Wednesday, May 11, 2022

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 42

 男效才良

nán xiào cái liáng

"men, imitate the talented and good"


Apologies for my recent lack of writing. Time's been moving strangely, and it feels as if I've got a thousand things on my plate, none of which are getting done. What's even weirder is that when I stop to think about what those things might be, I can't identify a single one. 

Anyway, not a lot to say about this line, other than how it compares against the one before it. Women are supposed to be chaste and virtuous, which is achieved less by what they do than what they don't, whereas men are urged to actively emulate their society's role models. The passive/active dichotomy here could be seen as a reflective of 陰陽 yin and yang, but I don't think that's really the case. This is just women being told to behave one way and men another, and the women get the short end of the stick. Sounds pretty fuckin' familiar, doesn't it?


微臣
史大偉

No comments: