Mid-Year Stock Take - Letter to Jon at 35

Mushroom cloud over Nagasaki 9 Aug.1945

 

Dear Jon,

Here we are, just breaching the second half of the 25th year of the 21st century. Also breaching the 35th year of your birth to your departure on August 9th. 

Admittedly, I have discovered more things about today as time progresses. It's perhaps of our fixation on birthdays that we overlook departure days. It has taken me nineteen years to realise more facts about August 9;

Apart from being Singapore's national day, and that it's exactly two weeks or 15 days after your birthday, 

it was also the devastation of Nagasaki when the US dropped a second nuclear bomb to unofficially and brutally end the war.

 It’s been a year since I last shared endings and beginnings with you. It was the beginning of the 2024 Paris Olympics ending around your departure date leaving the world relatively safe and peaceful. 

Fast forward one year, this post is a sort of report card of where the human race is at. 

1. The human race has never been so comfortable, peaceful and empowered in their daily lives. 

2. Things could get worse. 

3. Things could get really bad. 

We live in a material world. We do all that matters in search of better lives chasing dreams in a society that has provided the best in healthcare, food, living conveniences, economic and technological advances are unprecedented yet we’re on the verge of self- destruction. 

There is a serious trust deficit growing amongst us since the end of the cold war. From relationships to families, communities and nations. Most people in the civilised world are living ultra comfortable lives yet not happier but more anxious desiring more of everything material that we think will make us happier. Be it entertainment, food, sex, possessions or anything that provides distractions from ourselves. 

The endless scrolling of screens be it the mobile devices as an extension of our hands or the large screens as extensions of our living rooms, searching for news and useless information so we can feel-better. That’s not what happiness looks like.

As if not serious enough, we are heralding the dawn of Ai, arguably mankind's greatest technological achievement, coming into the mix. Although the possibilities are positively game changing, the dangers of misuse by bad actors using Ai to plot world domination, loom ominous. 

Not withstanding Ai, the madness is already upon us. Israel is carrying out a systemic genocide on the Palestinians since October 2023. As if mad with bloodlust they have started wars with Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen with the aid of their lackey the US and no end in sight.. 

It is a slow and painful genocide in Palestine. The Israelis are deliberately starving women & children and mindless wars are being waged in the Middle East that could escalate into another nuclear third world war. 

One would think that after Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy & the Japanese defeat in the Second World War would have taught us the futility of war but apparently not. It has been exactly 80 years since the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked by the US ending the war but more wars are being waged around the world today instigated or led by the US. 

Isn’t it ironic, that the liberators of the free world from the horrors of the Second World War has been the sole peddler of wars ever since? It seems that the most powerful nation on earth is hell bent on destroying it. America has been entrusted to lead and police the world and they have done so with impunity. The age old adage still rings true; 'Who is going to police the police?'

These realities come to light when Donald Trump won a second term in the White House. A convicted felon managed to win a landslide victory beating the democrats whose last term was disastrous even irresponsible. Democrats or Republicans, America's politics have, from the onset, been divisive- "Either you're on my side or you're against me." This is nothing new as Americans have subscribed even invented this form of 'game theory' for decades against it's own people as well as the rest of the world. The world's largest human lab has in turn, turned the world into it's own human lab- bringing it's own ideology of governance or justice to all, inflicting chaos and destruction everywhere they choose. The only diplomacy they know is through force or coercion. Donald Trump is no different from his predecessors. 

"When all you have is a hammer, every challenge you face becomes a nail to be hammered out."

The only difference is that Trump is not a career politician but a 'businessman' and hopefully he can begin to see that business can only be done with mutual transfer of value benefitting both sides leading to a multi-lateral world, not one of domination by a facist regime. In fact, America is known to be a plutocracy (ruled by the rich 1%) or even kleptocracy (ruled by thieves) and the only reason they can be that is that they wield the biggest hammer. 

