It’s been a while since I last wrote anything regarding the random thoughts that come to me during my procrastination sessions. I was surprised to see two more comments waiting for moderation today.
I started this blog to keep track of my own thoughts on the various political, religious, cultural and academic issues, and to keep a collection of articles or extracts which I find interesting or thought-provoking. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to see that there are people out there taking interest in some of the topics I have posed, particularly in regards to Dalai Lama.
Admittedly, I knew hardly anything about him before this year. The riots in Lhasa earlier this year certainly aroused my attention to the entire Tibet issue and his role in it.
I am not a religious person although I do have great interest in learning about the major religions of the world. My Chinese heritage certainly plays an important part in my perception and interpretation of the world today, but I do like to think that I have the ‘free mind’ to draw my conclusions based on evidence presented.
I must say that I find much inconsistency in what Dalai Lama preaches and does. I find him more or less a politician than a pure religious figure. But I will talk about my thoughts on him another day.
Now back to my random thoughts.
From Jin Yong to Religion
I have been a fan of Mr Jin Yong’s novels since the age of ten. The first time I came across his work (indirectly) was when the Taiwanese version of Yi Tian Tu Long Ji was shown on TV in the early 1990s. That was the time when Taiwanese entertainment industry first made its mark in mainland China. Wuxia (Kungfu) TV series and period dramas (dramas set in ancient times) proved extremely popular. The only non-Wuxia related popular dramas were in fact all romantic love stories by Qiong Yao, another famous novelist from Taiwan. Most of her stories were set in the early 20th century, when the Revolution led by Sun Yat Sen overthrew the Qing Dynasty.
Anyway, although I (in fact, many other students my age) was very much a big fan of all the Wuxia TV series, to the extent that I’d be singing the theme songs during lunch breaks, I did not know of Mr Jin, not did I know of his other works aside from Yi Tian Tu Long Ji.
A few years later, when I left my hometown, I found myself in a foreign place not knowing any English apart from a few simple greeting words. My family was in a very poor status, and we didn’t even have a TV. Luckily there was a library near our home with a small Chinese section.
It was then that I came across Jin Yong’s other works, starting with Tian Long Ba Bu (which at first I thought to be a Buddhist manuscript). Thanks to that small Chinese section, I managed to maintain the little Chinese that I had learnt in the years before.
For the next few years, I was fortunate enough to finish reading all of Jin Yong’s works, as well as the works of Liang Yu Sheng, Gu Long and, at a later stage, Qiong Yao. My favourites were none other than Jin Yong’s famous Trilogy, She Diao Ying XIong Zhuan, Shen Diao Xia Lu and Yi Tian Tu Long Ji. It was only then that Yi Tian Tu Long Ji was in fact a part of a series. Although I have read each of the three books separately, but I never read them together in one go. And in the past week, I finally managed to do so.
In the process of reading, I had a few ideas come to me that I want to write down for future reference. The first of which is the reference to Persia and certain historical figures from ancient Persia. The Old Man of the Mountain (Shaykh al Jabal) was mentioned briefly in Yi Tian Tu Long Ji . The story of this assassin organisation interested me greatly and I was curious to learn more.
I found a brief introduction to Shaykh al Jabal on wikipedia, but by then, my attention suddenly turned elsewhere.
My interest vary greatly and cover a broad range of topics and I often become distracted by other topics when searching for something. This time, as soon as I saw the name Shaykh al Jabal, my mind clicked, and I thought of the Arabic alphabet that I had been learning for a while earlier this year.
My interest in languages began with my study in French and Japanese at school. I excelled at both but I took a particular liking to Japanese because of its resemblance to the Chinese language which I very much liked. But in recent years, I began to take interest in many other languages, amongst which are French, Korean and Arabic. In fact, I find that I am very attracted to all sorts of linguistic issues.
Anyway, I became distracted from the Shaykh and went on to finish learning all the Arabic alphabets. As of now, I can recognise most of them in printed form, although I have trouble pronounciating some.
And when one talks about Arabic, Islam naturally comes to mind. I know very little about Islam, apart from the rhetorics that media often like to use in their portrayal of the “evil Muslims”. In all honesty, sometimes I do find myself agreeing with Richard Dawkin’s ideas with regard to religion, but I do not think the mainstream view of what Islam is about is necessary the truth. To this end, I’d like to find out more about the Islam religion, the Qu’ran, and the different branches of Islam.
