Jeff Thompson, a foreign teacher working in China, wanted to do something to help the Chinese people when hearing the devastating quake hit Sichuan. Therefore, he left his donation to me and immediately I sent the money to the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation.

Today I finished reading Biography of Zhu Yuanzhang, a book written by Wu Han, a Chinese historian. I was really impressed by Zhu who rose from nothing to become the founding emperor of Ming Dynasty. He was born in an impoverished peasant family, to the extent that when his parents died, he and his brother had no money to bury them. he had to go to the temple to be a monk. Then he joined the insurgent armies against the Mongolian rulers. Anyway, he had the talent for military and successfully defeated his rivals. In 1368, when he was 40 years old, he founded the Ming Dynasty and become the second emperor who was born in a poor peasant family like Liu Bang.

He was a tyrant with an iron hand. Because he came from the bottom of society, he sympathized with the poor peasants who led a hard life and loathed the corrupted officials, to consolidate his power. Therefore, he killed many chancellors, even those who helped him during the wartimes.

Though he had been a monk, he still tended to study the Confucian and Taoist classics. However, he disliked Mencius, because he had some expressions against the emperors' rule.

Some wonderful books and passages I am reading:

唐浩明評點梁啟超輯曾國藩嘉言鈔 岳麓書社出版 Liang Qichao's selection of Zeng Guofan's fine words

If you read this book, you can learn a lot from the greatest man in China in recent hundreds of years. According the Confucian value, a great man should be an "inner sage, outer king"內聖外王. Who had achieved it? Mao? Kiang? Neither. However, The person who both of them admired most did achieve, that is Zeng Guofan.

藝文志諸子略 選自漢書·藝文志 A Summary of Various Masters in the Bibliographical Record of the History of the Former Han Dynasty.

If you want to know the origins of the ancient Chinese masters and acquire a general idea of their theories, this passage will help you a lot. It was written by Ban Gu, an ancient historian.

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