However, with the inevitable rise of China after a century of humiliation, there is a new world leader in the making. Compared to four thousand years of civilisation, it took only a century of humiliation to put order to the chaos largely brought upon themselves, tranquilised by the comforts of the spoils of internal warfare and imperial rule handed down through the dynasties. Starting with the end of the Qing Dynasty, China bade farewell to it's last emperor Puyi and the Chinese Communist Party won complete victory in the Chinese Civil War and the People's Republic of China was founded in August 1950. 

So in a sort of a roundabout way, I have briefly but more importantly recounted the journey and establishment of a world power worthy and capable of standing up to the US in the delicate balance of power as to who holds the bigger hammer, be it in military strength or Ai advancement to rule the world. 

I often wonder what we wouldn't talk about son.

Happy 35th Birthday Jon.

Happy New Year. A History Lesson.

What can we expect in the 21st Century. 

Going into 2023 seems like a good time to give the third decade of the 21st Century an assessment.

 How we live in the 21st century depends on what we learnt from the past. 

The past, where much has happened by way of human endeavours, achievements and deeds. A past that unfolded in a region where we Asians live, a past that can inform us about our history or be condemned to repeat it. 

It started with great disaster manifesting in a Corona apocalypse that has reset the world. In a world that badly needed a reset and quiet riposte from the onset of the 21st Century. 

The world order was set in motion in 2001 with September 11. The events on the attack of the World Trade Center led to the further unleashing of American hubris in the Middle East and the torture chambers of Guantanamo Bay. 

Another major event set in motion in the same year, was the lesser known admission of China into the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The Phoenix rises...

It is apparent which significant event born in the second year of the 21st century is going to last another century- China's rise. Which should come as no surprise seeing China's economic performance of late but more importantly recognising the fact that China has been leading the world in economic performance, technology, knowledge, culture and the arts for over 4,000 years before 1820.

The West, mainly Portugal, Spain, Great Britain and France traded with China for over a century for tea, silk, porcelain, spices, even basic condiments like salt and sugar. Before that, during the 7th Century, merchants were plying the silk road trading with China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907CE). See China's Golden Age.

Etching by 19th century British artist Thomas Allom showing the Dayuling Pass between Jiangxi and Guangdong, a key transport artery between Jiangnan and Lingnan where merchants passed and where the Gan River flowed. The beautiful scenery was mesmerising. Image: Hsu Chung-mao

From the 1700, the modern world had begun trading with China, first the Portuguese, the Dutch and the Spanish came to the East looking for spices to make their bland tasting meals edible. Then the British came under the guise of The East India Company, enslaved the people of India, Burma, Malaya, Borneo, and Java by defeating and breaking the Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish dominance of the East Indies. 

British dominance grew and so did their demand for Chinese luxury goods especially tea, porcelain and silk. This resulted in a trade imbalance in favour of the Chinese. To counter this imbalance, the British started growing opium in Bengal and allowed British merchants to sell opium to Chinese smugglers for illegal sale in China. The influx of illegal narcotics created increasing numbers of opium addicts that eventually reversed the trade imbalance to Britain's favour by 1820. 

The Most Profitable Commodity in the 19th Century

The sale of opium became Britain's largest single most profitable commodity in the 19th century. It became so big even the American merchants joined the action bringing in cheaper opium from Turkey. The opium demand grew rapidly as Chinese dealers could travel further inland to sell the narcotic to more Chinese. Demand outgrew supply attracting more European dealers to China selling more opium. 

As the opium trade grew so did the expatriate population of European merchants in Canton and Macau and soon the influx of private entrepreuners broke the monopoly of the East India Company. British merchants like William Jardine and James Matheson (later founded Jardine Matheson & Co, British principal opium producer) together with their Indian supplier Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, formed a trinity of dealing in legal goods at the same time profiting from trafficking opium to China for decades. 

With great wealth comes great influence and the great gains from their illegal sale of opium allowed them to navigate the system and smuggled in more opium to fund their enterprise which in turn funded the Chinese authorities to turn a blind eye. 

