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Chinese Quotes

“LONG YEARNING Long yearning, To be in Chang'an. The grasshoppers weave their autumn song by the golden railing of the well; Frost coalesces on my bamboo mat, changing its colour with cold. My lonely lamp is not bright, I’d like to end these thoughts; I roll back the hanging, gaze at the moon, and long sigh in vain. The beautiful person's like a flower beyond the edge of the clouds. Above is the black night of heaven's height; Below is the green water billowing on. The sky is long, the road is far, bitter flies my spirit; The spirit I dream can't get through, the mountain pass is hard. Long yearning, Breaks my heart.”

PoetryHeartbreakChineseYearning
Author:Li Bai
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“Workers were required to stay six months, and even then permission to quit was not always granted. The factory held the first two months of every worker's pay; leaving without approval meant losing that money and starting over somewhere else. That was a fact of factory life you couldn't know from the outside: Getting into a factory was easy. The hard part was getting out.”

LifeWomenCapitalismLaborChinaChineseGirlsGlobalizationCityMigrantsRuralFactoryMigrantManufactureChuqu
Author:Leslie T. Chang
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“The first Chinese star, they call her, and it's the qualifications that are crucial. First. Chinese. A star may play only him- or herself, but she is supposed to play a race. How can she be herself and represent millions, both at once? And who does she represent them to? To themselves or others? "Who does she thinks she is?" an outraged Nationalist critic has demanded. She wishes she could say. Not a star, then. A star gives off its own light. Another celestial body, a moon, reflecting others' light.”

RaceFameChineseChinese American
Book:The Fortunes
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“Don’t read books! Don’t chant poems! When you read books your eyeballs wither away leaving the bare sockets. When you chant poems your heart leaks out slowly with each word. People say reading books is enjoyable. People say chanting poems is fun. But if your lips constantly make a sound like an insect chirping in autumn, you will only turn into a haggard old man. And even if you don’t turn into a haggard old man, it’s annoying for others to have to hear you. It’s so much better to close your eyes, sit in your study, lower the curtains, sweep the floor, burn incense. It’s beautiful to listen to the wind, listen to the rain, take a walk when you feel energetic, and when you’re tired go to sleep.”

PoetryZenPeacefulChinese12th Century
Author:Yang Wanli
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“It is fundamental to both Taoist and Confucian thought that the natural man is to be trusted, and from their standpoint it appears that the Western mistrust of human nature-whether theological or technological-is a kind of schizophrenia. It would be impossible, in their view, to believe oneself innately evil without discrediting the very belief, since all the notions of a perverted mind would be perverted notions.”

PhilosophyHuman NatureTheologyChineseTaoism
Book:The Way of Zen
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“The soft pit-pat of her footfalls echoed through dark hallways as she tiptoed toward the courtyard. Outside, the evening air was crisp. The fragrance of sweet osmanthus wafted across her path as crickets chirped near the burbling stream. Mulan followed a stone walkway over a bridge and under a round archway that took her out of their inner yard. A small red pagoda sat atop the hill beyond.”

HomeChinesePathwayCourtyard
Book:Feather and Flame
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“Approaching the Start of Civil Exams Perhaps I was once a young Chinese scholar approaching the start of civil exams, my mind grown weary and sad from seclusion with books on syntax and poetic style. All that I knew were the mist-covered mountains and sweet white blossoms of mountain apples that grew in the valleys of my province. But I had been gone over six years busy with studies in the Heavenly City empty and thin despite my work. I showed my verses to an older poet who told me a truth I longed to believe: all knowledge is futile and barren which does not open the love of your friends.”

LoveTruthFriendshipWorkKnowledgeStyleBooksPoetSweetSadBusyChinesePoeticScholarVersesWearyMountainsMistBarrenSyntaxSeclusionFutileBlossoms
Author:Jim Chapson
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“A man in a boat is crossing a river when he sees an empty boat on course to collide with him. This doesn’t make him angry even though he’s an angry person. But then he sees someone is in the boat — he calls out, telling them to change direction. When his first call gets no response, he calls out again. And when the second is also met with silence, he calls out a third time, throwing in some insults for good measure. Before, he wasn't angry — now he is. Before, the other boat was empty — now there's someone in it. When you imagine the boats empty you won’t be so angry.”

