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 ?