Chinese sayings: 40 (失斧疑鄰 / 失斧疑邻 shī fǔ yí lín)

 

失斧疑鄰 / 失斧疑邻 

shī fǔ yí lín

“lose axe suspect neighbour”

This is a saying from an ancient Chinese story by philosopher 列子 Liè Zǐ of The Warring States period, 475-221 B.C..

    A man who had lost his axe suspected his neighbour’s son.  Every time he looked at the neighbour’s son, the latter had all the body language of a thief.

    A bit later, the man found his axe.  The next time he saw the neighbour’s son, the latter no longer looked like a thief.

    So his brain had been leading his eyes astray then.

    It happens often enough, doesn’t it?  I myself was guilty of judging an old man by his unkempt appearance and the fact that his flies were undone in this episode: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2012/07/smell-london.html.

Frozen memories (Singapore)

 

Singapore-based nephew Kaikai and I were talking about remembering people and events from earlier days.

    This unearthed one memory about a girl in my Primary One class (so we were aged six) at the Chinese stream school where my mother had sent me while waiting for my English stream convent school place to come up a year later.

    I was bullied at the Chinese school by a gang of three girls, one of whom was the daughter of the school principal (therefore a useful friend to have).  One of the things they did to me was to make me push them sitting in the three-seater wooden bench swing in the school yard until my palms developed blisters.

    One day, I came back to the classroom after the break to find my colouring book missing from my school bag.  I was very upset and cried for a long time, more from the fact that people could do such a hurtful thing than from the loss of a colouring book.

    The following week, this girl in my class (I think her name was Tan Poh Choo) gave me a new one as a replacement.  She and I were not even that chummy with each other (I was a loner even at that age), so it was particularly touching that she should've done it, especially when she was only six.

    I left the following year because my space at the convent school had come up, so I lost touch with that kind girl.

    Fast forward to my teens.

    I was doing my duty at the wake of my mother's uncle when this girl turned up with her family to pay her respects.  She turned out to be distantly related to him.  I recognised her as the Tan Poh Choo who'd been so kind to me, so I got hold of her telephone number from a relative and invited her out for some performance at the National Theatre, then went for a milk shake afterwards.

    It was a bit of a damp squib, this attempt at renewing my relationship with a girl who'd been kind to me some years back.  She'd carried on in the Chinese stream, where Mandarin was the teaching medium for all the subjects, whilst I'd gone on to an English stream school with English as the teaching medium.  We couldn't really communicate satisfactorily enough, language-wise, so after a fairly awkward milk shake, much of which was consumed in silence, we went home, and never got in touch after that.

    I've heard of people who'd been in a relationship in their teens and gone on to marry someone else, then getting back together in later life but becoming disappointed at the renewed relationship, as they and their separate lives in the interim had changed.  Some memories are perhaps better left frozen.

    I wonder where Tan Poh Choo is now, and if she remembers having done that kind act to a distraught classmate in Primary One?

(Singapore, 1960 and 1968(?)/9(?))

Chinese sayings: 39 (以毒攻毒 yǐ dú gōng dú)

 

以毒攻毒

yǐ dú gōng dú

"by-means-of poison attack poison"

The English equivalents are:  fight fire with fire; fight evil with evil; set a thief to catch a thief.

(from googling) Quote Vaccines work by introducing a weakened or inactive version of a germ to your body, triggering a safe immune response without causing the disease. This "imitated" infection teaches your immune system to recognize and remember the specific pathogen, creating antibodies and memory cells. If you encounter the real germ later, your immune system is prepared to fight it off effectively, providing protection from serious illness. Unquote

    One of the rules in my house when I was growing up was to go and clean out the mouth immediately after getting up, before doing anything else.  Even taking a phone call that had got you out of bed would earn you a ticking off, even though the other party can't smell your unclean breath.

    Eyebrows were raised, therefore, when we were told about the recommendation by a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) practitioner whom our circles had heard about, mainly because he was a bit young (in his 40s?) to be a TCM practitioner.  (The traditional image, in my childhood days anyway, was that of an old man [note: man] with a grey beard.  That's how long it's supposed to take to learn before one is good enough to start treating people.)

    This new buzz of a TCM practitioner had recommended that instead of brushing out all the foul-smelling stuff in our mouths accumulated over our x hours of sleep, we should first of all, upon getting up, drink some water.  (In the Chinese tradition, preferably warm water, in spite of the hot tropical climate, because it's closer to the temperature of the body and therefore won't be such a shock to the system and upset various organs in their functioning.)  

