On the flight from Houston to London, Jim had re-read Sun Tzu’s classic treatise The Art of War (“Keep your friends close but your enemies closer”), but he was pretty sure that the cannon at the Tower of London was not the art Sun Tzu was talking about . . .
Tony’s recurring bad dream of being chased by the giant dragon while he and his friends were frozen in place was troubling–what did it mean? A warning to eat at Taco Bell instead of the Chinese Buffet, or worries about China taking over the world? And why did the dragon have deer-like antlers? Tony’s online shrink didn’t seem to be of much help . . .
“Some things don’t translate from one language to another very well,” thought Gui Kun; for example, his current dilemma–because he was looking down at Hong Kong from Victoria Peak, did that mean he was Uptown . . . ?
Though he was in a vibrant, cash-rich economy with lots of money flowing, entry into the Hong Kong Yacht Club was prohibitively expensive. Li Gao decided to go it alone . . .
In an early attempt at going paperless, Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty had figurines put on the roofs of various palace buildings–if your figurine wasn’t there, it didn’t matter your excuse or explanation–you weren’t getting in, papers or no . . .
Al Gore, while touring China with his band The AlGoreRhythms, had played at a prestigious Chinese center of learning and had been asked to speak about how he had invented music several years before inventing the Internet. When several western reporters asked if maybe Bach, Tchaikovsky, Elvis, Al Jolson or various angelic choirs hadn’t maybe preceded him by a little, his response was that those allegations were simply bigoted, uninformed right wing Tea Party propaganda from Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh . . .
