Miscellany
The Chinese Communist Party requires that all published books be assigned a “book number” by the government; between 2003 and 2004 the General Administration of Press and Publication banned around fifty periodicals and dictionaries for using registration numbers illegally obtained from other books. In January 2004 the People’s Daily reported that two men had been sentenced to seven and nine years in prison by a court in Anhui Province for “unlawful operation of a business.” The men had published a book of love poetry using fraudulent book numbers.
Miscellany
The title track of Van Morrison’s 1990 album Enlightenment opens with the lyrics “chop that wood, carry water,” a reference to the popular Zen Buddhist dictum that before enlightenment, one must chop wood and carry water, and that after enlightenment, one must chop wood and carry water. The origin is a verse by the late eighth-century Chinese poet Layman Pang, who declared that his “supernatural power and marvelous activity” was “drawing water and carrying firewood.”
Miscellany
According to the fourth-century-bc Zhuangzi, the man who attains unity with nature “mounts on the clouds and wind, rides the sun and moon, and roams beyond the four seas. Life and death do not alter him, much less principles of gain and loss.” Such human beings “turn beginning and end around and don’t know start from finish. They carelessly loiter beyond the dust and the dirt and wander free and easy.”
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