Word: shang
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...earliest surviving essay, written when he was 19, was on one of China's most celebrated early exponents of cynicism and realpolitik, the fearsome 4th century B.C. administrator Shang Yang. Mao took Shang Yang's experiences as emblematic of China's crisis. Shang Yang had instituted a set of ruthlessly enforced laws, designed "to punish the wicked and rebellious, in order to preserve the rights of the people." That the people continued to fear Shang Yang was proof to Mao they were "stupid." Mao attributed this fear and distrust not to Shang Yang's policies but to the perception...
...number died in China during the famine that followed the Great Leap between 1959 and 1961. In the Cultural Revolution that followed only five years later, Mao used the army and the student population against his opponents. Once again millions suffered or perished as Mao combined the ruthlessness of Shang Yang with the absolute confidence of the long-distance swimmer...
Rejecting his former party allies, and anyone who could be accused of espousing the values of an older and more gracious Chinese civilization, Mao drew his sustenance from the chanting crowds of Red Guards. The irony here was that from his youthful readings, Mao knew the story of how Shang Yang late in life tried to woo a moral administrator to his service. But the official turned down Shang Yang's blandishments, with the words that "1,000 persons going 'Yes, yes!' are not worth one man with a bold...
Ancient China made unique contributions to many areas of science, including astronomy, calendric system, geography, mathematics, agriculture, medicine and the humanities. Records of solar and lunar eclipses are found in the inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty over 3,000 years ago. In the 2,100 years from the Qin Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty (that is, from 221 B.C. to 1911), the 27 appearances of Halley's Comet were all recorded in China. Zhang Heng, of the Han Dynasty, invented a seismograph to determine the location of earthquakes, and the celestial globe that showed...
This show will take things much further, for specialists, no doubt, but especially for the ordinary viewer. There could be no more vivid introduction to the upper reaches of Chinese art, and this takes hold right at the beginning. No matter how many ritual vessels from the late Shang dynasty (13th to 11th centuries B.C.) you may have seen, the memory of them will pale beside the massive ting, or tripod pot, in the first room, with its swollen bronze belly and deeply incised decoration. And when, in a nearby case, you see a late neolithic pi, or jade disk...