people-from-china

"This fear of the power of the totalitarian state is something normal people cannot understand."

"I felt a narrowing of freedom of speech. The change was very pronounced when you compare Xi Jinping to previous eras of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao."

"I kept on reading, observing and reflecting on China’s political and social problems. Then in that year I suddenly felt a strong need to express my ideas. Comics is what I am good at, so I began to create political comics."

"People who live in totalitarian countries experience educational brainwashing and real fear of the government. They are not brave enough to stand out and express different opinions."

"As a first-generation immigrant, I want to make the soil richer. My kid will grow up in a free world without fear and will be thinking like an ordinary American. I envy him very much."

"Men are adorable, but mysterious...How can he be so average, yet so full of confidence?"

"It wasn't until I saw the comments that I realised some people reacted aggressively towards my performance. It kind of scared me. I felt like I was dragged into a war I didn't start. I'm only trying to be funny. In fact, in the same performance, I also ridiculed women for being emotional, but I didn't receive any hateful comments or threats from female netizens. Women have most likely become used to their stereotypical weakness being made fun of, while men have heard so few jokes like this before."

"Regarding the change in identity, I actually took the initiative to accept and work hard to change in this direction, because I feel that growing up on the stage is not as rewarding as recording a show, and I am still eager to go."

"My mother never urged me to have a blind date again. She felt that if a man wanted to marry me, it might just be more convenient for him to beat me. In this world, all girls will get sympathy when they encounter domestic violence."

"To be honest, I thought at first that it was an advantage for women to stand alone, because the most important thing for actors is to have their own labels on stage, and actresses carry their own labels. My image on stage has always been that of a girl who is single, who wants to fall in love and who is not particular about being particular."

"If a man wants to marry me now, it should be more convenient when he just wants to beat me."

"The supermodels all have skeletal bodies . . . the very existence of their bodies expresses an attitude: the disdain for men. The more men like a certain part of their bodies, the less they want to grow that part. Fashion is such an attitude."

"As men, you stand at the center of the universe. You spout pearls of wisdom that shape the future of the world. So when your female friend comes to you, you might wonder: ‘Is she hoping to share her sadness with me? No, she must be hoping to learn something from me!’"

"Intel is so picky about laptops, they’re even more selective than my taste in men."

"A joke can only get laughs for one reason because it resonates."

"Unlike women, who always think of themselves as unimportant, men always think of themselves as the center of the universe. Every single sentence from men carries utmost importance, and points out the right direction in which the world should advance."

"We want to transform ourselves from a PC market-share leader into a PC-plus innovation leader. This will ensure we have sustained growth, profitability, and the strong foundation to build a great global company that can last for generations."

"After having had my microblog for a year, I find that Chinese netizens like to comment on topics regarding me. For example, my hairstyle has received a lot of reviews lately. I log on to Weibo everyday to check netizens' comments. There is no doubt that social media is a great platform to post information related to Lenovo's businesses."

"Lenovo has been paying huge attention to technology innovation ever since I became the CEO. Even when I was not the chief executive, I was responsible for research and development. Many people may think Lenovo achieved its success through efficiency and execution. But constant investment in R&D and product innovation have been another crucial factor in Lenovo's success. Back in the PC era, we added a feature that made tablet access to the Internet just a click away. Our products are unique in design and address particular requirements. In fact, it is innovation that helped Lenovo score over competition."

"Our success is a combination of four things: first is right strategy and good execution. The second is innovative products and third is efficiency of our delivery. And finally the diversified global leadership team which understands the needs of different geographies. On top of that, in the last four years we have had a strategy of ‘protect and attack’. We protect our strength in our core geography and business, that is, China business and global enterprise business. And we attack with new markets with new products — like emerging markets."

"As the world continues to adjust to the ‘new normal’, we are confident in the long-term growth potential of both devices and cloud infrastructure. We will continue to leverage our core competences of operational excellence and global/local footprint, while accelerating our service-led transformation to better grasp opportunities and drive sustainable growth."

"Strategy. The industry is absolutely shifting toward mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, which are growing fast. But Lenovo has prepared for this shift for many years. Our belief is that we can address those markets as well as our core PC market. In the smartphone sector, for example, we’re number two in China; we’re in the top five now worldwide."

"The contact between Tokharic and Chinese adds little to our knowledge of the Urheimat but merely confirms that the Tokharic people lived that far east. The adoption of almost the whole range of domesticated cattle-names from Tokharic into Chinese also emphasizes a fact insufficiently realized, viz. how innovative the cattle-breeding culture of the early IE tribes really was. They ranked as powerful and capable, and their prestige helped them to assimilate large populations culturally and linguistically. But for Urheimat-related trails, we must look elsewhere."

