by Ramin Mazaheri
Look, we are just butting heads here, we Muslims and Europeans.
Constantly arguing over whose ideology and culture is superior.
And all the while the 1% of families who own 99% of the world’s wealth are just looking down and laughing at us as they read their stock tickers.
And that 1% is multicultural, multiracial and practices multiple religions. They don’t care about European or Muslim or whatever – they care about money: yours.
But for us 99% the clash of civilizations is happening…or has happened, or will happen, or will not happen – who knows?
With such confusion reigning, let’s do what two seemingly irreconcilable parties often do – turn to a mediator.
Our cultures have ceased helping, so let’s turn to a totally different culture: I propose China.
Yes, China. They do have a UN veto, and they don’t just give those away.
“China’s a biased country – they have plenty of native Muslims,” shouts Brussels. Indeed, 20+ million: more than Europe if you exclude Turkey.
“China’s a biased country – they’re scared if we take over they’ll lose pork and gambling,” shouts Riyadh. Indeed, as well. China seems very fond of those two.
No cultural mediator could be perfect. However, China is not a country.
China is a continent – it just never took credit for it like Europe did. It never even got a grudging “sub-continent” designation like India.
China has nearly 60 ethnic groups, 8 major linguistic groups and hundreds of dialects. This is after the societal unification brought about by Communism, so imagine what it used to be like?
They know all about Warring States periods and Three Kingdoms becoming many kingdoms, and too many Han here and not enough Turkic tribes there.
We know they know about building walls.
So I propose we let the Chinese mediate on the question of how Europe should treat its Muslim communities, and how Muslim communities in Europe should treat Europeans.
“Not fair, you are already thinking in a binary-yet-interactive fashion so you yourself are biased!”
Shut up Paris! Quit playing the devil’s advocate for your own amusement!
Let the mediation begin!
Ahhhhh so…China discuss this long ago. You still here?! Heap great disgrace!
Therefore if a great country gives way to a smaller country,
It will conquer the smaller country.
And if a small country submits to a great country,
It can conquer the great country
Therefore those who would conquer must yield
And those who conquer do so because they yield
(Rustling breezes, gurgling brook, someone playing a reed flute)
This is the 2nd part from Chapter 61 of the Tao Te Ching, written around 500 BC and still being misunderstood by hippies today.
In China’s most humble opinion, this is the most relevant passage of the chapter to our discussion, so let’s start there.
Being barely able to grasp the meaning of the Tao as humble China already is, China is going to assume a lot of this poem is already obvious to you. But you are paying China to mediate, so….
The “Great Country”, here, is Europe.
They are economically advanced – cough cough imperialism cough cough – and their dominance cannot be denied.
And Europe is after all…located in Europe. It is, therefore, full of “Europeans”. That is really the main point – China really likes to examine the fundamentals, please to excuse us.
In each of the European countries you have a dominant group, with a long and impressive culture. In nearly all the countries the culture is not as long or impressive as China’s…but China has digressed foolishly here.
You also find a dominant religion (Christianity of some form) and a dominant ethnic class (Latin, Anglo Saxon, Celtic, Slavic, etc.)
Ahhhh, but did the immortal Tao counsel Lao Tzu to write: “A great country says what’s what, so shut the hell up about it”?
Not at all, the Tao guided Lao Tzu to write:
Therefore if a great country gives way to a smaller country,
That very notion is a very different starting point from what China reads from the very un-Tao-ed European mass media, or their governments, or the drunk at the local bar when there are no Browns around.
China suggests – please to try hard to follow – that “great” Europe “gives way” to the “small country”.
The “Small Country” here…being all those minorities of Roma, Muslims, Africans, Coptic Egyptians, Black animists, Eritrean atheists, etc. within Europe.
China does not mean this in the opening of the gates to more refugees, necessarily, because China is concerned about the major lack of social harmony in Europe today.
China is advising the Great Country to give way culturally, to live in harmony with the Tao and thus each other.
China notes that the Great Country has many more natural advantages over these Small Countries – demographic advantages, national homogeneities, social advantages – that it should hardly be worried about losing its “national identity”.
Conquering means the smaller “integrates” into the greater
And this has already proven to be a workable model.
China notes that in France there are many Blacks and Muslims who are 100% proud to be “French”, and rightfully so. France has much to admire. The great country let them in and assimilation was mastered by many: the smaller country was conquered.
Supreme good fortune – nothing was unfavorable.
The great country should always conquer eventually through the natural process of absorption. With any proper absorption – as with food – it eventually becomes part of the main organism.
You are what you eat. If you reject what you eat often enough…you must be sick. Maybe you have dysentery and will eventually die. It is serious. Please do not use China’s toothbrush.
But this takes cultural digestion takes time and cannot be forced. Europe did not already conquer so many members of the Smaller Country by thinking it can eat foreigners whole and easily spit out whole Europeans.
If you ease back and watch the show and enjoy your Great Country feeling of fullness – all will be well in the end.
So what can we infer that the Tao Te Ching does not advise, in this cultural context?
The Great Country should not be aggressive at all – it should be satisfied and secure in its own dominance. A lack of aggression translates into tolerance, patience and generosity for the small.
China senses something is sticking in the craw of in perhaps Europe’s most difficult…yes London?
“All I’m reading is about ‘Great Country’ responsibilities – what about the responsibilities of the ‘Small Country’?”
Why are you so impatient? Most unharmonious. But let’s move on to lines 3 and 4
The cycle has waxed into waning
And if a small country submits to a great country,
It can conquer the great country
Indeed, “submitting” is what China now advises for Europe’s Muslims – the Small Country.
China knows there are some immigrants who move to a place and never learn the language or make new friends. They choose to remain isolated in their own immigrant communities and seemingly live exactly as they did before.
The plus side is – they seem perfectly content, are hard workers and commit no great crimes.
China knew a non-Muslim English journalist here (a journalist!) who lived in Paris for 15 years and said he could only order a baguette in the French language – his wife did all the talking. China reports that this guy is hilarious, was a big success and should not be stoned to death for his stubbornness or lack of language skills.
China must note – for those who don’t actually know immigrants at all, and China knows them very well – the ones who don’t submit are only a small part of the very first arrivals.
The reason is – usually all they do is work at some lousy job!
They are tired, LOL. They are tired from working to pay for their kids’ food; they are tired from cooking and cleaning. If they want to see their immigrant friends in their little spare time, or just watch TV, then give them a break!
“Old dogs can’t learn new tricks,” these people believe. Fine, let’s move on from them.
China notes that the ones who do submit to the dominant culture are truly living and are immeasurably enriched.
China knows one goofy journalist in Paris who can’t imagine living in France without having adopted their language and customs, or not having befriending French people. China says this guy has replaced many of his ideas and habits for French ideas and habits, and he is better for it.
China notes that this guy already had plenty of room for improvement.
The 2nd generation – China must say here – always submits to the Great Country to a great extent. They have to – they go to the schools, where peers and teachers ensure it. They also grow up watching the local TV, movies, music, etc.
In Europe you now have 3rd generation and 4th generations of Muslims. In a few more generations – like the Normans in France – they’ll be 90% “French” and only 10% other. Are the Normans so bad? Are the Muslims as bad as invading Vikings?
Of course not. Exaggeration is an extreme, and so the Tao naturally changes from irony to seriousness.
But even Vikings had principles
However, China warns that to force submission on matters of deepest principle is inherently against the way of the Tao.
That is going too far. If one submits or subverts their own morals simply to please the Great Country – such a person clearly is not operating with the Tao, yes? This a weak person, greatly at fault.
So Great Country Europe cannot force Muslims to take a drink if it violates their morals. They cannot force women to feel they are being immodest – that would cause them to feel great shame quite unnecessarily.
The Great Country must yield when there is no one hurt or no laws broken. China does not advise writing new laws which they know the Smaller Country will break! This is needless antagonism, and cannot but turn out poorly.
