Traditionally, the Chinese nation is known for its courtesy and trustworthiness and taking its promises seriously. Confucius once said, “If a man does not keep his word, what is he good for?” Mencius said, “Sincerity and honesty is the way of Heaven.” They both advocated that people should behave in accordance with heavenly principles, be honest and trustworthy.
However, in today’s China, when people’s minds are poisoned by the Chinese Communist Party’s fallacies of “falsehood, wickedness and struggle,” they tend to say one thing and mean another and have become skillful in trickery and deception.
October 13, 2013 | By Zhu Xi
(Minghui.org)
Ethics in Academics Lead to Breakthroughs
US physicist Luis Alvarez attended an annual function in 1953. At lunch time, Donald Glaser, a 27-year-old postdoctoral PhD researcher, sat next to him and the two started to chat. Glaser told Alvarez that after observing beer bubbles he had the idea of building a bubble chamber to observe the paths and lifetimes of particles. Alvarez thought Glaser’s idea was brilliant, and as soon as he returned to work, he and his assistants started experimenting. After years of painstaking effort, they finally built a liquid hydrogen bubble chamber. Compared to Glaser’s original design, their model was greatly changed; it used liquid hydrogen and was much bigger. Glaser’s design wasn’t quite on scale with Alvarez’s achievement.
However, the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Glaser. Alvarez believed that the original idea came from Glaser. Although he was the one who eventually built the bubble chamber he still believed that the Nobel Prize in Physics should be awarded to Glaser. When Glaser shared his original idea with Alvarez, it was still only an idea, one that Alvarez listened to for a few minutes. Later he spent several years testing and experimenting to make it a reality. When Alvarez succeeded, he still acknowledged that the idea was originally Glaser’s. Because his starting point was honesty and academic ethics, Alvarez was able to discover a large number of resonant states through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chambers and data analysis. Alvarez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968.
In ancient China, such honesty and trustworthiness were also commonly seen.
Keeping One’s Word
There’s a story in the book, “Jing Shi Heng Yan” (Ordinary Words to Warn the World) by Feng Menglong in the Ming Dynasty. The story was about Yu Boya and his best friend Zhong Ziqi, and took place during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC).
One day, Yu Boya, a high-ranking official from the Jin State, was sent by the king on a mission to the Chu State. After he finished his mission, he toured the Yangtze River by boat. When he arrived at the river mouth in Hanyang, it happened to be the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival. So he asked the boatman to berth the boat near a cliff. The moon was extremely bright that night, and Yu Boya sat at the head of the boat. He lit some incense and started to play the Chinese zither. Just as he finished one melody, one of the strings broke. Yu Boya was very surprised. He got up and looked around, and saw a woodcutter standing under a tree attentively listening to his music. Yu Boya didn’t think much at the beginning since the man was only a country woodcutter and wouldn’t know anything about music. However, after Yu Boya started to chat with him, he found that the man not only knew a lot about the instrument and music theory, but was also well versed in both ancient and contemporary knowledge. He learned the man’s name was Zhong Ziqi. The two chatted for a long time and became sworn brothers. Because Yu Boya had to get back to attend his duties, he could not go on shore to visit Zhong Ziqi’s family. The two had to say goodbye, but arranged to meet again on the same day the following year.
The next year, prior to the Mid-autumn Festival, Yu Boya asked for leave to pay a visit. He arrived at the place where he met Zhong Ziqi the year before, exactly on the evening of the Mid-autumn Festival. He waited there for two days, but Zhong Ziqi didn’t come, so he went on shore to make inquiries. He learned that Zhong Ziqi had died of illness about a hundred days earlier, and before he died he asked his father to bury him by the river so that he could honor his promise to Yu Boya. Yu was very upset about the passing away of his friend. He tearfully played a melody in memory of Zhong Ziqi. When he finished, he smashed the zither into pieces as he believed that there wouldn’t be anyone else who would understand his music as Zhong Ziqi had. He then took in Zhong Ziqi’s parents and cared for them as his own parents till they passed away.
There was another story from the ancient book “Sou Shen Ji” (Anecdotes about Spirits and Immortals). It tells how Fan Shi from Shanyang and Zhang Zhao from Runan studied together and got on really well like brothers. Upon finishing their studies, Fan Shi said to Zhang Zhao, “I’ll pay your parents a visit in two years’ time.” They also arranged a specific date for his visit. On that day two years later, Zhang Zhao reminded his mother and asked her to prepare some good food to entertain his friend Fan Shi. His mother said, “There are over a thousand li (one li equals ½ km) between Runan and here and it would take over 20 days on the way. What’s more, the two of you haven’t contacted each other these two years. He may have long forgotten about it.” Zhang Zhao said, “Fan Shi is an honest gentleman. He wouldn’t break his promise.” Indeed, Zhang Zhao arrived as he had promised. Everyone was overjoyed for their reunion and they had a wonderful time together.
A few years later, Zhang Zhao suddenly fell ill. His condition deteriorated as time went on. One night, Fan Shi had a dream, in which Zhang Zhao said to him, “I’m already dead and will be buried on a certain date. I wonder if you could come and see me one last time?” FanShi woke up in tears and believed what he saw in his dream. He set off immediately for his friend’s funeral. He rode at top speed day and night. Before he arrived, Zhang Zhao’s bodyhad already been laid in a coffin, ready for burial. But the coffin inexplicably became very heavy and could not be moved. Just as people felt bewildered and helpless, they saw a man wearing mourning clothes riding a white horse quickly galloping towards them. The man shouted as he rode, “My brother Zhao, wait for me! I’m here to see you off!” Fan Shi came to the tomb site, sobbing as he held the coffin rope and said, “My brother, have a nice journey. We’ll be parted forever now.” As he said these words, the coffin became lighter and the burial went smoothly. Like the story about Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi, this story also shows the principle that a promise cannot be taken back once it’s made. Those ancient people acted as good as their word and treated their friends with a true heart. Their stories deeply touch people’s hearts even today.
