Friday, November 03, 2006

The "Mini Meanies" in the Floating World of Mirrors and Flowers

Yuen Luk Luk's October 25th post on "Cursing the Mini Meanies" reminds me of the story in Chapter 19 of "The Floating World of Mirrors and Flowers":
..... After a few more days on the road, our travelers Tong-O and Ninth Uncle arrived at the City State of Qin Ran. Tong-O asked, "Ninth Uncle, have you been to this place before? I heard that the citizens here are short in both their statues and characters." Ninth Uncle replied, "The people here are famous for being defensive and mean and they speak with fork tongues. They will mislead you by saying sweet is bitter, salty is bland to make you all confused. Such is their practice here, so don't be too surprised." They disembarked, walked up to the city gate, through which they crawled through, and found themselves inside the city proper. The streets, lanes and steps were all so narrow and small that moving about was not exactly an easy task for our travelers. At the city centre, Tong-O and Ninth Uncle came upon the inhabitants who were no more than a foot tall for adults and four inches for children. To defend themselves from predatory bird attacks from above, they huddled close and walked in groups of three to five and carried weapons with them. Their postures were defensive and the speeches were equally barbed with poison, trickery and double-talks. Tong-O sighed, "I can now see why they are called Mini Meanies." .......

I am convinced that the Heartless People and the Mini Meanies are neighbours. As I asked in my post "The Floating World of Mirrors and Flowers" several days ago, are there many heartless and meanies among us? I hope that with the united will of the majority, righteousness will always prevail and that I will encounter less of them in our modern society.

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