And China notes that for the Small Country, Muslims, to conquer means acceptance by the Great Country.
The Small Country will conquer by gaining acceptance for some of their minority ways which they feel it would be immoral to compromise.
If Muslims submit – integrate in a sincere fashion – then China is confident that they will convince the Great Country that the submission need not be total.
Such submission is slavery, something Europe renounced, yes?
China does not understand how Europe’s feelings could even get hurt by simply seeing a hejab or a Brown sheepishly turning down a drink.
China says: you are too sensitive. China believes that Europe’s pride is hurt – they feel they have been colonized by the United States.
China cannot give any advice here…because China does not have this problem. Hahahahahahaaha!
China will never have this problem…as the US will submit to us! Hahahahahaahahahaha!
Who says the Chinese have no sense of humor?!
Yes, Europe’s pride has been hurt because they are no longer the #1 colonizer – the student has surpassed the teacher. And when the pride of a Great Country is hurt it looks for a scapegoat – a Small Country – because it is not admitting self-blame, which would enable it to correct its internal position in way which is in accordance with the harmonious Tao.
China knows that if we ever hope to absorb the Small Country of the United States – so very small to us, so young, sensitive and amusing – we know what we have to do: Look to the Tao Te Ching and give way to the smaller country.
Otherwise, those ignorant, hillbilly, Trump-loving capitalist savages will give us much indigestion! You think millions of Muslims are bad – imagine millions of Americans in Europe! Muslims aren’t so bad now, eh?
But to properly absorb the smaller, if it is wise, China will return to lines 5 and 6:
Therefore those who would conquer must yield
And those who conquer do so because they yield
So you see China already has a plan
Not just a mediation solution, but a plan.
A plan for taking over the US, and a plan for taking over Europe!
China says to the Great and Small Countries of Europeans and Muslims: “Get your act together and seek mutual harmony cuz we are coming babyeeeee!”
This is why China advises all Europe to seek harmony immediately.
But China is communist. China has suppressed a lot of religions – and the Tao is our version of the Holy Spirit – when our communism was new and ignorant. Perhaps we have forgotten these teachings, you say?
Let’s say that is indeed true. China would like to point out that our modern Communist Revolution won, and we gained plenty!
China is still growing and has made huge strides in decreasing inequality and increasing solidarity, while Europe is in total economic disarray, even after profiting from 2 centuries of imperialism in the Muslim world and 4 centuries of imperialism in the New World.
China reminds Europe to read a newspaper once in a while: the European Union and Eurozone is neo-imperially feeding upon its Smaller Nations, as it once did with China.
China notes that the Small Country Muslim communities are broke and receive very little of these neo-imperial spoils. They also certainly have no political power to organize these capitalist and counter-revolutionary machinations which clearly violate the Tao up the yin-yang.
China stresses: Communism is a truly modern ideology, much more modern than nationalism, and it promotes ethnic unity 100%. You wouldn’t have this crisis under communism, for certain, and the average European could concentrate on its real enemy – capitalism.
China notes, with total serious: Join communism and there is only a true, modern brotherhood between us…and no China forced to conquer you.
China feels the time for judgment has come in this mediation
Europe must first return to lines 5 and 6. They require meditation.
Therefore those who would conquer must yield
And those who conquer do so because they yield
Perhaps you should take a break? Maybe go outside and look at the moon? If it is daytime perhaps you can glance at the sun, noting its munificent magnificence shining down.
Have you done that? Is the meaning clearer?
Here is China’s decision:
China is telling Europe: hey, if you want Muslims to fit in: stop harassing them. They are here and they are only your underclass, so stop trying to take away their morality, too – their religion. That is going too far, so change. Be a bit more generous and humble!
China is telling Muslims: hey, stop your crying or go home. You have to learn the new ways in the new country and change. If your old country is so great – you certainly have a valid passport which allows you to return there. Be a bit more generous and humble!
