The Life of Confucius – Part 3/5

May 4, 2010

Confucius dreamed of becoming a great minister of state and putting an end to corruption and bloodshed. He spent much of his free time between the age of 19 to 30 in the libraries of Chufu reading.

He said, “When people are educated, the distinction between classes disappears…. If the sons of emperors and princes are without quality, they should be reduced to the ranks of the common people. If the sons of the common people have quality, they should be elevated to the ranks of the rulers.”

Confucius with students

Confucius was the first teacher in China to start a school that accepted students from every class.  The sons of peasants and powerful families mingled and formed friendships.

Confucius demanded absolute honesty, total self-control and unyielding virtue from his followers. “A superior man thinks about what is right. A small man thinks about what is profitable.  A superior man demands much of himself.  A small man demands much of others. A superior man accepts his lot in common.  A small man is full of complaints.”

One goal remained—a position of power. In 501 BC when Confucius was fifty, the young leader the Duchy of Lu begged Confucius to give up his teaching.

Confucius said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.… You should give education and knowledge to the common people instead of ignoring or subjugating them.” The Duke made Confucius the governor of Lu and while Confucius governed, the streets were safe, crime almost vanished and merchants stopped cheating their customers.

Return to Part 2 of “The Life of Confucius” or go to Part 4

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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1 Comment | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Confucianism, education, government | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Chinese Poetry

May 3, 2010

Traditional Chinese Poetry is very similar to Western poetry.  Lines in Chinese poetry may have a fixed number of syllables and rhyme was required, so ancient Chinese poetry resembles traditional English verse and is not at all like the free verse in today’s Western culture.

Modern Chinese poets have written in free verse, but many still write with a strict form.

In the end, the form is not as important as what the poem says. Western poetry often focuses on love while painting an image of the poet as a lover.

Influenced by Confucius and Taoism, the ancient Chinese poet shows he or she is a friend—not a lover and often paints a picture of a poet’s life as a life of leisure without ambitions beyond writing poetry and having a good time.

Chinese Dragon Boat Races

According to legend, this Chinese poet killed himself to protest the corruption of the time, and it is said that the Dragon Boat Festival was named to honor his sacrifice.

Battle
By Qu Yuan (332-295 B.C.)

We grasp our battle-spears: we don our breastplates of hide.
The axles of our chariots touch: our short swords meet.
Standards obscure the sun: the foe roll up like clouds.
Arrows fall think: the warriors press forward.
They menace our ranks: they break our line.
The left-hand trace-horse id dead: the one on the right
is smitten.
The fallen horses block our wheels: they impede the
yoke-horses?”

Translated by Arthur Waley 1919

If interested in Chinese art and/or opera, see Peking Opera.

1 Comment | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese literature, Confucianism, Taoism | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Life of Confucius – Part 2/5

May 3, 2010

Life was hard for Confucius and his mother, who struggled to grow vegetables on a small plot of land. To survive, he helped by working as a common laborer, and his mother spent hours making sure Confucius had an education so he might have a better future.

A Chinese peasant grinding rice

Ugly, awkward and shy, Confucius had few friends, so he did not experience a normal childhood. By the time he was a teen, he had read the great classics of Chinese civilization and discovered that learning never stops.

Then his mother died. The grief almost destroyed him, because she had been the only person who loved him.  By the time he buried her near his father’s grave, he had lived through hardships that would break most men. Instead, he turned these survival lessons into strengths. With his mother gone, he realized that a family’s love was greater than gold.

Confucius was a poor, ugly giant—an illegitimate child with no family connections. His only advantage was his extraordinary mind, but fate was going to smile on him.

He lived in Chufu, the capital of the Duchy of Lu. One of three powerful warlords of Lu recognized his talent and gave him an important job. At 19, he married, but no one knows who she was. They had a son followed by other children.

Return to Part 1 of “The Life of Confucius” or move on to Part 3

_______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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2 Comments | China, Chinese history, Confucianism, family values | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Life of Confucius – Part 1/5

May 2, 2010

Confucius was born 550 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.  Ironically, he was born into a time of war and bloodshed and his father was a fearsome warrior. Due to the father’s skills in battle, his king made him governor of Tsou, a village southeast of today’s Beijing.

Although the father had more than one wife, nine daughters and one crippled, sickly son, he was lonely. He wanted a healthy son, so at age seventy Confucius’s father took a 16-year-old concubine who gave him a healthy son, who would become the man we call Confucius. Confucius was not a pretty baby. His head looked like a hill shaped like a crown.

Confucius was not his real name. Twenty-one-hundred years after his birth, Christian missionaries would change his real name to what we know today.

Confucius was three when his father died. Jealous older wives disowned his mother. Facing starvation, mother and child traveled to a nearby city ten miles from the village. Life for Confucius and his mother was not easy and his path to wisdom was going to be hard. The suffering would cause Confucius to vow that he would bring peace to China.

Go to Part 2 of “The Life of Confucius” or hear the music of The Yangqin

_______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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2 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Confucianism, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Permalink
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China’s Grand Canal

April 30, 2010

An example of how hard the Chinese work stands in the Great Wall of China and the Grand Canal. To understand the significance, we will look at the Suez and Panama Canals first as a comparison.

China’s Grand Canal

In the 19th century, the French built a canal 100 miles across the Isthmus of Suez. When it opened, the Suez Canal was only 25 feet deep, 72 feet wide at the bottom and 200 to 300 feet wide at the surface. About 20,000 ships use the canal each year. Source: History.com

The Panama Canal was started in 1881 by the French but ended a failure. The Americans finished the canal between 1904 – 1914. The canal was 51-miles long.  Today, it handles over 12,000 ships a year. Source: The Panama Canal

When I was in grade school, we learned about the Panama Canal in glowing terms. I’m sure the French and British brag about the Suez Canal in their textbooks too.

Until my first trip to China in 1999, I had never heard of the Grand Canal, which is the oldest and longest man-made canal in the world at more than a thousand miles from Beijing to Hangzhou south of Shanghai.

China’s Grand Canal

The construction started almost five hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ and was completed centuries later.  The canal is still in use today.  To finish it, the Pound lock was invented in the 10th century during the Song Dynasty. There are 24 locks and about 60 bridges.  Source: Wikipedia

_______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Honorable Mentions in General Fiction
2012 San Francisco Book Festival
2012 New York Book Festival
2012 London Book Festival
2009 Los Angeles Book Festival
2009 Hollywood Book Festival

Finalist in Fiction & Literature – Historical Fiction
The National “Best Books 2010” Awards

E-book_cover_MSC_July_24_2013

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China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

4 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
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