Yanwen’s blog

I came upon this book last year -- Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels by Catherine A. Sanderson. An interesting story there reminds me of a Chinese saying, 三个和尚没水喝 (sān gè hé shang méi shuǐ hē), its literal meaning is: Three monks have no water to drink. This is the third part of the saying: If there is one monk, he will fetch water for himself. If there are two, they will fetch water together. But if there are three or more, none will take it upon himself to fetch water, thus no water for all. It carries the same meaning as this: "Everybody's business is nobody's business."

The story goes like this. In a small village, every house has a vineyard for making its own wine. The town has this custom -- on New Year's day, each family brings a bottle of their best wine of the year to a town gathering and pour it in a huge wine barrel, so all the people enjoy it over a feast. 

One year, a husband has this idea, our bottle of wine is the best in town. When we mix with others' wines, nobody can enjoy our wine. Why not keep it ourselves and fill the bottle with boiled water and pour it in? Nobody can tell anyway. So he did.

But he quietly shared this secret with one of his relatives who started playing the same trick. The practice spread slowly and surely. Of course, the quality of this barrel of wine at the New Year's dinner is getting worse and worse.

Eventually, one year, people turned on the taps on the barrels and out flowed pure white water!

The author used the story to illustrate how social slackness and irresponsibility can snowball and eventually generate more and more destructive consequences.

When our relatives sit together talking, I have noticed two different styles of an adult and her son. One of my sisters habitually expresses herself in an assertive manner, zero tolerance of opposing voice, showing your typical dominant personality.

Her son appears to be the opposite. He cares more about maintaining harmony with others, not to provoke or rub someone the wrong way. So he is gentle and quiet, seldom talks without being asked, never raising different voices. 

This resembles the scene in one of my former work places where one colleague talked in similar fashion, making others quiet.

I used to think perhaps others don’t have much meaningful to share. Actually this pattern is the result of interactions between them over the course of a long period of time.

Very often, in our fervor to express ourselves, we forget to consider the impacts of our manner on our listeners, that our forceful manner of speaking and reacting to different voices could sound intimidating and discouraging to others to talk. We are so dominant that we forget to give others opportunities to speak, especially in a family. The consequences of this dominant style may include raising a child who prefers to be quiet and bury his voice.

A Chinese saying describes this style 一人独断 (yì rén dú duàn), meaning:  one person makes decisions disregarding others, the opposite of being democratic.

This morning my 93-year old mother told me that she is the only survivor among her generation of in-laws, 8 of them in total, my parents-in-law, my first sister’s parents-in-law, my youngest sister’s parents-in-law and my parents. This is true. 

To encourage her to keep doing the right things for herself, I told her of two keys to her longevity: healthy lifestyle and keeping high her spirits.

She said, there’s no one size fits all recipe for keeping one’s spirits high and getting good moods. Each one has his own unique way. Some people get high from their careers pursuit, some in having good food, or in traveling, some in creative works, while others in serving the society. That’s why there’s a Chinese saying, 助人为乐（Zhù-rén wéi lè), meaning: get pleasure from helping others, get Helper’s high.

What surprises me is the fact that my mother totally embraces the belief in diversity even though she has never been educated in a place that advocates diversity.

Perhaps the third key to longevity is wisdom, the one that recognizes, accepts and respects diversity in life or perhaps helper’s high.

On my way back to Beijing I met one Chinese graduate student majoring in American literature from UMass. She just finished her studies and moved back to China. No job is waiting for her now in China. 

Sitting by my left side are two Chinese students going to a private high school in Florida. They came from Changchun as sophomore last fall. They go back to China for winter, spring and summer breaks. They talk and behave very much like your average Chinese students.

I also met a young relative of mine, who is turning 26 soon. I was thinking about talking with him and sharing with him some of my ideas and thoughts. But I refrained from saying anything beyond shallow greetings. I’d rather write something here.

Not because I don’t have anything valuable to say or to share but because I think of the time when I was his age and what I was doing and thinking.

Back then I was young and stupid and full of myself, definitely not interested in listening to seniors talking and trying to learn from them. I thought they either don’t understand me or they belong to an older generation, sort of lagging behind in their way of thinking.

Young people see the differences between us much more than wherein we are the same, that we are all travelers on this same life journey, all going through the same process of growing, rebelling, awakening, self-awareness, self-fulfillment, and most importantly, getting old.

Being senior means they start the journey earlier than the young and have the time to accumulate some valuable experiences. The paradox of life is this: seldom do the young have the wisdom to see this. After they repeat the same mistakes and are no longer young, they now know.

A Chinese saying goes, 年轻气盛 (nián qīng qì shèng), that is, young people like to fight at every battle.

A tall architecture with a commanding view caught my eyes while I was passing through the Brooklyn Bridge. I walked to its front, wondering what this building was. Honestly, I didn't expect it to be a government building. Generally, government buildings have a boring modern look. It must be some kind of ancient architecture with a long history. It is called Manhattan Municipal Building.

Can you believe a government has such great taste for a building incorporating classic Roman styles of architecture with Corinthian columns? More research reveals that the design of the building was inspired by the City Beautiful movement in New York.

This is the first time that I heard of City Beautiful movement. I think the movement exemplifies a scenario where people were motivated by the reform philosophy that beautiful urban environment promoted order, harmony and civic pride and improves the quality of life. They were driven by the belief that physical appearance of a city could have strong social, cultural and moral impacts on the residents. And they implemented their noble ideas and beautiful visions, resulting in, among others, Manhattan Municipal Building.

Such a splendid building! It all started with a noble idea and a beautiful vision. Idea and vision come ahead of everything.

Here’s a Chinese saying for this, 完美无缺 (Wánměi wúquē), meaning “flawless.”

By the way, I wrote this piece on 12/26/2024. I have to recycle this one as I’m on the way to Beijing now.