The author, Peter Man, shares his personal experiences, secret thoughts, and outlandish ideas on the multifarious subjects he is interested in, which is practically everything under the sun, as well as beyond the solar system to infinity. Be sure to comment if you wish to learn more, especially about the mysteries of the trilogy.
AuthorBorn and bred in Hong Kong and educated by a Catholic English school, the author immigrated to Canada and established Canada’s first national Chinese language television station. He later worked in China in the broadcast and telecommunications technologies industry for many years, experiencing that country’s meteoric rise. Archives
October 2022
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This is a long post with a lot of material to back up Sana's claim in her video. If you're one of those people who have always wondered about why the world is as it is and want to understand the reality we live in but can't distinguish the lies from the truth, spend a bit of time to learn the answer at the very end. Hopefully, you will find it worth your while, and you will pass this to your family and friends. Sana Saeed is a host and senior producer at AJ+, the digital news service distributed over social media and owned by Al Jazeera, which, in turn, is owned by Qatar. It's always advisable to know the source of your information. I normally do not pay much attention to Al Jazeera, as they tend to repeat the Western mainstream narratives. I'm, therefore, intrigued when I came upon Sana's AJ+ YouTube post titled "How the Threat of China was Made in the USA" Here is my comment: I am from Hong Kong and have become a Canadian like Sana. I worked in the mainstream media in the early days of my career and actually built a national Chinese language television station in Canada. That was a long time ago. When Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997, I returned to my hometown to watch that historical event. I ended up getting a job in China and lived there for almost two decades. I have witnessed China's rise and I can share one of my experiences in a few words. I was utterly shocked by the complete disregard for factual reporting of China by Western journalists. I am almost ashamed to say that I started my television career in Canada working as a director for a news crew on the streets of Toronto. These so-called Western "journalists" willfully dissemble and dissimulate in their reports about China, and they twist everything about China with a negative narrative. It is their job to be dishonest about China and they're happy to make a living doing it.* China is by no means a perfect society, and no one should lie about that, but why should we expect any human society to be perfect? Given that China is a huge country with a long and continuous civilization, trying to feed a large and complex population with scant resources, and which is in the process of recovering from a hundred years of incessant wars and colonial plunder, its government has at least helped its people improve their lives from extreme poverty and with a very disadvantaged hand. What has our government done for us lately, except crushing the people under a mountain of debt to send the people's sons and daughters into endless wars, committing atrocities in our name and buying propaganda from the mainstream media so we can all blame China, meanwhile all the money flows into the coffers of the 1%? Sana's well-researched mini-documentary unequivocally reveals the role taken on by Western mainstream journalists and their media bosses as disseminators of misinformation and false narratives in almost all of their reports about China. Unfortunately, lies and fabrications will not overcome truth and facts. Not only will the mainstream media destroy our trust in them, they will destroy themselves as well as our society. This is what happens when our society no longer has trust. One of the symptoms of our sickness is how we now have lying presidents and lying prime ministers and lying lawmakers, and how it is now normal for them to lie. The problem is not that they lie, but that they lie poorly. I have recently written a short post titled "The Blame China Song." Feel free to read for a laugh. My comment received 600 upvotes on YouTube The following is a sample of comments on my comment. Alex Tang Mr. Man, well said, glad that you speaking out ! did watch your "FairChild TV" during my university days...Alex from Toronto. Xi Xu Thank you for telling the truth ! Ken Aidiun Thanks Sir (three thumbs up) Amelia H I never thought of a rap based on such a topic ! ! Xel Kim Peter, do share more, its hard to find a anyone from Hong Kong with that unique experience. Keep safe. Xi Chen Thanks for your work Truth I've read your rap. A great one. I forwarded to a video as a quoted comment with your name. If you don't like it please let me (know) then I can delete it there. Thanks. Diana Xu Bravo, well said!! Would like to hear more from you. * It turns out I am not the only person besides Sana to arrive at such a conclusion. There are many of us out there. The following links are a small sample of YouTube videos made by people from the West who have lived in China and have discovered this strange anomaly in mainstream news reporting. And then, there are a few videos by mainstream journalists who have decided to tell the truth. Cyrus Janssen: The Real Reason Western Media Lies About China Cyrus has a good heart and wants peace between the U.S. and China. I do not, however, agree with his conclusion that the real reason is jealousy. His experience of not seeing a single positive report on China from the West in thirteen years is not an anomaly. I lived in China for twenty years and I saw none. In fact, I started observing this phenomenon since I visited China in the early '80s. Jealousy alone could not have done that. (Click Below) Daniel Dumbrill: The Media's Public Manipulation Exposed From The Inside Fellow Canadian, Daniel Dumbrill, owner/operator of a microbrewery in Shenzhen is one of the best vloggers on the subject. He is thorough, he is meticulous, he is knowledgeable, he is well researched, he is balanced, and he