    The idea is similar to the general principle of how vaccines work (injecting them into our body which makes the body produce antibodies to fight the disease), which has been around for a long time and accepted by most people.  (I know a couple of women who feel quite strongly about the Covid vaccine, regularly forwarding anti-Covid vaccine material around in support of their feelings about it.)  

    As I understood it at the time (I was ten), this TCM practitioner was saying, back then in the 1960s, that the process of feeding the body with the foul-smelling stuff in our mouths first thing in the morning would trigger a reaction in the body to fight it.  (It makes sense, although to me as a ten-year-old child, it's a bit worrying that we carry this supposedly harmful stuff in our mouths all the time, living with it at first hand.)

(Singapore, 1960s)

Going to the gym

 

Gyms have been sprouting up everywhere in the last couple of decades.

    There's one by the bus stop I use regularly, so while waiting for the bus, I see these people doing the treadmill:  on and on and on, I see them treading the conveyor belt.

    Each time, I think, "Why don't these people just walk everywhere?  This way, they get their exercise, as well as save money (bus/Tube fare; their gym subscription) and save the environment (energy / electricity for powering these machines)."

PS:  This blog is just a light-hearted take on the gym culture.  I know that there're all sorts of other facilities and activities they offer that are designed scientifically to produce health benefits, etc.  So put that brick away.

(2025)

Just make it up: 01 (Peru)

 

The guide book in 1986 for Peru said South Americans (or maybe just Peruvians specifically, I can’t remember now) will give you any answer rather than say they don’t know.

    We found this out first hand one day in Cusco/Cuzco when we were trying to track down a travel agency.

    The guide book said it was on Street X, which was a long road.  We walked up and down the entire length of Street X, but couldn’t see the travel agency.

    At some point somewhere in the street, we asked a local, who pointed us up the street, without any hesitation.  We were sure we hadn’t seen the travel agency on that stretch when we were there a few minutes earlier, but since the local man confidently and instantly pointed that way, we took his word for it.  Went the whole length of that stretch.  Nope, no travel agency.  

    Walked back down the street, saw a policeman at half point and asked him, who confidently pointed us down the street.  Ah, the local man had been wrong then.  Went the whole length of that stretch, but no, there was no travel agency there either.  So, even the policeman chose not to admit that he didn’t know.

    Two hours later, after having walked up and down that street n times, we found out (can’t remember how now) that the travel agency had moved to another street but the guide book had not known about the move or had failed to note it.

(Peru, 1986)

PS:  Actually, re-reading this, it has just occurred to me that the local man and the policeman might not have completely made it up.  They might've remembered it from its former siting, i.e., it HAD indeed been on that street before.  It's just that those two men didn't get the section of the street right:  whether it was up one end or down the other.

Just make it up: 02 (London)

An octogenarian student of mine (let’s call her Susan) texted to suggest going for a meal, mentioning in the next line that her daughter was visiting from abroad between Date X and Date Y (staying with her, as usual).

    I texted back, asking for the significance of the mention, wondering (in the text to her) if it meant that we couldn’t go for lunch during that period.

    No, she texted back, we could still go for lunch, the daughter had her own plans which wouldn’t affect her going for lunch with me.

    A few days later, she texted to say that she wouldn’t be going for the monthly gathering of a social club on Sunday because of her daughter’s visit.  My immediate thought was, “But she said only a few days ago that the daughter visiting her wouldn’t make any difference to her own movements.  She’s contradicting herself.”

    Another week later, she texted to say that she wouldn’t be going for the healing session on Saturday because her daughter was visiting her.  That’s the second time she’s contradicted her first text, I thought.

    I saw her for lunch the day after the daughter left, and brought this up at one point, as I was confused about the contradiction.

    She said, “Oh, it was too complicated.  We were going to have a meal with someone on the Sunday of the social club gathering, then on the Saturday of the healing session, we were doing something else with somebody else.  I decided it was too complicated to explain why I couldn’t make it to both those occasions, so I just said it was because my daughter was visiting from abroad.”

    I said, “But you did specifically say that your daughter visiting you wouldn’t affect your movements, so wouldn’t it be better to say, ‘Long story’, instead of plucking anything out of thin air, and confusing the reader because of the contradiction??”

    Ha!  I got a text yesterday saying she had felt a huge improvement in her health after the healing session, adding, “Long story.  Will tell you when I see you.”

    It is such a simple trick I’m surprised she had to be taught it in the first place.  So I wasn’t gaslighting myself then.

(London, 2025)