PhilosophyPoetryPoemEmpathyEmptyChineseTaoismStoicismBoatsZhuangzi
Author:Zhuangzi
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“Spring returns to my lonely chamber, Once more spring grass is lush and green. Some red plum blossoms are open, Others have yet to bloom. I grind tea bricks into fine jade powder In a pot carved with azure clouds, Still under the spell of the morning's dream, Till all of a sudden I am woken By a jug of spring. Flower shadows press at the double gate, Pale moonlight silvers the translucent curtains. A beautiful evening! Three times in two years We've missed the spring. Come back without further ado And let's enjoy our fill of this spring!”

PoetryLonelinessChineseClassicMelancholyReminiscence
Author:Li Qing Zhao
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“I breakfasted with the crapulent major a week later. It was an earthy, quotidian scene, the kind Walt Whitman would have loved to write about, a sketch of the new America featuring hot rice porridge and fried crullers at a Monterey Park noodle shop crammed full of unrepentantly unassimilated Chinese and a few other assorted Asians.”

FoodChineseImmigrantsBreakfastVietnameseVietnamese AmericansAsian AmericansChinese Americans
Book:The Sympathizer
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“What benefit have the Hindus derived from their contact with Christian nations? The idea generally prevalent in this country about the morality and truthfulness of the Hindus evidently has been very low. Such seeds of enmity and hatred have been sown by the missionaries that it would be an almost Herculean task to establish better relations between India and America... If we examine Greek, Chinese, Persian, or Arabian writings on the Hindus, before foreigners invaded India, we find an impartial description of their national character. Megasthenes, the famous Greek ambassador, praises them for their love of truth and justice, for the absence of slavery, and for the chastity of their women. Arrian, in the second century, Hiouen-thsang, the famous Buddhist pilgrim in the seventh century, Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, have written in highest terms of praise of Hindu morality. The literature and philosophy of Ancient India have excited the admiration of all scholars, except Christian missionaries.”

CharacterAmericaChristianityMoralityIndiaChineseGreekTruthfulnessPersianEnmityHinduArabianMissionariesHerculesJainismMarco PoloChristian MissionariesHerculeanArrianMegasthenesXuanzang
Book:The Monist
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“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”

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Book:The Communist Manifesto
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“The Chinese considered the moon to be yin, feminine and full of negative energy, as opposed to the sun that was yang and exemplified masculinity. I liked the moon, with its soft silver beams. It was at once elusive and filled with trickery, so that lost objects that had rolled into the crevices of a room were rarely found, and books read in its light seemed to contain all sorts of fanciful stories that were never there the next morning.”

SunBooksMoonChinese
Book:The Ghost Bride
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“Yong is the outer manifestation of something. Ti is the underlying essence. Technology is a yong associated with a particular ti that is ... Western, and completely alien to us [the Chinese]. For centuries, since the time of the Opium Wars, we have struggled to absorb the yong of technology without importing the Western ti. But it has been impossible. Just as our ancestors could not open our ports to the West without accepting the poison of opium, we could not open our lives to Western technology without taking in the Western ideas, which have been as a plague on our society. The result has been centuries of chaos.”

HistoryTechnologySocietyWesternChinese
Book:The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
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“My little donkey, if I hadn't shown up, your fate would have been sealed. Love has saved you. Is there anything else that could erase the innate fears of a donkey and send him to rescue you from certain death? No. That is the only one. With a call to arms, I, Ximen Donkey, charged down the ridge and headed straight for the wolf that was tailing my beloved. My hooves kicked up sand and dust as I raced down from my commanding position; no wolf, not even a tiger, could have avoided the spearhead aimed at it. It saw me too late to move out of the way, and I thudded into it, sending it head over heels. Then I turned around and said to my donkey, "Do not fear my dear, I am here!”

LoveLifeBraveryChinese
Book:Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
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