shows you raw material that demonstrates a salient point, that wage-earning journalists and profit-oriented media bosses cannot afford to report the truth. (Click Below) Since Daniel is awesome, I will add another of his video that, if you watch through to the bitter end, will present a very strong case that our reality has been shaped by the free press. But do we want to take the red pill? Daniel Dumbrill: Mainstream Media Dishonesty Quoting Daniel at the beginning of the video, "... these people know exactly what they're doing. It isn't a matter of journalists being poor at the job. It's very much deliberate ... You can look at it as a masterclass of the state of modern journalism and how it's infested with bad actors, propagandists, and malicious state-sponsored narratives. And, you know what, actually a mass exposé ..." Watch the video to the end and decide for yourself. (Click Below) If you have an hour to spare, you may use that to watch Daniel interview Nury Vittachi, a British mainstream journalist in Hong Kong who was extremely anti-China in his early years of news reporting. Lee Barrett: Western Media Lies About China Lee and his son Oli are just ordinary folks from England who have been living in China and who make vlogs about their life in China. They're not experts on the subject of politics or the media. They do notice the dishonest reporting from the West. After all, Western mainstream media attacked them. Here is Lee the father talking earnestly about his experience and feelings about Western media reporting. (Click Below) Jason Lightfoot: British News Exposed my Funding Jason is an ordinary Brit living in China. He is a humorous guy and his vlogs about his everyday life in a fifth tier city of one of the poorest provinces in China (Guizhou) is highly popular both in China and on YouTube. His lovely newborn son, Lincoln, is also a social media star. Then he discovers that he has become the target of attack by Western mainstream media for merely showing his life in China on his channels. Watch Jason laugh it off. (Click Below) Raz Gao-Or: The New York Times Article About Me Raz is a Jewish guy from Israel who grew up in Hong Kong and Beijing. His father manages an equity fund from Israel specializing in investments in China. Raz's highly popular channel, Y-China, talks about China, the Chinese people and foreigners in China. He is basically a fun guy and is not interested in a lot of political mumble jumble. Unfortunately, he did travel to Xinjiang to find out for himself and his channel's followers what the real Xinjiang looked like. That offended the New York Times, which targeted Raz in a hit piece on China. Surprisingly, many readers defended Raz in their comments. (Click Below) Numuves: A Chinese Canadian who lives in China and makes vlogs about China shares a compilation of speeches by retired colonel Richard Black, former Republican member of the Virginia State Senate and an American patriot who killed and risked to be killed as an American soldier in many wars on behalf of Americans. Here col. Black decides to tell the shocking truth that is almost diametrically opposite to what we have learned from the mainstream media. (Click Below) Numuves: The Chinese Canadian vlogger also shares with us a speech by Udo Ulfkotte, a German mainstream journalist who turned rogue after working for top-ranked German newspapers for twenty-five years. For those of us who have not worked in the news reporting business, listen carefully to the whistleblower. I have worked in the mainstream media and had, in fact, built and ran a TV station; therefore, I was privy to a few things. Udo Ulfkotte decided that he was fed up with disseminating lies for the newspapers. He told the world that he and his colleagues had been lying in their news reports all the time and from day one. He didn't beat around the bush. He named names, and no one ever sued him. They couldn't if he was telling the truth. (Click Below) Udo Ulfkotte: In the following 2014 clip, Udo explained that he was worried because Europe was being pushed into war. We learn too late, in 2022, that his worries were not unfounded. While for twenty-five years, Udo's mainstream lies were treated as the gospel truth, the moment he started telling the truth, he was branded as a right wing extremist and a crazy conspiracy theorist. Now, he may hold views we don't completely agree with, that is not strange. But listen to the man's words. Read his interviews. Make your own judgment. Does he sound like he was making things up? Udo expected that his telling the truth would bring him a world of troubles. At least, he did not have to suffer long. He died two years and three months later in January of 2017 at the young age of 56. In Udo's own words, "I've been a journalist for twenty-five years, and I was educated to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public" and "Germany is still a kind of a colony of the United States." Truth is sometimes rather refreshing.** (Click Below) ** I have always maintained that Germany does not have full sovereignty, and that may offend some people. But people refuse to acknowledge that Germany is still occupied country. China once had foreign soldiers and gunboats in the country. The Chinese people know by experience what that means. Yonden Lhatoo: The insufferable hypocrisy of Western governments Finally, an indignant mainstream journalist, Yonden Lhatoo, Chief News Editor of South China Morning Post, lashes out at hypocrites who like to lecture others on the freedom of the press. Yonden quoted Chris Hedges in his video. Chris used to work for the New York Times as their Middle East and Balkans Bureau Chief. He resigned in 2005 after being reprimanded for telling the truth. Do we have hope? What then is the real reason for this widespread and deliberate mainstream media dishonesty? Maybe Upton Sinclair hinted of it when he said this about journalists, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." They can't afford to tell the truth and we can't afford to learn the truth. We're all subjects of the mighty Hege-money. At least, we have now identified the falsifiers. Let us be wary of their mendacity.
