On Chinglish

May 2, the New York Times ran an article entitled, “Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish.” The article begins:

“For English speakers with subpar Chinese skills, daily life in China offers a confounding array of choices. At banks, there are machines for “cash withdrawing” and “cash recycling.” The menus of local restaurants might present such delectables as “fried enema,” “monolithic tree mushroom stem squid” and a mysterious thirst-quencher known as “The Jew’s Ear Juice.”

This information about misspelled, misrepresented, or completely incorrect English is not news. The article is a typical China fluff piece, meant to fill space in an otherwise decent paper. But I have to say, it’s rather disappointing to see that it has managed to stay in the ‘most popular’ category for more than a day. The reason I’m so disappointed is evident in the previously quoted paragraph.

The article begins with neo-colonial beer goggles. For some reason, we’re supposed to sympathize with English speakers living in China with subpar Chinese skills. I mean, we all know that it's completely impossible to learn a language as illogical and fantastical as Chinese. We should feel terrible that our expat comrades cannot read signs. After all, with our linguistic advantages it is unjust that native English speakers should be confronted by confounding signs anywhere in the world!

That aside, what really got me wondering when we went back to the 1920’s was this:

““If you standardize all these signs, you not only take away the little giggle you get while strolling in the park but you lose a window into the Chinese mind,” said Mr. Radtke, who is the author of a pair of picture books that feature giggle-worthy Chinglish signs in their natural habitat.
Lest anyone think it is all about laughs, Mr. Radtke is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Chinglish at the University of Heidelberg.”

There we have it, the true value of Chinglish. Both for laughs (I won’t dispute that) and as a window into the Chinese mind. In fact, I find this to be true of my Chinese. Whenever I say something in Chinese that is grammatically or lexically incorrect, I’m secretly happy. Nothing expresses what I mean better than what I don’t mean.

In this article, we have groups of white people: Germans, American reporters, expats, etc. who find their amusement at nonsensical signs more important than avoiding potential embarrassment on the part of the Chinese. This is both elitist and racist. It is elitists because it makes us feel better about our crappy Chinese when compared to Chinese public English, and it is racist because one gets the sense that this aspiring scholar believes that nonsense signs reflect something of the Chinese psyche. What they really are is simple. They are embarrassing translation errors, which have more to do with a poor language pedagogy than with some sort of reified, ignorant, Chinese psyche.

All this is not my way of discounting the validity of a degree in Chinglish. This topic is actually quite interesting. There are millions of people in China who actually speak Chinglish (this is pidgin Chinese-English) as a second language.


(Photo from: http://www.asianoffbeat.com/default.asp?display=1642)

(New York Times Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/asia/03chinglish.html?src=me&ref=world)

An Imam In Xi'an

Ma Yiping is an imam. For over two decades he has prayed, counseled, and worked for the Muslims of Xi’an’s Hui (sino-muslim) community. Like many of the Xi’an Hui, he does business. But his business is a little different, his tiny store in filled, literally bursting, with his own Arabic calligraphy.



Ma Imam was born in 1964 and by the time he was “able to understand things” in the early seventies, religious devotion had been replaced by the fervor of the Cultural Revolution. Mao earned lip service while Ma was taught Koranic verse in secret. Since Xi’an’s mosques were sealed, Ma wandered through the twisting, closed allies of the Hui quarter to the house of a politically disgraced Imam. There were no books, instead, the Imam wrote a section of the Koran in Arabic. He explained its meaning, and helped Ma by holding his hand as they rewrote the verse.

This is where, according to Ma Yiping, his interest in Arabic calligraphy began. His initial learning occurred furtively, desperately avoiding the watchful eyes of Red Guards and other would-be informers. In the 80’s, when the Cultural Revolution was a distant abstraction, Ma entered the Beijing Koranic Studies University. Then he began to take his calligraphy more seriously. Later he studied in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, gaining limited fame as one of the rare Sino-Muslims who represented their combined cultural traditions.

Which brings me to yesterday. Lately I’ve been spending a great deal of time with Ma Imam (A-hong as they say in Persian derived Chinese). My friend D. Wang and I have been making a short film on the Xi’an Muslim district, and since I can talk the Sino-Muslim talk, Ma Imam has graciously given us the opportunity to harass him. Yesterday, Malaysia TV 1 came to Xi’an to film the Imam (He has also appeared on Al-
Jazzera a few times). In his excitement, he invited me to come by and observe the proceedings.

Why, you may ask, does Malaysia TV 1 care about a Hui calligrapher in Xi’an? There are a few reasons: 1) Due to his perceived orthodoxy (good Koranic Arabic, calligraphy, etc.) Ma Yiping is a charismatic representative of the Hui community to the wider Dar al-islam. 2) He is ideally located in Xi’an, a city as symbolically Chinese as Mecca is Muslim, and is an Imam at the city’s most famous mosque. 3) It is of interest to Malaysians, who are neither Arab nor Persian, to promulgate Islamic alterns. 4) He has been on Malaysia TV before.

This post is more of an awkward beginning than concrete introduction. Ma Yiping and his community are worthy of our attention for a number of reasons, which will be explored in future posts. I hope you’re ready for some Islam.

(Here he is on Al Jazeera http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/hajj/2009/11/2009111565134985669.html)

A Chinese Earthquake

Lacking both access to blogspot (censorship) and my flashdrive (misplaced), I have failed to post. I hope this gets things started again.

Earthquakes have been in the news. A couple of weeks ago there was an earthquake in Yushu county, Qinghai. Before that, lest we forget (it has been awhile…), Haiti shook with devastating consequences. All of this seismic activity inspired my academic interest, and since I live in Xi’an, I thought I should dig through the libraries to briefly introduce the most horrific quake in world history. So, ladies and gentlemen, I present an earthquake that has kept me awake at night fearing every indication of an impending tremor, The Hua County Earthquake of 1556.

Late at night January 23, 1556, the people of the Shaanxi central plain were asleep. Some of them lived in cave houses, carved into hills and cliffs, other lived in houses made from brick and mud. It doesn’t seem to have mattered what they lived in, because the 8.5 magnitude earthquake that struck at about 2AM shook the strongest foundation.

The epicenter of the earthquake was in eastern Shaanxi, centered on the regions around Tongguan and Puban. City walls collapsed, as did mountains. Deep chasms opened up, swallowing entire households. A contemporary estimation of the number of individuals killed is around 800,000. In some cities and counties over 70% of the population died, in Xi’an, around 30% perished. Tremors were felt through over 90 counties, and extended from Gansu Province in the west to Shandong Provincein the east.

But, rather than bore you with the germane details of the event, I will, as usual, provide a translation. Below is a partial translation of an account called Dizhen Ji, or Record of the Earthquake, written by a survivor, Qin Keda. (To the right: The Little Goose Pagoda in Xi'an lost its three top stories in the quake)

“On midnight of the thirteenth day of the last month of winter during the 52nd cycle year during the Jiajing reign there was an earthquake in the central plain. It was an earthquake of the likes which has never been recorded in any histories. That night, I was startled from my dreams by a violent shaking. My body was tossed helplessly about the bed, and nearby it sounded as though someone were knocking over my furniture. Ceramic roof tiles were crashing loudly, it all sounded as though a myriad of horses were charging through.

At first I thought I was being robbed, next I though that there were demons or evil spirits. Then, in the next moment, the wall my head was against suddenly collapsed. I started to realize it: this is an earthquake. I saw the moon was obscured by dust. I urgently wrapped my robe about me and got out of bed. My body wobbled as though I were drunk, and my feet couldn’t find solid ground. There was an empty spot to the south of my house. I rushed [for it] frantically, exiting through the hole in my wall. When I reached it I saw that my mother, my brothers, and my nephews had all reached there first. Safe and sound, they said, “We were shouting for you, didn’t you hear us?” At that time all the houses were collapsing. The sound enveloped me, stuffing my ears. I couldn’t hear anything. Much less someone shouting!

Past the fourth watch the [tremors] strength still increased. It sounded like thunder everywhere. It was very fearful. By the fifth watch things settled slightly and I could begin to hear sounds of crying from all around. My family was fortunate, no one was hurt. But because we were anxious about our relatives, we had someone go seek those we were most worried about. Fortunately, they were all safe.

In the predawn light, I saw that the earth was painted with cracks running in every direction. Over half of the houses were leaning or collapsed. As for the walls surrounding houses, only one or two out of every ten was still standing straight. People came and went crying and they ran about frantically like wasps who had lost their hive. After noon no one had eaten, our ovens and utensils all having been suddenly destroyed. Even all of our grain was buried, covered by earth.

Soon after, before around 3 PM, there was an uproar and a string of shouts. People were saying that the Aerduo Hui (Chinese Muslims) to the Northeast of the city were rebelling. People were fleeing fearfully. I thought about it, and it seemed like a wild rumor. In truth, there was no Hui uprising. But alas, the hearts of the people are so easily stirred up!

In the countryside beyond the suburbs, some residents of villages that had meet with disaster were lucky enough to flee and temporarily take refuge in the provincial capital. But as for those who lived in cave houses and valleys, in most cases whole families were crushed to death. It was very rare for someone to have made it out.

With regard to the details of the earthquake’s occurrence, it spread from Tongguan and Puban, exploding outward like an angry wave dispersing in all directions. Thus it went in every which way, expanding slowly, and so, there are disparities in the damage sustained in each affected region. It is impossible to know how far it went. In the west of my province and onwards it gradually weakened, from the east of my province and onwards it gradually strengthened to reach its full force in Tongguan and Puban.

Where the earthquake was weak homes and walls merely slanted a little, but where it was severe, everything completely collapsed as soon as it began. Where it was weak people could be saved and they could flee for refuge, but where it was severe, even though there were those who were lucky enough to survive, the were mostly all dug out of the rubble. For instance, in Weinan one of the city gates into the ground, in Hua Zhou the whole city wall now leans precipitously. In places such as Tong Guan and Pu Ban their full city walls collapsed. In such places all of the people’s homes and the official residences and everything else, it can be reasoned, collapsed.

