Li Yousheng (March 2015)

Abstract: In his blog post, Zhang Yuanshan discusses why the Chinese are the most intelligent people in the world, and points out the various drawbacks behind this success after comparing it with the West. Zhang argues that since the Qin and Han dynasties, the Chinese have misdirected their intelligence, becoming clever but not wise. Under the rule of Chinese-style Eastern mysticism, life has become a process of solving riddles and then achieving profound enlightenment by exiting those riddles. None of China’s enlightened figures have revealed objective truths or contributed beneficial ideas to improve national happiness, thus turning China into a barbaric jungle uncivilized by civilization. I completely agree with Mr. Zhang’s views and am impressed by the clarity and articulation he expresses. Here, I use my years of study of the two-tiered society theory and related phenomena I have observed while living abroad to corroborate Mr. Zhang’s article, greatly expanding the various aspects of the issues he raises and making them clearer and more complete. The East and West are respectively based on a natural, primordial society and a man-made, secondary society. If we remain at the level of the emotional aesthetics of the primordial society and disregard the rationality of the secondary society, then there is no mystery or riddle-solving involved. The Chinese people’s introverted nature does not preclude the ugliness and cruelty of secondary societies. The biblical statement that God regretted creating man allows them to deal with the imperfections of secondary societies rationally.

* * *

IV. Wild Jungle

First, it’s important to point out that the Qunsang people of South Africa, extensively studied by anthropologists, are described as a primitive yet prosperous society: they possessed abundant natural resources, spent most of their time roaming, were physically healthy, and had longer lifespans than contemporary Indians and Brazilians. Chinese intellectuals throughout history often envied the freedom of birds; pre-civilization human life could only be better than that of birds, because they had accumulated cultural knowledge and knew how to use tools. The polarization theory aptly explains that primitive societies were suitable for humans, while the unmanageability of polarization brought disaster. Therefore, Zhang Yuanshan’s statement that Chinese history was “not a civilized society, not a civilized community, but merely a barbaric jungle where cleverness backfired” only refers to societies after the Qin and Han dynasties and is not applicable to Chinese society in the time of Confucius or before.

Zhang Yuanshan and I share the same belief: the “savage jungle” is one of the many symptoms of the unmanageable nature of a man-made secondary society, appearing only after the Qin and Han dynasties in China, a consequence of centralized authoritarianism. The West, on the contrary, began as a secondary society of competition and war, essentially a state of uncontrolled savagery: in the Bible, this is the story of Adam and Eve’s descendants killing each other, leading to God’s regret in creating humankind. Homer’s epics recount the Trojan War, which lasted ten years, culminating in the killing of all the men on the opposing side after the city’s fall, and the subsequent sale of women and children to slave traders. If the Trojan War resolved the ownership of a single city, then the Zhou dynasty’s conquest of the Shang dynasty in China, almost simultaneously, resolved the ownership of countless cities. According to Mencius and many modern scholars, this dynastic change war lasted only one day, and aside from King Zhou’s suicide, it’s possible there were no casualties. The conclusion is: before the Qin, Han, and Warring States periods, the West was far more like a savage jungle than China.

If the ancient Greeks were cruel and barbaric towards the Trojans, they were far more civilized towards their own people. It is said that after the Spartans conquered Athens, they could have killed them all, but they were captivated by Athenian culture, especially by Athenian plays, and refrained from killing these conquered Greeks. Athenian plays could be performed in tens of thousands of people, including foreigners, and of course, Spartans as well.

In modern Western thought, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was the first to propose the concept of a savage jungle. His ideas are so famous that the saying “Hobbes’s jungle” has emerged. Hobbes, along with Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), who was already renowned for *The Prince*, played an irreplaceable role in the Renaissance and the overthrow of the intellectual constraints of Christianity. They clearly foresaw the process of society becoming a savage jungle after the breakdown of the religious order.

