china

If American misjudgments and actions that evolved into human tragedies__.e., racism, sexism, and other bigotries__re guiding lights, the Chinese leadership must ultimately yield its power to the sovereignty of its people.

History is the archaeology of the present and future.

A convergence exists in the search for human excellence on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.

There are seemingly parallel origins of Nature__ God in America and China__ Mandate of Heaven. These twin concepts created socio-political forces for public good and orderly governance, and a unique cultural ethos (related to the Creator of the Universe in America and the Son of Heaven in China) is deeply rooted in both societies. Each concept is physically yet stealthily manifested in the architectural designs of the two capital cities, Beijing and Washington.

To achieve the ultimate Confucian objective__ virtuous society__merica has favored the rule of laws over Confucian-style virtues.

I have read more about Oprah Winfrey__ ass than I have about the rise of China as an economic superpower. I fear this is no exaggeration. Perhaps China is rising as an economic superpower because its women aren__ spending all their time reading about Oprah Winfrey__ ass.

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.

There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.

America acknowledged the greatness of Confucius through a trio of ancient lawgivers__oses flanked by Confucius to his right and Solon on his left__n the monument to __ustice, the Guardian of Liberty_ displayed on the eastern pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.

... it is shameful that there are so few women in science... In China there are many, many women in physics. There is a misconception in America that women scientists are all dowdy spinsters. This is the fault of men. In Chinese society, a woman is valued for what she is, and men encourage her to accomplishments yet she remains eternally feminine.

There is one element in Christianity which was not borrowed from Paganism -- religious intolerance. Referring to Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, a writer on China says: 'Between the followers of the three national religions there is not only a total absence of persecution and bitter feeling, but a very great indifference as to which of them a man may belong.... Among the politer classes, when strangers meet, the question is asked: 'To what sublime religion do you belong,' and each one pronounces a eulogium, not on his own religion, but on that professed by the others, and concludes with the oft-repeated formula 'Religions are many; reason is one; we are all brothers.

Happiness is a conscious choice we make for ourselves. It has to come from within.

The progress of science has always been the result of a close interplay between our concepts of the universe and our observations on nature. The former can only evolve out of the latter and yet the latter is also conditioned greatly by the former. Thus in our exploration of nature, the interplay between our concepts and our observations may sometimes lead to totally unexpected aspects among already familiar phenomena.

But it also had many large posters with messages of a more peaceful nature. These extolled the country__ economic achievement since the Cultural Revolution, which was supposed to have liberated the forces of production and increased productivity. Of course, the Cultural Revolution had done just the opposite. Official lies like this, habitually indulged in and frequently displayed by the authorities, served no purpose except to create the impression that truth was unimportant. Pg. 400

This communal parenting brought me out of the privacy of our foreign enclave and into the public life of the community. Here, parenting was everyone__ responsibility; all adults were "aunties" and "uncles".

Part of the Maoist project was the deliberate construction of a new moral identity. To do this it was necessary to destroy people__ previous sense of who they were and to make sure there was no room for it grow back.

In Confucian thought, individuals practice moral virtue both by restraining themselves and pursuing their own interests. This is a dual push-and-pull process. In today__ China, the latter is taken care of by capitalism and commerce. The former, however, needs to be taken care of by the rule of law. Otherwise, the system of governance is corrupted by unrestrained individual desires and selective enforcement of __irtue_ or law.

If God's love encompasses the whole world and if everyone who does not believe in him will perish, then surely this question needs to be asked: When, after two thousand years, does God's plan kick in for the billion people he 'so loves' in China? Or for the 840 million in India? Or the millions in Japan, Afghanistan, Siberia, Egypt, Burma ·.. and on and on?Why would a God who 'so loved the world' reveal his message only to a tiny minority of the people on earth, leaving the majority in ignorance? Is it possible to believe that the Father of all Mankind would select as his Chosen People a small Middle Eastern nation, Israel, reveal His will exclusively to them, fight alongside them in their battles to survive, and only after their failure to reach out to any other group, update His plan for the world's salvation by sending His 'only begotten son,' not to the world but, once again, exclusively to Israel?