Week 7 ICLP

Hey everyone,

Honestly, it’s been interesting taking classes online as opposed to being in-person. My classes everyday are at 5-6am and 7-8am because of the time zone difference and it has fully transformed me into a morning person and fixed my previously terrible sleep schedule. It’s been a great opportunity for me though to show my professors what the Williams campus is like; sometimes I’ll walk around and show them different parts of our campus and compare it to the NTU campus. I think I’m fully in the rhythm of things now. We do have our Oral exam next week, but I only have to prepare for my independent reader class (which I admittedly have not talked much about. We mostly study different economic and political policies, education systems etc in Taiwan/Mainland China). However, since my LaoZhuangzi class is a Classical Chinese, which is hard to test orally, it’s not part of the Oral exam.

Anyways, story for this week. Hui Tzu and Zhuangzi are having a conversation about a big gnarly ugly tree. Hui Tzu things this tree is big and useless, as carpenters couldn’t use it and it’s ugly to look at. Zhuangzi however advises us to value the tree for what it’s able to offer, which is a great place of shade and comfort for anyone who chose to relax under it. Zhuangzi also says that nothing can ever harm it and that if there’s no use for it, it can never come to grief or pain.

Two things are interesting here, firstly that we shouldn’t take things at face value, especially in terms of how we judge other things and people. Sometimes certain things might not be conventionally attractive or appealing but they have their own worth and value. But what’s interesting is that Zhuangzi himself is suggesting the argument that the tree has it’s own “different” utility but simultaneously arguing that it’s lack of utility is what allows it to be immune to pain and grief (as no one will bother it). This kind of paradoxical thought is very common to the Zhuangzi text, and is encouraging us to break free of the rigid standards of language we have set for ourselves.