closer to becoming the person I was born to be, I first needed to accept who I am. For me, that was relatively easy (easy does not mean painless mind you) and it happened at the unusually young age of twelve. The second step to transforming my life means I need to tell others the truth about who I am. I have been doing this ever since my personal acceptance occurred. As a result, I have learned that there will always be those people who cannot be trusted with the truth. There are also those who will simply never be able to understand my truth no matter what anyone says to them. However, others will hear the truth very clearly, understand it completely, and even care greatly. Moreover, I can hear, I understand, and I care. I have also learned that there are times when it is better to be silent. Sometimes words are just not necessary… Like when I am sharing with someone who already knows my heart. And then there are times when words are pointless… like when I have already spoken my truth to someone, yet they are simply not capable of hearing what it is that I am saying. This is when I need to find other ears. Sometimes, a silent sign of love is the best way, or even the only way that I can express myself. However, at those times, my silence is a choice that I am making. It is not being forced on me by fear or shame… and I will never let it be because… it is MY voice!

The next morning I told Mom I couldn’t go to school again. She asked what was wrong. I told her, “The same thing that’s always wrong.” “You’re sick?” “I’m sad.” “About Dad?” “About everything.” She sat down on the bed next to me, even though I knew she was in a hurry. “What’s everything?” I started counting on my fingers: “The meat and dairy products in our refrigerator, fistfights, car accidents, Larry—” “Who’s Larry?” “The homeless guy in front of the Museum of Natural History who always says ‘I promise it’s for food’ after he asks for money.” She turned around and I zipped her dress while I kept counting. “How you don’t know who Larry is, even though you probably see him all the time, how Buckminster just sleeps and eats and goes to the bathroom and has no raison d’être, the short ugly guy with no neck who takes tickets at the IMAX theater, how the sun is going to explode one day, how every birthday I always get at least one thing I already have, poor people who get fat because they eat junk food because it’s cheaper . . . ” That was when I ran out of fingers, but my list was just getting started, and I wanted it to be long, because I knew she wouldn’t leave while I was still going. “ . . . domesticated animals, how I have a domesticated animal, nightmares, Microsoft Windows, old people who sit around all day because no one remembers to spend time with them and they’re embarrassed to ask people to spend time with them, secrets, dial phones, how Chinese waitresses smile even when there’s nothing funny or happy, and also how Chinese people own Mexican restaurants but Mexican people never own Chinese restaurants, mirrors, tape decks, my unpopularity at school, Grandma’s coupons, storage facilities, people who don’t know what the Internet is, bad handwriting, beautiful songs, how there won’t be humans in fifty years—

I’m sorry, Rosie,” Silas says when he sees the sadness in my eyes. I shake my head, trying to brush the look away, but Silas isn’t easily deterred. He hesitates, then leans on the counter beside me, moving slowly as if he needs verification that each move is acceptable, wanted. “Hey,” he says, resting two fingers on my arm. It starts as a friendly gesture. I press my lips together as he slides his palm up my arm and around his shoulders. Silas paused, and though I’m not certain, I think he realizes that the touch is far more friendly as well—a thought that makes me dizzy but practically forces me to move my own hand to the small of his back. I close my eyes and inhale, and I feel Silas’s breath on my forehead, hear his relaxed heartbeats. His lips are so close to me, I could easily tilt my head back and kiss him if I were braver. It’s hard to not sigh, like the exhausted breath is building up in my chest and I’m holding it back, though more than anything I want to release it, to truly hold myself against him— Scarlett’s shower cuts off. Silas snatches his arm away and I lean back up, head swirling from the quick change. “Um . . . right,” Silas says, looking startled. He looks at me. “Okay, back to studying Potentials, wolves, important stuff . . .” He shakes his head as if he’s casting away a mental fog. I bite my lip. I want to get out of here—I need to get out of here, or the thumping desire for Silas is going to consume me. There’s no way Scarlett won’t figure it out if I can’t escape and get my mind off him. It’s just for a little while—I can go get groceries or something. Silas will help her research. We can’t keep paying for Chinese food. I meet Silas’s eyes, dashes of sky color in the monotone apartment. “I’ll be back,” I say, then dart for the door. “Wait!” he whispers sharply. He lunges toward the couch and tosses me the belt with my knives on it. “Just in case.” I catch it with one hand and swing it around my waist. Silas gives me a sly smile—does he know the affect that smile has on me?

