From: Justin KH Tse 謝堅恆
Date: January 26, 2017
To: Frank Chin
Hello Frank:
I hope this finds you well. I have been getting your emails and enjoying them.
I just wanted to let you know that as the fiasco in the White House unfolds, thanks to our conversations and my reading of your work, this has all sent me back to re-read the Three Kingdoms. The eunuchs are running the palace.
Cheers,
Justin
Visiting Assistant Professor, Asian American Studies Program
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Northwestern University
From: Frank Chin
Date: January 26, 2017
To: Justin KH Tse 謝堅恆
Justin
What? A Chinese (Chinaman? Chinese-American? American-Chinese? Jook cock? Jook sing?) has actually read 3 Kingdoms? Is it a sign?
Chinese value their childhood? No, that's too much! The child lives with its mind working without words. Too much! It's the excitement of the new year. What does 3 KINGDOMS mean, if anything? WATER MARGIN, gives the reader a good bureaucrat, Soong Gong. But he's a sucker for the approval of an authority higher than his. He doesn't seem to know that there is none.
MONKEY gives the reader a silly irresponsible fuck around time that might or might not free up clogged logic from the forces of society. Satire. In Japanese lit - MONKEY becomes UKIYO-E, (FLOATING WORLD) SHUNGA (pornography) Buddha is an power hungry fraud. The Buddhists who discover that discovers the written texts of what Buddha said at one time, are written in the being, (The art of Liang Kai).
The fourth book - the Heroic Tradition - GENERAL YUE FEI, trans. by SIR T.L.Yang, with an intro that tells the reader, once upon a time, British Sir T.L. Yang has personal childhood connections to YUE FEI. He spit on the statues outside of Yue Fei's tomb in Hangzhou. The English wasn't translated until 1957. The Brits were afraid of the book. GENERAL YUE FEI put Chinese flavored fact and fiction together , and tries to happy end family, and alliances of families, and "civilization", the family will always be in war. Yue Fei.
GENERAL YUE FEI - Yue Fei is a Kwan Kung cleaned up and perfected. As a youngster he kills the emperor's son! Kwan Kung killed, just people. Nobodies. Yue Fei kills somebody everybody remembers. He stays clean and perfect as his people and the emperor's people go to pot. He and his family live perfectly well on land left to condemned. People come from their miserable lands for advice. Descendants of the Trio of 3 Kingdoms, children of 108 outlaws of Liangshan Marsh. The children of the champions of the Han way of life. The crooked emperor sends his crooked Prime Minister or Chamberlain to beg Yue Fei to save the empire from the north.
Yue Fei's mother making tea and puttering round the farm hears every plea, and applauds her son's wisdom. My boy's perfect! When the emperor claims Yue Fei for the Nation, she injects her claim to her son as her country, her Guo or Gawk. Which rhymes with Kawk, as in Kawk nay guh tau! (Knuckle rap your head). No mother in 3 Kingdoms, Water Margin, or Monkey does such a thing.
"Yue Fei" introduces women that are free thinking from birth, choose to fight for their claim to land by the Yellow River, along with perfect Yue Fei, and take over after that chickenhearted youngster protecting his art collection and losing his land kills the perfect Yue Fei.
Tia Ling Yang is (if he's still alive) at Hong Kong University, and used to be Chief Justice on the Colonial Hong Kong Supreme Court. He's Yang the same Yang as the Seven Women Generals of the Yang Family - Widows of Yang who take their husband's place. The Yang family is ruled military style by the Matriarch. The widow of the Patriarch. The patriarch was struck with a heart attack while fighting Mu Guiying. He would not tolerate his son having any love with a mountain bandit queen. "He fought me for his life. I won him." "What! What!...." and that is that. The matriarch makes Mu Guiying Supreme Commander of all the Yang armies.
Does Tia Ling Yang begins his translation of GENERAL YUE FEI in 1957 into English and his history, from childhood to British law, rejection of British rule and a run for democracy under Communist eyes, semi-retirement to Hong Kong University, or finish this book and publish, then retirement to a scholars retreat further up the mountain. Damn! Sounds like a Taoist painting of a path up a mountain to perfect solitude - that's solitude, with servants. Yes, even beggars with nothing of worth have servants. Does Yang being a Yang make sense? All these acts are written acts. Today in Hong Kong does the Yang family still ring a bell in Chinese ears? Have all the good booksellers gone to where good books go?
THE FOUR BEAUTIES (concubines) stories of patriotic Jane Fonda-like beauties fucking a bastard for the cause.
THE BALLAD OF MULAN (550 ad) - A freethinker, free fighter, saves land for her family, the emperor spills she's a woman now, and those who fought at her side come a running. Whew! What a girl! leads to THE THREE HERO WOMEN - Liang Hongyu, Mu Guiying (Southern Song) Chin Liangyuk (Ming) leads to the 20th century's THREE CHINESE WIVES - Song Ai Ling (Money) Soong Ching Ling (China) Soong Mei-ling (Power). Exemplars of their kind.
If you're Chinese, Korean or Japanese sometime ago, you knew all this to make sure you pop up at the right place at the right time and come to the time you improved the writing of your language, to sharpen the difference between your people and the world.
Beware of the load of Cockanoodle news the Fire Rooster spit out in loads, of glory me!
