柏楊

It is sad to see the obituary of Bo Yang (柏楊).

I read the first half of <柏楊版資治通鑑> during my preclincal years of medical school - when the latter half was not yet published. Oh, with time I know there are many inadequacies in the historical details with this supposedly biblical work, but its weight in my "mental record" remains. After all we read this series not for what had happened, but for the orderly presentation of the comments by all those giants in history study - from Sima Guang (司馬光) to Bo himself.

"God cannot alter history, but historians can." Thanks god for sending Bo to us - he told us the things that did happen (sadly, only up to the Song [宋] dynasty).

PS. It is twenty years after Bo's The Ugly Chinaman (醜陋的中國人) was published, and it remains great fun to read this masterpiece. You will be surprised to find quite some local columnists earn their salt by making good use of it - I mean keeping the idea but changing the term China to Hong Kong.