Human greed knows no bounds, when soon the wealthy merchants grew contemptuous of Chinese legal systems and began fighting for more trading rights and political recognition by Imperial China. Meanwhile opium addiction grew among the Chinese and officials wrote the following describing the extent of the widespread addiction;

 

At the beginning, opium smoking was confined to the fops of wealthy families who took up the habit as a form of conspicuous consumption, even they knew that they should not indulge in it to the greatest extreme. Later, people of all social strata—from government officials and members of the gentry to craftsmen, merchants, entertainers, and servants, and even women, Buddhist monks and nuns, and Taoist priests—took up the habit and openly bought and equipped themselves with smoking instruments. Even in the center of our dynasty—the nation's capital and its surrounding areas—some of the inhabitants have also been contaminated by this dreadful poison.

The Scholar Official

The Qing Emperor, obviously alarmed at this dilemma issued a decree to stop the illegal opium trade, and appointed Commissioner Lin Xezu to eradicate the problem. Lin, quickly addressed the source and wrote an open letter to the 'Ruler of England' urging the Queen to end the opium trade. He stated that "..foreigners like the British have travelled great distances to come to China to procure goods for their wellbeing and benefit. Then how can the foreigners return injury for the benefit they have received by sending this poison to harm their benefactors?" "Since opium is illegal in the UK, he thinks it is wrong for the Queen to support it's sale in China as well as its cultivation and production in the British territories of Bengal, Patna, Bombay, Madras and Malwa." He further informed the Queen that he intends to "cut the drug forever." There was no response.

Having sworn to carry out his mission, Lin Xezu enforced the ban on the sale of opium and demanded that all supplies be surrendered to Chinese authorities. He closed the Pearl River channel trapping all British traders in Canton, raided all warehouses and ships stockpiling opium and destroyed all the opium seized. 

British Naval officer, diplomat and colonial administrator, Charles Elliot, protested the seizures but he had the good intention to avoid war and convinced the British merchants to cooperate with Chinese authorities. They handed over the stockpile with promise of compensation by the British government, who never agreed to this promise. This ploy further gave rise to British justification for starting the war.  During April and May 1839, British and American dealers surrendered 20,283 chests and 200 sacks of opium. The stockpile was publicly destroyed on the beach outside Canton.

History has proven that the best way to promote any product is to ban it. With the opium ban in force,  the black market for smugglers grew. Foreign ships arrived laden with opium, unaware of the ban had to unload their illegal cargo at Lintin Island. The sharp rise in opium prices made local traders and smugglers more eager to smuggle more opium into China. This was a great damper on Commissioner Lin's efforts to eradicate opium addiction. It seems that the opium scourge has been deeply entrenched for over two decades no thanks to push and pull economics. The British were pushing the narcotic they grew and manufactured in India to the local Chinese merchants' demands, for profit from a huge and growing distribution network. 

Who pays The Price of Progress?

China in the 19th Century seems to already suffer from the ills of progress. A growing population with growing affluence from trading goods the world craves, while she craves for nothing that the world has to offer in goods but illegal opium. 

While the world craves for her wares of fine silk, tea and porcelain, all sorts of characters- sailors, seamen, traders, merchants, of all pedigree would show up on her shores. These men would arrive from  all corners of the globe, principally Britain, Spain, France, Holland and the US, they would bring their silver and their wares to trade with China. The Imperial court foresaw the complications that these trade intrusions would cause and they decreed that trade should only be restricted to the Canton system, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Canton.

What do we do with the drunken sailors?

True to form, in July 1839 a group of British merchant sailors got drunk on Chinese rice wine in Kowloon. Two of them got out of hand and beat to death a villager from nearby Tsim Sha Tsui. While Superintendent Elliot arrested the sailors and sentenced them to punishment in Naval court, he also refused to hand them over to Chinese authorities fearing they would be killed. 

Angered by their refusal and lack of respect for Chinese sovereignty, Commissioner Lin had to enforce punitive action as the British were running rough-shod over the Imperial decree yet again. He issued an edict preventing the sale of food to the British and ordered all ships to leave the Chinese coast. By the end of August over 60 British ships and over 2000 people were idling off the Chinese coast, fast running out of provisions. 