Xu Tianbo compared the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods with modern Europe and found that both had a process of demoralization and cruelty in war, which is the process of social savagery and jungleization. Xu Tianbo used the term Hobbesian Leviathan to represent this process of demoralization and cruelty in jungleization. Leviathan is a kind of terrifying giant monster in the sea in the legend of the ancient Mediterranean civilization. The Hobbesian Leviathan law is the law of natural selection, survival of the fittest, and the law of the jungle. This is a state after the disorder of civilized society, and it is not necessarily a natural state. Xu Tianbo believes that ancient China went further and more thoroughly along this path. Although Britain was very Hobbesian Leviathan-like when conquering other peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, it never gave up its gentlemanly demeanor when fighting with other European countries and always showed self-restraint. During the period that Xu Tianbo compared, there was no large-scale killing in Europe like the Qin army. [6]

Here we’ll discuss Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Sun Tzu’s Art of War describes warfare during the Warring States period, and one of its principles is deception, which means breaking the rules. If everyone deceives, deception is ineffective; it’s most effective when the majority still adheres to the rules. Sun Tzu’s deception includes deceiving one’s own soldiers, saying, “Fool the eyes and ears of your soldiers, so that they know nothing.” The “Nine Grounds” chapter of *The Art of War* states: “The general’s task is to be calm and secluded, upright and well-governed, able to fool the eyes and ears of his soldiers, so that they know nothing; change their tasks, alter their plans, so that they are unaware; change their positions, detour their routes, so that the people cannot think. When the commander sets an appointment with them, it’s like climbing a high place and removing the ladder; when the commander leads them deep into the territory of the feudal lords, he unleashes his opportunity. It’s like driving a flock of sheep, driving them there and back, so that they know not where they are going. Gather the entire army and throw them into danger; this is the general’s task.” For a general to discuss so many techniques for “fooling the eyes and ears of his soldiers” without any moral remorse is not human nature, nor can it be formed in a short time. Even more extreme, Sun Tzu’s concept of “fooling soldiers” manifests in the principle of “burning the boats and breaking the pots,” sacrificing one’s own men to ensure their own survival while leaving the enemy a way out: “Do not pursue a desperate enemy; leave an opening when surrounding the enemy.” This demonstrates a willingness to be benevolent to outsiders while being ruthless to one’s own people, all for the sake of victory.

According to Ge Jianxiong, this was indeed the case in Chinese history. China’s foreign relations were not characterized by Western-style conquest, enslavement, and exploitation, but rather by a kind of face-saving gesture. When the King of England wanted to show goodwill to Emperor Qianlong, Qianlong replied: “The Celestial Empire is vast and rich in resources, and has everything. I do not need anything from you.” The implication was: “Whatever you want, come and take it from me, as long as you acknowledge my status in China.” [7] In China, internal strife resulted in the deaths of more than half of the population, but generally did not involve surrounding ethnic minorities. The West was the opposite, being ruthless in wars against foreigners, but maintaining a gentlemanly demeanor in wars against its own Europeans. [6]

Conclusion: Historically, China was internally brutal and savage, but externally maintained a gentlemanly demeanor; Western history, on the other hand, maintained a gentlemanly demeanor internally but externally became brutal and savage. This difference has its advantages and disadvantages, leading to their respective defeats—one internally and the other externally.

If the people are governed too leniently, they will turn on each other and be defeated internally; if they are governed too strictly, they will not receive the necessary training, will lack fighting power, and will be defeated externally and conquered by foreign enemies. Therefore, governance must be appropriately lenient or strict. The Qin and Han dynasties, founded by Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han, set a path for China that led to constant defeats due to strict self-defense: in the early stages, there were brief periods of internal strife, and even the Three Kingdoms period lacked the pluralistic political landscape of the Warring States period. After the mid-Tang dynasty, Han Chinese regimes were forced to accept only half of the country, and were subsequently conquered by foreign tribes and peasant armies, while foreign regimes expanded their territories. In contrast to China, the West chose a path of complete internal defeat in terms of culture and war. The Roman Empire accepted foreign Christian culture while tolerating the secular culture represented by ancient Greece, leaving Europe fragmented to this day. While conquering the world with its honed military strength, it also exported its culture, modernizing the world. If the more than 1,000 years after the An Lushan Rebellion were equivalent to the Dark Ages in Europe, Chinese civilization faced the Renaissance, while the West faced the next Dark Cycle. Only through mutual learning between China and the West could we hope to overcome the current global ecological crisis. Conclusion: The difference between internal and external defeats in the history of the East and West: The West was defeated internally, which was long-lasting and thorough. The Mediterranean coast of the ancient Roman Empire is now divided into different ethnic groups and cultures; Europe, which was dominated by Christianity, was also divided into different ethnic groups and countries. As a result, they not only conquered outwards by force, but also promoted the diversity and high development of secondary social culture to the world. Chinese culture is based on the original society, which is conducive to unification but not conducive to multi-faceted competition. It was conquered by foreign ethnic groups by force, but it was very inclusive in terms of culture. However, it was underdeveloped at the secondary social level and could only accept foreign Western culture. [8]

