Prashant > Recent Status Updates

Ranking so far (John Minford’s English titles):

1. The Laughing Girl
2. Magical Arts
3. The Painted Skin
4. Talking Pupils
5. The Snake Charmer
6. The Taoist Priest of Mount Lao
7. Fox Enchantment
8. Growing Pears

any given chapter of this book is both more interesting and entertaining than the entirety of Ridley Scott's 2023 film

"But the strangest thing of all was that, on careful inspection, there were now two pupils visible in that eye, while the right eye was still obscured by its spiral-shaped growth. Apparently both of the two eye-mannikins, his talking pupils, had now taken up residence in the left eye. So although Fang was still blind in one eye, he could see better with his one good eye than he had ever done with two."

HUH

"As Xi once warned officials, 'the Soviet Communist Party had 200,000 members when it seized power, and had 2 million members when it defeated Hitler, but when it had nearly 20 million members, it lost power.'"

still not sure i understand how the world works

very interesting though

"Xi slipped out of detention one rainy night and ran home cold and hungry, hoping his mother would make him some food. But instead of feeding her son, Qi Xin reported him, worried that she would get detained for sheltering a "counter-revolutionary" and leave two of her other children by themselves.. Xi understood his mother's decision and ran off to find another hiding place, but was caught the next day, Yang wrote."

something something 了解中国文化 something something

“… adding context and rounding the edges for sensitive Western reporters. In doing so they constantly molded the ayatollah’s words and his image… He was quoted in the Guardian as saying, “I don’t want to have the power or the government in my hand. I am not interested in personal power.””

reading for a class

im convinced Fyodor had a time machine

“I concluded an island city-state in Southeast Asia could not be ordinary if it was to survive. We had to make extraordinary efforts to become a tightly knit, rugged and adaptable people who could do things better and cheaper than our neighbors, because they wanted to bypass us and render obsolete our role as the entrepôt and middleman for the trade of the region. We had to be different.” - LKY

this book seems like a great start point. what an interesting history!