30\u00a0 77%\u00a0 24%\u00a0 3mph NNW bar30.04 falls windchill28 Imbolc<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon<\/p>\n
Got a package today from Mary in Singapore.\u00a0 It came with many, many stamps bearing the picture of the large golden tree squirrel.\u00a0 Looks like a lemur to me.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And a red water buffalo wallet with Chinghis Khan on the front.\u00a0 The only one in my neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Having kin in Southeast Asia makes it feel less foreign, less faraway.\u00a0 It also means I get a ground level view of events there like the tsunami and the political unrest in Thailand for example.\u00a0 It is a privilege to have this window on these Asian cultures and one I cherish.<\/p>\n
Today I will\u00a0finish Hero, the Jet Li wu shu feature about the assassin and Qin Shi Huang Di.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He then\u00a0decreed a common script and common laws, using the political philosophy of Han Fei-Zi.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 His political philosophy reminded me most of Machiavelli’s Prince, but I may not understand them either of them very well.\u00a0 In my view they both see themselves as realists, preferring the pragmatic to the ideal, the functional to the just.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 In Hero the focus is on the Jet Li character, Nameless, the prefect of a Qin ten mile square area.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
30\u00a0 77%\u00a0 24%\u00a0 3mph NNW bar30.04 falls windchill28 Imbolc \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon Got a package today from Mary in Singapore.\u00a0 It came with many, many stamps bearing the picture of the large golden tree squirrel.\u00a0 Looks like a lemur to me.\u00a0 She sent a wonderful anthology of contemporary Asian art and, … Continue reading A Chingis Khan Red Water Buffalo Wallet<\/span>