China doesn’t want to gloat but…
China has communism and the Tao! It’s a good time to be Chinese!
And now we humbly now cites the following and final four lines of Chapter 61:
A great nation needs more people;
A small country needs to serve.
Each gets what it wants.
It is fitting for a great nation to yield.
(Rustling breezes, gurgling brook, young woman with an enormous hat pads by in sandals)
That’s how it is!
These lines mean:
“Europe is great so it truly needs more people. These people are coming from small, poor countries, and so they need to serve in order to improve their station. Each side will get what it wants…if Europe acts without fault and yields first, in acceptance.”
China is now happy to serve you all an enormous fortune cookie we have baked for your honor and enjoyment! The huge fortune cookie was needed to fit the preceding paragraph, which is your fortune to meditate on.
Your lucky numbers are 6, 17, 22, 37 and 42.
The cookie is halal of course! Hahah, just kidding – China is worldly enough to know that those rules don’t apply here. Just making with the food and the fun – everyone likes that! China is now serving rice wine, but our Uighur delegation says they are high enough off God.
Must be nice to be Uighur, then, but make mine a double!
Just kidding, I’ve been given the honor to moderate – want to do my best to promote harmony.
Also I have much work to do: China needs more people, as we a great nation.
Tao Te Ching – Chapter 61
A great country is like low land:
It is the meeting ground of the universe,
The mother of the universe.
The female overcomes the male with stillness,
Lying low in stillness
Therefore if a great country gives way to a smaller country,
It will conquer the smaller country.
And if a small country submits to a great country,
It can conquer the great country
Therefore those who would conquer must yield,
And those who conquer do so because they yield
A great nation needs more people;
A small country needs to serve.
Each gets what it wants.
It is fitting for a great nation to yield.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.
Do they say about treatment of animals in Tao Te ?
The other day I’ve seen couple of dogs in one tight cage, sad!
Lovely creates like dog and horse did help us to make what we are today.
Ramin
Not only are you a great journalist, you are a great philosopher. Been enjoying your articles, they have been very thought provoking. Thanks Rachel
yep, like we need a huge communist state to mediate on behalf of the rest of the world. No thanks I like my freedom of speech and not worrying about organ harvesting of dissenters, tianenmen square, etc.
The Tao also says:
Rule a (big) country like you are frying small fish. i.e. stop messing with it too much.
Some of this is both true and worth the while, while some is also contrived. For example, here in the UK we now live with two legal systems; areas where “sharia” patrols sometimes advise and other times harass British people going about there business. While I comprehend that Governments use such measures as a tool for friction and divide and conquer strategies it does not inspire either integration or friendship. Too, we were never asked if we wanted our elected representatives (sic) to flood our country with other competing cultures: This is important. The assumption that these are all refugees is a puerile statement: They are not. Read on the subject of one Richard, C, Kalergi to find the under-lying agenda. Refugees are owed safety and protection, not citizenship and immediate right to travel across Europe and do as they please. If Citizenship is what they want, as it quite evidently is then there are already channels. There is much more, but China has its own problems with Uighers and is not suitable as an arbitrator.
In any event, I for one perceive this mass migration as a managed attack upon the social fabric of Europe (B.L. Specter) engineered by the usual culprits and our governments. Therefore, any hostility I feel at social disharmony inflicted upon us is currently directed at the British and US and EU establishments who, in my view are barking mad, idelogues reminiscent of Bolsheviks.
He (She) is right, “Barking Mad!
If you ask the average Chinese what they think of God, as in King of the Universe, or moral enforcer, they will think you are somewhat crazy to image such a thing. Yet somehow, their idea of Tao and Harmony and morality has served them quite well, thank you very much, no fear of hell if we don’t tow the Heavenly line fed to them by the institutional clergy.
I was once asked by a pretty high Communist party official, in fact the chief of police of a well known city, what I as an American thought about Marx. Speaking as someone who studied Buddhism, I said that in Buddhism, the idea is to save–that is–help in whatever way we can, other beings, no conditions of loyalty to a clan or authority required. And on the other hand, Communism says all things should be shared fairly and equally. No deity involved just basic human decency.
