On my mind

From reading, mainly

[hayingsang]

Read in 2026

Luo Guanzhong, Three Kingdoms III (Moss Roberts translation)

My read-the-big-Chinese-classic-novels projects moves forward another big step. With Three Kingdoms completed, all that’s left now are two volumes of Journey to the West and three of The Plum in the Golden Vase.

As with what I’ve read so far of Journey to the West, I ought to have read Three Kingdoms far earlier. Much as Journey to the West is what Chinese culture is about, here is Chinese history, with its Han-dynasty-end tale of the struggle for supremacy between the kingdoms of Wei, Shu and Wu and names which I’ve seen many times but without any meaning attached – Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang above all.

Now I can see just how much of Chinese tradition goes back to this era – I have to presume because of this book and its role in shaping everyone’s thinking about China’s past over the last few hundred years since it first appeared.

As with Journey to the West and its introduction by Anthony Yu, so translator Moss Roberts’ overview of the book is invaluable. I need to find something similar for The Marshes of Mount Liang/The Water Margin to get some more context on why that book exists too.

As to the book itself, what can I say? If you’re interested in China – go and read it. As with Journey to the West, many other things about the country start making more sense, and so do this as early as possible.

[hayingsang]

I predict ...

The AI Superforecasters Are Here

...

User guide - ask your AI the following:

“Think like a superforecaster and answer with a probability: what is the chance of X? If this isn’t a well-formed forecasting question, please rewrite it as one and check it with me before proceeding.”

[hayingsang]

Cultural life

I saw Backrooms with one of my family. He didn’t like it all. “It went nowhere,” he said. I wouldn’t be quite so harsh, but I can see what he means. If you didn’t like how it did what it did, then what else was there? I liked its 1980s office setting more than he did, or maybe it just resonated more. I wasn’t so keen on the surreal furniture slid at angles into floors and walls, but I did like its evocation of the (sort of) latent violence that fills so many people’s dreams, and the idea that you can be trapped in a mental world created by you but which you can’t control. But did it take these ideas anywhere? It would be a stretch to claim that the mental world Backrooms showed was that of everyone, but it was that of its main character, Clark, who successfully persuaded Mary, his shrink, to enter that world. And it pulled me in – by doing what it did, with scary bits and unsettling bits, great soundplay and enough hints in the excellent performances of Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve that Clark and Mary’s unsettled lives might not be so far from ours to leave me a little more disturbed than my companion.

[hayingsang]

Making do with Machiavelli

It seems like we don't know what's going to happen. Adam Tooze at his best here, reminding us of the world's different outlooks on what events throw at us.

Chartbook 452 Europe's Machiavellian Moment

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Read in 2026

Luo Guanzhong, Three Kingdoms II (Moss Roberts translation)

Suddenly, I’ve broken the back of the book. Now through 94 of its 120 chapters, and its two leading protagonists – Liu Bei and Cao Cao – are dead, as are the other two – Lord Guan and Zhang Fei – who with Liu Bei in chapter 1 gathered in a peach garden to swear an oath of eternal brotherhood. Sun Quan is still alive and ruling Southlands, but he hasn’t played a prominent role for a while. Driving the story now is Kongming, conquering all who cross his path.

I haven’t cheated and looked up the final outcome yet (though I think I know what it is). Instead, I’m going to let the book’s tremendous momentum carry me there, probably rather quickly. As I mentioned in my note on volume I (here), I found getting going hard. Now though, it rolls along, chapter after chapter, relentlessly, edging forward more than moving, with recurring patterns and themes, though each with their own variation. Fighting, strategising, allying, betraying, machinating … It’s all there. mixed in with pride and suspicion, ambition and loyalty, and lots of chopping off of heads.

Now to enjoy the last 26 chapters.

[hayingsang]

Read in 2026

Ned O’Gorman, Politics for Everybody

It was O’Gorman’s subtitle that pulled me in: “Reading Hannah Arendt in Uncertain Times”. But his book’s not really about reading Arendt – he doesn’t send the reader off to dig around more in Arendt – it’s about why he would like everyone to be liberal. I sympathise, but this isn’t the problem (nor, I think, was it one of the problems that Arendt wrestled with either). The problem is how to be a liberal when others aren’t. Or to put it even more starkly, what do you do when non-liberals run the show.

There aren’t many choices. Organise if you can is the main one. Then - flee if you can’t? Speak out whenever possible? In normal times, I think you work with whoever’s around you. If you’re serious, you do more. A lot of effort has to be preventative. And then supportive – opening your doors to those in need.

