(#15) Week of July 2 - 英语阅读训练组

阅读小组训练第十五周开始了，有关此次训练活动的初衷，请猛戳这里
前几周发起了阅读训练小组素材推荐的活动，我把版里已有的/训练小组同学正在阅读的，都总结到了素材推荐的一楼，欢迎大家继续推荐，请猛戳这里

参与的形式还是不变，希望已经参与的同学继续坚持并保持/提升阅读速度，观望的同学速速加入欢迎大家跟贴交流阅读感受。



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参与形式：copy自己觉得好的句子，注明page number贴出来。同时最重要的，作为练习，必须把这个句法应用在自己生活的场景里面，也写出来。几乎天天都有汇报进度的话，会比较容易坚持。参见隔壁战拖组，凡是一个人单打独斗的，至少是帖子都没有follow下去，计划是否完成旁人就不知道了。跟组的看起来是坚持的要好些。

跟战拖组一样，每人一周只许占1楼，所有讨论集中在一个贴（这里）。一周内每日更新在自己的楼里，每完成一周一个学分。自己选的书或者指定书都可以，但是4周内必须完成（否则也太慢了）。全部学时完成的，还有1学分奖励。


3/26 周一开始吧，争取4周完成一本。任选1本开始就可以。不过大家都读同一本，争取match进度也不错，免得没有监督难以维持。这点暂时随意吧。

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暂时就是这些规矩。有其他书推荐的话，下一个学习组里面用。其他建议welcome

(16)They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. (17)A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. (18)They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. (19)It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. (20)The Negro led them into the parlor. (21)It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. (22)When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. (23)On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.

"On China", a book written by Kissinger
week 1.

Chapter 1. the singularity of China
they also cherish a tale of original.
A special feature of Chinese civilization is that it seems to have no beginning.
In the tale of the Yellow Emperor, revered by many Chinese as the legendary founding ruler, China seems already to exist.
When the Yellow Emperor appears in myth, Chinese civilization has fallen into chaos.

the new hero pacifies the realm and is acclaimed as emperor

it strides into the historical consciousness as an established state requiring only restoration, not creation

This paradox of Chinese history recurs with the ancient sage Confucius: again, he is seen as the “founder” of a culture although he stressed that he had invented nothing, that he was merely trying to reinvigorate the principles of harmony which had once existed in the golden age but had been lost in Confucius’s own era of
political chaos.

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note: this is an interesting observation that we chinese do not need founder, but only a integrator/a uniting figure.
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Chinese today can understand inscriptions written in the age of Confucius; contemporary Chinese books and conversations are enriched by centuries-old aphorisms citing ancient battles and court intrigues

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note:we should be pround that we are living in history and with history.
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At the same time, Chinese history featured many periods of civil war, interregnum, and chaos. After each collapse, the Chinese state
reconstituted itself as if by some immutable law of nature. At each stage, a new uniting figure emerged, following essentially the precedent of the
Yellow Emperor, to subdue his rivals and reunify China (and sometimes enlarge its bounds).

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evokes this continuous rhythm: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide
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note: 天下合久必分，分久必合
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Warring States period (475–221 B.C.).
Three Kingdoms period (A.D. 220–80),
Himalayan frontier

The extent and variety of this territory bolstered the sense that China was a world unto itself. It supported a conception of the Emperor as a figure of universal consequence, presiding over tian xia, or “All Under Heaven.”


The Era of Chinese Preeminence

Through many millennia of Chinese civilization, China was never obliged to deal with other countries or civilizations that were comparable to it in
scale and sophistication.

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note: that's why we say we are天朝上国
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Europe was even further away in what the Chinese considered the Western Oceans, by definition inaccessible to Chinese culture and pitiably incapable of acquiring
it—as the Emperor told a British envoy in 1793.

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-baidu 1point3acres
Yet China acquired no overseas colonies and showed relatively little interest in the countries beyond its coast.
But in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, between 1405 and 1433, China launched one of history’s most remarkable and mysterious naval
enterprises: Admiral Zheng He set out in fleets of technologically unparalleled “treasure ships” to destinations as far as Java, India, the Horn of
Africa, and the Strait of Hormuz.

Yet beyond declaring China’s greatness and issuing invitations to portentous ritual, Zheng He displayed no territorial ambition
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中华民族真是爱好和平
--------China’s splendid isolation nurtured a particular Chinese self-perception
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China knew, of course, of different societies around its periphery in Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma; but in the Chinese perception, China was
considered the center of the world, the “Middle Kingdom,”
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中土,中国
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China remains a “civilization pretending to be a nation-state.”
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中国没有国家意识，只是一个文化，民族观念
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-baidu 1point3acresAs late as 1863, China’s Emperor (himself a member of a “foreign” Manchu Dynasty that had conquered China two centuries earlier) dispatched a letter informing Abraham Lincoln of China’s commitment to good relations with the United States. The Emperor based his communication on the grandiloquent assurance that, “[h]aving, with reverence, received the commission from Heaven to rule the universe, we regard both the middle empire [China] and the outside countries as
constituting one family, without any distinction
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1863年，同治帝
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But since it was largely self-sufficient, other regions had only peripheral comprehension of its vastness and its wealth.
Trade with China was so prized that it was with only partial
exaggeration that Chinese elites described it not as ordinary economic exchange but as “tribute” to China’s superiority.

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进贡
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confuciasim

Almost all empires were created by force, but none can be sustained by it. 建国靠暴力，维持却不行
Empires persist if repression gives way to consensus. 压迫让路于共识?
The methods by which it was unified, and periodically overturned and reunified again, were occasionally brutal. 残酷的

Confucius (551–479 B.C.) lived at the end of the so-called Spring and Autumn period (770–476 B.C.), a time
of political upheaval that led to the brutal struggles of the Warring States period (475–221 B.C.). The ruling House of Zhou was in decline, unable to
exert its authority over rebellious princes competing for political power. Greed and violence went unchecked. All Under Heaven was again in disarray.
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天下大乱 All under heaven was agiain in disarray/chaos.
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But unlike Machiavelli, Confucius was concerned more with the cultivation of social harmony than with the machinations of power. His themes were
the principles of compassionate rule, the performance of correct rituals, and the inculcation of filial piety.


love of kindness, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by foolishness. Love of knowledge, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured
by loose speculation. Love of honesty, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by harmful candour. Love of straightforwardness, without a
love to learn, finds itself obscured by misdirected judgment. Love of daring, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by insubordination.
And love for strength of character, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by intractability
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Oriented toward this world, his thinking affirmed a code of social conduct, not a roadmap to the afterlife
If the Emperor strayed from the path of virtue, All Under Heaven would fall into chaos.