So there is no contradiction between the two.
That is the basic human way. Just practice basic human decency, seeing the other as oneself, and seek mutual accord. That is the core principle at the heart of all religions, or moral belief systems.
The West, especially Western Europe, made the gross philosophical mistake of thinking/believing that there is some kind of self existent entity, either one’s own person, or extending out to family, clan, country, and ultimately Divine Boss. This core misunderstanding of what is ‘self’, resulted in 500 years of greed and cruelty, based on a superior notion of a self, as expressed as a country or it’s ‘rulers’ (the ones who own the gold), that has resulted in most of the world’s problems since Columbus landed on Turtle Island, and the rest of the world was equally subjected to Western arrogance, ignorance, greed and cruelty.
Let’s hope that Holy Russia and China, who seem to be the major adults in the world family, have the ability to mature the unruly, petulant Westerners before they blow us all up, or starve us while they gorge themselves to Capitalist death.
RM
Auspicious. Great advice witty in format is given.
see the herd from above:
“And all the while the 1% of families who own 99% of the world’s wealth are just looking down and laughing at us as they read their stock tickers.
And that 1% is multicultural, multiracial and practices multiple religions. They don’t care about European or Muslim or whatever – they care about money: yours.”
Their religion, morals and rules are Money and Power.
The Tao, Mao, Buddha, Marx and other directing spirits of the past are used as tools against me and you. One that works all day and has no time to find out the truth for himself or finds out a bit towards the end of his life has no way out.
The hope for better times is still in the Moral, enlighten one from the elite, the one that knows better and wants the best for all the people and not only for himself.
Love thy neighbor — how easy is this when one does not even know who he is himself, his past, his family, his culture, his nation?
Pink hats, hate the white male, riots, debauchery, lies, lies, pc… shut up and toe the line and follow.
Where was all this Tao wisdom when the great Qin empiror united the Chinese with fire & blood? where was it when the Han emperors sent 200,000 armed men to subdue and control the Tarim basin (today’s Xinjing)? all this submission talk is nice and dandy but Chinese history is very different.
Even today the Uighurs are held down by force, see: https://jamestown.org/program/beijings-new-scorched-earth-policy-uighurs/
The main problem with your thesis is that the Europeans unlike the Chinese (and Russians, Arabs) have zero tolerance for the Other, they want to completely eradicate any difference by force; just observe how Germans crushed the Polish identity while the Russians gave them autonomy (early 19th cent.). So tolerating non-Europeans is out of the question.
Another problem is that the Europeans are not the greatest in every aspect, demographically they are dying, religiously they have lost all faith (they have no unifying ideology larger than the individual and his gratification). While the North Africans, for example, have demographics on their side, still have faith (even if it’s misguided) and there is a drive to go out of their countries that are literally running out of drinking water (apart from all the other problems).
There is a lot to learn from the Chinese: urban/rural balance, great infrastructure works, tolerance for minorities (Han Chinese are 95% of China BTW, so not as bad as in Europe) but peaceful living with the Other is not really one of them (peaceful living inside a centrally governed Empire maybe).
Europeans have two options: first start having children again, second to import the excess population of North Africa (not sub-Sahara Africa!) and integrate the two regions of the Mediterranean; France’s Sarkozi announced something like that (Union for the Mediterranean), of course nothing came out of it because Germany is much insular than France and will never submit willingly to anything like that and Germany is currently welded to France.
Neither option will be taken and the whole region will continue on the path of wars they started on when the first Sumerian city-state fought with the city next to it. The excess population south of the Mediterranean will, one way or another, settle in the empty countryside of the north Mediterranean, north & west Europe will collapse economically and start having children again and life will go on wars and all ;)
I forgot to thank the “goofy” author for his interesting, bright and well written articles.
Using humor when addressing these difficult and complex issues – that’s talent!
