Category: Concepts
Articles on the core terms and ideas.
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Zhuangzi: Forget Each Other in the Rivers and Lakes
The four characters everyone quotes are the first half of a sentence whose second half rejects them.
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Zhuangzi’s Three in the Morning: Nobody Is Deceived
Ask anyone in Taiwan what 朝三暮四 means and you will be told it describes a person who cannot hold to a decision — the…
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The Double Ninth in Taiwan: Kites, Gift Money, and a Plant That Is Not Dogwood
The Double Ninth festival falls on Sunday 18 October in 2026, and in Taiwan it arrives less as a climb than as a bank…
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Mei Xia Yu Kuang: Zhuangzi’s Phrase Now Means the Opposite
A phrase from the Zhuangzi about how to test a pig now means things are getting worse. Taiwan’s own idiom dictionary records the reversal,…
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Da Qi Wan Cheng: The Oldest Copies of Laozi Do Not Say ‘Late’
On the sports pages in Taiwan, da qi wan cheng is a compliment with a faint apology folded into it. A badminton player wins…
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Zhuangzi’s Useless Tree: The Half of the Quote He Never Wrote
Somewhere in Taiwan this week a newsletter, a graduation speech or a shop sign will quote Zhuangzi’s useless tree. The line runs 無用之用，是為大用 —…
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Zhuangzi Mourning His Wife: The Idiom Says the Opposite
Zhuangzi drummed on a tub when his wife died, but he says he grieved first. In Chinese the phrase now means a widower’s grief.
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Cook Ding and the Ox: Zhuangzi’s Parable Is Not About Skill
The story of Cook Ding and the ox is the most quoted passage in the Zhuangzi, and in English it has been quietly turned…
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Zhuangzi’s Happiness of Fish: The Pun in the Last Line
Zhuangzi’s reply to Huizi turns on one word. Five English versions compared, with the Chinese, the old commentaries and what Taiwan’s dictionaries make of…
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Govern a Great Nation as You Cook a Small Fish: What Laozi Left Out
Reagan quoted Laozi in 1988 and added four words the chapter does not contain. What chapter 60 says, what Han Fei made of it,…
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Heaven and Earth Are Not Benevolent: Laozi’s Straw Dogs
Four English words carry most of the weight of this chapter: heaven and earth are not benevolent. They are usually quoted to prove that…
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Should Kids Learn Traditional or Simplified Chinese?
Parents usually meet this question at the worst possible moment: signing up for a class, standing in a bookshop, or reading an online course’s…
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Why Did China Simplify Chinese Characters?
China simplified Chinese characters to make reading and writing quicker to learn, at a time when most of the population could not read. That…
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Does Taiwan Use Traditional Chinese?
Yes. Taiwan writes in traditional Chinese characters, and has done so without interruption: the government, the schools, the newspapers, the night-market signs and the…
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Traditional Chinese vs Mandarin: A Script, Not a Language
The question usually starts in a drop-down menu. A translation app offers “Chinese (Traditional)” and “Chinese (Simplified)”, a streaming service offers “Mandarin”, a form…
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Loushi Ming: The Humble Room, Read Line by Line
Eighty-one characters, and every schoolchild in Taiwan and Hong Kong has had to learn them. The Loushi Ming — 陋室銘, an inscription for a…
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Eight Steps of the Great Learning: Order, Source, Misquote
Four phrases hang in more Taiwanese offices and classrooms than any others from the classics: 修身、齊家、治國、平天下 — cultivate the self, order the household, govern…
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The Great Learning’s Three Principles and One Disputed Word
The Great Learning opens with the sentence Confucian schooling has begun with for eight hundred years: 大學之道，在明明德，在親民，在止於至善. Those are the Great Learning three principles…
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Pratyekabuddha Meaning: Why Chinese Needed Two Words
The pratyekabuddha meaning you will find in English is “solitary Buddha”: someone who awakens by himself, in an age with no Buddha to teach…
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Arhat Meaning: Three Chinese Readings of One Sanskrit Word
English dictionaries give the arhat meaning in a phrase: “one who has attained enlightenment”, “a Buddhist saint”, “a perfected person”. All of those are…