Reading

I am always skeptical with all those English textbooks for our school children. Besides being a cash cow of the publishers (too bad none of them is listed company - another proof that they are really making money), there seems no purpose for their existence.

Clinical medicine could not be taught by a textbook of physiology, but by seeing how other physicians handle cases, and then work with cases by your own self – hopefully with some guidance. English is no exception - how can you learn a language by reading grammar textbooks (not to say they are local ones written by dyed-hair gangsters with possible expressive dysphasia) ?

Read good – and interesting – English books (or songs, movies); write and speak in English. There are Sherlock Holmes (my own prejudice, of course), Harry Porter, Mark Twain, J Tolkien, Charles Dickens, and many others. I cannot imagine a school child find Tom Sawyer not a portrait of his friends (if not himself), or stop in the middle of Devonshire without reading to the end and find out who kept the Hound of Baskerville.

PS. I was about to recommend Strunk and White if there needs a textbook for "grammar", but it remains an unnecessary addition. After all The Elements of Style was meant for university students.

Language

Our honorable bureau eventually decides to surrender and gives up the MOI (Media of Instruction, 母語教學) policy in secondary schools. The policy is not a failure - it is a disaster.

Most of us agree that the English standard of our (university) students deteriorated a lot in the past 10 years - many of them have difficulties in writing a letter or expressing themselves in complete sentence. Of course it may not only be the result of our education system. Don't you write shorthands in emails and MSN ? But, the worrying bit is: our students do not end up with better capability of using Chinese. If you think their English letters are horrible, their Chinese ones are certainly not - you simply do not understand what they try to say (well, base on the assumption that they have used a few synapses and do have something to say).

PS. After some years of recession, economic "wake-up" (復甦) becomes a term that appears on TV news frequently. It is really disappointing - to say the least - that our dominant TV channel consistently mistaken the term "復甦" as "復蘇" in her evening news. No wonder our economy doesn't really wake up, it just sounds as if it is so.

Yokosuka

Another reason that made Momoe phenomenal was: she was a girl from Yokosuka (橫須賀).

Take a look on all the US naval facilities there. If Japan is the passive young Asian woman and America the strong (and armed !) man, Yokosuka is the - pornographic, if you prefer - point that they interact. A girl from this very city sounds being plundered and needs extra love and care.

(Listening to her early albums, Momoe did appear to be poorly treated - not by the American soldiers, but her managers. I consider it bad taste to ask a 14-year-old girl to sing Aoi Kajitsu [青い果実] or An Experience of One Summer [夏の経験] - with all those explicit lyrics: "You can do whatever you want with me, it's OK if rumors spread that I'm a bad girl." "I'll give you the most precious thing a girl has." Oh, my god.)

PS. I suddenly feel less uneasy that our government didn't allow Kitty Hawk - the US symbol in Yokosuka - to stay in the Victoria Harbour.

Momoe

Hear the name Momoe from a soap opera on TV last night - it is such a long forgotten name.

For those of a younger generation, I am referring to Momoe Yamaguchi (山口百惠). Yes, she is always the actress - somewhat like Irene Adler. "I am like the prima donna who makes positively the farewell performance ... it repeats itself an indefinite number of times !" No, she is not Hercule Poirot - nor most of the other imitators. After the last song in Budokan (武道館), promise was kept and she was off the stage - forever. We are left only with her films and albums. Her life as an artist was short - just like Sakura (櫻花) has a short time for flower viewing. That makes her a perfect symbol of Japan, and an eternal figure to be remembered.

Momoe wrote an autobiography Aoi Toki (蒼白時光), which I read in my university days. It is, of course, hardly a good book; but the title says all. To a (traditional) girl who gave everything to her family, the time under the lime light was no doubt a period of pallor.

Ritz Carlton

It is sad to see Ritz Carlton closing down. Although the building is not an old one, it has a hue of the traditional Europe. Everything is small and elegant - a distinct contrast to most of her competitors that follow the American doctrine: big is beauty.

