On power and respect: the change in Thai perception of Russia

The other day we went to a restaurant in Silom, Bangkok's business district.  At the end of the dinner, I got to chat with our waitress, who upon learning where I am from, started waxing on lyrically about what a great, strong and admirable leader Putin is and what a great rich country Russia is.
 

I am not quite used to Thais enthusing about anything Russian at all. When I lived in Bangkok in the late 1990s, Russia was a defeated Communist tyranny fighting a poor self-image, hyper-inflation  and a complete rehaul of its entire way of life in the midst of Yeltsin's lawlessness. I remember reading then an article in the Times of India to the effect that Russia, with its compromised economical and international clout, is now a poor cousin to ignore not an ally to side with. It sounded unpleasantly opportunistic, yet  it did, with unashamed honesty, describe the wide-spread perception of Russia at the time. In Thailand, Russians were the farang jon, 'poor Caucasians', stragely dressed and with little purchase power.

All that has changed with Putin dragging Russia out of the Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes that it was in the 1990s. Russia's estimated 5 billion dollar annual investment into Thailand and the influx of cavalierly spending Russian tourists seem to caus a sea change in Thais' ideas about the country. Besides such visible signs as the ubiquitous Russian-language signs and menus, the attitude has shifted too: neither any longer a feared Communist empire, nor a poor cousin of the farang world, Russia now seems to be admired mostly on the back of its economic resurrection.

Sinic vs. Indic through spiritual traditions

This piece's main thrust is by no means to promote yet another modernist dichotomy but there is a noteworthy distinction between yoga and Tai Chi/Qi Gong approaches, even if both work with the same energies in the same earthling's body, or, if you will, both are two different paths to the same summit. To make it clear from the start, I am not talking about modern Western adaptations of yoga for physical workouts, which are highly syncretic and are a totally different kettle of fish.

Firstly, quite a bit of time in yoga is spent sitting on the floor, while the Sinic martial arts keep you on your feet all the time. For me, that has to do with the type of personal eschatology each tradition adopts. The Indic way fells more about deeper digging into oneself until you discover there the Absolute and thus escape the physical world for good. The Sinic way is to harness the power of the Absolute and make it work in the physical world (cf. Mao's simile of how the stupid, the clever and the wise deal with wind). 

Secondly, in yoga a lot of exercises and definitely meditation is done with your eyes closed, while in Chinese martial arts your eyes are open and focused or, sometimes, semi-closed, and very rarely completely shut.

To what extent these two existential imperatives influence the modernisation paths of China and India is a moot point. Just like Weber's grossly misunderstood Protestant spirit is an important, yet one of a multitude of the factors behind the success of Western capitalism, there are a myriad of reasons why Chinese and Indian economies are the way they are now. Chinese and Indian middle classes are probably more similar in their aspiration for modernist success, than different. Yet, there is something manifesting behind what you see as you travel through the two countries, which helps make sense once you keep in mind the subtle differences between the approaches of the two cultural pinnacles, which are yoga and Tai Chi/Qi Gong. 

P. S. This piece was partly inspired by a conversation with a Japanese teacher of Tai Chi, who after living 20 years in Bangkok,  told me that ethnic Thais overwhelmingly prefer yoga and Sino-Thais mostly go for Tai Chi. 

井底之蛙: why frogs do not fly

Once they asked a frog who lived at the bottom of a well, 'Would you like to fly in the sky?'

'Why the fuck would I want to do that?' quoth the amphibian. 'Your sky is the size of a handkerchief!' 

井底之蛙 - jǐng dǐ zhī wā, "frog at the bottom of a well".

"In the sky full of people, only some want to fly, isn't that crazy?"

 

More articles like this: 四字熟語- ancient wisdom in four-letter maxims

弱肉強食: “survival of the fittest”

弱肉強食 (jakuniku kyōshoku)

Is Leben really a Kampf? Should we cull out the low-earners annually? Who will eat the strongest once they are too fat?

The proverbial “survival of the fittest”, the Neo-Liberal rallying cry meant to justify every minor and major dastardly policy, in Japanese sounds even juicier: “The weak are the meat for the strong”. That said, it’s no match for my Dad’s laconic French, ‘in life you either fuck or get fucked’.

More articles like this: 四字熟語- ancient wisdom in four-letter maxims

晴耕雨読：the joys of country life

晴耕雨読　(seikō udoku): "Till the land when the sky is clear, read a book when it rains." For those aware of ancient history, this would surely remind of the Roman Emperor Diocletian's retirement plan. After a career of feeding Christians to lions, introducing prostration as the form of greeting the emperor, and a slew of very savvy administrative reforms, he retired to blessed Dalmatia (now part of Croatia) to grow cabbages. When appealed by his subjects to return to the throne and fix the crumbling empire, he reportedly replied: 'If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn't dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed.' That uncool verbosity could have been avoided though, had he have a smattering of Chinese or Japanese:'晴耕雨読, innit!".

More articles like this: 四字熟語- ancient wisdom in four-letter maxims

Four-letter words are not always foul language: 四字熟語 and 成語

Chinese for Japanese is what Greek and Latin are for European languages or Sanskrit is for Thai and Malay: the source of a high, abstract vocabulary as well as, with a due bit of curiosity and intellectual effort, access to the wisdom of the ancients of the "Confucius say" fame.

One part of that ancient Chinese heritage are yoji-jukugo (四字熟語), delightfully laconic idioms that express very complex ideas or metaphors in mere four characters.  Using the same model, the Japanese have later come up with their own indigenous yoji-jukugo, just as succinct and sagacious as the 成語 (chéngyǔ) borrowings from China.

Quite a few of them are included in the national school curriculum and thus effectively are part of the daily vernacular. Every once in a while I post the juiciest and intellectually aesthetically striking ones here: 四字熟語/成語, so that you too can drink from that refreshing font of timeless wisdom. 

P.S. The Thai language also has a similar concept, where a four-letter, essentially four-word set expression represents a graphic metaphor, a moralistic proverb or a witty allegory. There's a plethora of such in Thai but one that springs to mind first is บ้านนอกโคกนา (ban nok khok na), literally meaning "the countryside: a chicken coop and a rice field", a both nostalgic and slightly pejorative description for where most people in this rapidly urbanising nation come from.