Confucius talked a lot about the "cultivated man". Education, music, poetry, correct moral attitudes, and proper filial piety all figured into his ideal human being. He went to great lengths to expound and cement his ideals into his pupils such that the reading of Confucius can get really painfully boring. For the most part, he wasted his time. What follows is a biased, unfair, and very limited account of what we perceive to be the current state of Chinese manners in modern day post-Cultural Revolution China. It should be said that my (Dez) experience comes from years of living at home, in Taiwan, traveling some ten years back thru China, teaching in Taiwan for seven months, and most recently, backpacking through mid and northern China once again. It should also be said that we're not trying
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