Caveat: links to Wikipedia are for casual reference only. One should be aware that Wikipedia articles are not always accurate or without bias. Readers who are interested in the subject should conduct more in-depth research.
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(26/1/2022)
How to Win Big This November -- by Michael Moore Michael Moore has done much good and told much truth, but when he attaches himself to politics, his arguments weaken, and I disagree with him on this. My Comment: Poor Michael Moore is still full of hope and change. Let us not mock ourselves with vain hopes. The Dems will lose big. Here is what I say. Why would anyone vote for the Dems when the people have been lied to every time? Remember Clinton? Remember Obama? Many Dem voters are already regretting that they have been duped (again) to vote out the cretinous Trump, because how is Biden any different? Hasn't poor Michael (who--bless his soul--has his heart in the right place but not so much his head) noticed that Biden has continued most of Trump's imbecilic policies? Biden turns out to be Trump 2.0.* He lies just like Trump, perhaps with more finesse. Notice that under Biden the pandemic is reaching another peak with America approaching a million Covid deaths? Notice how Biden is going to get America to fight wars with Russia and China at the same time? Notice the breakdown of global production chains? Notice the uncountable self-defeating sanctions and tariffs? Notice the inflation from profligate and unaccountable printing? Notice the crime wave and the mass shootings? Notice the crazy real estate and casino stock market bubbles? Notice Biden's approval diving below that of Trump's? ** Why should people bother to save this "democracy" when Michael himself says that ever since Bush senior, "our" numbers have been greater than the other side in every election for thirty years, yet what has this "democracy" done for the majority? Big fat nothing, not even when "our" side wins, not even when "our" side controls all three branches of government. It's a big fat joke. How many people are still delusional enough to believe that we have to save this "democracy"? Should we hope for a better result when we believe in the next Democrat lie? Whose problem is it when the people keep believing in lies from the same liars over and over again? And even if the Dems win, let us not forget that the Trump majority in the SCOTUS don't give a flying fig about "our" majority. Ask yourself how did that happen. Bad luck? I fear not. "Saving our democracy" is just a slogan meant to distract. Voting for the Democrats will save nothing and no one. Better to take the red pill and think of how to wake the people from this lie and save this once beautiful country from those liars, hypocrites, thieves, murderers, and miscreants, whom by the way the people have elected by this "democracy," and to whom the voters have granted the imperious power and unlimited funds to commit atrocities in "our" name with impunity. We have met the enemy and he is us. A Peter Man screed * I predicted in a correspondence with my writer's group six months before the election that Biden would win the election. I predicted that Biden would not only continue many of Trump's policies but would redouble his efforts. I predicted the Trump mob insurrection although dating it to a more efficacious date in December. I predicted also that Biden would test China by stepping over the red line in Taiwan. I did not have insider information. I only followed simple logic based on verifiable facts from public information, discounting all opinionated reports from the MSM. All have come to pass. For those who disagree that the US has stepped over the red line in Taiwan, I suggest in the correspondence that the so-called ambiguity policy of America relating to Taiwan is a Kabuki act. It's like the husband promising his wife he would never sleep with her sister, and when caught swears that he never slept a wink. ** In another correspondence with my writer's group, I have predicted at the end of 2021 that 2022 will be a doozy of a year, again based on verifiable facts from public information, discounting all opinionated reports from the MSM. Be prepared. Comment from John Rachel (Counterpunch.org contributor): Thank you, Peter, for introducing clarity and perspective into the vapid puff of delusion Michael Moore has subjected us to. While I've admired the man in the past for making powerful movies accessible to everyday people, the last few years he's become unhinged with TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) and a puerile obsession with the corporate Dem hypocrisy machine. Nice Work!
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Words of a prophet in 1995 (2/1/2022)21/5/2022 (2/1/2022)
The prophet's name is Carl Sagan. The following is an excerpt from his 1995 Best seller "The Demon-Haunted World -- Science as a Candle in the Dark". "I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what is true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (my comment: Wow! I forgot how long the sound bites were; YouTube now has five second ads), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentation on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."