There is so much good memory here: Vivian and I had our wedding banquet in the basement; we enjoyed many happy evenings - and memorable dinner - at Toscana. I can only pacify myself by believing that a lovely actress should die early, and a brilliant speech should be short. Otherwise there are wrinkles and hiccups and rusts (or is it actually degeneration of our own eyes and ears ?) and everything becomes different.

Yes, the best method to preserve a perfect place – or person – is to keep it (only) in our memory.

Topic

EW - a friend of mine and a regular audience of this blog - asks me to grumble less on Chinese history (and probably philosophy) and talk more on my friendly encounters with extra-terrestrials.

Well, I begin to understand the difficulty of those editors of our local papers. Is it more important to know the progress of the snow storm in China, Kosovo's independence, election in Pakistan, the crocodile's tear of Hillary, or these suspected famous women doing all the suspicious things ? For the owners of these media, they are out to make money, and the answer is obvious.

But there is no need to be too cynical. For many of those around, they would not give a penny for the paper unless there are all foggy – and partially covered – pictures on the front page. They would never know what's happening in Hunan or Balkan if they have to pay. So let's put all these under the cover of salt and spices.

PS. As an outdated man I like Frank Sinatra, especially his masterpiece <My Way>.

Paradox

To be fair to JW, he is almost always able to sell before the growth ceases and the price drops. And he often argues that, for a huge market like mainland China, a good company may continue to growth for 10 or 20 years.

(The famous saying of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca suddenly occurs to me: "Tonight ? How can I tell ? I never plan ahead for that long.")

My argument against that long period of growth is not as philosophical. Take the hypothetical company I put up yesterday. How much equity does it have - at the time with a price $30 and earns $1 per year ?

If it is $10, the return of equity (ROE) would be 10%. The earning of the next three years are $1, $1.3 and $1.69. If the company does not pay any dividend, the equity 3 years later would be $14. In other words, the ROE would become 15.7% ($2.2 - the profit next year - divided by $14) - a nearly 60% improvement. But, ROE reflects the nature of a business and it should remain similar. The above calculation implies that either the profit in the forth year becomes $1.4 (10% of $14) - the growth stops - or, in order to sustain a growth, the ROE improves dramatically. How ? Either the company is doing an entirely different business, or the debt ratio increases exponentially !

Growth

JW showed me the annual report of Manulife - a favorite stock of him, and an interesting one for me.

This highly respected colleague of mine has a special passion with growth stock. I am, alas, always skeptical about the future (and for which we two had several interesting, and fortunately not too colourful, discussion). He loves to quote the classical financial teaching, of which a stock with expected growth rate of 30% for the coming years (note the plural; it is not one year) can enjoy a PE ratio of 30 - and I am very hesitant to accept. Not only because a nominal yearly return of 3.3% seems too low to me, but rather for the fact that we can hardly be sure a certain business can have such a satisfactory growth for some years.

For example, if a stock has yearly earn of $1 and has expected growth rate of 30%, we can - by the growth stock valuation - give it an acceptable price of $30. Three years later, if the promise has been fulfilled, the yearly earn would be $2.2 (note the exponential growth). If the company has reached it limit and can no longer be regarded as a "growth stock", we would accept a PE of 10 to 12. The reasonable valuation, after 3 years of satisfactory growth, becomes $20 to $26.5 only. How can one accept this ?

燈謎

This is the Chinese Valentine's day. I shall follow the tradition and put up a quiz:

昔者有求必應

此後夢想成真

(猜一港鐵站名)

Rashōmon

Movie lovers may find my blog Paper two days ago somewhat confusing. Should it be Rashōmon (羅生門) that I was referring to ?

No. The movie Rashōmon by Akira Kurosawa (黑澤明) comes from the story In a Grove (竹藪中) by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (芥川龍之介). Akutagawa did have a story called Rashōmon, which is entirely different.

