Author: cheok hong chuan
Date: 05-13-12 18:05
SL Lee,
Thank you. It was so wonderfully touching and profound! It is very instructive. People like Chow Lee should watch it many times!
We are so lucky being Chinese and being a living antiquity and blessed with such a rich heritage and the Three Pillars of Chinese Society; that enable and allow us to have so much pride in our past and steadfast in the identity of being ourselves, and dignity to defy subjugation and oppression and discrimination by foreigners, and confidence to face the future optimistically whatever perils it may bring.
It is so good that we can continue to hand down with pride and dignity our own unique Chinese stories, our own unique identity, our own unique cultures and traditions and customs.
But we do this openly and keeping an open canvas as to the duality, the relativity and the vagaries and the nirvanic or karmic destiny of or in life. The Way of the Tao teaches us not to have an ‘ego', not to be haughty, not to go beyond the boundaries of our homeland, not to intrude or interfere or judge others and other nations.
We do not teach our young to be one-sided or single minded; for the Tao has no words, marks or labels or definitions. We tell our young that the moon has a bright side and a dark side; that Heaven has eyes, so do not boast or be proud or greedy!; that the Law of karma will set things right, do bad and you will be a cockroach in the next life. We teach equally about dignity and honour as we do about shame, when we say to our children not to look down on others, or else there will be a role reversal in the next life!
Chimamanda Adichie's tale was a condemnation and indictment of Western 'gweilo' egotism, mindset, psyche, Western hegemony and sense of white superiority and supremacy in thought, literature, philosophy and religion. Once again, Chow Lee, please take note!
There is a passage in Sun Tzu that says to win in war you must know how the enemy thinks.
So, do not be a one-story reader nor have a one-story perspective!
I read widely both in Chinese as well as Western writings. I am equally competent discussing Western history, literature, philosophy, religion, cuisine as against Asian history, literature, philosophy, religion, and cuisine or indeed to a lesser degree anything that comes within the realm of human knowledge!
I remember when I was young and the Indian arts teacher queried me why I painted the River Klang 'muddy brown' and the Malaysian skies 'grey', so as to make my painting unattractive. I looked at him and said - 'Are you colour blind or are you an orang puteh ['White man]?' He was speechless! The rivers are muddy and the skies are overcast grey in the tropics!
Start young! Do not let our children be besotted by Western values and mindset!
CHC
14/5/12
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