flat people in a round world?

Four months after returning from China, no one has really asked me about my trip. The world may not be "flat", but people seem to be!

Query to Polyglot Cathy II

If "companion" is someone with whom one shares bread...how might one construct a word for someone with whom one shares... soul? ideas? travels? et al!

the desecrated sacred Mount T'ai Shan -- 1628

Searching to compare the "ideas" of Mount T'ai Shan and Mount Sinai, I located this from an account of a trip, a pilgrimage, to Mount T'ai ca. 1628. It reveals that the dismaying, annoying experience I had in July 2012, with the crowds, sellers and shops, is also a tradition of Moung T'ai Shan. There were differences, but essentially...

From Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China by Susan Naquin, in the account of Chang Tai, ca. 1628:
“But the beggars were only one of two abominations: the other was the visitor’s disgusting practice of inscribing on rocks as well as on the tablets they erected such trite phrases as ‘Venerated by Ten Thousand Generations’, or ‘The Redolence Continuing for an Eternity’. The beggars exploited Mount Tai for money while the visitors exploited Mount T’ai for fame. The land of Mount T’ai, once pure, was now everywhere desecrated by these two groups”. (p. 77-78)

the world is flat

I continue to be astonished at how "flatly" my mention of a trip to China is heard by those to whom I mention it. I suppose we are all grown indifferent, and expect a "flatland" everywhere.

outer and/or inner journey?

Which was the more life-changing and lasting journey this summer -- the outer or the inner?

My trip to China for 3 difficult weeks...with that glimpse of Mao in his anti-Feng-shui Memorial? the crowds of the forbidden in the Forbidden City? thoughts on the politics of the aesthetics of decor in the Great Hall of the People? my visit to Confucius' home? that day's ordeal to reach the top of desecrated sacred Mt Tai? ...

My soon -- in our jet-age -- enduring again, with an attempted smile, the thoughtless mental state in the Heart of Dixie? the nervous excitement on "hiking out" on one pontoon for those high wind moments on my Hobie Wave? the emergency beaching of the boat, in fear, as lightning struck too near? the great fried crab claws?...

Or the insights and comprehensions of our human story via reading through When China Rules the World, The Idea of the West, The Adventurer - The Fate of Adventure in the Western World, Inventing Europe, et al?

"To China? Oh, that's nice."

My experiences in China have only as yet at best found mild, rather shallow interest and questioning. Pretty much what one might expect in society these days.

Put on your body?

Reading in Inventing Europe, and reflecting on China. Do people put on cultures, languages, even psychologies, like they put on clothes. The answer would seem to be otherworldly.

Put on your nationality?

My time and experience in China -- and the entire story it was and is -- now allows me more realistically to consider the "relativeness" of even the deepest "Western" identity.

Query to Cathy

It is famous that gnothi seauton (γνῶθι σεαυτόν) would be a knowledge of oneself -- "know thyself". But can you help me...how might one correctly write: "know the world"?

A Meeting in Bookworm Beijing

A conversation -- unfinished -- in the Bookworm bookshop in Beijing, July 13, 2012 suggested camaraderie in history, religion, philosophy, travel, language...
A polyglot from the Netherlands on a solicitor's sabbatical; serious, energetic; a bibliophile (Did you get When China Rules the World?); even Ancient Greek and Latin; enthused by history; Chinese; Russian... How was your time, learning and experience in Beijing?

Stephenwolf (In)sightseeing in China

Beijing/Qufu...Delhi/Varanasi...Cairo/Alexandria...
Beijing in summer was much more difficult physically and emotionally than prior journeys in search of understanding and sense of these places and peoples.
And, though I perhaps neared heat stroke one scorching afternoon walking from the garden beside the Forbidden City to my 6th floor room in the King's Joy Hotel... I viewed the swarmed Forbidden City, Mao and his mausoleum, the Great Hall of the People, parts of the restored and unrestored "Great Wall", the Temple of Heaven, the crowds, the oppressive smog, the business/shopping areas...
China correctly perceived confronts the "Westerner" with the deepest questions as to what is the human being, and what is the reality of the "Western Civilization", and its entire history and world-views.
More to write later.
A difficult, tiring, lonely trip it was.