PS. Stealing hair from dead people to make wigs is of course a harsh way to make one's living, but the shocking bit of this story - at least to me - was that in the same country of that starving old woman, there were many people who could afford a wig !

Typing

You may find my grumbles on Chinese history boring. More likely you may wonder: why didn't I write this in Chinese ? It is in fact painstaking to check the English translation of all those names - people and places - which I do every time.

The reason is simple: I cannot type Chinese, at least not fluently - to the satisfaction of writing down my idea as I think. (Visitors to my office would notice a dingy page of instruction on Chinese typing [倉頡輔助字形表] posted on my memo board.) In the only Chinese paragraph that I wrote in this blog, I deliberately did it in traditional Chinese (文言文), which needs fewer number of words.

Of course the traditional Chinese writing was meant for the time when writing (or markings on pieces of bamboo, when there was not yet any paper) was not as convenient. It seems ironic to go back to the old writing system because of advance in technology.

Migration

You may think as a country, China is a more fortunate than Babylon. We had been one of the earliest civilizations and remains a "civilized" country - our land is not deserted, yet.

Hold on. People of my age should have studied Chinese history in secondary school. It remains stocking to see how the territory and capital of our home country changed with dynasty. Early in the Shang (商) and Zhou (周) period, the "civilized" Chinese was confounded to area along the Yellow River; places around the Yangtze (長江) were considered to be occupied by barbarians (南蠻). In the Han and Tang Dynasty, the government settled in Chang'an (長安) - with a population of nearly 2 million at the prime of Tang. The head city moved east and south to Bianjing (汴京) and then Lin'an (臨安) in the Song (宋) time. At this moment, Chang'an was under the territory of the Jin (金) Empire - and by then a much deserted place. In Ming (明) and Qing (清) periods, most of the food within the kingdom was grown from southern provinces - so much so that King Hangxi (康熙) had to put "canal transport" (漕運) as one of the three major problems to tackle during his reign.

"Canal transport", alas, is the transportation of rice and all other agricultural products from Yangtze area to the northern part of the coutry - and Beijing.

(By the way, it seems most paradoxical for our local government to scrap the subject Chinese history from the syllabus of our secondary school on one hand, but promote "patriotic education" on the other. Oh, maybe our officials are actually right - you cannot achieve the latter otherwise.)

Paper

Once I think of paper, I consider the most serious military defeat in the history of China the Battle of Talas.

For those who have not heard of this happening, here is some background. It was the transition period between pre- and post-Islam dysnasties of Iran in the middle Asia, and the peak of Tang Dynasty in China - under the reign of Li Longji (李隆基, 唐玄宗). In short, the two empire ended up having a battle (for various possible reasons, including competing for the support amongst tribes of the middle Asia) near Talas. The Tang army was defeated; the empire was soon followed by the rebellion of An Lushan (安史之亂). The rest, alas, as they say, has become the history.

I said it was the worst miliary defeat not because 30000 Chinese soldiers were killed, or that the influence in middle Asia vanished quickly. More seriously, prisoners of war from the Tang empire transmitted their technology of making paper to their Islamic masters, and later to the Europe via the First Crusade. Without all these happenings, the world would be very much different from that nowadays.

PS. It is real fun to read the accounts from the two sides of the Battle - you can hardly believe they are describing the same event. The invented tale of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (芥川龍之介) - In a Grove (竹藪中) - is a second best way behind.

Babel

On a second thought, did the Tower of Babel project fail because of communication problem (alas, in the straight literal and biblical sense), or were there other factors ? If you've read Jared Diamond, the idea of environment exhaustion would certainly come to your mind. It needs man to build the Tower (and possibly more to protect the border of the kingdom). The population continued to growth until it reached a point when the agricultural production could not support. It was also a time when fertilizer - even natural ones, you know what I mean - was not extensively used. Attempts to boost up crop production by intense seedling would certainly result in famine after exhaustion of nutrients in the soil (we have similar experience not so long ago ...), and the need of wood for building the Tower means that forest is reduced and farms will soon turn into desert.

