243. On being a Living Tao - 活道 (Part 7)

When a person becomes a “Living Tao” (活道), the way in which a person sees things begins to change. We gain this uncanny ability to pierce through the thicket, thereby gaining a new understanding about the world around us. Unfortunately, sometimes what we perceive goes against what the people around us wish us to see. It’s a bit like fighting a war and halfway realising that your enemy is in the right. For example, just like the Tao is the Tao, Hong Kong is Hong Kong. A couple of days ago my family and I went out for dinner and we chose a nearby Cantonese restaurant. The kids picked their favourite dishes from that place: Vegetarian Horfun wet, and beef and tomatoes with rice. While my wife and I chose a tofu hotpot dish. The meal went great until, at the end, my kids asked for desert a Chinese Fortune Cookie each. My wife, who’s from Hong Kong, was not happy about it. Citing that Chinese Fortune Cookies are not Chinese. And I said, “Yes they are. They were invented by overseas Chinese.” She countered that until recently they did not exist in China. “So what?” I said, “Their invention was Chinese.” To which, she replied that they weren’t Chinese. And so I asked what made her any different? She told me she was from Hong Kong and Hong Kong is Chinese. I told her Hong Kong is Hong Kong and she’s not Chinese. That did not go down well. She thought I was being a right royal dickhead. And wanted to counter my argument. But then I asked her to consider this: If Hong Kong and the Hong Kong people are Chinese, why then, is the Chinese government spending so much time, effort and money making Hong Kong, Chinese? We went home and spent the rest of the evening watching a documentary on Taoism together called ‘Journey to the East’ by George Thompson from Bristol, U.K. The film is available on YouTube. This argument we just had, I know will offend people on both sides of the Hong Kong - China conflict. But the real issue here is China the idea is far more massive than China the country, and that the opening lines of Romance of the Three Kingdoms will, like yin and yang, always hold true: Empires rise and fall… As things come together and unify, they also expand and break apart. No amount of rectification by China can interfere with Heaven’s Mandate. Both sides will need to find a way to let go.