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(29/12/2021)
Although I have been to many places in the world, I have never traveled to Iran. I do, however, have a reliable source of information--my mother. First, let me provide a little background. My mother was a career educator in Hong Kong. She retired thirty years ago and, for all these years, had traveled the world. She loved traveling and had visited every nook and cranny on earth. Another thing about my mother is that she is a diehard redneck to the right of Proud Boys. America is paradise, it is being destroyed by evil China and illegal immigrants from Mexico, and Dubya Bush and MAGA Trump are superheroes who will save America. This is no joke. My mother belonged to a large group, maybe a majority, of educators who had been teaching the young minds of Hong Kong. They are also government employees paid with public funds. Anyone who had visited the Hong Kong Teachers Association and seen the vitriolic anti-China posters there would understand. The organization had decided to disband after the Hong Kong government implemented the China Sedition Law. (note: the HKTA used to be non-political until after June of 1989) With this in mind, we should understand that before visiting Iran, my mother had already been inculcated with an ingrained and immutable idea of the evil Iran in her mind, thanks to the excellent work of the mainstream media (MSM). She probably wanted to go and see for herself so that she could tell others she had seen and experienced the evil Iran in person. In fact, she visited while there was an upheaval in Iran. The mainstream news was filled with images of angry protesters demonstrating in Tehran (that was over 10 years ago, and I don’t remember the exact occasion or timing). There were travel warnings for people wanting to visit Iran, and tour groups were canceling left and right. My mother, at 95 years of age, was and still is a fearless traveler (in the midst of Covid explosion, she just flew to Newark by herself, and then to Florida and back with my sister’s family, now spending New Year’s Eve at Princeton). Her Iran tour group had been delayed earlier, but this time she insisted on going and somehow there were just enough people to form a group. So away she went. My mother has a failing memory now. She has also mellowed somewhat. Only about a month ago, I asked her of all the places she visited, and that’s like, everywhere, which country had the nicest people. To my surprise, the answer was Iran. Not only Iran, but she said by far Iran. I cried, "What? Explain." Interestingly, the first thing my mother said was after her Iran trip, she would not trust mainstream news anymore. That’s a good start! She said after landing in Tehran, the group was told not to visit a certain district where the protesters were restricted to hold their demonstrations. Otherwise, the city was calm, peaceful, and fun. At no time did she notice or feel any dangers or disquiet. The mainstream media were warping the viewing public's reality to make it seem like Iran had descended into chaos. Okay, for some of us who have visited and even lived in evil China, we know about the relentless mainstream media lies, but what makes my mother think Iranians are the nicest? Has she been brainwashed by evil Iranians? Although my mother sometimes traveled to different countries with tour groups (she actually traveled to many places by herself; but at 95, her adventuring days are pretty much over), she seldom, if not never, took local tours to visit the regular tourist traps. To her credit, she liked to interact and observe people. While others in her group would visit the museums, historical sites, and souvenir shops, my mother would wander off by herself to the nearest park, for example, and check out the ordinary people living their regular lives. So, on this day in Tehran, my mother was sitting by herself on a bench in a park watching the children play. A young Iranian lady sat down on the bench beside my mother. The young lady noticed that my mother’s shawl was not properly covering her head. It was a scarf that was not meant to be a hijab. The Iranian girl dug out a spare shawl from her handbag and put it over my mother’s head in the proper manner. They only communicated by hand signs. After a while, my mother wanted to walk around. She thanked the young lady and tried to return the shawl. She was very surprised when the Iranian stranger told her to keep it. That was not just good luck. The next day, my mother was invited by another stranger (an English teacher) to visit her home and have tea with her family. The young teacher even invited her to stay overnight rather than pay for a hotel room. Since my mother was with a tour group, she had to politely decline. The day after, a young boy brought over tasty treats for my mom. It was much more than she could ever consume. She was an old Chinese lady sitting in a Tehran park all by herself being pampered. This was in a country which had been severely sanctioned by Western countries and vilified by Western mainstream media for decades, and the people were made to suffer for it. But everyone treated my mother with the utmost respect as if she was the matriarch of the family. My mother was utterly amazed. Iranians are the best, this is my mother’s conclusion. But how does that reconcile with her understanding of Iran as promulgated by Western media which always wag their sanctimonious finger at evil countries like China, Russia, and Iran? My mother quickly found her answer. The Iranian government and the religious leadership are evil but the people are the nicest. That explains the apparent contradiction. Since all human beings suffer from a psychological condition known as “confirmation bias” which you will notice when some people basically say, “my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts,” making it impossible to carry on an intelligent conversation, I would therefore give up and leave it at that. This is a personal anecdote, of course, and does not represent some statistical research based on measurable metrics. But there may be a moral lesson somewhere that we can all learn from.