Well, I'm not sure how much truth there is in this speculation. After all, it is equally possible that the Bible is completely correct even in literatal sense, and the project failed simply because of communication problem - not strictly because of different languages, but because of difference in idea amongst various groups of builders (i.e. "teams"). Remember it was a time long before paper and printing were invented, and people just talked to communicate - without any writen documentation. No surprise administration was difficult and target never reached.

PS. Of course it is much agruable whether the appearance of paper could have helped the Tower. More likely forest would disappear more quickly (to make the papers) and the workers would be drowned by bureaucratic work !

No harm

I cannot remember who said this prinicple of medical practice: first, do no harm. (Was it William Osler, Dr. Loeb, or somebody else ?) A good number of patients certainly die of this doctrine.

Why, a patient has chronic - say for example - heart problem and is treated with a number of medications. Some time later, he has jaundice and is referred to a hepatologist - who notes (quite rightly) that one of the heart medicine may cause the liver problem. How would you regard this infra-diaphragmatic physician if his response is not stopping the culprit - because he does not want to embarrass the colleague who takes care of the organ above the triangular ligaments (oh, an inferiority complex) or bare the responsibility in case the patient develops a heart attack the next day ? He sees the prescription sheet, considers for a while, and decides to do no harm - and do nothing. Oh, my god.

As the old proverb says, there is a (clear) fine line between an idiot standing by the side of shore and fishing.

Collaboration

I was completely mistaken to suggest sending a copy of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations to those emigrated to Pluto. They’ve certainly studied this bible well – at least for the first paragraph. That’s why they put so much emphasis on doing collaborative research.

No, it is not collaboration – according to their definition – if you are a rheumatologist and he is a cardiologist, and you two propose to do some work on premature atherosclerosis in lupus patients. It must be the marriage between a hematologist and a (basic) pharmacologist, a neurosurgeon and a musician, or a psychiatrist and an architect. (Alas, the children of the last couple – we know just too well – are called Fung Shui [風水].)

And polygamy is much encouraged – if you manage to arrange a wedding between three or more sexes.

Well, I do not object collaborative work, but there is no need to give up everything else, or do something merely for the sake of collaboration. Having people from different fields do not always result in fresh idea. More often then not they just use all the time to understand each other – or worse, to juggle with politics or bureaucratic formalities.

Our friends in Pluto have probably forgotten the most ambitious collaborative work in human history was the Tower of Babel.

Integration

Amongst all the obsessive behavior of our team from Pluto, the passion of an “integrated” teaching (and examination) is certainly phenomenal.

Why, experts from highly different areas do not become integrated just because they sit together and each gives a short speech – in their own language. A course of dinner does not become “fusion” dishes by merely putting won ton in soup as the starter and sirloin as the entrée. No, even if you put fried rice as the side dish for the steak, it does not mix – it becomes a monster (alas, colonial cuisine). As a part-time gourmet I would rather visit an Indian restaurant today and a French one tomorrow – I shall integrate myself after learning the fine taste from each country, certainly not all in a single hurry evening.

Perhaps we should send a copy of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations to those creatures in Pluto. The very first paragraph of this masterpiece goes like this: The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgement … have been the effects of the division of labour.

FW

(cont'd)

We lunched together. His eyes were different - he was too worn off by the tough life in India, as he told me. Again people around set plots against him. He could not find a job, and was doing a kind of speculation trade in the foreign exchange market - via the internet.

For a while, he did make a living from this - to me - highly unsecure income. We had tea in a few peaceful afternoon, and long chats over the phone in many winter nights. The conversation, nevertheless, was usually in one direction: he lost money in the exchange market because people around stole his idea, and other friends of his - some of whom I knew very well were straight and honest persons - looked down upon and got away from him.

