Translation of Making an argument (Luxun, 1925)

Making an argument (Luxun, 1925):

I dreamed that I was preparing a composition in the lecture hall of the elementary school, asking the teacher for advice on how to make an argument.

　　 "Very hard!" The teacher shot me a look, askance from the edge of his glasses. "Here's a story for you—"

　　 "A family gave birth to a boy, and the family was extremely happy. When the full moon came, they took him out and showed him to the guests. Presumably to get some auspicious tidings.

　　"One said: ‘This child will grow up to be rich.’ So he got a lot of thanks.

　　"One said: ‘This child will grow up to be a government official.’ So he obtained a few compliments.

　　"One said: ‘This child will grow up to die.’ So he was beaten up by everyone else.

　　 "Death is certain, while saying he is certainly going to be rich and noble are hopeful lies. But those who lie are paid well, and those who talk of certainties are beaten. You see..."

　　 "I am willing to neither lie nor to be beaten. So, teacher, what should I say?"

　　 "Then, you have to say: ‘Ahhhhh! This kid! You see! So... Ah! Haha! Hehe! he, hehehehe!’"

　　 July 8, 1925.

The Chinese Hitler: Yellow Tiger Zhang Xianzhong

Today we talk about Zhang Xianzhong, who called himself many names: the Yellow Tiger, the Great King of the West, and Laozi ("old master"). People remember him as "the butcher of Sichuan".

Heaven and Earth are not kind.
They regard all things as straw dogs.
The sage is not kind.
He regards people as straw dogs.

-- Laozi, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 5

A quick YouTube search shows the usual genocides (here, I include massive man-made death-events) being covered: Hitler's genocide, Khmer Rouge genocide, Armenian genocide, Rwandan genocide, the Soviet famines, the Great Leap Forward famines... but nobody, I repeat, nobody has done a video on Zhang Xianzhong, the genocidal dictator of Sichuan in the 1640s. Indeed, the English information on Zhang Xianzhong is extremely scanty.

Well, not anymore. I will make a video all about Zhang Xianzhong. This post is my scrape-book as I do the research.

The chaos of Ming-Qing transition

The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.

---- First line of the Chinese epic, Romance of the Three Kingdoms 

A lot of the Western conceptions of the "old and sickly China", with mandarins, long braids, opium-smoking, and ling-chi, those are from the Qing dynasty (1644 -- 1911). Before that, there was the Ming dynasty (1368 -- 1644).

China was extremely powerful during the Ming dynasty, and the seven massive voyages of Zheng He took place from 1405 to 1433, asserting dominance for the Chinese emperor all over the coast of Indian Ocean.

Source: Wikipedia

Genocide in Xinjiang, old and new

What is Xinjiang, and what is Dzungaria?

Xinjiang, a border province of China, is in the news since 2005, as the Chinese government enforces stricter control over its Muslim Uyghur population. This has been heavily reported and I won't repeat. However these reports miss a historical precedent: the 18th century genocide of Dzungaria by the Qing dynasty.

Map of China with Xinjiang. Source: Wikipedia

That's Xinjiang today. Before that, Xinjiang was controlled by Qing dynasty as its west-most province. And before that, it was an independent Mongol khanate, called the Dzungar Khanate.

"Dzungar" is the name of a group of Mongols that ruled the land called Dzungaria. Dzungaria still exists as the name of a geographical area within Xinjiang, but the Dzungars are gone, thanks to the Dzungar genocide.

Map of Dzungaria around 1700s. Source: Wikipedia

To say that Dzungaria is obscure is an understatement. Even I have not given this place a second thought despite living in China for many years, and reading about the Uyghur situation in Xinjiang. I hope that this post will make their history more known, and give better context for the current Uyghur situation.

The imperialistic conquests of Qing

Before Qing dynasty got imperialism-ed by the West, Qing was busy imperialism-ing the west, and north, and even south. Comparing the map of Ming and Qing and you'd notice several big additions: Taiwan, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. Imperialism!

Ming and its neighbors, 1409. Source: Wikipedia

Qing map, circa 1820. Source: Wikipedia

(I am not saying that Qing got what's coming for them, since there is no justice in history: the British Empire never got imperialism-ed.)

The Wuxuan cannibalism frenzy, China 1966

In 1968, during the cultural revolution in Wuxuan of Guangxi, a case of widespread cultured cannibalism occurred. This is a quick post compiling the best quotes from Consuming Counterrevolution: The Ritual and Culture of Cannibalism in Wuxuan, Guangxi, China, May to July 1968 (1995). This paper is itself heavily based on the book Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China (1993).

Wuxuan in 1966 was a fairly remote county reporting a population of 221,786.

From May to July, struggles were held in all or the great majority of the 114 brigades (villages and streets [jie]), and no fewer than 90 had one or more struggle meetings that terminated with on-the-spot execution. Of a total of 524 executed, 64 (later amended to 75 or 76) were eaten throughout the county's municipality and nine communes, according to the official investigation (Zheng 1993:58, 96). 

His second chapter is closely based on the official report of what happened, dated May 1987, and a separate list of 64 victims, dated July 4, 1983. Fifty-six had their heart and liver cut out; 18 were completely consumed (down to the soles of their feet), 13 had their genitals eaten, one was decapitated after being eaten, and 7 were actually cut up while they were still alive (Zheng 1993:96).

Only 15 were punished by jail sentences, for only up to 14 years.

Children's hell, according to Japanese Buddhism

While Christians might condemn dead babies to limbo, hell, or paradise, and atheists like me condemn everyone to utter nothing, there is a children-only hell in Japanese Buddhism, invented around the eleventh century.

This post is based on chapter 8 of Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins (1997).

Japanese Buddhism has included the idea of an underworld where all dead people go to after they die. This underworld is usually temporary, as people would simply go through a bureaucratic process which assigns them to a suitable rebirth. However, some people can be stuck in the underworld.

On the edge of the underworld is 三途川, Sanzu no kawa, meaning "the river with three passes". In order to reach the other side of Sanzu, a dead person must walk through one of the three passes. The eviler the person is, the harder the pass is.

Notes on Falun Gong

What is Falun Gong, and why do they believe "Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the communist party."?

This post collects a list of facts about Falun Gong, a new religious movement from 1992, China. Since 1999, the Chinese government has heavily suppressed it, and it has since then engaged in a fierce propaganda war with the Chinese government.

The Chinese government calls it an evil cult that caused many deaths of its members, and the Falun Gong (FG) members claim the government, as well as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is evil and will be destroyed in a coming apocalypse (more on the theology of FG later).

Disclaimer: This would read a lot like anti-Falun Gong propaganda that the Chinese government spins. That's a bit unfortunate, but I only quote from primary sources, academic secondary sources, and a few reputable news journals, like The Guardian and The New York Times. This post also overlaps with the RationalWiki's page on Falun Gong, which is more entertaining to read, but I think my post is better, because I keep my sources authoritative.

My attitude is that the nice, boring bits of Falun Gong (truth, kindness, tolerance) are good, the Chinese suppression is bad, and the religious doctrines and propaganda tactics of Falun Gong are bad. This post is purely on its bad religious doctrines and propaganda tactics.

China Uncensored - Disillusioned

Recently I had a great disillusionment with China Uncensored, a YouTube Channel that gives consistent criticism of the Chinese government. Since February 2020, it had started talking about some coronavirus conspiracy theories (Coronavirus Began in Chinese Lab? US Investigates), in a way that strongly suggests they are true without actually claiming they are true. It is a very devious technique, the one-sided reporting of third-party sources without directly supporting it.

More troublingly, it calls the coronavirus the "CCP Virus",

because it's the CCP's coverup that is what allowed it to spread back in December and January.

That is utter nonsense. Even if the Chinese government was fully transparent about the virus, it would still spread throughout the world, because of how infectious it is. A much more reasonable argument could be made, that the coverup delayed in understanding the virus's infectiousness by about 2 weeks, which contributed to slower responses by some foreign governments. However, America also has itself to blame, considering how its institutions managed to do precious little throughout February, despite being fully warned about this global health emergency by the WHO on January 31.

Suicide notes of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke

The suicide note of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, "A Note to a Certain Old Friend", is just one of several notes he wrote before suicide. I translated them by referring to a Chinese translation, a Japanese transcription, and an extremely detailed study of the manuscripts, which contains way too much information.

Overview of the documents

From 芥川龍之介から妻・芥川文子宛ての遺書 Suicide note from Ryunosuke Akutagawa to Fumiko Akutagawa (2010)

芥川龍之介は1927（昭和2）年7月24日日曜日早朝に自殺した。つぎのとおり複数の「遺書」を残している。 

Ryunosuke Akutagawa committed suicide early in the morning on Sunday, July 24, 1927. I have left several "wills" as follows.

　　　a. 妻・芥川文子 宛て（原稿用紙2枚）
　　　b. 妻・芥川文子宛て断片1（同1枚）
　　　c. 妻・芥川文子宛て断片2（同1枚）
　　　d. 「わが子等に」 比呂志・多加志・也寸志 の息子3人がいた（同3枚）
　　　e. 友人・菊池寛 宛て（同2枚）
　　　f. 友人・小穴隆一 宛て（同5枚） そして
　　　g. 「或旧友へ送る手記」（友人・久米正雄 宛てだとされる）

a. To wife, Akutagawa Fumiko (2 Japanese manuscript sheets)
b. Fragment 1, addressed to wife Akutagawa Fumiko (1 sheet)
c. Fragment 2, addressed to wife and Fumiko Akutagawa (1 sheet)
d. "For my children", addressed to his three sons, Hiroshi, Takashi, and Yasushi (3 sheets)
e. To friend, Hiroshi Kikuchi (2 sheets)
f. To friend, Oana Ryuichi (5 sheets)
g. "A Note to a Certain Old Friend" (Likely addressed to a friend, Masao Kume)

Cancer Atavism: a bizarre but cool theory of cancer

Old longings nomadic leap,

Chafing at custom's chain; 

Again from its brumal sleep

Wakens the ferine strain.

Atavism

Atavism: a return to the ancient past, in behavior, appearance, or genes. From Wikipedia:

Evolutionarily traits that have disappeared phenotypically do not necessarily disappear from an organism's DNA. The gene sequence often remains, but is inactive. Such an unused gene may remain in the genome for many generations. As long as the gene remains intact, a fault in the genetic control suppressing the gene can lead to it being expressed again. Sometimes, the expression of dormant genes can be induced by artificial stimulation.

That sounds like computer code with a long legacy where an ancient feature pops up for no apparent reason.

Atavisms have been observed in humans, such as with infants born with vestigial tails. Atavism can also be seen in humans who possess large teeth, like those of other primates. In addition, a case of "snake heart", the presence of "coronary circulation and myocardial architecture [which resemble] those of the reptilian heart", has also been reported in medical literature.

I've heard of people with tails before, but snake heart?? That's new!

Death Poems from Samurais

I played the game Seppuku Jisei. Slashing enemies was meditative. I aimed for the zen of one slash, one death, to lose myself in the flow of the kill. I stood in the middle of a mound of blood and limbs.

After the game, I saw some death poems here, and decided to investigate them. Thanks to my passable Japanese skills, I found their originals, and their contexts.

Death kept her distance.

But I reached for her hoof 

Just one touch...

I shivered from her love.