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The Blame China Song (13/12/2021)21/5/2022 (13/12/2021)
Also posted on Quora I’m an insomniac. When I can’t sleep, I go on-line and read the news. But the more I read, the harder it is to sleep. I finally come to the realization that China is to blame, and I have written a little ditty to demonstrate the reasons why: Why can’t I sleep a wink? Blame China. Why do I need a drink? Blame China. Why can’t I pay rent? Blame China. Why can’t I get a grant? Blame China. My papa hates my mama; blame China. My mama hates my papa; blame China. My brother hates my guts; blame China. I don’t know WTF; blame China. Why am I watching Fox? Blame China. Why do I watch Maddow? Blame China. Why is Biden just like Trump? Blame China. Why are donkeys like elephants? Blame China. Freedom of choice gets us asses; blame China Freedom of voice gets us liars; blame China Freedom of war gets us burned to ashes; blame China Freedom of guns turns brothers against brothers; blame China Why can’t we sanction all Chinese? Blame China. Why can’t we sanction all dog fleas? Blame China. Why can’t I have peace? Blame China. Why can’t I eat cheese? Blame China. Now finally I can sleep, because I can blame China.
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(7/11/2021)
Originally posted on Quora The following is a true story. Decades ago, I left Hong Kong for the first time to attend university in Canada. I was eighteen. I was a freshman at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. At that time, I had the habit of running at the tracks every night with my best friend Tai Pang, who is still my best friend. I had a rather odd pair of running shoes that I brought over from Hong Kong. They were green, and had green shoelaces. I would say green shoelaces were rather unique at the time. One evening, after running 400 or 800 meters with Tai Pang, we returned to our dorm Whidden Hall* to discover that I had lost the shoelace on one of my running shoes. Since I didn’t believe that I could find another green shoelace in the whole of North America, Tai Pang and I went back to the tracks to look for the shoelace. It was in vain. I even combed the tracks again and went to the school Lost and Found the next day but there was no green shoelace. As time went by, I simply forgot about the green shoelace. It was insignificant and I had other more pressing matters to attend to. By the end of school year, I started looking for summer jobs. Eventually, I found a job working at the bar in the Men’s lounge of the Dundas Valley Golf and Curling Club, a private club for the privileged. In order to be near work, I looked for a summer rental in the small town of Dundas which was not far from the university. I found a perfect rental of a second floor of a house with private entrance. The owners lived downstairs. They were an old couple who immigrated from Austria. The old man’s name was Manzl,** and my name was Man. We hit it off immediately and the deal was done. The house was perfectly located in a quiet back street and only minutes away from the club by bicycle. One day, the old couple told me that they would be away for a week to visit their daughter in Vancouver. They said that I could watch TV downstairs and if I needed tools for anything, I could find their toolbox in the garage. Before this, I was never invited into their living space. My best friend Tai Pang got a summer job at Cambridge which was not too far from Hamilton and Dundas. During weekends, he would come to visit me. He would usually wait for me to get off work at my place, and then we would finish a bottle of vodka. Those were the days. On this particular weekend while the Manzls were away, Tai Pang rode his bicycle to the club. Dundas Golf and Curling Club sits on a bit of a hill, and we have to go downhill to get back to town. Being young and fearless—some may say reckless—and accustomed to riding the bicycle on this route everyday, I just rolled downhill with my arms stretched sideways like the wings of a plane. It was a Sunday and there was no car in sight. Tai Pang on the other hand came from a well-to-do family and learned to treasure his life. He went down more carefully behind me with his hands securely controlling the brakes. As my bike flew into town and through stop signs where no cars would ever appear, Tai Pang shouted behind me to warn me about the stop signs. I foolishly turned around to ask what he was saying. But since my hands were not on the handle, the bicycle swerved and hit the only electric pole within a mile. I jumped off without hurting myself, but the cross bar of the bicycle was bent. To make a long story less long, I went to the garage to look for tools. When I opened the toolbox, I found my lost green shoelace inside. I would later learn that Mr. Manzl had worked at the university as a part-time gardener, and he found my shoelace at the tracks. Having survived the Second World War, he did not like to throw out anything. So he kept it in his toolbox just in case it might come in handy. For me to meet my shoelace again, I’d have to find a job in Manzl’s town, rent his home, he and his wife had to go away, he would for some reason tell me to use his toolbox, Tai Pang would have to visit me at the club and yell at me about the stop sign, I would have to foolishly turn around, my bicycle would have to hit that single pole, and viola, I find the green shoelace. The odds are astronomical, but a series of events conspired to help me find my green shoelace. And my best friend Tai Pang was right there as my witness. This tale amazes everyone who hears it. Aftermath: I showed Mr. Manzl my green shoes with the missing shoelace. He was also amazed by the coincidence, and gladly returned the shoelace to me. I don’t remember wearing those shoes very much though, I think green shoes went out of style. * Legend says that Ivan Reitman stayed at Whidden Hall while studying for a university degree at McMaster. The residence was all male and therefore resembled a fraternity. It is said that Reitman's experience there inspired Animal House. As for the incredible Animal House experience of Whidden Hall, that's another story for another post. Sadly, the shenanigans would eventually be banned and Whidden Hall is now Co-ed. The boys will have to find some other respectable things to do. ** Mr. Manzl by the way fought during the Second World War. He showed me pictures of him as a soldier of the Third Reich. Comments Charlotte Neumann: It’s a nice story - but any statistician could tell you this is not the way to look at an event. My response: “If a man speaks in the middle of a forest, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?” — George Carlin. Ashok Lulla: But what happened to the bike? Did you manage to fix it? Did Mr. Manzl take it kindly that his bike had a ‘crash’? My response: It was my bike. I found my green shoelace but I paid with my bike. I junked it. Life’s not perfect. At least I got a good story to tell at dinner parties, and now to share with Quora readers. Samina Naz: I hope you have not lost the other shoe lace by that time. Sabrina Couture: Amazing!