What I did not appreciate of his info was the one onCuba, where all was splashed in sunny, rosy colors, when one knows that the equality and ‘happiness’ there was achieved by leveling down, to poverty and enslavement and not by elevating the people. As anywhere else there also, is a 1% in power and a very tough one. What was left to the people was the bread, circus and political jokes.
Been there, done that.
This is so Beautiful, serious and full of humor and of course wisdom :-)
It is the kind of advice take it or leave it… up to you … if you want success and harmony and at least 98% wants that.. then you do… the 2% is the government and parliament and they don’t… but the big country small country apply here… so I think we shall do…
Thank you for this wonderful piece of applied Tao…. :-) :-) :-)
On the other side of the coin. And in the spirit of living together. Since Iran and the Gulf States have rising wealth. And the Caribbean and Latin America are overpopulated. How about those states opening their borders to those peoples.A few million Caribbean immigrants would do those countries some good.We could see a new multiculturalism take hold there.And maybe since its closer.mass Indian Hindu immigration to those countries.Of course they’d have to adjust to some of the culture. But surely the Arabs and Iranians would understand their must be tolerance shown.Those populations don’t object to alcohol. And in the Caribbean pork is a popular meal.So any laws against those items will need to go.And those peoples certainly wouldn’t tolerate restrictions on women. A quick look at the female dress in those lands show that easily. So any idea of a “hijab” enforced on women is totally out of the question.And from I’ve seen. If some of those “religious” even tried to enforce something like that. A women or two would beat their “a,,..” in a heartbeat. Then of course there is China ,Korea,and Japan.A few million Indian immigrants would be helpful in Japan.And a few million Jamaican immigrants would add a bunch of fun to the Chinese culture. Wait,what you say? In the Gulf they already have immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of Indian,Sri Lankan,and Filipino workers already are there.That’s right,I must have forgot that. We hear all the time about tolerant and “wonderful” their treatment is in those countries. What with slave like conditions for workers. The beating and sometimes beheading of “foreign guest workers”. And all,how could I forgot the wonderful “benefits” of multiculturalism practiced in those states.But still now.Since its a “wonderful” idea to double-down with mass immigration to Europe and the US,Canada,Australia,and New Zealand. Then maybe there just needs millions more in the Gulf States to have that same “beneficial” results. And if we can judge from the other states with mass immigration. After a few years,those nations will have their very own “no go zones” in sections of their cities. And we can see mass riots break out there as well as in Paris and Stockholm . Just want the doctor ordered as for as I’m concerned.I’m sure ,no one would object to that,right. After all if they did it wouldn’t matter anyway. Europeans don’t get a say in that. So why should Arabs and Iranians have a right to object. And even if they did it would just be “racist” of them. Yes its plain those states need to see the same benefits that Europe is.I’m all for that,and now.
Although you wrote this sarcastically, but I agree in principle. These countries should open uuup. In fact the whole world should be open once again, like it used to. If you have a talent, you could apply for a job in China, Dubai, wherever.
If capital can move freely across borders, so should people. Itll be a new world, but definitely more exciting than being prisoners of our local circumstances.
Plus Asia is where the action is.
Divide et imperium. Weak and verbose.
Divide et impera (Divide and rule) fk mod
Yes. Thanks mod. Google has weakened my memory.
Ghassan Kadi is back.
Too much tongue in cheek makes the discourse unintelligible. As the French say: babillage. By the time when you try to pass on your serious message people got bored. TLDR.
But I had the patience. The cookie the Chinese would serve us is not halal. The Chinese took with gusto to… French wine. China is the biggest consumer of red wine in the world and remains the top export market for Bordeaux. Their love affair with the red goes a long way back. It became a sign of distinction, good taste, refinement, a status symbol.
“In 1996, Chinese premier Li Peng surprised his audience at the National People’s Congress by toasting the Ninth Five-Year Plan with red wine: “Drinking fruit wines is helpful to our health, does not waste grain, and is good for social ethics”. They give up on ‘Moutai Flying Fairy’ and other spirits derived from grain for Château Lafite Rothschild, no less.