"Maybe you should find a job and settle, rather than relying on something (to me) not much different from gambling ? After all, your mother should take some rest and retire." I suggested. His mother, whom I met several times in the past, was a hard-working woman who kept the good old tradition and never said something rude.

"No, I cannot get away. They shall spy on me and take my idea whereever I go."

"Who ?" I began to worry.

He was mute, and the conversation broke off. Some days later I asked a friend - a psychiatrist by profession - what to do. Of course nothing could be done. "You have no proof that he is insane," my friend commented.

Again FW disappeared from my life for another few years. When my memory of him had almost vanished, he rang up my office one day. "I can go no where. These people keep spying on me. Why are they against me ?"

I considered for a while, "Maybe you should find some reliable people to talk to ? Have you told your mother ?"

I was wrong, not realizing I was that reliable person. He retorted right the way, "Don't you believe me ? Do you think I am making all this up ? These people are all together. Once I tell them, they would lock me up again"

The line broke off. I've never heard from FW since then. Did he say "again" ? Or was it my hallucination ? I think of his university in Australia and office in India, and feel unrelentingly sorry for his mother.

花市

Went to the flower market of Victoria Park with Vivian in the evening of Chinese New Year Eve.

It has been 20 years since I was last here - when I went with FW, a friend from my secondary school. FW was one of the best boys in his class, and had a natural gift in dealing with numbers. He had, alas, a series of unfortunate happenings and was not doing so well in his School Cert and A level examinations. In that New Year Eve, as he told me, he was planning to go abroad - apparently Australia - to continue with his university study.

I lost touch with him for a few years, and he re-emerged as a junior trainee in a local accountant firm. That was the time when I graduated from medical school and we enjoyed happy dinner gatherings every now and then. He worked hard for the ACCA (or CPA ?) examination but never really got through, and I noted that he grumbled more and more about his colleagues setting plots against him.

He changed his job several times, and, as Hercule Poirot said (in the ABC Murder), he was the rolling stone, but gathered very little moss. Some years passed, and one day he told me that his company was about send him to the new office in India.

I did not hear from him for another several years. I had no idea where he'd been, and my life took its own pace. Some time later, I went for overseas training. A few months after I was back, he called me - rather unexpectedly.

(To be continued.)

1 in 50

"This snow storm is a catastrophe, and we see it only once every 50 years. Give us some help."

I have all my sympathy for any humble Chinese worker being caught up in the middle of a rail station and says such a thing. But, for a government, I shall think twice.

Why, this cry for help sounds just too familiar. When did we last hear a similar one ? "We see this flood once every 50 years." "This is the worst drought in the last 50 years." What else is possible ? Tsunami, earthquake, storm, influenza epidemic ... If you cannot name 50 items, look up a dictionary. If you can, alas, we are expecting some kind of natural disaster every year !

We hear all too often certain intelligent person blaming his failure to unexpected poor luck. With time, I learn that most of the people struck by repeated unfortunate happenings usually have problems themselves.

PS. I set off to write about the duty of a government. Well, you’d better read the masterpiece of Huang Zongxi (黃宗羲): 明夷待訪錄.

Tour

If you have a two-week holiday for a trip to Europe, where would you go ?

Some lovely creatures in Pluto suggest joining a crash tour and visit 10 different countries - to get a glimpse of the whole continent. I find it an innovative idea, not only because I cannot imagine where else they could see besides those airports and bus stations, but, more importantly, these guys actually had the same 10-country tour a year ago. Gently I point this out, and their reply is: they have forgotten everything from the previous trip because the stay was so short.

You find this story unbelievable ? Quite right, it is my invention. Our friends from Pluto are actually not planning a trip to Europe, but a 2-week course of internal medicine - on 10 specialties - for our medical students before they are advanced to the final year. It seems that our students are televisions - the channel could be changed by a click of finger, and you can do administration by the remote control in a non-touch technique. (Ah, that's why whenever problems arise, they can claim that their hands are clean. Lesson learned.)