Leaders Who Squander Trust Lose Everything
There are many other ancient stories about honesty and trustworthiness. These values are essential for mutual trust. If a country or a regime fails to honor such values, it will lose the people’s support and be looked down upon. Eventually the loss of these essential human values will destroy it. If government officials lack these values, they may willfully distort the facts, disrespect themselves and despise others. They won’t be honest in delivering rewards or punishments, and as a result, people will regard the law as child’s play and act in a lawless manner. If people fail to honor honesty and trustworthiness they will lose friendship and family affection; people will become resentful towards each other and become enemies. If an individual fails to act with honesty and trustworthiness, society will no longer trust him and will eventually shun him.
At the end of the Western Zhou Dynasty, King You had a concubine named Bao Si. She was exceptionally beautiful, but never smiled. In order to make her smile, King You offered a large amount of gold for ideas. One of the court officials suggested lighting the warning beacons (usually used to summon armies from the surrounding vassal states in times of enemy invasion). The vassal nobles would rush to the Zhou Court, but only to find everything was fine. They would leave, feeling dejected. This might make the lady laugh. Indeed, when Bao Si saw the vassal dukes and princes rush over upon seeing the warning beacons and leave in a dreadful predicament after learning the truth she clapped her hands and burst out laughing. King You played the same trick a number of times. A few years later, when the Quan Rong tribe attacked Zhou, King You ordered to light the warning beacons for help. But the vassal nobles didn’t believe him any more. A few days later, the invaders took over the capital city and King You committed suicide, marking the end of the Western Zhou Dynasty.
Modern Chinese Society Built on Falsehoods
Traditionally, the Chinese nation is known for its courtesy and trustworthiness and taking its promises seriously. Confucius once said, “If a man does not keep his word, what is he good for?” Mencius said, “Sincerity and honesty is the way of Heaven.” They both advocated that people should behave in accordance with heavenly principles, be honest and trustworthy. However, in today’s China, when people’s minds are poisoned by the Chinese Communist Party’s fallacies of “falsehood, wickedness and struggle,” they tend to say one thing and mean another and have become skillful in trickery and deception.
Under the Party’s dictatorship, today’s China takes atheism, the theory of evolution and materialism as truth; officials regard falsehood, wickedness, cruelty, ugliness and violence as the norm in their conduct. They deceive their superiors and delude their subordinates, mixing lies with facts, until no one is sure which is the truth.
After over 60 years of suppression and deception, the Chinese people have become suspicious of one another. They are resentful towards each other and threaten each other. China has now fallen into an unprecedented crisis of trust due to lack of honesty. The Party used to advocate that the whole of China was covered in red; but now China is plagued with deception, pornography, contamination and corruption. Prostitutes are seen everywhere, food is contaminated, people entertain themselves by gambling and officials are corrupted by greed. Government officials constantly tell lies and cheat and fight among themselves, each trying to outwit the other. Their degeneration and corruption has brought big disasters to the country and the people. In business, people try to gain profits through trickery and fraud. They sell second rate merchandise and food at best quality prices, greatly harming people.
During the SARS breakout, China’s Health Minister Zhang Wenkang lied to the world’s media, saying, “It’s quite safe to travel to China.” When excessive aflatoxins was detected in Mengniu brand pure milk, director Gao Hongbin from the Feed Association said, “One will need to take tons of it over a period of a number of years before developing cancer.” When contaminated medicine capsules were found on the market, Chen Zhu from the Health Ministry encouraged the people to “have faith” in China’s medicines. Expert Sun Zhongshi said, “If one takes one or two kinds of medicine, two capsules at a time, then he will take six capsules per day, which wouldn’t give him much chromium anyway. So in a scandal like this, you should be calm instead of being panic-stricken. You should not exaggerate the excessive chromium in capsules as a big danger.”
Party officials act with utter disregard of human lives and constantly lie, and tell people: It doesn’t hurt if you take “leather capsules” occasionally; it doesn’t matter if babies take milk mixed with melamine occasionally; it’s not a problem if you eat contaminated steamed buns or meat with excessive beta-adrenergic agonists occasionally; it’s not an issue if you only occasionally consume food mixed with Sudan I or cooked with illegally recycled waste cooking oil, or fake Haitian soy… However, would they still say it doesn’t matter if it were their own children being admitted to hospital as a result of all these toxic substances in our food chain?
The CCP regime has framed Falun Gong with big lies, such as the “Tiananmen Square Self-immolation” hoax; it has even harvested organs from Falun Gong practitioners for lucrative profit. Yet, due to deception and brainwashing, many Chinese people have become numb and apathetic towards each other’s plights. It is thus so important to help people learn the truth.
Now, Falun Dafa is widely spread around the world while the Chinese Communist Party is facing imminent downfall.
We would like to sincerely advise everyone to take this precious opportunity to withdraw from the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations as soon as possible for your own future and that of your family and relatives. Only by doing so can you be safe, escape danger and have a bright future.
