westernbias-blog1

[westernbias-blog1]

Second:

I’ll be posting quotes from time to time of Chinese philosophy I read. I have mostly read Zhuangzi, Laozi, Liezi and some Kongzi, Mengzi and Mozi, but there is so much more out there.

There is a great series of books that was published relatively recently. The Library of Chinese Classics comprises several hundreds of books that have been retranslated into modern Chinese from the source material by Beijing based scholars. The books are dual language, meaning that there is simplified Chinese on the left page, and on the right page the relevant English translation.

Its great for learning Chinese and it also addresses the issue of old and inaccurate translations. Many Chinese texts present in libraries and book stores today are translations by western scholars that often utilise specifically western/christian terminologies that distort the original meaning. Also many of these translators omitted passages of texts they thought unfit to be published/translated. A famous example is the book Liezi which was first translated by a man called Lionel Giles who decided to not translate the 7th chapter on Yang Zhou, giving this reason:

‘The seventh of these deals exclusively with the doctrine of the egoistic philosopher Yang Chu, and has therefore been omitted altogether from the present selection‘

Here is the 7th chapter, its good :)

See (here) for the translation and introduction by Giles. Its still worth a read, especially the intro which is quite good actually but still manages to waffle about the bible somehow. 

The new translations in the Library of Chinese Classics are difficult to obtain (at least in the EU) and expensive, so if you see one somewhere cheapish, buy it!

I’ll also be using some paintings to illustrate the quotes somehow. For now I will use a painting by Ma Yuan a Song dynasty painter. 

 Its in the public domain and can be found here:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:28.850.1-Ma_Yuan-Southern_Song_dynasty-Museum_of_Fine_arts_Boston.jpg

There is a great article about him here at Daily Art Magazine.

There is another thing that has always bothered me when see Chinese art displayed in a western context is the absence of translations of the texts/poems/dedications present in many paintings or old bronzes and the like.

My Chinese is not good enough (yet) to translate most things, especially when old, but I’ll use the internet for help and find some Chinese/English bi-linguals that can help!

[westernbias-blog1]

A little reminder about Hong Kong history

The media is full of outcry about the protest in Hong Kong. I listen to the BBC Radio 4 on a daily basis and it baffles me that English radio does not seem to know anything about its own history and the way it treated its colonies.

I present to you the Peak District Reservation Ordinance one of the many examples of the brutality of English colonialism.

Just to give you a tldr: It’s a law that made it impossible for Chinese people to live in a part of their own city for “health reasons”.

Its mind-numbing really. 

One protestor died by falling off a roof in HK and the world is up in arms, yet England murdered dozens of protestors in Hong Kong protests in the 20th century:

Canton-Hong Kong Strike 1926, 50 people massacred by English troops in Shanghai by police under British command. Its Shanghai, but in the twenties the Europeans were still all over China.

HK riot 1956, 56 fatalities

HK riot 1966, 1 fatality

HK riot 1967, 51 fatalities

This is just a small sample of atrocities committed by Europeans in China in the last century, what has China done to us? Why do we continue to ignore history and insist on lecturing others of how to deal with their own affairs?

[westernbias-blog1]

First:

I have started this blog to document the way China is portrayed in the Western media and public discourse more generally. 

I studied Chinese Art for some time and keep up-to-date with the news and current affairs. It always baffles me when I read the strongly negatively biased news pieces regarding the perceived threat from China, be it economically or politically.

In the context of recent history (Colonialism, WWii and the Cold War) it is pretty  bigoted for European governments to be anything else than apologetic and humble towards modern China. 

The terrible deeds of the European Alliance during the 19th century, the details of which are there for everyone to see in the history books (just a a taste: Opium Wars, Boxer Rebellion,  and one of the unequal treaties that established the ridiculous 155 year occupation of Hong Kong by the British Empire). These are just a few examples of what happened not too long ago. 

History is in the past, I get it, I think its good to move on. But I have to say that the way that this history is white-washed, ignored and often deliberately mis-told, and the continued glorification of imperialism (looking at you England and the Empire 2.0) in Europe makes me angry.

The colonised people of the past deserve an apology at the least. An apology for having being robbed of the possibility to develop their own futures. They were often forced into systems that were, and remain to this day, foreign to colonised peoples.

Colonialism persists to this day in many places and forms (looking at you again England, or France, or the Netherlands, or Denmark, or USA, you get my point!)

Anyway, I wanted to focus on China. The internet seems to be a good outlet for my frustrations with the historic ignorance of our age and locale. 

I’ll post links and texts every now and then...best, g