As Sherlock Holmes rightly pointed out, reality is always more difficult to believe than any invented tale.

Scream

K asks why I put up Edvard Munch's The Scream as the theme photo of my blog.

I know very little about the Norwegian artist. The paint is of course famous enough. Yes, a man cries out for the overwhelming environment. What is he screaming for ? Which question in life scared him so much ? Or was it the answer that he came to realize ? You look at it and say to yourself: the man is screaming for this and that. Oh, this is actually what you wish to scream for. This is not a paint - but a mirror.

No, there's more in it. The sky was red actually as a result of the eruption of volcano Krakatoa from Indonesia. Yes, it was tens of months ago and thousands of miles away - that's the shocking bit. The explosion was in Pacific, but the sky turned red in Norway - and the whole of Europe; temperature of the globe dropped by 2 degrees, all rain became acidic, agricultural production fell for some years, followed by several political repercussion. This was the time when modern world first saw the effect of globalization and pollution. We were first aware of and should worry about existence - of our own self, and of mankind.

PS. The eruption was in 1883, and the paint 1893. It was a remarkable era. The Qing Empire was gasping after the Taiping Rebellion (太平天國) - not knowing the worst was yet to come. Queen Victoria, on the other hand, was enjoying the best time of her kingdom, and the first underground began to run in London. (Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes were both a few years later.) In the same city, nonetheless, Karl Marx was about to finish his most abused masterpiece. Above all, Nietzsche declared god was dead, and we have to make decisions ourselves.

Apple

If my story on choosing to have surgery before holiday is the tip of an iceberg, then medical decision is an iceberg at the edge of north pole - and not a big one.

There are so many things that we have to make decision - many of them have no right-or-wrong answer. Should I spend tonight with my family, or out with my friends ? Should I follow my interest to choose my job, or take the one with better prospect ? Should we respect privacy, or the right to know of the public ? (For some of our friends in the new world: Should I vote for the shrewd woman, or the black idealist ?) I touch the piece of apple stuck in my throat; it is not yet digested to give intelligence.

No, here is Satan's trick. No kind of intelligence could give us the black-and-white answer to these questions (that's why the apple was meant for Adam's throat, not his stomach) because there is actually no such answer - and probably no such answer for most of the questions in life. God is the one who tell us there are definite answers: you should do this and that. (No. I should follow the idea of Spinoza: God does not tell us the definite answer; god is the definite answer.) When we realize there is no definite answer and we can - alas, have to - choose, god leaves our soul - and we leave Eden.

Then, where does intelligence come along ? Here is what you've been fooled: intelligence is merely the bait on Satan's hook. He makes us believe that there are definite answers - and we can know the answer after taking the apple of intelligence. Once we eat the apple, our eyes open and realize, as Nietzsche said, god is dead.

Eden

I will not put all the blame to medical professions for not making decision for the patients. More often than not our patients ask for every detail of relevant (and even more commonly irrelevant) information - and wish to make a medical decision themselves. The result is generally - to use a palatable and politically correct adjective - seminal.

(Alas, the result of Napoleon's invasion of Britain was seminal - I mean the failure and its consequence were unprecedented.)

Why, man should have knowledge, open his eyes, and choose his own way - this is his life after all. Yes, you may be right. The first man, Adam, said the same thing before he ate the apple of intelligence - which was never digested and remains in our throat thousands of years later. His eyes did open, but he was driven out of Eden forever.

"You're Satan. You mean we should play god."

Unfortunately yes. I said unfortunately because you would certainly have an ice-cold feeling on your back if you know just too well you are no god, yet you have to play his part.

Choice

You may consider my question yesterday a nuisance: We should explain to the patient and let him choose !

Anyone who has practiced medicine for some time would agree there are many patients who rely on the physician to make the judgement. Even for an intelligent and well educated patient, the decision depends very much on how we present the facts.

