A Thousand Pieces of Gold: A Memoir of China’s Past Through its Proverbs

A Thousand Pieces of Gold: A Memoir of China’s Past Through its Proverbs
Adeline Yen Mah

The author of the international bestsellers Watching the Tree and Falling Leaves has always been fascinated by proverbs and their importance and use in China. Both her book titles are based on such proverbs.The majority of Chinese proverbs are drawn from the 1st century, when the First King of all China established his leadership over the whole country and its warring kingdoms. In ancient China, a scholar's conversation would be studded with appropriate sayings, and a man's status in society would be defined by his use and knowledge of proverbs. In modern China, much of this is still true, and proverbs are used daily.Adeline Yen Mah introduces us to the whole rich picture of the first century BC when after the long wars between states, China was finally united and the richness of the literature and art could flourish. She portrays the leaders, the plots and the counter-revolutions with great vividness and liveliness so that even those ignorant of Chinese history become absorbed. And as in all her other books, she relates the historical episodes and the proverbs derived from these to experiences in her own life.One of the major expressions of this age was of course the First King's tomb with its terracotta soldiers, of horses and carriages and the stones of the building. The re-finding of this monument – now open to us all – and Adeline Yen Mah's own experiences there, are extraordinary.A Thousand Pieces of Gold, following Watching the Tree and Falling Leaves, is a personal account by a much loved author, but it is also a lively history of the fascinating period of civilisation when Europe was barely out of the stone age.

One Written Word is Worth

A Thousand Pieces of Gold

ADELINE YEN MAH

Dedicated to my husband Bob,

who knows me better than I know myself (zhi ji) and makes everything worthwhile.

CONTENTS

Note on Pronunciation (#uf60b1d83-926b-52a2-a590-596925a7c6ac)

Preface (#uf3bb2f43-a31d-576a-bc99-6cc4be8c49ea)

1 Loss of One Hair from Nine Oxen (#uf9312c77-24a0-530a-8f67-deef431e79f6)

2 Precious Treasure Worth Cherishing (#ua71eb5d4-ade4-57f1-b118-4827302961f0)

3 One Written Word is Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold (#u0535de10-f570-554c-8d1d-842d054bb915)

4 Binding your Feet to Prevent your own Progress (#u17f4d1a6-add9-51bc-9193-83807b902fc4)

5 Clapping with One Hand Produces No Sound (#ua1337367-f65b-5025-97de-742530b85b89)

6 When the Map is Unrolled, the Dagger is Revealed (#u756a2b3e-fc9a-51b5-8674-d8181a13c1b9)

7 Burning Books and Burying Scholars (#litres_trial_promo)

8 Words that Would Cause a Nation to Perish (#litres_trial_promo)

9 Pointing to a Deer and Calling it a Horse (#litres_trial_promo)

10 Little Sparrows with Dreams of Swans (#litres_trial_promo)

11 Destroy the Cooking Cauldrons and Sink the Boats (#litres_trial_promo)

12 This Young Man is Worth Educating (#litres_trial_promo)

13 Banquet at Wild Goose Gate (#litres_trial_promo)

14 Dressed in the Finest Brocades to Parade in the Dark of Night (#litres_trial_promo)

15 Plot to Sow Discord and Create Enmity (#litres_trial_promo)

16 The Heart of the People Belongs to Han (#litres_trial_promo)

17 The Human Heart is Difficult to Fathom (#litres_trial_promo)

18 Devising Strategies in a Command Tent (#litres_trial_promo)

List of Proverbs (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Adeline Yen Mah (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Note on Pronunciation (#ulink_9eb797f5-56b1-59f0-a04d-fd320cfda595)

Chinese is a pictorial, not a phonetic, language. Words are pronounced differently in different provinces, even though they are written in the same way and have the same meaning. This was true even during the time of the Warring States (475–221 BC). The historian Sima Qian began the biography of the assassin Jing Ke with these words: ‘Jing Ke was born in the state of Wei [present-day Henan province]. The natives of Wei pronounced his name Master Qing, but those from the state of Yan called him Master Jing.’

After the Communists conquered China in 1949, they standardised the phonetic spelling of Chinese characters throughout China according to the Beijing dialect, or Mandarin, and called it Pinyin. Pinyin is defined as the phonetic, alphabetic spelling of Chinese writing.

I would like to introduce a few famous figures from Chinese history to western readers using Pinyin. This is not an exhaustive list of all the names that appear in this book, of course, but it gives an overall flavour of how Chinese names are pronounced.

Unlike the western world, Chinese surnames are pronounced first, to be followed by the given names. For instance, my maiden surname is Yen

and my given name is Junling

. Thus my Chinese name is Yen Junling

.

My husband Bob’s surname is Mah

. When I married Bob, my Chinese name became Mah Yen Junling

, whereas my English name became Adeline Yen Mah.

In a similar vein, Deng Xiaoping’s surname was Deng

. His given name was Xiaoping

.

Mao Zedong’s surname was Mao