“As well as importing wines and their prestige, China is also building its own formidable wine industry. According to industry analysts, within five years, China will bottle more wine and devote more land to vineyards than any other country. For instance, the government of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region announced its plans to construct 50 new châteaux and a regional classification system modeled on Bordeaux in November 2013. To qualify for a listing, a château must not only meet industrial production quotas but build a four-star restaurant and hotel for guests. The vineyards are to be staffed by ethnic Hui, the Muslim farmers and herders the government has arranged to relocate or “move out” of rural poverty. “In fact, this is incorrect,” Grape Flower Industry Development Bureau director Cao Kailong tells Mustacich. “We have plans to develop one thousand châteaux…
“Wine education” camps begin to sprout up where elite buyers can train their tastes. The Chinese wine grower Dynasty builds a replica of Versailles complete with a copy of I.M. Pei’s glass pyramidal entrance to the Louvre as part of a wine tourism venture. “This was a humble decision,” the company’s chairman explained somewhat ironically after the castle opened in November 2010. “Because we believe and we know that all wine actually originates from Europe and is very much related to the culture of Europe.” Less than a year later in the northern industrial city of Dalian, a tycoon named Qu Naijie held a press conference to announce that his company, Haichang (“Sea Fortune”), which had lately diversified from oil shipping into theme parks and real estate, would build a 5,000 acre luxury development with vineyards called Château de Bordeaux”.
@https://newrepublic.com/article/124461/china-conquered-frances-wine-country
[In 2016] “China took another step closer to becoming a wine superpower after a team of wine-tasters beat the French at their own game at an international competition in Provence.
The Chinese team, who last year were 13th in the same contest, took first place in a field of 21 nationalities, with the French second and the United States third.
China now boasts the second largest clutch of vineyards in the world by surface area after Spain, with 799,000 hectares (1.97m acres) dedicated to growing grapes, according to the Paris-based International Organisation of Vine and Wine.
However, the country is still struggling to shed its image as a mass producer of poor quality products.
Earlier this year, the company behind Dom Pérignon and Moët & Chandon launched what it hopes will be the first world-class red wine to be produced in China”.
@http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/09/chinese–stomp-all-over-the-french-to-win-wine-tasting-contest/
“More than 100 properties in France’s southwest wine-producing area are today owned by Chinese tycoons looking to diversify fortunes built upon real estate, jewellery, industry or tourism holdings. This makes up 1.5 per cent of the region’s 7,000 vineyards…
[Jack Ma] has bought the Chateau de Sours vineyard in the famed winegrowing region of Bordeaux, which boasts a castle dating back to the 18th century and an 85 hectare property which produces 500,000 bottles of wine a year.”
@http://www.scmp.com/news/china/money-wealth/article/1917084/chinas-jack-ma-snaps-french-vineyard-chateau-de-sours
So, what’s more likely to happen? The Chinese telling the French: don’t give wine to the Muslims, or telling the Muslims: if you don’t like (and buy) our French-Chinese wine, go home?
Perhaps the Muslims of China would simply shorten their names to Mu or Hu in such an instance, whilst the emperor retains (or did retain) their Muslim bodyguards? Any chance of a quick reference to the historical record, or would that get in the way of the above failed effort to troll the article, which was of course predictable?
Yes. It is a gift from God that ignorant bigots will continuously and as previously predicted, predictably(!), continue to expose their blind bigotry through such self righteous stupidity and self satisfied ignorance.
For God is merciful.
< correction:
Not Hu but Hui. Of course!
That seems more appropriate indeed.
it is indeed entirely and specifically appropriate as the understanding of this history and Tao can help the sane people of the earth understand how and why so many indigenous peoples of this earth embraced Islam.
Including of course many early Christians, which apparently caused extreme cognitive dissonance for some. Perhaps we should take pity?