V. Subjective well-being

Under the pressure of war, the Western world pursues material things. In the postmodern era, people living in the same global village have begun to pay attention to happiness, and happiness is largely subjective. Living the same life, some people feel very happy, while others feel very unhappy. It is said that this idea of ​​taking the happiness of the Chinese people as the goal first came from Nepal, the birthplace of Buddhism, which pursues inner peace. I once compared the poetry of the early civilizations of Greece, India, and China, and speculated from the frequency of word usage: India was more positive in terms of emotions, while Greece was the worst. [9] This was before the Qin and Han dynasties in China, so what about after the Qin and Han dynasties? My research results on the degree of subjective expression also support Zhang Yuanshan’s view of a barbaric jungle after the Qin and Han dynasties. I wrote:

The author used the frequency of the word “I” in poetry to represent the degree of subjective expression in order to test Marx’s theory of state dictatorship. He found that the historical trends of the East and the West were opposite: Western history showed an increase in the degree of subjective expression, while the degree and persistence of the decrease in the degree of subjective expression in China over three thousand years left a deep impression. The ratio of the word “I” between subject and object in poetry after the Tang Dynasty was similar to that of the suicidal poet Qu Yuan, which makes people imagine the heart-wrenching pain of the ancients. [10]

The conclusion is that, in terms of improving the subjective well-being of the Chinese people, one possibility is that Chinese culture, after the Qin and Han dynasties, lags behind both Western and Indian cultures. The reason for this is that both Western and Indian cultures are based on secondary societies. Hinduism and Buddhism teach how to cope with the suffering inherent in secondary societies, while the Christian Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve’s descendants killing each other, causing God to regret creating humankind. Chinese culture, based on a primitive society, lacks sufficient understanding of the unmanageable nature of secondary societies and has not devised more proactive solutions. Instead, it relies on the profound enlightenment of solving a riddle and then withdrawing from it, as described by Zhang Yuanshan. The life experience of facing a mysterious world, being unable to solve it, and having to withdraw is certainly inferior to the positive life experience of Indian and Western cultures, which face a transparent, imperfect world and strive to improve their personal lives. Compared to Zhang Yuanshan’s profound enlightenment of solving a riddle and then withdrawing from it, the Buddhist concept of a Western Paradise and the Christian concept of God’s Kingdom are more likely to provide positive emotional experiences.

The author emphasizes here that the real world and subjective well-being is a very complex topic with many influencing factors. The research on the degree of subjective expression and the comparison between Chinese, Western and Indian cultures that I have mentioned above are consistent with Zhang Yuanshan’s theory of the savage jungle, but it does not exclude many other aspects not covered in this article, nor does it exclude the possibility of other results. The author once pointed out that the world of a secondary society is like a novel such as “Dream of the Red Chamber”, where readers and researchers can have different opinions, and even contradictory conclusions can be valid at the same time. [11]

VI. The differences I observed between the eastern and western city walls

Another insight I gained from chatting with locals during my work and study in the UK in the early 1980s was learning that Western city walls were simple and low, unlike the thick walls of China. More than one person told me they were surprised to see how wide Chinese city walls were on television, with vehicles able to drive on them. The city walls I saw in Chester, England, were so simple they were practically nonexistent. Even today, I can’t recall a clear impression of them, yet we used to walk home along those walls with a few Chinese classmates every day after school.

Later, while traveling in continental Europe, I visited a medieval castle in France, perched atop an isolated hill surrounded by flat land. The hill was surrounded by a rudimentary wall, merely a pile of stones less than a meter high, similar to the stone walls surrounding farmland I had seen in Guizhou. The castle guide told us that the surrounding farmers cultivated the land, and in times of war, they would hide on the hill, clinging to the simple wall to fight the enemy. A common Western impression of traditional China is that of a country with walls surrounding cities. Every county town in China had walls as thick as the Great Wall. Contrary to medieval Europe, the farmers surrounding county towns did not seek safety within the towns; on the contrary, the thick Chinese walls served to protect the few officials within, preventing peasant uprisings. That is to say, the difference in city walls between China and the West reflects the different social structures of China. The aforementioned differences stem from the distinction between internal and external factors; in the same article, I specifically argued that the peasantry was an external force, not an internal one, for the Chinese government. [8] The history of China after the Qin and Han dynasties was precisely about suppressing the classes between the feudal lords and nobles and placing the peasants directly under the emperor, which fundamentally prevented the phenomenon I saw during my visit to France: peasants and local noble forces forming numerous independent political forces.

Let’s revisit the traditional Chinese social model described in Section 2 above. Historically, China was known for its small government, with administration only extending to the county level. A county government, governing hundreds of thousands of people, consisted of a single magistrate and a few clerks and servants. The stability of the vast peasant society relied entirely on human nature and the aesthetic order of a quasi-primitive society. Therefore, the thick city walls that dotted the land symbolized the insurmountable gap between the primordial and secondary societies, as well as the unique hierarchical separation system characteristic of ancient China. Peasants in traditional Chinese society were illiterate, and the few rural intellectuals could only depend on them; if they were drawn to rural life, they could also depend on the bureaucratic intellectual class. The peasants’ absence from the riddle-solving and enlightenment activities described by Zhang Yuanshan were matters for the bureaucratic intellectual class in the upper-class social model. These intellectuals could also return to the fields after achieving enlightenment, living like Tao Yuanming. A study of the degree of subjective expression in Chinese history suggests that these enlightened figures, like Tao Yuanming, were not necessarily happy. They differed greatly from Zhuangzi, who, along with his disciples, formed an independent sub-society, neither dependent on nor subservient to any human authority. The enlightened figures of the Qin and Han dynasties, however, still lived under the rule of the imperial court; even their idyllic rural life, like Tao Yuanming’s leisurely observation of the Southern Mountains, was under the supervision of local governments.

If Chinese peasants lived a natural life in a quasi-primitive society like they did during the Three Dynasties, their subjective sense of happiness would be higher than that of bureaucratic intellectuals. However, peasants’ quasi-primitive society life under the social model has its vulnerabilities, and the victims of the periodic upheavals in Chinese history were primarily these peasants.

After the imperial examination system matured in the Song Dynasty, the bureaucratic intellectual class was thoroughly Confucianized. They lived between the characters Jia Zheng and Jia Yucun in “Dream of the Red Chamber”. Jia Zheng and Jia Yucun are typical literary characters, but in real life they can only live between the two. After the Song Dynasty, Chinese society saw the emergence of figures between the bureaucratic intellectual class and the vast peasant class, namely the vagrant class that Wang Xuetai called. Ah Q can be seen as a representative of this vagrant class. According to Wang Hui’s research, Ah Q was controlled by the spiritual victory method throughout his life, and there were only six moments when the spiritual victory method failed. That is to say, the spiritual victory method was successful most of the time. [12] Judging from the image of the heroes of the Jianghu in contemporary literary works and Ah Q’s life, the subjective happiness of this class should be very high, but this is only a bold and distant estimate.

literature

[1] Zhang Yuanshan (2015): Why are Chinese people the smartest in the world? The original article can be found on Zhang Yuanshan’s blog: (http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4f0c6b5d0102vj7n.html)

[2] You-Sheng Li (2005): A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy. London, Canada: Taoist Recovery Centre.

[3] Li Yousheng (2015): Looking at Confucius from a different perspective. Suzhou: Suzhou University Press.

[4] Yousheng (2013): The Imperial Examination System and Plato’s Republic: A Historical Analysis of the Success and Possibilities of the Confucianization of Chinese Politics. *Xue Deng*, Issue 27: http://www.confucius2000.com/writer/yousheng.htm.

[5] Chen Ping (1979): The single small-scale peasant economy is the root cause of my country’s long-term turmoil and poverty. Guangming Daily, November 16, 1979, page 3.

