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When one hears China, what comes to mind? Perhaps Wuhan and COVID-19. Perhaps the stories the media tells, tailored to agenda and audience. Perhaps pandas, milk tea and kung pao chicken. None of that is a complete understanding of China. I wish people would think about: (1/N)
I wish people would think about Confucius wandering different nations with his students and Zhuang Zi dreaming of butterflies. About the junzi admiring a pretty lady in the Book of Odes and the ceremonies in the Book of Rites. About the Qin Emperor uniting China. (2/N)
About Liu Bei visiting Zhuge Liang's hut three times during the Era of the Three Kingdoms. About the Tang dynasty, and Li Bai drinking under the moonlight. About the Song dynasty, and the great writer Su Shi singing as he wrote Former Ode on the Red Cliffs. (3/N)
About the four great composers of Yuan Qu and Zheng He setting sail for the west in the Ming Dynasty. About Qing Dynasty's eight legged essays and its rise, and its fall. About the Opium War and the pillaging of Yuanming Yuan and the century of humiliation. (4/N)
About the Sino-Japanese war and the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War and all the sacrifices, suffering, and pain. About the establishment of a new, modern, China and the fight, tooth and nail, to return to the world stage. (5/N)
About the mistakes we made and the blood we spilled and the lessons we learned. About our values and our pride and our unity, preserved through thousands of years of history. About the love we have for our fellow countrymen, all fifty six ethnicities. (6/N)
About how we are a people who will stand up again and again, who stubbornly refuse to be beaten and subdued, who will stand and make a new Great Wall with our flesh and blood if the need arises. It's been five thousand years. We, the Chinese, are not going anywhere. (7/N)
I wish people would think of all these things, and yet, this is only a miniscule portion of what makes China, China, and what makes Chinese civilization great. (8/end)