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(22/10/2021) Last year, I wrote a few articles about Taiwan, making bold predictions and wild suggestions*, and sharing them with a small circle of friends self styled as China Writers Group. At the same time, I sent the articles to a few venues which I thought might be interested. Rather unexpectedly, I received a response from Professor Justin Yifu Lin (林毅夫), who is the Dean of Institute of New Structural Economics and Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development, and the Professor and Honorary Dean of the National School of Development at Peking University. This is an internationally respected economist who, for some reason, commented on an article from someone he has never heard of. Since not everyone knows who Justin Yifu Lin is, here is a short introduction. Professor Lin was originally from Taiwan. He was a model ROC military officer and was posted to Kinmen (or Jinmen 金门) off the coast of Fujian in the late seventies. In May 1979, Lin was reported missing and was presumed dead. In fact, Lin had jumped into the sea and swum about two kilometers in the dark to the mainland. At that time, China's per capita income was about a third of the average income of people from sub-Saharan Africa. Lin wanted to help the Chinese people improve their lot. Even in those early days of China's reform, only a few months after the US and China established official diplomatic relations, Lin already could see far into the future. He held the conviction that Taiwan's reunification with the mainland was inevitable. He wanted to contribute to the Chinese renaissance rather than to engage in counter-productive internecine strife. He could not tell his wife, who was pregnant at the time and looking after their young child at home. He also had to risk his life, as there was no guarantee he would not drown or he would not be caught. Captain Lin must have felt the full force of destiny when he took that fateful plunge. Lin crossed over safely and became a private citizen in China. At first, his story was kept a secret and few people knew his background. He got his Masters Degree in Economics from Peking University and, after getting a recommendation from Professor Theodore Schutz, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, went on to obtain his doctorate from the University of Chicago, the breeding ground of Nobel Laureates in Economics. Lin was, in fact, one of the first Chinese citizens of the PRC to receive a PhD at the university. Lin's wife and children joined him in Chicago, and the family later settled in Beijing. In 2008, Professor Lin was appointed Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank for a four year term. At the time, that was the highest position any private Chinese citizen had held in an international organization. Professor Lin is one of the most prolific contributors of academic papers on economics coming from China. In addition, he is a current member of the standing committee of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and the Deputy Director of the Economic Committee of the National Committee of the CPPCC that advises the Chinese Central Government on economic policies. In short, Professor Yifu Lin may have achieved much of what he had set out to do, although much work remains to be done. Since making this connection, I have kept up a rather lively correspondence with Professor Lin for the past year. He has occasionally sent some of his translated articles and speeches to me and I would help with a bit of editing without having been asked to do so. I explain apologetically to the professor that, as a writer for the last couple of years, it has become a habit. Professor Lin good-naturedly approves. A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article by David Goldman (Deputy Editor, well known financial analyst and true identity of conservative political pundit, Spengler) on Asia Times, titled "China Marches on Towards Fourth Industrial Revolution" quoting heavily from Justin Yifu Lin. It turns out that the professor has recently published another book, and his publisher is probably getting some exposure for it. An excerpt for his book Justin Yifu Lin on China's Economy appeared several days later on Asia Times. I promptly and dutifully reported the sighting to the professor. One week later, this was what I got in the mail. * I predicted in August of 2020 that Trump would lose the election. I predicted that Biden would at least continue Trump's China policies if not redoubling the attack on China, including regularly stepping on or over the Taiwan red line. At the time, there was talk in China about Biden being friendly to China. It was wishful thinking. I predicted that Trump would not go quietly. I predicted Trump would try to subvert the result of the election. All of these came to pass. I was only wrong on the date of the Trump insurrection. I had expected his advisors to plan for disruptive action in December to block the legal processes, not the formality in January of 2021. I gave Trump's team too much credit. I did not have any insider information; all of my predictions were based on observation of facts available to the public, making use of simple logic and not believing in lies. (04/04/2022) As a follow up to the above story, I have received an even better present from Professor Lin. The title of my trilogy is "Planet of Perpetual Peace." The story will include an actual socioeconomic plan for making such a society possible. I condensed my theory in the form of a short thesis and asked Professor Lin to comment on it. I frankly did not expect the super busy professor to indulge me. I was wrong. This is his reply. Here is Professor Lin's recent speech
New World Order to come amid China's growth Caveat: links to Wikipedia are for casual reference only. One should be aware that Wikipedia articles are not always accurate or without bias. Readers who are interested in the subject should conduct more in-depth research.