[6] Victoria Tin-Bor Hui (2005): War and State Formation in Ancient China

and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

[7] Ge Jianxiong, Unity and Division: Lessons from Chinese History, Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore, 1994.

[8] Yousheng (2014): A Unique Perspective on Chinese History: Defeat from Within and Defeat from Without. Personal website and Sina blog. (http://taoism21cen.com)

[9] You Sheng (2009): On the unique characteristics of Chinese civilization. Xue Deng, Issue 10; http://www.confucius2000.com/admin/list.asp?id=3976.

[10] You Sheng (2011): On the anarchist tendencies of Confucius and Mencius. Xue Deng, No. 17; http://www.confucius2000.com/admin/list.asp?id=4700.

[11] Yousheng (2009): Review of Xu Tianbo’s “War and State Formation in Ancient China and Modern Europe”. (Author’s website: http://taoism21cen.com)

[12] Wang Hui (2011): Six Moments in Ah Q’s Life – Commemorating the Xinhai Revolution as the Beginning

(Published in Modern Chinese Literature Journal, Issue 3, 2011) (http://wen.org.cn/modules/article/view.article.php/2604)

Zhang Yuanshan’s original text:

Why are Chinese people the smartest in the world?

Zhang Yuanshan (http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4f0c6b5d0102vj7n.html)

1. Why are Chinese people so intelligent?

There’s a joke that’s widely circulated in China: Every nation lists itself as one of the three smartest nations, with the exact same formula: Chinese, Jews, and their own nation.

I suspect the author of this joke is Chinese. Even if not, the fact that Chinese people enjoy discussing this joke so much at least shows that they are very proud of their intelligence. But I feel not pride in the intelligence of the Chinese, but rather deep shame. Because the Chinese people after the Qin and Han dynasties have misused their intelligence.

For over two thousand years after the Qin and Han dynasties, everything in China relied on intuition, hence the Chinese particularly revered enlightenment. Most things in China were not explicitly stated in law, only understood through divine intervention. This “divine intervention” meant “Heaven knows,” something ordinary people couldn’t truly comprehend. Even in the very few matters with explicit regulations, one lacked the right to know or question, forced to ponder and speculate, exhausting all effort yet remaining utterly confused, seeing something in front of you only to have it disappear behind you. It’s clear that the intelligence and enlightenment of the Chinese after the Qin and Han dynasties were forced upon them by the unique structure of Chinese society. Some might say, “Isn’t this great? If everything were explicitly regulated, with sufficient transparency and the right to know, the Chinese would lose their enlightenment and become as dull as oxen.” But I believe that intelligence, wisdom, intellect, and enlightenment should be used to explore objective truth and enhance human happiness, not wasted on artificially created mysteries. Even if one is clever enough to decipher such mysteries, it’s not wisdom, but merely cunning. The riddles and puzzles of Chinese society are a waste of life and a pointless exercise. Setting riddles is playing with people; solving riddles is being played. The Chinese after the Qin and Han dynasties forgot the wisdom of the pre-Qin era: “Playing with things leads to the loss of ambition; playing with people leads to the loss of virtue” (from the Book of Documents).

A tiny minority of riddle-setters in Chinese life create an unnecessary and tedious puzzle; the vast majority of riddle-solvers face a difficult situation that could have been avoided. The vast majority of Chinese people, including learned scholars who dedicate their lives to studying, will never be able to solve the riddle, because setting a riddle is easy, solving it is difficult. Logically, the incredibly intelligent Chinese, who cannot solve the riddle in their lifetime, should easily think to question why the tiny minority of riddle-setters would maliciously design such a tedious and difficult situation for the nation. However, the intelligent Chinese never question this; all their intelligence is devoted to solving riddles. Even if they never solve the riddle, they will not question the intentions of the riddle-setters, but will only doubt their own intelligence, continuing their enthusiasm for solving riddles to improve their intelligence, ultimately misdirecting their intelligence and insight throughout their lives. This leads to the strange phenomenon: the Chinese are so intelligent, and so eager for enlightenment, yet very few achieve it.