"The location of the Anatolian branch of IE (Hittite and its sisters) is a problem, or at least a puzzle, for IE homeland studies. The Anatolian languages are attested very early in Asia Minor, removed from Europe and far from the steppe; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov ... offer as a strength the ability of their proposed homelands to account for the location of Hittite with minimal migration. Alternatively or additionally, the location of Tocharian—attested in the early centuries AD well to the east of most IE territory in present-day Xinkiang (Chinese Turkestan)—is a problem or a puzzle... Accounting for the locations of both Hittite and Tocharian is usually presented, at least rhetorically, as a major problem."

"The simplest explanation of the presence of a Centum language in Central Asia would be to regard it as the last survivor of an original Asiatic Aryan stock. To identify a wandering of Aryans across Turkestan from Europe in a relatively late historical period is frankly difficult."

"The later Chinese tended to identify themselves with their ruling class. The Qin 秦dynasty (-3rd) yielded the international name China, Sanskrit Cīnā; the Han 漢 dynasty (-3rd to +3rd) lent its name to the usual self-designation of the ethnic Chinese as distinct from the minorities within China as “the Han”. It might be that a Chinese elite for some reason had identified itself with the expanding Scythians. We do find such a reason in the alternative sinification of the same foreign word. Then pronounced very similarly to the character Xia 夏, it is now pronounced Hua and written 華. This character is a self-designation of the Chinese both internally and abroad, e.g. the Chinese minority in Vietnam is known as the Hoa. Its basic meaning is “civilized, elite” (apart from “flower”, with the same character), the opposite meaning of “barbarian”. The Chinese do indeed consider themselves as the civilized ones, as distinct from the barbarians."

"We got used to dividing the world into industrialized countries and developing countries – rich and poor. However, four East Asian tigers would soon disrupt our worldview. The British colony of Hong Kong and the city-state of Singapore did the opposite of all other countries, and opened their economies wide, without trade barriers. The experts claimed that free trade would knock out the small manufacturing sectors they had, but, on the contrary, they industrialized at a record pace and shocked the outside world by becoming even richer than the old colonial master, Britain. Taiwan and South Korea learned from this and began to liberalize their economies with amazing results. Their rapid growth took them from being some of the poorest countries in the world to some of the richest in a few generations. It was a global wake-up call because it was so easy to compare what the Chinese in Taiwan achieved compared to the Chinese in Mao’s China, and what the Koreans in the capitalist south created compared to the Koreans in the communist north. In the mid-1950s, Taiwan was only marginally richer than China. In 1980, it was four times richer. In 1955, North Korea was richer than South Korea. (The north was, after all, where mineral resources and power generation were located when the country was partitioned.) Today, South Korea is twenty times richer than North Korea."

"The oldest attestation of Hua 華 as a self-designation is among the ruling class of the feudal state of Zhao 趙. .... Except perhaps to aged and highly cultured members of the Zhao elite, no one was aware anymore that Hua 華 had entered Chinese as a loanword, moreover one that designated a foreign nation. Thus, it finally came to mean “we, the Chinese”. It still has that meaning today, along with Zhong, “middle”, from Zhongguo, “the Middle Kingdom, China”. We still see the two together in Zhonghua Minguo 中華民國, “Republic of China”, and Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo, 中華人民共和國, “People’s Republic of China”. The origin of the words Xia 夏 and Hua 華 is the collective self-designation of the inhabitants of Bactria, a country of which the Greeks rendered the Iranian name as Ariana. ... At any rate, the Iranians came to boast of their Aiirya-ness... It is with this elitist connotation that the word also came to mean “us, Chinese”, whence developed the meaning “the Chinese”. And so, in the state of Zhao and later in all of China, the character Xia also acquired the meaning of “grandeur (in manners)”, “courtly sense of ceremony”, while the character Hua also came to mean “splendid”, “excellent”. As a name for the Chinese people, Hua is unapologetic in its claim to superiority... So, the same word came to designate the ethnic specificity of Afghanistan, Iran, North India and China. The unexpected commonality between India and China is reflected in Tibetan. There, the word for the Chinese is Rgya, from Hua, from Ᾱrya; for India it is Rgyagar, apparently from Ᾱryavarta. At any rate, most of Asia called itself Ᾱrya at one time. Here we are reminded of the Manu Smṛti, in which it is said that even the Greeks and the Chinese (both of whom the Indians met in Bactria) had once been Ᾱrya, but had lapsed from that status due to a lapse from Dharmic norms, a barbarian-type conduct. Manu was not much of a historian, but at least he was right in seeing something Ᾱrya in the Chinese. For us, then, this glimpse into the strange itinerary of the term Ᾱrya is a healthy exposure to the relativity of core Vedic vocabulary."