A hungry man is an angry man.

On 4 September 1839, Superintendent Elliot sailed into Kowloon for food supplies and encountered three Chinese junks. The Chinese peasants were forbidden to sell food to the British, after an ultimatum given by Elliot met with no response, the British opened fire at the Chinese junks. The junks returned fire and Chinese gunners on land began to fire at the British ships. By nightfall the Chinese junks withdrew allowing the British to desperately procure food supplies bribing local villagers in Kowloon. Thus was the start and end of the day old Battle of Kowloon, the first of many to follow in the first Opium War. 

Mounting pressures from the demand and supply chain in British, Indian and Chinese business owners, coupled with the loss of profits from the confiscation of illegal opium in China, led the British parliament to approve funding for war against China in October 1839. This was in spite of the fact that the public in both Britain and America expressed outrage at the British supporting the opium trade. 

Then member of Parliament, William Ewart Gladstone called it "most infamous and atrocious" referring to the opium trade between China and British India in particular. On the first opium war, Gladstone criticised it as "a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace."

By November 1839, Foreign Secretary Palmeston instructed the Governor General of India to prepare military force for deployment in China.

The First Opium War 

The war that marked the start of what 20th century Chinese nationalists called the "Century of Humiliation". The ease with which the British forces defeated the numerically superior Chinese armies damaged the dynasty's prestige. The Treaty of Nanking was a step to opening the lucrative Chinese market to global commerce and the opium trade. The interpretation of the war, which was long the standard in the People's Republic of China, was summarised in 1976: The Opium War, "in which the Chinese people fought against British aggression, marked the beginning of modern Chinese history and the start of the Chinese people's bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism.

 

Started in 1839 and ended with the Chinese losing in 1842 with heavy casualties and an uneven treaty called the Treaty of Nanjing forcing the Chinese to accept punitive terms in further opening up her country and markets to accommodate the Europeans, chiefly the British. Several more wars were to be fought in the ensuing years when unfair terms left one side seething with anger and dissatisfaction. 

Now after a hundred years of being trampled and beaten by foreigners and one hundred and eighty four years since the first opium war, the Chinese have learnt that; ".. if you are unprepared, you will be badly beaten." 

Given the geopolitical situation in the world today, China is very well prepared. The Lion is finally awake. 

*How they did it is a story for another day.

Happy New Year. And Happy Chinese New Year 2023.

I love you. Tang Dynasty - Golden Age of China

 Tang Dynasty - Art & Poetry.

During the Golden Age of China, poets and poetry was highly revered amongst royalty, court officials, concubines and commoners. Not only do they appreciate poetry, almost everyone became poets themselves, writing and reciting about life, unfolding in their time.  Records revealed that, thousands of poets had written thousands upon thousands of poetry. Thanks to the Tang court and others who came after, like the Song, Ming, and Ching Emperors, who made it mandatory to archiving volumes of Tang poetry.

 *According to the pre-eminent collection of Tang poetry entitled Complete Tang Poems( Quan Tangshi in Chinese), there were around 49,000 surviving poems divided into 900 volumes and written by a total of 2,200 authors.

They say; Art mirrors Life. And life during the Tang period in China was blossoming. 

Almost all aspects of life were going gloriously well. This was mostly due to the good governance of the Li Family who ruled during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). Li Yuan, the founder was a garrison commander in Taiyuan when revolt against the Sui Dynasty broke out in 613. He marched to the Sui capital, forced the last Sui emperor to abdicate and founded the Tang Dynasty. From here onwards, it took five years of campaigning by the imperial princes Li Jiancheng and Li Shimin before the country was reunified.

Here are some notable achievements during the Tang Dynasty aka China's Golden Era;

• Commerce and Economy - Trade flourished within inter-cities as well as internationally. Merchants flocked to China via the Silk Road opening up trade routes and exchanges of knowledge and culture between East and West flourished. Chang'An, the capital was the largest city in the world rivalling Rome which was the Western equivalent at that time. China was the most powerful and the most prosperous nation on earth.

• Good Governance - Just like all dynasties, it was ruled by a powerful emperor who instituted, modified and carried out reforms within a legal system with laws that benefitted everyone. 

The government of the Tang Dynasty had three basic departments that came up with laws and policies. The framework of rules and laws were all administered by a group that was called the Six Ministries. These ministries were; 

1-military, 

2-personnel administration, 

3-finance, 

4-justice, 

5-rites 

6-the public works. 

This system worked very well and it actually outlived the Tang Dynasty, which collapsed in the year 907. The government system was actually modelled upon which every dynasty based its own systems. This was also widely used by other kingdoms and countries, including Korea and Vietnam.

• Art and Culture - Creativity in the form of culture, art, painting and poetry were heavily promoted during this time. Notably Tang poetry which stood to define Chinese literary culture to this day. 

Some characteristics of Tang poetry.

Tang poetry was strongly connected to religion and had a major impact on the Song Dynasty poetry and even on world literature. The most popular Tang poetry styles included ”jintishi,” used by poets such as Cui Hao and Wang Wei and ”gushi,” used by Li Bai.

The former poetical style is characterized by seven Chinese characters per line, an antithesis between the second and the third couplets, and eight-line stanzas. Poetry contests were very popular and Tang poems were often recited in Classical Chinese, which was spoken during that era.

Here is one of the most famous, that almost all Chinese scholars would know:

Song of Unending Sorrow

China's Emperor, craving beauty that might shake an empire,

Was on the throne for many years, searching, never finding,

Till a little child of the Yang clan, hardly even grown,

Bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her,

But with graces granted by heaven and not to be concealed,

At last one day was chosen for the imperial household.

If she but turned her head and smiled, there were cast a hundred spells,

And the powder and paint of the Six Palaces faded into nothing.

...It was early spring. They bathed her in the FlowerPure Pool,

Which warmed and smoothed the creamy-tinted crystal of her skin,

And, because of her languor, a maid was lifting her

When first the Emperor noticed her and chose her for his bride.

The cloud of her hair, petal of her cheek, gold ripples of her crown when she moved,

Were sheltered on spring evenings by warm hibiscus curtains;

But nights of spring were short and the sun arose too soon,

And the Emperor, from that time forth, forsook his early hearings

And lavished all his time on her with feasts and revelry,

His mistress of the spring, his despot of the night.

There were other ladies in his court, three thousand of rare beauty,

But his favours to three thousand were concentered in one body.

By the time she was dressed in her Golden Chamber, it would be almost evening;

And when tables were cleared in the Tower of Jade, she would loiter, slow with wine.

Her sisters and her brothers all were given titles;

And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,

She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,

Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy.

...High rose Li Palace, entering blue clouds,

And far and wide the breezes carried magical notes

Of soft song and slow dance, of string and bamboo music.

The Emperor's eyes could never gaze on her enough-

Till war-drums, booming from Yuyang, shocked the whole earth

And broke the tunes of The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.

The Forbidden City, the nine-tiered palace, loomed in the dust

From thousands of horses and chariots headed southwest.

The imperial flag opened the way, now moving and now pausing- -

But thirty miles from the capital, beyond the western gate,

The men of the army stopped, not one of them would stir

Till under their horses' hoofs they might trample those moth- eyebrows....

Flowery hairpins fell to the ground, no one picked them up,

And a green and white jade hair-tassel and a yellowgold hair- bird.

The Emperor could not save her, he could only cover his face.

And later when he turned to look, the place of blood and tears

Was hidden in a yellow dust blown by a cold wind.

... At the cleft of the Dagger-Tower Trail they crisscrossed through a cloud-line

Under Omei Mountain. The last few came.

Flags and banners lost their colour in the fading sunlight....

But as waters of Shu are always green and its mountains always blue,

So changeless was His Majesty's love and deeper than the days.

He stared at the desolate moon from his temporary palace.

He heard bell-notes in the evening rain, cutting at his breast.

And when heaven and earth resumed their round and the dragon car faced home,

The Emperor clung to the spot and would not turn away

From the soil along the Mawei slope, under which was buried

That memory, that anguish. Where was her jade-white face?

Ruler and lords, when eyes would meet, wept upon their coats

As they rode, with loose rein, slowly eastward, back to the capital.

...The pools, the gardens, the palace, all were just as before,

The Lake Taiye hibiscus, the Weiyang Palace willows;

But a petal was like her face and a willow-leaf her eyebrow --

And what could he do but cry whenever he looked at them?

...Peach-trees and plum-trees blossomed, in the winds of spring;

Lakka-foliage fell to the ground, after autumn rains;

The Western and Southern Palaces were littered with late grasses,

And the steps were mounded with red leaves that no one swept away.

Her Pear-Garden Players became white-haired

And the eunuchs thin-eyebrowed in her Court of PepperTrees;

Over the throne flew fire-flies, while he brooded in the twilight.

He would lengthen the lamp-wick to its end and still could never sleep.

Bell and drum would slowly toll the dragging nighthours

And the River of Stars grow sharp in the sky, just before dawn,

And the porcelain mandarin-ducks on the roof grow thick with morning frost

And his covers of kingfisher-blue feel lonelier and colder

With the distance between life and death year after year;

And yet no beloved spirit ever visited his dreams.

...At Lingqiong lived a Taoist priest who was a guest of heaven,

Able to summon spirits by his concentrated mind.

And people were so moved by the Emperor's constant brooding

That they besought the Taoist priest to see if he could find her.

He opened his way in space and clove the ether like lightning,

Up to heaven, under the earth, looking everywhere.

Above, he searched the Green Void, below, the Yellow Spring;

But he failed, in either place, to find the one he looked for.

And then he heard accounts of an enchanted isle at sea,

A part of the intangible and incorporeal world,

With pavilions and fine towers in the five-coloured air,

And of exquisite immortals moving to and fro,

And of one among them-whom they called The Ever True-

With a face of snow and flowers resembling hers he sought.

So he went to the West Hall's gate of gold and knocked at the jasper door

And asked a girl, called Morsel-of-Jade, to tell The Doubly- Perfect.

And the lady, at news of an envoy from the Emperor of China,

Was startled out of dreams in her nine-flowered, canopy.

She pushed aside her pillow, dressed, shook away sleep,

And opened the pearly shade and then the silver screen.

Her cloudy hair-dress hung on one side because of her great haste,

And her flower-cap was loose when she came along the terrace,

While a light wind filled her cloak and fluttered with her motion

As though she danced The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.

And the tear-drops drifting down her sad white face

Were like a rain in spring on the blossom of the pear.

But love glowed deep within her eyes when she bade him thank her liege,

Whose form and voice had been strange to her ever since their parting --

Since happiness had ended at the Court of the Bright Sun,

And moons and dawns had become long in Fairy-Mountain Palace.

But when she turned her face and looked down toward the earth

And tried to see the capital, there were only fog and dust.

So she took out, with emotion, the pledges he had given

And, through his envoy, sent him back a shell box and gold hairpin,

But kept one branch of the hairpin and one side of the box,

Breaking the gold of the hairpin, breaking the shell of the box;

"Our souls belong together," she said, " like this gold and this shell --

Somewhere, sometime, on earth or in heaven, we shall surely

And she sent him, by his messenger, a sentence reminding him

Of vows which had been known only to their two hearts:

"On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life,

We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world

That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,

And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."

Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,

While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever.

Bai Juyi

There are reportedly as many as 100 versions of the poem. Many as there are, they tell a beautiful tale of unending love as much as unending sorrow. This story also inspired a classic work of Japanese literature- Tale of Genji, written in the early 11th Century by Murasaki Shikibu declared to be the world's first novel.

At the end of it, my take is that for any dynasty, nation or society to prosper and thrive, it must nurture and promote their art and culture. For without them, people are merely roaming the earth in pursuit of material well being. Material well being cannot be sustained with just hard power alone. Soft power is as important if not more powerful, as has been demonstrated by the soft, beautiful and irresistible Yang GuiFei.