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(22/9/2021) The following shares a correspondence I had with a Chinese-Vietnamese-Canadian scholar. "Xu Shen's [许慎] Lexicon [说文解字] is not a perfect source for Chinese etymology. It's not Xu Shen's fault. He didn't have Oracle Bones and archeology to help him with his research. For example, you had explained the word for "philosophy" [哲] at your Confucius-Plato lecture as a hand, an axe, and a mouth. On the surface, that is correct, but [哲] is actually a word with a phonetic component on top and the pictogram of a mouth below. But even that is incorrect. The earliest form of this word (so far discovered) is a Bronze character [金文] with several variations. Check this one out. The top part is the phonetic [折], meaning "break," with the optional "eye" to indicate learning from observation. I would like to add that the phonetic may also carry the connotation "to break apart," hence to analyze. The lower pictogram is a "heart" rather than the "mouth" in the modern character. The heart is of course for learning and understanding, and in ancient Chinese culture, equivalent to the "mind." The phonetic [折] is a late derivative from Oracle Bone script. It is incorrect to describe it as a hand and an axe. Check out the Oracle Bone character. Those are not hands on the left but a piece of wood cut in half by the axe on the right (the wood is broken, hence the meaning "break"). While the superficial etymology of philosophy [哲] is violent with a hand and an axe, and relates to expatiating with the mouth, the true etymology is based on observation and analyzing with one's heart and mind. It is closer to the Greek etymology for "philosophy," which means "love of knowledge" or "love of wisdom."
This is not to say the Lexicon is useless, far from it, but we should understand that it is no longer the Bible. It hasn't been for a long time."
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The following is an account of how my mother from a Hainanese family living in Saigon--now Ho Chi Minh City--during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the second phase of the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949) got an education from a well-known school in China, and what happened to that school. The following is what I gathered about my mother's secondary school at Guilin, known as Hanmin Middle School 汉民中学. Hanmin is from Hu Hanmin 胡汉民, who was an early revolutionary and a right wing leader of Kuomintang 国民党 (KMT). The principal and founder of the school, Ren Zhongmin 任中敏, was the secretary of Hu Hanmin. He founded the school in 1937 at Nanjing, or Nanking, at that time the capital of the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek. He named the school Hanmin to commemorate Hu Hanmin, his old boss, who passed away in 1936 from brain hemorrhage. At the time of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's passing in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek was in charge of the Nationalist army, while the Nationalist party KMT was under the control of a triumvirate consisting of Hu Hanmin on the right, Wang Jingwei 汪精卫 on the fence (he was a hero of the 1911 Revolution but later became a famous quisling by agreeing to act as the leader of the Japanese occupation's puppet government), and Liao Zhongkai 廖仲恺 on the left (husband of famous women's rights activist He Xiangning 何香凝, father of the famous Communist leaders Liao Chengzhi 廖承志 and Liao Mengxing 廖梦醒). Liao Zhongkai was assassinated shortly after the death of Dr Sun. Although the case was never solved, the prime suspect was Hu Hanmin, as he afterwards joined Chiang Kai-shek in the bloody purge of communists from the KMT (it is not a well-known fact that under Dr Sun, many communists including Mao and Zhou Enlai became members and executives of the KMT), during which the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, later CPC, the Communist Party of China) were decimated and Mao's wife Yang Kaihui 杨开慧 was executed by firing squad for refusing to renounce the CPC and Mao. At the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), Principal Ren moved Hanmin Middle School from Nanjing--shortly before the Fall of Nanking and the infamous massacre by the Japanese army--to Guilin 桂林, the provincial capital of Guangxi 广西 in the south-west of China, where my mother attended the school. She probably went there in 1940, when she was just fourteen years old, by sea from Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City 胡志明市) to Zhanjiang 湛江 (then known as Guangzhou Wan 广州湾 meaning Guangzhou Bay), and then by land to Guilin. She went by herself without her father's approval and was financed by her mother who had to sell some of her jewelry. At the time, the school received funding from Chiang's ROC government and was renamed National Hanmin Middle School 汉民国立中学. It was probably the only middle school in China at the time with national status. My mother returned to Saigon in 1948 for a one year break, granted by the school to all expatriates, most of whom had not seen their family for many years. My mother was twenty-two and had graduated from high school. She planned on taking continuing studies in mainland China. During her stay in Saigon, my mother witnessed the escape of Tsinghua Professor Wang Zhou 王洲--then known as Wang Anzhou 王安洲--from the colonial police. At the time, the professor's