That's the tip of an iceberg. There are so many complicated medical decisions. If our medical students have difficulty to do critical appraisal of medical literature (which is thoroughly understandable), how on earth is it possible for a patient with ordinary intelligence to appreciate every pros and cons in details so that he could choose for himself (take aside the time needed to explain everything, and the eternal source of problem - relatives) ?

When I first studied medicine, I realized very soon that there was no need for me to know everything - I only need to know who is good at what area so that when there is such a problem, I can have that expert to take charge of it. Why should our patient have to know everything, without an expert to fall back on ?

Holiday

Encounter a few cases in the grand round who need early surgery but feasible session of the operating theatre would only be avaiable before the Chinese new year - when everyone do not want to stay in the hospital.

As alway, KM was cool and unemotional, "I am not too concerned with the holiday and would certain welcome the surgery if I were having a cancer."

"I will not, because I am not sure if I can see the new year next time." My arguement was rather pessemistic.

There is no right or wrong here. It's just a matter of value and personal priority. The problem is: If two equally abled physicians (assuming I am one) have such a divided opinion on even this kind of trivial matter, what and how should we advise our patients ?

(PS. Of course I would not tell a patient not to have surgery before the new year because I am not sure if he could see the next one !)

Name list

You may find my list of important characters during the Three Kingdoms (三國) period somewhat unconventional. It is in fact quite a good personality test to see what characters do one pick for this list.

An obvious name that I should not have put up is Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮) - generally regarded as the wise man of all-time.

It is not only because he made little material contribution to the Battle of Red Cliffs (赤壁之戰) (which was actually a victory of Zhou Yu 周瑜), or that he was outwitted many times by his unrelenting rival, Sima Yi (司馬懿). Most people think that Zhuge could not have better military achievement because of various environmental factors; I would not agree - the history had provided a perfect case control study:

楚漢相爭,劉邦被分封到巴蜀漢中(也就是劉備的蜀漢),但不久即以"明修棧道,暗渡陳倉"之計,奪回關中.其時關中守衛,乃名將章邯;而三國鼎立,諸葛亮棄魏延計不用,二出岐山俱未能成功,其時關中,只二世袓夏侯琳矣.(無獨有偶,"暗渡陳倉"亦非張良之計,實陳平之功也.)

Alas, as Sherlock Holmes used to say: It doesn't matter what you do in this world, but rather, what you can make people believe that you have done.

Notes

Read two horrifying (to me) blogs by F. It is difficult to imagine a young cheerful girl has such a complicated background. Another proof that everyone has his own story.

I show the blogs to KM, who is a better teacher and mentor to help (if anything needs to be done). I do not ask him what he thinks. Although two persons see the same piece of information, they hardly ever come to the same interpretation or conclusion. (My salute to Hercule Poirot for pointing out this very truth.) As a rule I am suspicious - even though it is a pretty girl with all her tears and telling a heart-breaking story.

What would the others think after reading the blog ?

But, to F (if you are here): You are doing very well. You are in fact so strong - there is hardly a trace of sorrow in your eyes.

三國

Ironically, the two periods that there were most genius in China were when the country was divided: the Spring-and-Autumn (春秋) and the Three Kingdoms period (三國).

The latter era was particularly remarkable. You know what, during the Three Kingdoms period, the whole Chinese population was merely 8 to 10 million - not much more than that of Hong Kong now. (Well, there was no reliable censor data during the Spring-and-Autumn period; I cannot tell.) Imagine if we have all our legendary figures amongst us: 曹操, 孫權, 荀彧, 郭嘉, 周瑜, 陸遜, 諸葛亮, 司馬懿 - all within the south of Shenzhen river. No wonder we find the local political circle a dull drama.

I once told Vivian that if I were to do a PhD after retirement - like that of Jin Yong (金庸) - I would study history, and one of the interesting topic would be the education system towards the end of Eastern Han dynasty (東漢). How could a society - despite its political system breakdown, economic collapse, and limitation in technology (there was no printed books) - produce such a good number of genius ?