Al Hoang

Brendan O’Kane, a China blogger (an native English speaker blogging on topics on China) I like to read wrote a really neat essay describing Dao. He wrote it for some class of his but I find the essay a nice read explaining some etymology of the word Dao in Chinese. I’ve had a faint understanding of the ideas of Daoism but this essay brought up some of the difficulties with trying to fully wrap your mind around such a difficult concept. Here’s a snippet:

Daode Jing, the foundational Daoist text, opens by cautioning its readers that “the Dao which can be expressed is not the eternal Dao” (or, in the Mawangdui version of the text, that “ways may be expressed, [but] they are not the eternal Way”). Then, mindful of its own warning, it goes on to attempt the impossible.

Check it out

It is interesting to hear the debates on education in the U.S. It’s also
very mind boggling since the U.S. has no standardized school system to
base a student’s merits on.

Moving away from the U.S. and moving to India, we get a peek into
the life of some females that are from poor families and their struggle
to get an education. The article mentions that educating females has
many benefits for a society. It mentions that Taiwan and South Korea
benefitted from this. This is an interesting question if we look over
to Mainland China. I am not sure how the education system works there but
if females have much better chances at education than females in India
this might be another example of why it is beneficial to make sure
girls get an education.

Read it here