{"id":2717,"date":"2020-09-29T20:34:54","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T20:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/?p=2717"},"modified":"2020-09-29T22:40:37","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T22:40:37","slug":"to-know-china-was-to-offend-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/?p=2717","title":{"rendered":"To know China was to offend it"},"content":{"rendered":"

To know me is to love me<\/em>, means only as we begin to know something \u2014 or someone \u2014 can we truly begin to love it, Huff Post<\/a>\u00a0explained.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
2017.8.11 Central Park: a turtle\u00a0<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To know China was to offend it<\/em> is from Jon Rothschild who translated\u00a0Alain Peyrefitte’s 1989 book, L’empire Immobile, intoThe Immobile Empire<\/em>, in 1992. Peyrefitte (1925-99) was a\u00a0French scholar and politician. This is book is about Lord George Macartney’s trip to China in 1793. It’s nothing but excellent.<\/p>\n

This saying or translation came when Macartney paid compliment to the Chengde Mountain Resort by saying “worthy of the genius of the great Kangxi.”<\/p>\n

Now, Heshen who had been accompanying him, looked surprised, asking just did an English know this?<\/p>\n

Oh well, it seemed they themselves didn’t want to learn, they expected others did the same. But unfortunately, the world moved on.<\/p>\n

Another telling story: when Macartney invited Fukang’an (\u798f\u5eb7\u5b89 1753-96)to review his guards’ exercise, “with the latest European improvements.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Fukang’an declined, “… that nothing of that kind could be a novelty to me.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Macartney took that as\u00a0‘coldness tinged with unreasonable vanity.’ He<\/span>\u00a0“doubts whether he ever saw a firelock in his life; at least, I am sure I have never seen anything above a matchlock among all the troops in China.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately again, this was true in the Opium War, some half a century down the road.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To know me is to love me, means only as we begin to know something \u2014 or someone \u2014 can we truly begin to love…<\/p>\n

Continue readingTo know China was to offend it<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[88,18],"class_list":["post-2717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trade-war","tag-books-","tag-things-chinese","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2717"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2724,"href":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions\/2724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}