I finished "The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University" by Daniel A. Bell today.
I mentioned at lunch the first chapter, called "Dye and Dynamism". The author, a Canadian citizen who is a specialist in the thought and history of Confucius and his thought, describes the strong feeling in Chinese culture that having white hair is a sign of being, as we say, over the hill. He explains that having white hair is so frowned upon that he, like other campus administrators, keeps his hair dyed. But he looks bad with the typical deeply black hair like the Chinese. He settles for an appropriate brown.
Confucius advocated moderation but not in drinking alcohol. The Chinese have a white liquor that checks in at "53 percent alcohol" and a milder version of 38 percent. A common practice is to offer a toast for each member of a group. Bell reports that drunk driving was a bigger problem but that campaigns and severe punishment has improved the situation.
Bell introduced me to books on "the power of cute" and writes that at his Shandong University, everyone tries to be cute. I am not all that clear on "cute". I guess it is true that I tend to know it when I see it. The Oxford Dictionary says it means "appealing in a pretty or endearing way." He says that written communications tend to include emoji and that he mistakenly used one that depicted a pile of human excrement which he mistook for a picture of chocolate ice cream.
🫠 Melting Face Emoji - I thought this figure was a ghost! I don't use emoji. There is the emojipedia. https://emojipedia.org
Bell is a student of political science and divides political activity into policy making and ritual. He explains the burden people who are political symbols carry with the many symbolic and ritual requirements to be present, upbeat and "do nothing." He states that it is very tiring to do nothing.
