Chinese Canadian Quotes

Dare I ask Mao and his Communist Party?
I fear my throat will be cut into two pieces.
In the name of revolution, for thought crimes,
Such questions can turn me to ashes. ~ Zoe S. Roy

I remember really bonding with the first generation kids, the Chinese Canadian kids, and in high school bonding with the Latin kids and the East Indian kids. It was very interesting because it made me open to lots of musical sounds. ~ Nelly Furtado

When asked about his apparent lack of anger toward the Chinese by an incredulous reporter at the time he won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama replied something to the effect that: They have taken everything from us; should I let them take my mind as well? ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

NIGHT SNOW

I was surprised my quilt and pillow were cold,
I see that now the window's bright again.
Deep in the night, I know the snow is thick,
I sometimes hear the sound as bamboo snaps. ~ Bai Juyi

America is not only big and rich, it is mysterious; and its capacity for the humorous or ironical concealment of its interests matches that of the legendary inscrutable Chinese. ~ David Riesman

How is it that Asians and Westerners can look at the same classroom interactions and one group will label it class participation and the other talking nonsense? The Chinese emphasize deeper attributes focusing on moral virtues and achievement. Another study asked Asian-Americans and European-Americans to think out loud while solving reasoning problems, and found that the Asians did much better when they were allowed to be quiet, compared to the Caucasians, who performed well when vocalizing their problem solving. These results would not surprise anyone familiar with traditional Asian attitudes to the spoke word: Talk is for communicating need to know information; quiet and introspection are signs of deep thought and higher truth. ~ Susan Cain

A question, doctor," he said. "Why doesn't the coyote take the money he spends on bird costumes and catapults and radioactive road runner food pellets and explosive missiles and simply go eat Chinese?" He smiled coolly. "Why doesn't the coyote simply go eat Chinese food? ~ David Foster Wallace

When the death toll among British troops was added to that of the carriers the official 'butcher's bill' in the East Africa campaign exceeded 100,000 souls. The true figure was undoubtedly much higher: as many a British official admitted, 'the full tale of the mortality among [the] native carriers will never be told'.2 Even 100,000 deaths is a sobering enough figure. It is almost double the number of Australian or Canadian or Indian troops who gave their lives in the Great War; indeed it is equivalent to the combined casualties - the dead and wounded - sustained by Indian troops. It is as if the entire African workforce employed at the time in the mines of South Africa had been wiped out. Yet the East Africa campaign remains, by and large, a forgotten theatre of war. ~ Edward Paice

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe-straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment toward us. ~ Ron Paul

I am not inspired by helping you find Chinese food at 2am in Dallas, or swipe right to get laid. I want to use tech and data to make the world a better place. ~ Nancy Lublin

Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian. ~ Duke Ellington

The only reason Toronto is no longer the dullest city on earth is that it is no longer full of Anglo-Canadians. It is full of Hong Kong Chinese. And not a few Italians. ~ Joel Garreau

The next humans to walk on the moon may be Chinese. Only China seems to have the resources, the dirigiste government, and the willingness to undertake a risky Apollo-style programme. If Americans or Europeans venture to the moon and beyond, this will have to be in a very different style and with different motives. ~ Martin Rees

As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures, American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The Egyptian is so of the cavern and the mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

So our problem is to explain where symmetry comes from. Why is nature so nearly symmetrical? No one has any idea why. The only thing we might suggest is something like this: There is a gate in
Japan, a gate in Neiko, which is sometimes called by the Japanese
the most beautiful gate in all Japan; it was built in a time when
there was great influence from Chinese art. This gate is very elaborate,
with lots of gables and beautiful carving and lots of columns
and dragon heads and princes carved into the pillars, and so on.
But when one looks closely he sees that in the elaborate and complex
design along one of the pillars, one of the small design elements
is carved upside down; otherwise the thing is completely
symmetrical. If one asks why this is, the story is that it was carved
upside down so that the gods will not be jealous of the perfection
of man. So they purposely put an error in there, so that the gods
would not be jealous and get angry with human beings.
We might like to turn the idea around and think that the true
explanation of the near symmetry of nature is this: that God made
the laws only nearly symmetrical so that we should not be jealous
of His perfection! ~ Richard P. Feynman