family and my mother's family both being from Wenchang 文昌--hometown of the Soong Sisters--lived in the same three-story house. Wang Zhou was a young communist from a wealthy family. The police came knocking in the middle of the night. He escaped by the night-pot opening--through which people pushed out their daily refuse into the back alley for the poop collector--to Paris, where he became an expert in nuclear physics. Prof Wang returned to China in the eighties to teach at Tsinghua. My mother cannot confirm it but the professor probably still lives at the campus at the ripe old age of 90. After the one-year break, my mother was supposed to return to Guilin for continuing studies in 1949 but got stuck in Hong Kong during her transit (by sea from Saigon to Hong Kong, and then by land to Guilin) as Chiang's regime collapsed during that year. That's how my siblings and I ended up being born in Hong Kong. My mother and Bliss (my elder daughter) visiting Prof Wang Zhou (with his Russian wife) at Tsinghua in 2003 Prof Ren never left China despite his connections with the Nationalist government. He was much more of a scholar and educator than a politician. In addition to his not insignificant contributions to ancient Chinese literature, Ren was famous for being strict with his students. According to my mother--as it is not recorded elsewhere, but this is probably a true story--he expelled his only son, a handsome young man idolized by the teenage girls at the school, from Hanmin for committing a minor mischief. Then the old man personally carried his son's luggage to attend a lesser boarding school in the area. His son later joined the Nationalist air force and died during the Sino-Japanese War. My mother said that he died in a training accident. When the report of the son's death arrived at Hanmin, it was a sad day for Principal Ren and for everyone at the school who knew the young man. After the establishment of the PRC in 1949, Hanmin Middle School became Guilin First Middle School 桂林市第一中学, making it the top rung school of the city if not the entire region. Ren continued educating and became professor of Chinese studies at Sichuan University. He returned to his hometown Yangzhou 扬州 to teach at Yangzhou University during the early eighties. Few people knew that Prof Ren came from the same city and was a fellow student as well as good friends with renowned writer/educator Zhu Ziqing 朱自清, whose famous essay "Shadow of My Father's Back" 背影 we learned as a part of secondary school syllabus in Hong Kong. Prof Ren passed away in 1991 at the age of 95. He is now fondly remembered by his students and colleagues, and a bronze bust of him was erected in the campus of Yangzhou University in 2007. My mother never knew what happened to her middle school principal and, after I told her the rest of Prof Ren's story, regretted not having visited him before he passed away. Hanmin Middle School was highly influential for my mother's career as a teacher. She did not have her credentials when she started looking for teaching jobs in Hong Kong. When she applied at a private school and hoped that the principal of that school would believe her, it turned out that the principal's son was a fellow student at Hanmin, although several classes lower. The principal knew a lot about Hanmin from his son's letters, and my mother's description of the school checked out. She was hired on the spot, as Hanmin was a sort of ivy league school in those days, famous even outside of mainland China for churning out high quality graduates. Thanks to the principal's unselfish character, he would later sponsor my mother to take the Hong Kong Teacher's Certificate Exam, as she couldn't take it without any credentials. The certificate would allow my mother to teach at public schools at much better salaries and benefits as a government employee. It was a difficult exam and the principal's wife took it ten times over ten years before finally passing. My mother passed it on her first try. Her increased income allowed me to attend university in Canada and later become Canadian. The rest is history.
Caveat: links to Wikipedia are for casual reference only. One should be aware that Wikipedia articles are not always accurate or without bias, especially when it comes to KMT and CPC or ROC and PRC. Readers who are interested in the subject should conduct more in-depth research.
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(10/8/2021)
Rent is a Scam by Caitlin Johnstone Caitlin Johnstone is a well respected left-leaning political writer with a large readership. My comment is not meant to denigrate Caitlin or her work, but to bring to light a particular problem most of us will not notice. My Comment: Quoting from the article: "The mass media just spent years leading the world on a wild goose chase for Trump-Russia collusion that never existed and now have the absolute gall to act like people are deranged lunatics for not trusting them about elections, viruses and vaccines." But the people and the president and all the politicians from both sides of the aisle believe the mass media that China is evil and China is to blame. Where do the people get the gall to criticize the liars when they choose to believe in the lies from the same liars that satisfy their own bias? We have met the enemy and he is us. By the way, in America, not only is lying an inalienable right, hypocrisy is a virtue. |