"To put it very simply, anyone can become an American, but only a Chinese can be Chinese."

"Those, however, who do not emit in intercourse and in a day and a night have relations with several tens (of women) without losing their semen, completely cure all ailments and daily are benefited in longevity."

"The Yellow Emperor had sex with twelve hundred women and ascended as an Immortal."

"Tsai's Multi-kinetics were dynamically integrated multiple constructions, employing thirty-two kinetic units, each of which contains a configuration of multi-colored gyroscopic forms. With these elements he created an active environmental field that could, apparently, be infinitely extended. Each motorized unit was a self-sufficient entity, and when it was combined with other similar units produced a large-scale kinetic work that joined visual intensity with mechanical power. By controlling the time sequence of each unit in skillful compositions, Tsai used engineering principles to achieve aesthetic ends."

"There can be no doubt that Tsai's phenomena (whether they be works of art in the strict sense, or whether they be fantastic artifices) are extremely important. They show what promises and dangers may be in here in a "play," if it is proposed by a great artist. Because, even if Tsai's phenomena be considered artifices, there can be no doubt that Tsai is a great artist. Not because what he does is pleasant, or because he proposes a play, or because he represents the spirit of our times, but because he reveals to us, through artifice or works of art, the concrete experience of a future full of promise or abysmal danger."

"As far as the sensory experience of the spectator goes, the most outstanding American kinetic artist is unquestionably the Chinese-born Wen-Ying Tsai. His pieces, which are perfect on the technological level, serve the primary purpose of giving a complete visual experience to the spectator, whose sound solicitations provoke a choreographic, chromatic and rhythmic response in the ‘cybernetic sculptures’. [...]"

"They claim Xinjiang belongs to China. So they shouldn't treat it like a colony. Don't be a predator and a conqueror. You treat them as your enemy."

"From top to bottom, the Communist Party can't get through a single day without telling lies."

"I'm inspiring a new generation who are hungry to learn music. I think that's my responsibility and it's my dream."

"I’m very happy that so many children are learning the piano because of me."

"My fans really love me, so they want to understand classical music and I want to help them. By watching me, they’ve learnt not to clap between the movements, to know some of the music I play quite well. I love the idea of playing quiet music on a big stage, you can feel every note bubbling in the air, with everybody following."

"My emotions are expressed through the piano. It’s easier to speak through the keys than through words."

"Charity is just like music which comes from deep inside my heart. I can express my love for society and my country through my fingers, just like Chopin did."

"I'd play the piano at 5am."

"I think classical music is a great, beautiful art as long as people recognize it. But first we need to calm down and listen to it with heart. In this technologically advanced time, too many things are drawing peoples' attention. Sometimes we need to slow down, look back and feel the beauty of art and life."

"I started lessons when I was three and a half. In the beginning I just played a little but, when I was five, I played my first recital, and from that point my parents had high hopes for me; especially my father."

"美食其实也能吃出音乐的感受来。比如像法国作曲家拉威尔的经典钢琴曲《水的嬉戏》，最后一句就像香槟的气泡消失一样。"

"Why are you here? My city is in chaos because of you!"

"The Tank Man represents the independence and the liberties. Now I call him a hero, but today who are our "heroes"? I mean, from the media? They're always people in our military who have killed a lot of other people: the people who are great sharpshooters, the people who drop bombs, the people who run drone missiles. And they never get criticised in the major media for killing innocents. But they become "hero." Everybody that has a uniform now is a "hero." But what about somebody who wants to tell the truth? What if you have an Edward Snowden who finally speaks out and talks about the truth? He becomes a "traitor" in their eyes. I call Edward Snowden a true hero like the Tank Man."

"He risked a good and honorable death to stand up nonviolently for what is right."

"On June 5th, 1989 one individual had enough of the oppression he and others had long-endured from one of the biggest and most ruthless gangs ever to exist. Left with few other options after decades of rights-usurpations, the man stood up to the aggressors and very literally put his life on the line by standing in front of a column of tanks. Though never identified with absolute certainty, he became known as The Tank Man."

"Twenty years ago, on June 5, 1989, following weeks of huge protests in Beijing and a crackdown that resulted in the deaths of hundreds, a lone man stepped in front of a column of tanks rumbling past Tiananmen Square. The moment instantly became a symbol of the protests as well as a symbol against oppression worldwide — an anonymous act of defiance seared into our collective consciousnesses."