Was reading about a story from A Cornucopia of Tang Fiction and Zhang Zhuo’s A Record of Things Seen and Heard, when I thought of your above essay upon reading this gruesome fictional passage:
“The next day, Gao Zan held another banquet and boiled his twin ten-year old boys. When their heads and hands and feet were revealed, the guests became nauseated and vomited.”
“A real man either lives by eating from state sacrificial cauldrons or dies by being boiled alive in one.” is wild!
Fascinating, erudite, impressive writing, Xianyang City Bureaucrat!
I’m from pretty close to Xianyang, so you and I are 老乡。
What I’m able to write is not up to your level, but I take the liberty of sharing my “Good-looking Chinese ladies for decisive military victory, as related by Louis Cha”, because I think you might find it funny and interesting, as I do:
Just wanted to point out that in the first paragraph, they found that rice farming actually leads to higher time preference and lower delayed gratification (delay discounting), and higher risk taking. Lower age at first birth PGS score also correlates with higher disinhibition. The correlation they found on the PGS level was rather statistically insignificant anyhow, this area needs more study.
My upcoming "China's Soft Underbelly" piece will tackle what these differences pose for China's domestic and foreign relations.
Was reading about a story from A Cornucopia of Tang Fiction and Zhang Zhuo’s A Record of Things Seen and Heard, when I thought of your above essay upon reading this gruesome fictional passage:
“The next day, Gao Zan held another banquet and boiled his twin ten-year old boys. When their heads and hands and feet were revealed, the guests became nauseated and vomited.”
Translated by @WuxiaWanderings (https://wuxiawanderings.com/gu-long-on-wuxia/#more-3058)
Yep. It's often struck me that Chinese literature has way more of these stories than can be explained by random chance alone...
“A real man either lives by eating from state sacrificial cauldrons or dies by being boiled alive in one.” is wild!
Fascinating, erudite, impressive writing, Xianyang City Bureaucrat!
I’m from pretty close to Xianyang, so you and I are 老乡。
What I’m able to write is not up to your level, but I take the liberty of sharing my “Good-looking Chinese ladies for decisive military victory, as related by Louis Cha”, because I think you might find it funny and interesting, as I do:
https://feikayser.substack.com/p/chinese-ladies-for-decisive-military
Thank you, will read :)
Fits in with Bryan Van Norden’s
Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries
Just wanted to point out that in the first paragraph, they found that rice farming actually leads to higher time preference and lower delayed gratification (delay discounting), and higher risk taking. Lower age at first birth PGS score also correlates with higher disinhibition. The correlation they found on the PGS level was rather statistically insignificant anyhow, this area needs more study.
My upcoming "China's Soft Underbelly" piece will tackle what these differences pose for China's domestic and foreign relations.