SEA” Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur “SEA” Cherson! Cherson! You aint just whistlin Dixie, Sea— Cherson! Cherson! We calcimine fathers here below! Kitchen lights on— Sea Engines from Russia seabirding here below— When rocks outsea froth I’ll know Hawaii cracked up & scramble up my doublelegged cliff to the silt of a million years— Shoo—Shaw—Shirsh— Go on die salt light You billion yeared rock knocker Gavroom Seabird Gabroobird Sad as wife & hill Loved as mother & fog Oh! Oh! Oh! Sea! Osh! Where’s yr little Neppytune tonight? These gentle tree pulp pages which’ve nothing to do with yr crash roar, liar sea, ah, were made for rock tumble seabird digdown footstep hollow weed move bedarvaling crash? Ah again? Wine is salt here? Tidal wave kitchen? Engines of Russia in yr soft talk— Les poissons de la mer parle Breton— Mon nom es Lebris de Keroack— Parle, Poissons, Loti, parle— Parlning Ocean sanding crash the billion rocks— Ker plotsch— Shore—shoe— god—brash— The headland looks like a longnosed Collie sleeping with his light on his nose, as the ocean, obeying its accomodations of mind, crashes in rhythm which could & will intrude, in thy rhythm of sand thought— —Big frigging shoulders on that sonofabitch Parle, O, parle, mer, parle, Sea speak to me, speak to me, your silver you light Where hole opened up in Alaska Gray—shh—wind in The canyon wind in the rain Wind in the rolling rash Moving and t wedel Sea sea Diving sea O bird—la vengeance De la roche Cossez Ah Rare, he rammed the gate rare over by Cherson, Cherson, we calcify fathers here below —a watery cross, with weeds entwined—This grins restoredly, low sleep—Wave—Oh, no, shush—Shirk—Boom plop Neptune now his arms extends while one millions of souls sit lit in caves of darkness —What old bark? The dog mountain? Down by the Sea Engines? God rush—Shore— Shaw—Shoo—Oh soft sigh we wait hair twined like larks—Pissit—Rest not —Plottit, bisp tesh, cashes, re tav, plo, aravow, shirsh,—Who’s whispering over there—the silly earthen creek! The fog thunders—We put silver light on face—We took the heroes in—A billion years aint nothing— O the cities here below! The men with a thousand arms! the stanchions of their upward gaze! the coral of their poetry! the sea dragons tenderized, meat for fleshy fish— Navark, navark, the fishes of the Sea speak Breton— wash as soft as people’s dreams—We got peoples in & out the shore, they call it shore, sea call it pish rip plosh—The 5 billion years since earth we saw substantial chan—Chinese are the waves—the woods are dreaming

Architecture is (in part) “the art of leaving out irrelevant details”. Leaving out details, sadly, often derails into religiously ignoring details. The key word, however, is ‘irrelevant’: as the Chinese proverb says: people stumble over molehills, not over mountains. An architect consciously leaves out details that he or she has decided are irrelevant to the decisions to be made.

According to Chinese medicine, each of our organs relates to a specific emotion—the liver relates to anger, the kidneys to fear, the lungs to sadness, and the spleen to worry—and there are specific types of cleanses for the different organs. Some experts recommend doing regular cleanses at the change of each season.

the Chinese food that’s been served here, in this Chinatown, for as long as he can remember. But this Chinatown is changing. Jew has heard that the owners of Hon’s want to retire, too. “Which is understandable,” he says. “They’re pretty old. But it makes me sad. Who’s gonna take the torch of these places that have been here for so long?

As the sun dipped below Twin Peaks, Jones wandered toward Castro and Market and saw the huge crowd starting to gather. “It was the most amazingly beautiful, heart-wrenchingly sad, magnificent example of what San Francisco is. It was gay people, straight people, white people, Filipinos, Chinese, African Americans, men and women of all ages, children, the poor and well dressed, people in fur coats next to people in rags. We estimated there were between thirty thousand and forty thousand people. We marched in almost total silence down Market Street to city hall and filled Civic Center Plaza, a sea of people holding candles. I remember standing there and thinking, ‘This isn’t the end of anything. This is the beginning.’ And I was right. “I think every city has a soul, every city is unique and special. But for San Franciscans, I don’t think there could ever be another place to call home. And a lot of it has to do with what I saw that night: with this ability to suffer horrible and dreadful events, earthquakes, civil turmoil, assassinations, and to not only endure but to create something beautiful from it.

She was sad, in her eyes, the Chinese empress.

Here, day and night, the prettiest women of the Empire are dancing...songs and laughter echo from the golden screens. When all the others are overcome with drinking, I put down my wine. I take my brush, I wet the golden ink, and I write sad poems with swaying characters that look like these rosy bodies strewn on a marble floor.

