Tips

VW mentioned in his blog some practical tips for the final examination (see http://vwswong.blogspot.com/).

Quite rightly he used the analogy of the military tactics. I would try to supplement by the following citation:

上兵伐謀，其次伐交，再次伐兵，其下攻城。
(孫子兵法-謀攻篇)

Translating into modern English, I would say:

• The best strategy is to avoid difficult questions.
• The second best is to know the answer of difficult questions.
• If not, at least know (and admit) that you do not know the answer.
• The worst scenario is not knowing that you do not know.

It sounds simple. Does it mean there are ways we could score high even without knowing the answer of those difficult questions ?

On that, you are wrong; one could only avoid these questions by knowing their answers exceptionally well.

PS. You cannot see the relationship between the orignal Chinese citation and its English translation ? Of course not - I make the latter up.

Freedom

Once I think of the right to do things at our free will (i.e. without the need to be approved explicitly by law), it seems unavoidable to talk about the recent event of Jackie Chan (成龍).

Seriously, I think his idea that "we need to be controlled ... (Otherwise) we will just do what we want" absolutely correct.

Don't panic. It's not just for Chinese; all men (and women, of course) need to be controlled.

The point is, however, most of us - the average citizen - have sufficient laws and regulations to keep us under scrutiny. It is just that some senior officials and the privileged class who often come up and claimed that they have exceptional moral standard and need not extrinsic control - or even inspection.

One notable recent example is certain Mr. Yam, who, despite the financial tsunami, gave himself an annual salary of HK$12 million last year. Does anyone seriously believe he needs not be controlled ?

Unless you consider those are not human beings.

Well, after reading The Animal Farm of George Orwell, I think you could be right.

PS. It is yet another management principle that we should never rely on the good will or exceptional moral standard of a particular person and do away with objective scrutiny.

As the old Russian proverb says: We trust, but we have to verify.

Moral

You may say: But what that little superman did was certainly wrong !

Yes, you may be right - what he did was probably morally undesirable. (I would not use the word right or wrong, in order to remind myself I may not know what is absolutely right or wrong, or if there exists an objective standard for them. I shall leave this question of supreme importance some time later.)

But, it is plain simple that the verdict should not be based on whether the action is morally right or wrong, but whether there is any evidence for the thing being done against existing regulations. If there are defects in the regulation and someone takes the advantage, make the incident as a lesson and amend the regulation (rather than saying that someone is guilty). The principle is: If a certain thing is not prohibited by law, you can do it - and not, as we are so fond of freedom recently, that a certain thing could be done only if the law explicitly allows.

You think this is not important ? As Francis Bacon said: If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

PS. I am not saying what that Mr. Li did was legally right; there is reasonable evidence to make it suspicious. The point for argument in the court, however, should focus on proving that those who voted for the buyout were people with concerted action (一致行動人士) to him.

Motive

During a casual discussion, AL, who is studying for her law degree, said that she was long to see the court verdict and detailed rationale on blocking of PCCW buyout by the Court of Appeal.

I must say I am not that interested.

No, I am interested in the event - as a lesson on financial tactics to say the least.

I am no fans of the little superman, and there are reasons to believe some of the transactions during that critical period appeared suspicious. But I could immediately tell the judges were probably not in their right mind as soon as I heard them questioning on the real motive of the buyout proposal.

Jove, who could tell and prove what the motive is for anything ? (Alas, in this case, probably we can all guess. Besides money, what else could be the motive of a business decision ?)

And, if our society has regressed to a state of deciding whether someone is guilty (or banning their action) according to their motive, the next thing we face would be The Ordinance of Silent Curses (腹誹) - as we had in the Han (漢) dynasty.

That's the road to serfdom.

PS. If I were the defending side for our Richard, I would declare his motive was a Freudian one: He just wanted to prove his exceptional financial skill to his billionaire father.

For once, I think I speak the truth.

PPS. Just this afternoon, CB sighed to me, saying that many of our junior colleagues wrote their medical report with too much emotion. Well, what do we expect when our experts in legal procedure behave in the same way ?

Limitation

The more I think of the essay of Wang Anshi (王安石), the more I realize the analogy of the awl and the horse could not stand.

It has long been a romantic idea that many hospitable nobles during the Warring States Period (戰國時期) hosted a large crowd of guests, each with mysterious and specialized capability, in order to take care all those X-men's job.

The reality of this guest system is, however, an inevitable step in the evolution of our society.

You know what, with the establishment of the noble class and a dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity (in that era, probably the result of using cows instead of man for the strenuous tasks, and a better system of water supply), the unemployment rate rose rapidly (the number of farmer needed to feed the whole country was much reduced), while the rich people has a whole lot of excessive revenue (i.e. agricultural product) to dispose with. Remember, it was the time before the gadget refrigerator was even thought of, and the systems of money and trading were in their infancy. The logical way to materialize one's wealth was, therefore, to host (alas, hire) a large crowd of subordinates and make use of their manpower to, as Adam Smith said, get all the convenience in life.

The very result of this system is, unfortunately, most of the guests are people who could not find a better way of subsistence in the country. In other words, there's usually no awl in the leather bag.

Well, you find this situation somewhat familiar ? The latest major advance in productivity along the history of mankind is the invention of computer and artificial intelligence, and the richest people in a modern society is the government ... I don't think I should say any more.

PS. The noble-and-guest system is not unique in the history of China. To say the least, England had the same thing. Have you heard of the story between Thomas Becket and Henry II of England ?

Cow

Further to my discussion yesterday, another common tragedy is to ask a horse who excels in the stables to take up the cow's job.

One notable, albeit not very well known, story comes from VW's citation itself. When Wang Anshi (王安石) talked about horses in his essay, he was referring to the story of Mao Sui (毛遂). The original story is this:

平原君曰、夫賢士之處世也、譬若錐之處囊中、其末立見。今先生處勝之門下、三年於此矣。左右未有所稱誦、勝未有所聞、是先生無所有也。先生不能、先生留。
毛遂曰、臣乃今日請處囊中耳。使遂得處囊中、乃穎脱而出。非特其末見而已。平原君竟與毛遂偕。
(史記·平原君虞卿列傳)

And what happened next was the famous story The Self Introduction of Mao Sui (毛遂自薦): Mao went with his master and helped establishing a treaty between Zhao (趙) and Chu (楚) - saving Zhao from the army of Qin (秦).

It sounds great, eh ? Do you know how did Mao die ?

Alas, after the successful campaign against Qin, Mao was quickly promoted to be a senior official, and was ordered to take up the post of an arm general soon - in a battle against Yan (燕).

And Mao cut his throat following the horrible defeat in that battle.

錐·馬·牛

VW made a comment on my blog on 15th April - but the quote was too ahead of its time and seems more relevant to my discussion on the following days.

His citation was a famous one: 人之有異能於其身，猶錐之在囊，其末立見。

For those who are not familiar with Chinese literature, the citation comes from Cai Lun (材論) of Wang Anshi (王安石). This classic essay begins like this: 天下之患，不患材之不眾，患上之人不欲其眾；不患士之不為，患上之人不使其為也。

The whole sentence of VW's quote should be: 世之蔽者方曰 "人之有異能於其身，猶錐之在囊，其末立見，故未有有其實而不可見者也。" 此徒有見於錐之在囊，而固未睹夫馬之在廄也。

Yes, there are quite many horses hidden in stables, but I would add a further story:

(周)瑜卒，(龐)統送喪至吳，吳人多聞其名。及當西返，並會昌門，陸績、顧劭、全琮皆往。統曰："陸子可謂駑馬有逸足之力，顧子可謂駑牛能負重致遠也。"
或問統曰： "如所言，陸子為勝乎？"
統曰： "駑馬雖精，所致一人耳；駑牛一日行三百里，所致豈一人之重哉？"
(世說新語箋疏, 中卷下, 品藻第九)

Alas, there are many good horses hidden in stables, but there are even more excellent cows we missed because they seem humble and concentrate on their work.