Because it’s also exactly how we can understand and appreciate why the greatest Chinese admiral in history was a Muslim. These voyages and explorations and embassies are one reason (only one, perhaps a very very minor one) why the world’s biggest and or largest Muslim country is Indonesia. It’s not that hard to look at a demographic map of the world is it? Unless you are blinded by your bigotry!
As we all know the great c.asian armies of ‘Muslim imperialists’ spent millennia marching into SE Asia or west Africa etc take your pick!
It seems that the purveyors of the “sword of Allah” disproven nonsensical gibberish upon this forum can not only be observed by their own words to be ignorant and smug liars (otherwise known as the classic idiot syndrome!), but also that their efforts to be smug as in the attempt at a reply above for which they were set up (thank you thank you, but it is easy to expose an idiot) only further expose their own ignorance. Which is kind of funny.
Otherwise, those ignorant, hillbilly, Trump-loving capitalist savages will give us much indigestion! You think millions of Muslims are bad – imagine millions of Americans in Europe! Muslims aren’t so bad now, eh?
Confuscius say:
‘Do not argue with a funny Ramin.
Laughter is good for digestion.
Pork – not so much.’
http://www.muslimheritage.com/article/legacy-muslim-kung-fu-masters
Many thanks to all the kind words and compliments on this article! Much appreciated to be appreciated! Best wishes to all
Undiluted wonderful.
Great attempt at illumination however a couple of issues: China does not have the TAO it had the Tao, Muslims are not taught to merge with societies but to subvert and convert this is not assimilation, if all peoples took their faith less seriously your view would be amenable, that is the deep message of the TAO.
You do not know Kung-fu
–
The living Tao of Islam in modern China:
“contemporary Wu Shu, which was created after the newly formed Republic of China, was based on the Muslim version of Cha Chuan “Jamil Fist”, by adopting the Ten Sets, such as Long Fist and various other sets. Special consideration was granted by the Chinese Government for adopting the Muslim (Fist) version of “Jiao-men” meaning “Sect Fighting”; out of many other Wu Shu styles that existed; thus Chinese Muslims have kept close within their communities and had less illegal involvement with other minority groups. There is therefore a consensus that Muslim Fist is “purer”, and one of the most powerful, hence its depth and sacred techniques which have remained unchanged for centuries.”
i.e.: that is what you see when you pop down with your kids to your local wu-shu school/club.
Bear witness!
I’ve very often considered the wisdom in this verse relevant to US diplomacy – since the US is such a vast empire a this stage of history its greatest strength would be to assume a beneficent, embracing posture and not to direct all things. If we had turned inward after 9/11 and corrected our faults, there might be total peace in the world. But we all know 9/11 wasn’t an unexpected “attack.” it was both blowback and a planned intervention. But with Trump in office, there is a chance to turn inward again and stop intervening – that is being called nationalism. Regardless, its the more Taoistic path.
A true inter-nation diplomacy would win all hearts and minds over time to a benign Americanism, as the US doesn’t seek to convert cultures (only to take resources and dominate politics!). It could be aligned to Old Boy’s passage.
But of course, in Lao Tze’s day there were no “nations” in the context of the State that we face today. Nations were orders of powerful kings, and there were rules of honour and respect that become significant in Confucianism. Confucian philosophy was founded on the appropriate relations between peoples, while Taoism was more the individual in nature and the universe. he Confucian ideal is of mutual respect with a strong ordering of society around the family and civic duty. Again, translated to today, a Confucian moral landscape would detach from colonizing everything in the world and we would attend to and repair our own problems. We would create a society worth living on for the “families” of the kingdom or nation, and that greater nation would be most attractive to the smaller nations, yet cohesive and resistant to domination. Like Asian countries are still, today, including Russia.
Globalism is imperial colonization and is against all Chinese philosophy. When globalists inveigh against nationalist movements, they are only revealing their fear of loss of power and their ability to skim wealth from their organization of global markets. They don’t give a damn about their own cultures, how they can care about another’s?