O’Gorman’s book didn’t really work for me – far too handwavy for the most part. But all the same I liked it. Towards the end he takes a point from Grotius, that we shouldn’t be thinking about what’s owed to someone, but what’s appropriate for them. In this approach, right and rights have a role, but the situation is important too. We start from here and now, but “it is never possible to know where action will end” (Ariella Azoulay). Attributive justice, apparently – an idea I had never heard of before. I rather like it.

He’s also strong on forgiveness. Me too.

[hayingsang]

Cultural life

To The Turns studio theatre in East Kowloon Cultural Centre to watch an Unlock triple bill - three one-person shows.

First up, Cheung Wai Yin's take on contemporary pole dance, then Ching Chu's shimmering femme fatale, finally, after the interval, all of us onto the floor for some breathing exercises and dancing with Ho Tsz Kwan.

Around 40-plus in the audience, which to my mind is both good and representative of this kind of work in Hong Kong nowadays. The first two pieces each asked difficult questions. Cheung's made me wonder whether I should be wondering about sex workers and pole dancing (yes is the answer), but also whether I needed to (I'm undecided; how much attention need I direct to this question doesn't seem pressing to me). Ching's had me wondering about how women in tight dresses with splits are viewed differently by men and women, or more specifically what different type of reaction she might might have been looking for from her performance.

Ho's was a different kind of piece. She pulled nearly all of us into her performance. Quite an achievement considering how difficult audiences can be. But also I liked how Unlock had balanced the show - two questions and some participation. As with its previous evenings, there's always a range of different as well as interesting works on offer, and those who turn up are in the nicest way forced to become involved.

[hayingsang]

Read in 2026

Odd Arne Westad, Decisive Encounters

Westad’s history of the Chinese civil war from 1946-50 is an excellent book. Indeed, having now read three of his books, along with The Cold War (my note here) and Restless Empire (read in 2024 but which I didn’t write about), I think he’s one of the best historians around. This is a dense, meaty account of how the Communist Party of China ended up in power – you see how things happen, but also how they could have happened otherwise. Westad shows people making decisions and then living with the consequences. The communists won, but there was nothing inevitable about their victory (though being more competent than the nationalists probably helped). Diana Lary’s China’s Civil War: A Social History, 1945–1949 is a little better on what people thought and how it felt to live through those years, but Westad is superior at showing why things turned out like they did. Together they offer as much as most of us need to know on how China went from being run by Chiang Kai-shek in 1945 to Mao in 1949.

[hayingsang]

Read in 2026

Luo Guanzhong, Three Kingdoms I (Moss Roberts translation)

Definitely the hardest of China's big super classics for me to get to grips with. A lot of names, places and dynamics to fathom, and a rhythm that takes time to adjust to. But by the end of this first volume, I'm starting to get there - becoming aware of the ebbs and flows, who I should be watching out for and the geography across which things are playing out.

Picking up a bit of background helps too. Probably you shouldn't read a book like this blind, but I always want to see what the text says first, only dipping into the introduction or checking out some commentaries once I'm well into things.

I like the feel of this translation by Moss Roberts, more so than Yu Sumei's I started on last year. Maybe that's because Roberts' is a little tougher to digest? I remember Yu's being a little too racy and straightforward, but having to struggle a little with Roberts' slightly archaic English makes the book feel a little more like it's several hundred years old.

Also, I like having Robert's academic baggage - a seriously long Afterword, a lot of notes and a list of the characters. I hope I can back and read Yu's version in full later (and Martin Palmer's abridged version), but I think I made the right choice in swapping to Roberts for my first Three Kingdoms reading.

[hayingsang]

Read in 2026

Bruno Maçães, History Has Begun

I don’t think Maçães says much in this book. His basic thesis is that post neoliberalism, an era of American dominance, we’re returning to an era of competition between powers but with no equivalent of Western liberalism as the dominant school of though, ie, with no ideology that powers will be attempting to impose on others. This will be just a struggle between powers, likely with no final outcome. The US will remain one of the main forces – the biggest in Maçães’ view.

Most of the book, though, is waffle. He spends a fair bit of time talking about post truth stuff, but that’s irrelevant. Why should it matter if a lot of people have some weird view of how things are if ultimately it’s how things are that matters? I know that it’s perceptions that shape what people decide to do, but ultimately they can only do what they can do. Underneath Maçães’ musings is the fact that when it’s about brute power, the US still has it in abundance. I think this what he believes, but it’s not what he says, while as Trump has shown (and, indirectly, as I think China does too), it’s not really that simple. Power is a tricky concept, both in the mind and in practice. Figuring out what you can do, and what you can get others to do, will remain what politics is about. History will trace this – it never stopped.

[hayingsang]

Abdullah Ibrahim - one of the greats

[hayingsang]

Read in 2026

Lucian Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics

Very much an old-school book, much of it reading like someone pontificating after dinner. Opening its pages randomly, I find the final chapter starting:

Why does China thwart, frustrate, and even embarrass those who try to help? For all who befriend China, the story is the same: high hopes then disappointment.

