Skype Learn Chinese--the bridge: A New Way to Mandarin Chinese
This book is written for English-speaking students who are taking Skype Learn Chinese courses. A basic level vocabulary and understanding of Chinese grammar and culture is presented in this Skype Learn Chinese series. It is an effort to introduce the Skype Learn Chinese students to the language by explaining its basic principles in simple steps. The purpose is to prepare the student with a foundation on which to build, with confidence, its ensuing complexities.
Skype Learn Chinese A New Way to Mandarin Chinese lesson 8
221-207 BCE
A Summary
Skype Learn Chinese A New Way to Mandarin Chinese lesson 8 Part I
The dominant rise of the Qin during the Warring States period was due, primarily, to the role of its Prime Minister, Gengsun Yang (Shang Yang). Students in Skype Learn Chinese can learn more about this. He died in 338 BC, before his goals were realized, but he laid the foundation for the following State officials to develop.
“The means by which a State is made prosperous are agriculture and war”. We may translate ‘agriculture’ as land and producing its products, or ‘raw materials and their products’, and ‘war’ as capturing these raw materials and their products in Skype Learn Chinese.
“The way to administer a State is for laws to be clear, not to rely on men to be intelligent or thoughtful”. This becomes the key element of Skype Learn Chinese and the State and its Achilles heel.
“A strong State knows the number of its granaries; the number of able-bodied men and women; the number of old and weak people; the number of officials and officers; the number of those making a livelihood by ‘talking’ (rather than producing something); the number of horses and oxen (transport); and the quantity of fodder and straw (supplies).” A bureaucracy is needed for the analysis of Students in Skype Learn Chinese.
“Cleverness and sophistication are an asset for lawlessness”. Ignorance and crudity are easier to detect.
“Rites and music are symptoms of dissipation”. They are not ‘useful’ and so they waste time in ‘leisure’..
“Kindness and humaneness are the mother of transgressions”. They overlook ‘human’ frailties.
“Employment and promotion are opportunities for the rapacity of the wicked”. Competition builds greed.
“If virtuous officials are employed, the people will follow their example by loving their relatives”. A useless example of virtue in Skype Learn Chinese. “But if wicked officials are employed, the people will love the statutes”. The people will turn to the laws to try to get justice in Skype Learn Chinese.
“If, in the application of law, serious offences are regarded as serious and light guilty, themselves, and sentenced to death. offences as light, then light offences will never cease. Punishments should know no grade or degree in Skype Learn Chinese. Whoever does not obey the king’s commands, from ministers of State to officials and ordinary people, should be put to death and not pardoned. Colleagues, who, knowing of an offence, report it to their superiors, will escape punishment.” Otherwise, presumably, they will be considered. Students in Skype Learn Chinese can learn more about this.
Skype Learn Chinese A New Way to Mandarin Chinese lesson 8 Part II
In this framework in Skype Learn Chinese, Gongsun Yang predicted that the death penalty for any and every crime would deter all crime, and the results ‘proved’ it. What happened was that the people in Skype Learn Chinese were terrified that someone associated with them might be involved in crime, and began reporting endless numbers of ‘crimes’, and deluged magistrates in a chaos of imaginary scenarios that were beyond proper investigation. So, many real crimes were written off as ‘imaginary’, but the execution of ’associated’ people for crimes did eliminate some criminals. Students in Skype Learn Chinese can learn more about this. Also, people were afraid to report real crimes because it might involve them in an ‘association’ with criminals. So the ‘prosecution-proven’ crime rate dropped significantly. This points to an oft-repeated lesson of history: the brilliant mind(s) that conceived and implemented this system must have been in ‘denial’ for these obvious possibilities not to have been considered. Thus is the genius of man held hostage to his ego’s overwhelming self-admiration in Skype Learn Chinese.
Gongsun Yang died 338BC and didn’t see his ideas catapult the Qin to victory over the Warring States, but in 221BC King Cheng named himself, “Qin shihuangdi, the First exalted Emperor of Qin (China). In Skype Learn Chinese he was an energetic ruler who, through his Prime Minister, Li Si, drove an intimidated kingdom to abolish the feudal system of ranks and privileges and to disarm all private individuals. The court became the center of power in Skype Learn Chinese for the whole country, administered through a system of prefectures and counties. Weights and measures were standardized, and a common writing script imposed. Roads and communication systems were developed. Wars were launched on neighboring States to subdue dissent and large masses of people in Skype Learn Chinese were moved to defensive locations or to balance the population, and labor gangs were drafted to extend small, city-state defensive walls into the Great Wall of China. Then the king died.
The years of oppression burst into the struggle of rivals for personal power. The center collapsed and the system of control for the country was left powerless. Students in Skype Learn Chinese can learn more about this. The new king did not have a Prime minister who he could trust or army generals that could regain control. In 207BC, the fourteen year old dynasty was overthrown and the king without a throne, a prisoner in his palace, committed suicide.