It's really rather easy to write eighth-century Chinese poetry," said Angus Lordie. "In English, of course. It requires little effort, I find. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Golden Rule lies at the heart of every religious and of every ethical system of morality, it what makes us look at one another. The religions have all adopted it independently, Chinese, Indian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, because they find it works and because it says something very deep about the structure of our humanity. ~ Karen Armstrong

We could see the parapet of Ryougoku Bridge, arching above the waves that flickered in the faint mid-autumn twilight and against the sky, as though an immense black Chinese ink stroke had been brushed across it. The silhouettes of the traffic, horses and carriages soon faded into the vaporous mist, and now all that could be seen were the dots of reddish light from the passengers' lanterns, rapidly passing to and fro in the darkness like small winter cherries. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

One of the big mistakes they made in Europe is that the circumstances in which you most frequently read or hear the word "race" or "racism" in Europe applies to Muslims. Which is not a race. It is a religion. You can convert to this. You cannot convert your race. I could become a Muslim. I could not become a Chinese person or a black person. So they constantly use that in Europe. ~ Fran Lebowitz

My little donkey, if I hadn't shown up, your fate would have been sealed. Love has saved you. Is there anything else that could erase the innate fears of a donkey and send him to rescue you from certain death? No. That is the only one. With a call to arms, I, Ximen Donkey, charged down the ridge and headed straight for the wolf that was tailing my beloved. My hooves kicked up sand and dust as I raced down from my commanding position; no wolf, not even a tiger, could have avoided the spearhead aimed at it. It saw me too late to move out of the way, and I thudded into it, sending it head over heels. Then I turned around and said to my donkey, Do not fear my dear, I am here! ~ Mo Yan

He who is afraid of suffering, is already suffering fear. Out of fear, true creativity is blocked. ~ Chinese Proverb

Fact: If you want to get ahead as a Canadian, you're going to have to leave the country. Especially if you have the gall to live in Montreal. ~ Laura Roberts

How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much. ~ David Mitchell

Justin Bieber's tour bus was stopped by Canadian border patrol agents. And they found marijuana. The agents said Bieber was a disgrace to Canada and should never come back. Then they found the marijuana. ~ Craig Ferguson

Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the underworld. To the ancient Chinese, it was Ying-huo, the fire planet. ~ John Updike

For the Chinese, the Greeks, the Mayans, or the Egyptians, nature was a living totality, a creative being. For this reason, art, according to Aristotle, is imitation; the poet imitates the creative gesture of nature. ~ Octavio Paz

I found Americans arrogant, Germans rude, Britishers selfish, Frenchs desperate, Chinese worried and my own nation stupid. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

I remember quite well that 10,000 audience sang with us three on the spot, and ever since then, I always thought the Chinese audience are the greatest audience. ~ Luciano Pavarotti

Wonderful to see with the whole family. It's like travelling from dynasty to dynasty, from one Chinese region to another. ~ Bernard Drainville

Life is an adventure. ~ Chinese Cookie

One piece of information that made an impression on her was that individual Chinese lives mattered to the Westerners. ~ Jung Chang

A good model of how to 'work with the enemy' internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. ~ Alice Walker

It (the Chinese move to embrace capitalism in 1989) is a mirror of the corporatist state first pioneered in Chile under Pinochet: a revolving door between corporate and political elites who combine their power to eliminate workers as an organized political force. The creation of today's market society was not the result of a sequence of spontaneous events but rather of state interference and violence. ~ Naomi Klein

The Canadian circle in L.A. is really close. There's a magnet effect where we all just huddle together somehow. It's one big Canadian family, really. ~ Devon Bostick