The Shang Dynasty is remembered for many things, but perhaps most important is that the earliest Chinese writing comes from the Shang. The Shang wrote important information on oracle bones, as much of their culture was dependent on divination. The Shang also became the first dynasty to work extensively in bronze, and thanks to the tombs of the emperors, much of this bronze has been unearthed, giving a very accurate portrayal of the myriad uses of bronze in the dynasty. The Shang also began using chariots, and this suggests that at some point the Shang had contact with societies to the west, particularly the Middle East, but sadly, no record of this contact exists.

we grew accustomed to believe that he was alive in the house of power because someone had seen him light the Chinese lanterns at some festival, someone had told about seeing his sad eyes, his pale lips, his pensive hand waving through the liturgical decorations of the presidential coach

In the 2016 film Arrival by director Denis Villeneuve, based on “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is part of a scientific team summoned to Montana to help decipher the language of visiting extraterrestrials, known as “heptapods,” so that their intentions can be clarified. She starts to have frequent visions of a dying girl that she cannot place—she fears she may be going crazy from the strain of her assignment. The audience naturally assumes that these are flashbacks, memories of a child she lost in her past. As Louise begins to realize that her increased understanding of how the aliens communicate is helping liberate her cognitively from linear time, she begins having visions that aid in her work, including reading from the definitive book on the aliens’ written language that she herself is destined to write and publish in her future. From the book’s dedication, she realizes that the girl in her visions is a daughter she is going to have and who will eventually die of a rare disease. And at a key moment, when the world is on the brink of war with the visitors, she is able to contact a Chinese General on his private cell phone and talk him out of his belligerence after she “premembers” his phone number, which he will show her at a celebration months or years in the future—an event celebrating international unification in the aftermath of humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial beings, made possible thanks largely to her intervention. It is a story about time loops, in other words. And what “arrives” at the climax and at various turning points—excitingly in some cases and sadly in others—is the meaning of Louise’s baffling experiences. The heptapods, with their circular language, feel at home in the block universe of Minkowski spacetime, where past, present, and future coexist. In Chiang’s short story, the scientists attempting to crack the code of their language get an important clue from Fermat’s principle of least time (Chapter 6), which suggests a kind of teleological interpretation of light’s behavior—it needs to know where it is going right from the start, in order to take the fastest possible route to get there. Chiang resolves the perennial questions about precognition and free will by suggesting that knowledge of future outcomes causes a psychological shift in the experiencer: an “urgency, a sense of obligation”1 to fulfill what has been foreseen. “Fatalism” would be one word for it but inflected more positively—perhaps not unlike how Morgan Robertson and Phil Dick may have seen it: as absolution rather than restriction.

In the 2016 film Arrival by director Denis Villeneuve, based on “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is part of a scientific team summoned to Montana to help decipher the language of visiting extraterrestrials, known as “heptapods,” so that their intentions can be clarified. She starts to have frequent visions of a dying girl that she cannot place—she fears she may be going crazy from the strain of her assignment. The audience naturally assumes that these are flashbacks, memories of a child she lost in her past. As Louise begins to realize that her increased understanding of how the aliens communicate is helping liberate her cognitively from linear time, she begins having visions that aid in her work, including reading from the definitive book on the aliens’ written language that she herself is destined to write and publish in her future. From the book’s dedication, she realizes that the girl in her visions is a daughter she is going to have and who will eventually die of a rare disease. And at a key moment, when the world is on the brink of war with the visitors, she is able to contact a Chinese General on his private cell phone and talk him out of his belligerence after she “premembers” his phone number, which he will show her at a celebration months or years in the future—an event celebrating international unification in the aftermath of humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial beings, made possible thanks largely to her intervention. It is a story about time loops, in other words. And what “arrives” at the climax and at various turning points—excitingly in some cases and sadly in others—is the meaning of Louise’s baffling experiences. The heptapods, with their circular language, feel at home in the block universe of Minkowski spacetime, where past, present, and future coexist. In Chiang’s short story, the scientists attempting to crack the code of their language get an important clue from Fermat’s principle of least time (Chapter 6), which suggests a kind of teleological interpretation of light’s behavior—it needs to know where it is going right from the start, in order to take the fastest possible route to get there. Chiang resolves the perennial questions about precognition and free will by suggesting that knowledge of future outcomes causes a psychological shift in the experiencer: an “urgency, a sense of obligation”1 to fulfill what has been foreseen. “Fatalism” would be one word for it but inflected more positively—perhaps not unlike how Morgan Robertson and Phil Dick may have seen it: as absolution rather than restriction. In the film, one of the heptapods sacrifices its life to save that of Louise and her team members from a bomb planted by some soldiers, even though it clearly knows its fate well in advance. Their race even knows that in 3,000 years, humanity will offer them some needed assistance, and thus their visit is just the beginning of a long relationship of mutual aid in the block universe. At the end of the film, Louise chooses to have her daughter, even knowing that the girl will die.

In Chinese or Japanese artistic tradition, there is nothing wrong with cliches as such. The true test of skill is to redefine the familiar. The paradigm of the Japanese Buddhist belief that beauty is rooted in the evanescence of life and therefore its sadness.