Although most Chinese people yearn for enlightenment but fail to achieve it, in the endless process of solving this riddle, the Chinese have indeed become far more intelligent than other nations that do not need to solve riddles. Only a very few exceptionally intelligent Chinese people eventually crack the riddle. However, even those who crack the riddle do not truly experience “enlightenment,” but merely “profound understanding.” Some may think that “enlightenment” is the same as “profound understanding,” but that only indicates that one has not yet achieved profound understanding, and they are unaware of the difference between the two.

“Sudden enlightenment” means understanding everything, while “complete enlightenment” means no longer hoping to understand everything. Therefore, “complete enlightenment” is not “sudden enlightenment.” In other words, the Chinese “completely enlightened” finally realized that no one can unravel the mystery of China’s predicament through “sudden enlightenment.” Therefore, he made the wisest judgment he could make: what every Chinese person wants to understand is not worth wasting mental energy on. At the same time, he also made the wisest decision he could make: to withdraw and abandon Chinese life.

The very few Chinese who have achieved profound enlightenment are the most intelligent among the intelligent Chinese, but their exceptional intelligence is only used for retreat and abandonment, and is still completely unrelated to wisdom.

Cleverness and wisdom are fundamentally different in degree, not direction. Cleverness, if used correctly and accumulated to a certain degree, will inevitably rise to wisdom. Unfortunately, the cleverness of the Chinese is often the opposite of wisdom; the more clever one is, the further one strays from wisdom. Therefore, China’s enlightened thinkers, in giving up and retreating, also abandoned all efforts that could potentially change the “puzzle-solving” pattern. Thus, since the Qin and Han dynasties, no enlightened Chinese person has revealed objective truth or contributed beneficial ideas to improve national happiness. The most intelligent Chinese either passionately engage in solving puzzles (usually in the first half of their lives) or disheartenedly abandon puzzle-solving (usually in the second half), but never question whether a reasonable human life needs puzzle setters, and never strive to change the fundamental pattern of Chinese culture where a few set puzzles and the majority solve them.

Intelligent Chinese people deeply cherish worldly life, and even in the face of hardship and toil, they are unwilling to completely abandon it. At most, they might relinquish certain aspects of life that their intelligence is insufficient to manage. Each Chinese person possesses a different level of intelligence and area of ​​expertise, and the areas they find unmanageable and are forced to abandon also vary. The sum total of all the retreats and abandonments by intelligent individuals prevented Chinese society after the Qin and Han dynasties from becoming a civilized society or a civilized community; it was merely a barbaric jungle where cleverness backfired.

2. The Six Levels of Chinese Intelligence

Confucius is the father of Chinese culture after the Qin and Han dynasties, and also the main enigma setter of Chinese culture after the Qin and Han dynasties. His classic description of the six stages of life is precisely the six stages in which the Chinese gradually become wiser and gradually give up: “At fifteen, I set my heart on learning; at thirty, I stood firm; at forty, I had no more doubts; at fifty, I knew the mandate of Heaven; at sixty, my ear was attuned to the truth; at seventy, I could follow my heart’s desire without transgressing the rules.”

The so-called “at fifteen, I set my mind on learning” means to understand all the riddles of Chinese culture by first intending to understand them, to learn all the Chinese knowledge required to solve riddles, and to ponder all the Chinese tricks necessary to solve riddles with great enthusiasm, thus taking this as the entry point to the identity of a riddle solver.

The saying “at thirty, one stands firm” means to wholeheartedly immerse oneself in the Chinese-style guessing game with unwavering determination. This process takes about ten years, and only ten years. Because ten years is enough for him to realize that paying the enormous price of lowering one’s aspirations, humiliating oneself, and losing oneself will ultimately result in nothing.

The saying “at forty one is no longer perplexed” means that the riddle solver has given up hope of ever finding the answer. Before forty, he had many questions, and he was confident that with his intelligence and persistent effort, he would surely understand. But once he turned forty, he realized that it was all a waste of time, so he stopped trying to understand.

The saying “at fifty, one knows one’s destiny” means understanding that the Chinese destiny is about solving riddles—specifically, riddles with no answers. Aside from abandoning riddle-solving and withdrawing from the “riddle-setting-solving” pattern like a few enlightened individuals, there’s only one path: while no longer solving riddles, one doesn’t withdraw from the “riddle-setting-solving” pattern, but rather changes their role. Although they are unlikely to become riddle-setters themselves, they can easily become participants who increase the difficulty for riddle-setters. This role change is almost equivalent to solving the riddle of the Chinese enigma. This is the highest level of “knowledge” in Chinese “Eastern mysticism”: not a sudden enlightenment of understanding everything, but a muddled confusion of everything.

