China, Chinese and Chinamen and America in two important books. Followed by a kick to the ass to Trump supporters

I highly recommend the previous post which describes what may become a short lived effort to improve this seldom viewed blog by reading the:
previous post

Next Post (and the reason it may be short lived is because its a hassle to link (previous and next pages) every time I post a new post.

So here are the books I intended to write about in the previous post:

I put the category “China” in the blog in 2017 the year we visited China. Its category 128. I just reviewed to of the posts from that trip which I will point to. The first is about another book Stillwell in China. I gave the book I was reading to our guide Duan. It shows the note I placed in the book and it is reflective of a more optimistic time.

The Other is simply titled Two minutes of Shanghai traffic which I posted on youtube. Driving is pretty hairy in China.

To this list I will add yet another recent post which I only now added to the China Category. It was posted to the book category and is a photo and description of the books I own and skimmed or read on the subject of China.

The Chinese Typewriter was fascinating. Its massive bibliography is about another 150 pages after its 350 pages of text. Typewriters began taking over the world 150 years ago and began spreading because most languages are derived from the Mediterranean gift of alphabets. Chinese like ancient mesoAmerican languages and ancient Hieroglyphics was based on pictographs. For 3000 years it connected the uncountable tonal languages of the worlds most populous empire with tens of thousands of pictographs which took its most ambitious scholars a decade to get a handle on in a system of education in which Chinese bureaucracy and technocrats made China the richest state on the planet. Then the alphabet and the occident caught up with the hidden empire just after its brief moment or exploration which is described in one of my books on the floor: the Star Raft by Philip Snow. A year before about a dozen of Magellan’s original crew of 500 succeeded in sailing back to Spain making the Earth’s deadly but first circumnavigation China sent several fleets of thousands to the shores of Africa in a decade-long experiment in exploration. As I read this I thought of the Chinese fear of African exchange students during the AID’s epidemic of the 1990s. It left a bitter taste in the African visitors of that era which the Chinese are busy making history by pouring money into Africa’s current development as Trump returns to calling Africa nothing but “shithole” countries. Go Team!

Just a few days ago Xi’s China showed it could still flirt with Western honesty by revealing it had frog jumped Elon Musk foray into AI technology with its Deepseek AI system that cost a fraction of US costs of developing. If Emperor Xi shuts it down by curbing its honesty the Occident still has a chance of keeping abreast of Chinese development.

Deepseek’s announcement came as I was finishing Chinese Typewriter which was an exhaustive examination of two hundred years of developing the impossible Chinese typewriter following two thousand years of trying to organize over 100,000 Chinese characters by the most brilliant scholars in China. The book hinted that there was something in the Chinese means of communication that might be an advantage in thinking over the copious and profligate Alphabetic systems. I was moved to peek at Duolingo’s Chinese tutorial a couple times. OMG. I may sculpt iffy snow sculptures but learn Chinese. I don’t think so. Yesterday I got a listen to its five tones each of which changes every sound into different words. I only heard the difference in three of the five tones. Whatever it is about Chinese it turns out a lot of the worlds most gifted musicians of western orchestral music.

Maybe Trump will hand the Chinese the leadership of Earth by turning his back on truth and democracy despite the dreadful infanticide of Chinese children in Mao’s epidemic of one child abortions. It means that like Japan, China will have to figure out how to care for legions of senior citizens with no children to care for them. That is a challenge the entire world will have to figure out as we humans soak up the plastic drenched waste we are now consuming which is filling our brains with possible Alzheimers inducing levels of microplastics. Figure that problem out Bobby- stop the vaccines – Kennedy!

The other book is “Driven Out” which I began reading to Claudia the year we traveled to China but have never finished. It looks like I’ve mentioned it 9 (now ten) times in this blog. Last night I finished another twenty pages in the middle of the night bringing me up to about page 200 of 350. Its a harrowing tale of American Christian Chinese haters attempting to remove Chinese immigrants from the west coast. The more civilized of them got worried that burning down Chinatowns gave them a bad reputation so they reverted to Trump-like ICE raids only without Guantanamo Bay as a back up. I just saw a documentary on a post Civil War overthrow of democracy in North Carolina just a decade later using the same sort of tactics. No wonder Republican history destroyers are all sleep deprived zombies fighting wokeness. Ignorance is Piss and its the fountain they drink from.

So count me wide awake like Abe Lincoln’s early supporters. I’m no zombie penis sucker.

About the author

Harry is a ferociously good natured eccentric in Duluth Minnesota who detests traitors dressed up as Uncle Sam. You can find somewhat better edited writings of his at the Duluth Reader "contributors." page. The URL is:

https://duluthreader.com/contributors/h/84/284-harry-welty