My soul is dancing. If happiness is a brief matter, then I am in this brief moment. I wonder whether the sadness inside a human sometimes is just because of lack of sunlight.

VISITING THE TAOIST PRIEST DAI TIANSHAN, BUT NOT FINDING HIM A dog's bark amid the water's sound, Peach blossom that's made thicker by the rain. Deep in the trees, I sometimes see a deer, And at the stream I hear no noonday bell. Wild bamboo divides the green mist, A flying spring hangs from the jasper peak. No-one knows the place to which he's gone, Sadly, I lean on two or three pines.

While local governments were seen as corrupt and in cahoots with factories, both aligned in their mutual desire to abuse laborers in their pursuit of money, the officials in far-off Beijing were certainly on the side of the workers and would stop any mistreatment, if only they knew about it; didn’t the laws they wrote make that clear? It always made me feel sad, no matter how often this mantra of faith was repeated. The reality, of course, was that Beijing was much more concerned about preserving stability, and would never accept workers taking matters

There will always be more exciting things. Casinos will blink with avenues of exhilaration and offers to be devilish. The shelf of alcohol behind the bar looks like it may have a good read for you. A Chinese restaurant will buzz with customers and ticket orders. A booming concert may scream it has an extra spot, with strobe lights to hide your human. Partying people do not look like people who weep. You’ll think literature has no relevance to them. But eventually, the light will die down and the world will need to return home again. The fire will give out and the coals will glow and when the rising smoke clouds our vision, we will look for what we need: hearth. And there, the ignored is seen again. Asked for. There are exciting days, but the moment our flames die and we shiver honestly in our freezing universe, we will return to our homes, coming to what we need to, like mothers, like old love poems, like stringed instruments, like heroes.

Sadly, no one named Victor has written a definitive history of Hong Kong. So we’re left with three versions to choose from. The British version: Provoked into war by Chinese duplicity toward honest European traders, Britain—reluctantly, mind you—took, as a wee little concession, an uninhabited “barren rock with hardly a house upon it”, where they kindly implanted civilization, rule of law, and the most successful, freewheeling capitalist economy the world has ever known. 156 years later they magnanimously gave it back, and everyone lived happily ever after. The Chinese version: Hong Kong was a modern, thriving coastal commercial centre, seized by devilish foreigners during the greatest humiliation ever perpetrated upon China, a heinous act never to be forgotten for the next ten billion years. Thanks to the omniscient leadership of the Communist Party, China’s pride and joy was at last restored to the benevolent embrace of the Motherland, for which all Chinese around the world feel avenged. And by the way, Taiwan’s next. Finally, the most commonly-held version of Hong Kong history: I dunno. You mean I should care?

China’s government is deeply concerned about any loss of confidence in the country’s fragile financial markets, both legitimate and shadow. If a financial crisis were to cause the economy to crash, it would jeopardise the Party’s hold on power, not to mention a huge writedown in the value of assets owned by the red aristocracy. When China’s stock market was crashing in June 2015, a directive was issued to state media ordering them to change their reporting so as to ‘rationally lead market expectations’.99 They were directed to halt all discussions and expert interviews. The directive went on: ‘Do not exaggerate panic or sadness. Do not use emotionally charged words such as “slump”, “spike”, or “collapse”.’ Two months after the crash, a reporter for the respected business magazine Caijing, Wang Xiaolu, was arrested on charges of ‘spreading rumors’.

The Chinese police tell Zehua to open the door, that there won’t be any problems. Finally, he opens the door. Four police officers slowly walk in. Zehua is arrested and taken away. Another disappearance. Another cover-up. Another young life on the line. Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua are sadly not alone. Many more would go missing amid their valiant attempts to alert the world to Beijing’s cover-up of the deadly new virus crippling Wuhan.

During the final 20 million years of the Cretaceous, tyrannosaurs flourished, ruling the river valleys, lakeshores, floodplains, forests, and deserts of North America and Asia. There is no mistaking their signature look: huge head, athletic body, sad arms, muscular legs, long tail. They bit so hard that they crunched through the bones of their prey; they grew so fast that they put on about five pounds every day during their teenage years; and they lived so hard that we have yet to find an individual that was more than thirty years old when it died. And they were impressively diverse: we have found nearly twenty species of these big-boned tyrannosaurs from the latest Cretaceous, and there are surely many more out there waiting to be discovered. The Pinocchio-nosed Qianzhousaurus, so fortuitously discovered by that still-anonymous backhoe operator at the Chinese construction site, is one of the latest examples. Just as Brown and Osborn grasped over a hundred years ago, when they were the first humans to set eyes on a tyrannosaur, T. rex and its brethren really were the kings of the dinosaur world.

My dad foolishly brainwashed me into supporting these sad-sack franchises. Had he just moved the family to Cali like any normal Chinese person would, I’d be rooting for the Lakers or the Warriors as we speak.