In my investigation of Arabic, I also tumbled across Sanskrit, the equivalent of Latin in the East. I know nothing about Sanskrit apart from the fact that it is related to Buddhism. From there, I went into an investigation regarding the two different branches of Buddhism, Mahayana and Theravada. I knew that the majority of buddhists from Southeast Asian countries study Theravada sutras and most buddhists in East Asian countries like China and Japan study Mahayana sutras. Throughout ancient times, there had been conflicts between the two different branches of Buddhism in China, and I’d imagine, in the rest of the world as well. But I think this conflict is no where near as intense as the conflict between Shi’a and Sunni branches of Islam. Anyhow, I always thought that Tibet Buddhism classifies under the Theravada branch, but apparently it is not. But of course, even within these two major classifications, there exist many sub-branches. Take Tibet Buddhism for example, it comprises four major schools. Dalai Lama comes from one of the four schools but he likes to pose as the speaker on behalf of all Tibetans, and that is part of the reason why I consider him more of a politician than a religious leader.
I always wonder how eminent scientists resolve their religious beliefs with their work practices. I personally know of several accomplished scientists who are devoted Christians or Jews, and they all very much seem at peace. But I don’t think I will be joining their ranks any time soon, if ever.
Tit-for-Tat
I think I will have to keep this section short, as I had forgotten many of the ideas I had the day before. But I remember the inspiration came from Jin Yong’s Trilogy. The stories were very much to do with heroism, the “good” and the “evil”, and human nature. But the point that I was taking an interest in is to do with survival.
In the stories, there were characters who would never seek revenge or who believed in goodness in everyone, such as the Shaolin monk Kongjian in Yi Tian Tu Long Ji, who offered to take thirteen of Xie Xun‘s lethal blows with no defence in attempt to persuade him to give up seeking revenge from Xie Xun’s master, who attempted to rape his wife and murdered his entire family. At the end of the day, Kongjian died.
There were also characters who would do anything to seek revenge, such as Zhao Min, the Mongolian princess in Yi Tian Tu Long Ji, who openly claimed that if anyone harmed her family in anyway, she’d kill that person and his or her family without a second thought.
In the secular world, some people believe in “an eye for an eye”, but some promote benevolence to all, including the enemy. So in the grand scale of things, which of these two groups would out-live the other?
This reminded me of game theory which I had studied a little bit before. The strategy that came to my mind was Tit-for-Tat (“Equivalent Retaliation”), a highly effective strategy used for the iterated Prisoner’s dilemma. An individual using this strategy will initially cooperate, and then makes decisions based on the opponent’s actions. For example, if the opponent exhibited a history of cooperation, the individual will cooperate; if not, then the individual will not cooperate. This is said to be similar to reciprocal altruism in biology.
Of course, the Tit-for-Tat strategy is governed by certain conditions, but essentially one treats others with kindness, and only retaliate when betrayed. The individual is also quick to forgive. To me, this appears to be a combination of the “benevolence to all” and “an eye for an eye” approaches that I mentioned before. And in fact, the application of Tit-for-Tat to human society and politics has been discussed in Robert Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation.
From game theory point of view, the all forgiving and non-retaliation approach may not be the way to go if a group or species wish to survive in nature.
Spiked Online
There has been much news regarding China-bashing issue, and I came across this online magazine just yesterday and was surprise to see that it was one of very few organizations in the Western World to take a firm stand against China-bashing organisations and individuls. I also read some of its articles regarding the Russia-Georgia issue, and find myself agreeing with many of the viewpoints.
My guess is many readers of this online magazine will not take a liking to its stance as it is by no means mainstream, but I quite enjoy reading its articles they go to the trouble to substantiate their argument with solid evidence, not like many of the hand-wavy journalism plaguing the american-euro-centric world.
Translation
While investigating Sanskrit, I came across some interesting points on Chinese translations, in particular 欧化中文 (Chinese heavily influenced by European languages). The Chinese language, like most other languages around the world, has its intake of foreign vocabulary. 巧克力 (chiao-ke-lee) for chocolage, 巴士 (ba-shi) for bus, and even borrowed words from Sanskrit, such as 刹那. However, in recent years, the Chinese grammar has also been heavily impacted by foreign languages. To quote a few examples from Wikipedia:
The decline in his income has led to a change in his lifestyle
is translated to 他的收入的减少改变了他的生活方式, when it is in fact more natural to say 他收入减少……。
A translated phrase such as 听众对访问教授作出了十分热烈的反应 could’ve been better written as 听众对访问教授反应十分热烈. And 他是好人 sounds much better than 他是一个好人.
I think when I find time, I’d like to have a read of Mr Si Guo’s （思果） Research on Translation （《翻译研究》）.
