{"id":607,"date":"2015-11-04T13:46:25","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T21:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/?p=607"},"modified":"2021-01-16T10:07:29","modified_gmt":"2021-01-16T18:07:29","slug":"little-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/04\/little-china\/","title":{"rendered":"China, That Little\u00a0Country with 423% of The Population of the US"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">I&#8217;ve never been to China, but would love to go, especially after reading Liu Cixin. It&#8217;s been fascinating exploring the Eastern way of thinking&#8211;very old, very mature, yet so different from Western thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>I loved the book&nbsp;<em><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1Sh97Gz\">Three Body Problem<\/a>&nbsp;<\/em>by Chinese author Liu Cixin, but <em><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1MryOyY\">The Dark Forest<\/a><\/em>&nbsp;is twice as long and,&nbsp;I think, twice as good. This trilogy is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Cixin might not be&nbsp;as inventive as <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1Q04SRk\">Neal Stephenson<\/a> and he may not have the character breadth of fantasy author<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1Sh9gJP\">Brandon Sanderson<\/a>, but in terms of pure science fiction, he&#8217;s up there with<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1Mrz4xS\">Isaac&nbsp;Asimov<\/a>.<\/li><li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1MrzaFD\">The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently&#8230;and Why<\/a><\/em>&nbsp;by Richard Nisbett&nbsp;dives into why China never developed science in the Western sense, but how their very different way of thinking led to many pragmatic inventions and a worldview Westerners could learn a lot from. I&#8217;m only a couple chapters in, but have already have learned a ton.<\/li><li>Speaking of different ways of thinking&#8230; I&#8217;ve seen <em>The I Ching, or, Book of Changes<\/em> referenced many times, but I&#8217;ve never read it. I&#8217;m still a complete noob but <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.com\/069109750X\/?tag=besttoolforth-20\">this version<\/a>&nbsp;has a great forward&nbsp;by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Carl_Jung\">Carl Jung<\/a> (read it online <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=ExU6SjX97EwC&amp;lpg=PA1&amp;dq=The%20I%20Ching%2C%20or%2C%20Book%20of%20Changes&amp;pg=PT20#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\">here<\/a>). He&nbsp;explains how what&nbsp;could seem comparable to astrology or a magic book of spells&nbsp;can be useful to even the Western mind.<\/li><li>?&nbsp;is &#8220;wood&#8221;&nbsp;or &#8220;tree&#8221; in Chinese.&nbsp;?&nbsp;is &#8220;forest.&#8221;&nbsp;Cool.<\/li><li>That 423% number came from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wolframalpha.com\/input\/?i=population+of+china+as+a+percentage+of+the+US+population\">WolframAlpha<\/a>, one of the most impressive search sites on the Internet.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve never been to China, but would love to go, especially after reading Liu Cixin. It&#8217;s been fascinating exploring the Eastern way of thinking&#8211;very old, very mature, yet so different from Western thought. I loved the book&nbsp;Three Body Problem&nbsp;by Chinese author Liu Cixin, but The Dark Forest&nbsp;is twice as long and,&nbsp;I think, twice as good. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-m"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppj2P-9N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":825,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions\/825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}