The saying “at sixty, one’s ears are attuned” means that one has not only lost hope in solving riddles, but also greatly diminished enthusiasm for helping the riddle-setter increase the difficulty, because old age has arrived. Any efforts made by young people, any incorrect answers, even the enthusiasm to refute, criticize, or lecture them has completely vanished; everything is like the wind passing by.

The saying “At seventy, one can follow one’s heart’s desires without transgressing the rules” means finally understanding that the riddle-setters in China never intended for anyone to guess the answer; the “riddle-setting and riddle-solving” process is merely a uniquely Chinese game of manipulating people. Any game, even an absurd one, needs rules. And the more absurd the game, the more absurd the rules it requires. As Chinese people, as long as you understand that power sets the rules for everything, and everything must be done according to those rules without questioning their rationality, you can do whatever you want, even anything at all, and consider yourself supremely intelligent.

3. The Chinese are too clever for their own good.

In recent years, with China’s opening up to the world, Chinese people have ventured out into the global arena. This has led some of the supposedly brilliant Chinese to perceive foreigners as simple-minded, further fueling their pride in their own ingenuity. The truth is, foreigners’ apparent simplicity stems from their rational and transparent regulations. Before promulgation, these regulations undergo thorough democratic discussion and rigorous scientific evaluation. Once enacted, they are rarely changed. Any changes are always based on compelling reasons, again subject to extensive democratic discussion and rigorous scientific evaluation, thus ensuring the revised regulations are even more reasonable. People follow them without question, and over time, their thinking becomes increasingly simple. However, Chinese rules, before promulgation, often lack democratic discussion and scientific evaluation, and are generally considered unreasonable. Those issuing the rules often lack confidence in their rationality, frequently referring to them as “trial drafts.” Yet, “trial” can be formally “tested” for a long time, and “drafts” can remain “drafted” indefinitely. These “trial drafts” are also opaque, with extremely limited dissemination, leaving few aware of them. Therefore, these rules often exist in name only, and no one takes them seriously. Those few who were “informed” understood perfectly well that the “trial draft” would soon be “revised” at will, without democratic discussion or scientific verification, and therefore unlikely to be more reasonable, often even more absurd. Besides, the revised version would still be “trial draft two,” so it shouldn’t be taken seriously. The majority of Chinese people who weren’t “informed” had no choice but to learn to swim by swimming; those with poor comprehension were bound to drown, while those with good comprehension, after choking on some water, could only learn a few desperate, doggy-style moves, at best avoiding drowning, far from truly swimming freely. A lifetime of suspicion and doubt, dying a confused ghost.

The Westerners’ clumsy approach is to place doubt before regulations are promulgated. After free questioning, thorough discussion, and rigorous argumentation, they establish reasonable and transparent rules. The majority of the population, lacking discernment, blindly follow the rules, leaving the questioning to a small number of Socratic thinkers dedicated to questioning. Thus, the public’s minds become increasingly dull. The Chinese, on the other hand, cleverly place doubt after the rules are promulgated. A very small number of brilliant individuals, having set the stage, haphazardly establish an unreasonable and opaque rule and make do. The majority of those “involved” are left to doubt the rule’s rationality and clarity, forever confused. But the more confused they become, the more they try to understand, and the more they try, the more enlightened they become. Thus, the Chinese can interpret every rule as a “case” that is particularly advantageous to themselves and particularly disadvantageous to others. The same rule can be interpreted as flexible, sometimes light, sometimes heavy, and even sometimes black and white, requiring a very special Chinese-style understanding. As a result, the Chinese have become increasingly clever, ranking first in the world in terms of intelligence, but ranking last in terms of wisdom.

I am a fool who loves wisdom but is by no means clever, so I often worry: Is it possible that the extremely clever Chinese people, in order to remain clever forever, will never change the stalemate of “setting riddles and solving riddles” that has existed since the Qin and Han dynasties?

author By Dr. You-Sheng Li

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