Or how about this from the other end of the book:

The Chinese have always felt profoundly uncomfortable, dissatisfied and threatened whenever their politics has not been characterized by a dominant hierarchy and a single ideology.

Or how about this from somewhere in the middle:

In the Chinese civilization, the basic themes of social, political, and philosophical life all tended to converge in accentuating the importance of the collectivity.

Originally published in 1967, in the edition I read with a chapter added in 1991, post-Tiananmen, and one dropped, on communes, Pye’s book is strong on assertions, especially ones offering psychological assessments of Chinese people, but offers little in the way of evidence. I found myself repeatedly muttering “Really?” as I turned its pages, long before the end seeing it as a product of its time (though maybe more the 1950s than the 1960s) rather than a serious effort at trying to grasp what made Chinese politics distinctive.

Of course that could be my bias too. I’m always wanting hypotheses on why things are like they are and, when appropriate, where that might take things in the future. Pye, instead, is more interested in cultural-psychological “facts” delivered from patrician heights accompanied by little in the way of discussion of any events. Weird.

[hayingsang]

So the question is ...

Not how to democratise AI, but use AI to boost democracy.

As Henry Farrell writes:

The current Silicon Valley approach to AI is profoundly problematic. It reinforces hierarchy and subordination to the vision of the CEO, rather than enabling individual judgment.

Full piece here: AI Isn't Management. Try Explaining That to Matthew Prince

[hayingsang]

Cultural life

To Kowloon’s vile Elements mall to watch Baz Luhrman’s Elvis Presley in Concert, a fine piece of documentary craftsmanship. I loved the music – great sound system in the theatre – and I loved the film’s sly cleverness, taking Elvis from lean and fit to bloated and slow, jumping backwards and forwards to make things not too obvious, and letting you the viewer wonder what was going on. Fifteen minutes too long for me, but I imagine all too short for Elvis fans. What I liked most was how you caught a glimpse of something that for a moment was great, but a fleeting moment, and of someone who could and should have done more than eight years and thousand shows in Vegas.

[hayingsang]

Cultural life

To Kwai Tsing Theatre to watch Two Matters, a CCDC double bill. First up was Bruce Wong’s Nowhere to Land, a solid piece with much good ensemble dancing. Then Chen Wu-kang’s Restory, a heavy dose of Canto nostalgia that pulled great performances from across the company – clearly they loved doing this show. Both were confident, audience-friendly pieces – maybe not pushing at the edge of performance, but good reasons to head to Kwai Fong for some Saturday night fun and entertainment.

[hayingsang]

Cultural life

To the Cultural Centre to see Hong Kong Ballet put on a wonderful performance of Sleeping Beauty. The stars helped – Vladimir Malakhov pulled all the attention his way whenever he stepped on the stage as Carabosse and Davi Ramos was magnificently manly as Prince Desire – but it was the upping of everything that made this the best show I’ve seen by the company in a while.

Perhaps Malakhov’s direction pushed all the dancers up a level, or perhaps it was the quality of the choreography, which was a lot better than in many reworks I've seen in recent years. But also contributing were the set – taking full advantage of all the stage – and the lighting – some startling colour changes – and most of all the costumes – glitzy and shining and over-the-top. The music of course is wonderful from start to finish. A terrific evening out.

[hayingsang]

Read in 2026

Ma Jian, Red Dust

Like Gao Xingjian’s Soul Mountain, Red Dust is an account, set in the early/mid-1980s, of someone who after leaving Beijing to avoid political persecution travels around China, depending on their wits and dubious official documents to get by. Both books also include problematic encounters with women that confuse their respective protagonists.

Both books capture the weirdness of much of China at that time. Gao’s touches more on the people who survived the political upheavals of the previous thirty years – daoists, ethnic minorities. A recurring theme of Ma’s is just how poor many people are. Maybe Gao’s book explores more bigger, existential themes, while Ma’s is more personal.

But whereas Soul Mountain is billed as a novel, albeit one that draws on Gao’s experiences, Red Dust is described as an account of Ma’s travels. I’m not sure if that distinction matters much.

Ma’s book is the easier read of the two, especially for non-Chinese readers. Although it’s translated, I can’t see any trace of it having been published in Chinese, even in Taiwan. Both are indispensable reminders of how much China has changed since the 1980s. For the better? For many of the poorer people Ma met, I would hope so. For those rediscovering ways of life after the years of Mao’s period as China’s leader, or those wanting to figure out their own way of living, which includes Gao’s protagonist along with many of those he encountered. I’m not so sure.