Category Archives: World History

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Family, World History

A Chingis Khan Red Water Buffalo Wallet

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30  77%  24%  3mph NNW bar30.04 falls windchill28 Imbolc

                Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Got a package today from Mary in Singapore.  It came with many, many stamps bearing the picture of the large golden tree squirrel.  Looks like a lemur to me.  She sent a wonderful anthology of contemporary Asian art and, as has become her habit, knowing my interest in cinema, the largest grossing Asia movie for 2007.  And a red water buffalo wallet with Chinghis Khan on the front.  The only one in my neighborhood.

Having kin in Southeast Asia makes it feel less foreign, less faraway.  It also means I get a ground level view of events there like the tsunami and the political unrest in Thailand for example.  It is a privilege to have this window on these Asian cultures and one I cherish.

Today I will finish Hero, the Jet Li wu shu feature about the assassin and Qin Shi Huang Di.  It is one of two recent Chinese movies dealing with the king of Qin, Shi Huang Di, who unified the six warring states at the end of the eastern Zhou dynasty.  He has a peculiar position in Chinese history, since he is seen as the father of a unified China, but also as a tyrant and a destroyer of cultural treasures.  In the interest of a common language and culture for a unified China he is said to have burned all the books he could get his hands on at the time. 

He then decreed a common script and common laws, using the political philosophy of Han Fei-Zi.  Han Fei-Zi was a political thinker whose general type of thought became known as Legalism since it elevated a strict system of laws and punishment even above the ruler.  His political philosophy reminded me most of Machiavelli’s Prince, but I may not understand them either of them very well.  In my view they both see themselves as realists, preferring the pragmatic to the ideal, the functional to the just.  In this sense neither of them are as villianous as history has cast them; they might be seen as situational relativists, creating a system of governance that works for the times, not for all time.

Hero and The Emperor and the Assassin both portray Qin Shi Huang Di as a clever, courageous and intelligent ruler. Both also portray him as relentless, paranoid and unyielding.  In Hero the focus is on the Jet Li character, Nameless, the prefect of a Qin ten mile square area.  In the Emperor and the Assassin the focus is on the king himself and his lover from the stater of Zhao, where they both grew up.  They are very different movies with, I think, very different intentions, but both present an interesting take on this controversial man, the first Emperor of China.

Cinema and Television, General, Politics, World History

Ten Thousand Schools

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29  87%  26%  5mph NNW  bar29.89 rises windchill25  Imbolc

                  Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Saw Scarlet Johanssen talking to a group of Minnesota students tonight.  She’s pushing Barrack.  The political firestorm that will sweep the nation tomorrow will have a brushfire here in the Minnesota caucuses.  It remains to be seen whether a strong youth turnout for primaries and caucuses will  translate into votes in November, but I find the youth surge a hopeful phenomenon.  Maybe we’re getting back to a situation where the politics of compassion, not compassionate conservatism, and the politics of economic justice, not unjust foreign policy will prevail.  It’s got my vote.

The snow petered out, a dusting only after the vigor of the mid-morning.  Things did get freshened up.

Watched an anime on the Science Fiction Channel.  Saw why Miyazaki is considered an anime god.  This stuff is much more slapdash, also has a slasher feel to it without the grace of the samurai or wu shu movies like Crouching Tiger. 

I seem to find myself digging deeper and deeper into ancient China, especially the Warring States period when Taoism, Confucianism and Legalism plus many others–the Ten Thousand Schools–emerged.  It is also the time of the Qin unification and Qin Shi Huang Di fascinates me.  After the Qin the Han dynasty began and lasted for four hundred years or so, one of the first golden ages of China.  Later, the Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties would, each in their own time and in their own way, count as golden ages, too.

Politics, World History

Castrate Him!

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26  87%  28%  2mph NE bar 29.88 steady  windchill23 Imbolc

                Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

A good senate race has run under the radar of the Clinton/Edwards/Obama vs. Romney/McCaine/Giuliani primaries.  It’s a shame, too, since the Democrats have a real opportunity to win back a Senate seat.  I was skeptical of Al Franken, but it seems he’s run hard, straight and with serious intent.  I’m gonna support him on Tuesday, along with Barrack Obama.  I read a convincing article in the Nation that portrayed Obama as the only candidate with true left credentials.  Progressive is a weasel word, not least because Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt used it of himself and his movement.

If you enjoy the numbers and drama of politics, this has been a great year.  Lots of poll data, lots of actual votes and plenty of campaign back and forth without, so far at least, too much mudslinging.  Even a pinch of political junkie in your bloodstream would get you into the fray.

Wish for snow and voilá, it snows.  Six inches today they say.  Paul Douglas called this one.    

The perfect week shapes up for me:  up north for four days in a time of snow, home for a night and then off to the Sandwich Islands. 

Started reading last night in the annals of the Grand Historian, Sima Qin.  He’s a fascinating character. He inherited the task of completing the history of the Chinese people his father, also the Grand Historian, began.  Living in the time of Emperor Wu, a great Han dynasty emperor, he made the Emperor mad.  Apparently, at the time, making Emperor’s mad resulted in castration.  And, the usual response was suicide.

Sima Qin, however, felt he had a duty to finish his history so he lived for 21 more years, in spite of the indiginity.  His work is readable, at least in translation, and more than that, interesting.  Just ordered his volume on the Qin dynasty.

Now then, off to Maple Plain for some new shoes and to the coop for bread and cheese.

GeekWorld, World History

Crossed Speaker Wires

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26  80%  21%  0mph SSE  bar29.64  steep fall  Windchill26  Winter

          Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

Performed the test of the sound system today with the microphone that listens to output from the speakers and adjusts them according to prestablished program.  It sounds out whistles, clicks, rolling thunder, static and a loud rush of static.  Then it tells you if things are optimal.  First problem:  I’d crossed one set of speaker wires, the smooth to the positive instead of the ridged.  Checked all twenty connections, on speakers and on the receiver, found one set wrong and fixed it.  Second problem:  difference in volume excessive.  No idea what that meant, but one of the solutions was to move speakers around.  I did that and the next time through, pass number 3, No Errors.  This ends the first phase of the new video and sound system.  All of it is in place.  All of it works as intended.  

Next phase will be optimization of various aspects of the receiver, the DVD player and the TV.  This will take place over time and really never ends.  Fun.  A hobby in itself.

Watched an interesting Discovery channel program tonight on the Great Wall.  It presented the Great Wall as largely a product of one general in the early Ming Dynasty.  While the existing wall traces much of its current form to that era, wall building as a defensive strategy began much earlier, in the Spring and Autumn Period of the Eastern Chou dynasty.   Various pieces of walls got built at many stages in Chinese history.  The reason the Ming Dynasty effort was so vast lies in their resting power away from the Yuan Dynasty.  During the Yuan Dynasty China became a part of the Mongol Empire, ruled by Kublai Khan first.