From Africa.
China, however you want to categorize it, is the oldest civilization, civilization defined broadly as a project of organization and legibility. Ignore Chinese history, and you are terribly ignorant.
For Western men, claims of ignorance come with feelings of inadequacy, fear, shame, or, if things are going well, excited belligerence. Yet I sit in my favorite spot, and no one is speaking English, they are speaking Chinese, and I am desperately downloading Pimsleur Mandarin.
The Chinese have been through all of this several times for several thousands of years. They were the first ones, from the walk from Africa, to settle down, formulate a standardized language, create government, and build a large fucking wall. Why did the Chinese build a wall?
Civilization is born from the book.
ReplyDeleteIn Ontario, CA at a Best Western I was taught by a gringo to say some words in Chinese which when said, drunkenly for we were all very drunk, froze a tour bus full of gooks. Perhaps they were on holiday. Later Greg, who for some odd reason also responded when people called him Sean, explained I had said a truly nasty thing to the gooks and we should expect to be reported to the hotel abd sent off. But it did not happen. Gook is a strange and tragic language.
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