— Non-Fiction —

Life Lessons from My History Textbook: Chapter Three, Ancient China

Taken directly, copyrights-be-damned, from Chapter 3 of World History Vol. One: To 1800, 3^rd edition, Duiker and Spielvogel.

Xenophobia:
“The Mongols, a new and obscure nomadic people from the Gobi desert.”

Morose Solitude:
“Alone and abandoned he traversed the sandy waste … following the heaps of bones and horse-dung.”

Fierce Individualism:
“Liu Ling was an inveterate drinker and indulged himself to the full. Sometimes he stripped off his clothes and sat in his room stark naked. Some men saw him and rebuked him. Liu Ling said, ‘Heaven and earth are my dwelling, and my house is my trousers. Why are you all coming into my trousers?’”

Manliness:
“Genghis Khan once said, ‘Man’s highest joy is in victory: to conquer one’s enemies, to pursue them, to deprive them of their possessions, to make their beloved weep, to ride on their horses, to embrace their wives and daughters.’”

Complacency’s Repercussions:
“Have you ever seen the lice that inhabit a pair of trousers? They jump into the depths of the seams, hiding themselves in the cotton wadding, and believe they have a pleasant place to live. Walking, they do not risk going beyond the edge of the seam; moving, they are careful not to emerge from the trouser leg; and they think they have kept to the rules of etiquette. But when the trousers are ironed, the flames invade the hills, the fire spreads, the villages are set on fire and the towns are burned down; then the lice that inhabit the trousers cannot escape.”

Fetishes:
“Xuanzong … one of the great Tang emperors and a renowned patron of the arts, was dominated in later life by one of his favorite concubines, the beautiful Yang Guifei (Yang Kuei-fei).”

Estrogen’s Ambitions:
“The process of foot binding, carried out on girls aged five to thirteen, was excruciatingly painful, since it bent and compressed the foot to half its normal size by imprisoning it in restrictive bandages. But the procedure was often performed by ambitious mothers, intent on assuring their daughters the best possible prospect for marriage.”

Historical Hiccups:
“For two generations, China slipped once again into chaos.”

Work Ethic:
“Yang Juan was a builder as well as a conqueror.”

Metaphysics:
“Most Chinese identified with their immediate environment and had difficulty envisioning themselves living beyond the bamboo hedges or mud walls that marked the limit of their horizon.”

Triumph:
“After it had been struck fifty to seventy times, fresh blood poured from its eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. Wu Sung, using all of his superhuman strength and inborn prowess, in a short while pounded the tiger into a heap as it lay there like an embroidered cloth bag.”