There were large numbers of people who suffered misfortune. In Tong [Guan] and Pu [Ban] around seventy percent of the population died. In Weinan, around fifty percent died. In Lintong, around forty percent died, and in Xi’an, around thirty percent died....
”

Borders

Back from two weeks of traveling. I may write more on this later. Right now, I’m too exhausted to think about it. Now, a related post.

During our vacation, we went to a place in Southeastern Yunnan called Yuanyang. Yunnan is the end of Southwest China. It borders Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Tibet, and is home to something like 26 ‘officially recognized’ ethnic groups. The province is home to most of China’s biodiversity, and it contains a mind-numbing array of biospheres ranging from glaciers to rain forests. This was my second time to Yunnan, so I reckoned myself something of an old hand at the place. Three years ago, I went Tibetan chasing Yunnan’s Northwest. Having been there and done that, my wife and I decided to go towards the border of Vietnam to see jaw dropping rice terraces and break bread with the Yi and the Hani.


Unfortunately, Chinese New Year had passed and the hordes were unleashed. We secured a room at a hotel, but the proprietor’s accent was so thick that I couldn’t understand where the hotel was, or even its name (I googled [Yuanyang + Hotel] and got a list of nameless phone numbers). Our taxi driver took us to the wrong bus station, so we bought a ticket as far southeast as we could get, and looked forward to our transfer eight hours later. The roads were hours of air-condition-less bus, ninety-degree temperatures, and green-faced motion sickness. Bump after bump, we trundled towards our nameless hotel.

We arrived in Gejiu, our transfer location, at about 4 PM. The tickets for busses to Yuanyang were all sold out. But, maybe they weren’t. Everyone had such thickly accented, mouth full of bread and stones Mandarin that I couldn’t figure out what they were saying. Now, to give myself some credit, my Mandarin is good, and years at a Chinese restaurant taught me to deal with all sorts of different accents. But here was something I’d never heard. The sounds were familiar enough that I felt I should understand, but left me humiliated because I couldn’t. Desperate, we hired a cab driven by a swarthy, pockmarked, flip-flop wearing middle-aged man who insisted we’d get there without a hitch.

We did not get there ‘without a hitch.’ Yuanyang is on top of a mountain ridge, and the roads are two hours of the Mount Washington auto-road at insane Chinese speeds. Also, our driver decided to put us in a cab with his friend, who was “very familiar with Yuanyang.” So, halfway to town, we switched cars as traffic zoomed in both directions and each passing car promised to knock us off a two thousand foot precipice.

Once we arrived in town, we gave each other a, “This can’t be it” look. Yuanyang is perched on a ridge. Each side of the street gives a different view of mountains. It seems that the only things holding the town in place are the multiple piles of refuse weighing it down. Our opinion would probably have been better if we hadn’t been so travel weary, but at least we had beds to look forward to. Unfortunately, our new driver, who was much more familiar with the town, took us to the wrong hotel and drove away. I called our hotel’s phone number and a man answered. “Hello, we’ve booked a room at your hotel. Where are you?” “Mfph a-ge bridge mutter mutter.” “I’m sorry, can you say that again?” “Mfph a-ge bridge mutter MUTTER.” “Wait one moment. Can you say that a little slower?” Click. So, we walked. Soon we came upon a portly teenager.

The young, even in remote areas, tend to speak pretty decent Mandarin. Upon seeing our Buddha, I accosted him saying, “Friend, I’m sorry to bother you. But we’re a bit lost and I can’t understand anyone here.” He replied in beautiful mandarin, “Oh, no worries. I’ll help you.” I called the hotel again, and I immediately handed the phone to our savior. “Hello, I’m here with two foreign friends who can’t find your hotel.” A moment later he realized that his mandarin was as useless as mine. Then it was more, “Mfph a-ge bridge mutter mutter.” He hung up my phone and said, “I’ll take you there.” After ten minutes of walking up and down stair-lined alleys the Yi version of Kim Jong-il checked us into our dirty, urine smelling hotel.


Now, to the point. Liminal zones are frightening places. Both physical and metaphorical transitions unease us. It’s the rare person who can enter a liminal space comfortably and emerge unchanged (if they do, is it even a liminal zone?). Borders are the liminal zones of a country. Despite all the efforts of the political and cultural center, regions such as Coos (pronounced Co-os), New Hampshire; Belgium; Yuanyang; and the West Bank are uncomfortable for most visitors. Power means that borders will always exist. Perhaps the tension between the assertion or existence of something truly local (regional dialects) and its conflict with our familiar hegemonies leads the outsider to feelings of powerless confusion. You expect the normal to be stripped away in foreign places, but the combinations of familiar and alien, and half-comprehension found in border regions is much more jarring. Yuanyang jarred me. For most foreign travelers, all of China is alien. For me, it’s quotidian. Yuanyang was different in a way I wasn’t prepared for.

At least I know I’m not alone. Chinese people have been aliens in regions that are ‘politically’ China for thousands of years. So, I end this post with what originally inspired it. Two poems from the Tang dynasty (see my first blog post) on the western borders.

Both poems are by Wang Changling 王昌龄 (698-757?), and are written in the Han Dynasty (207BC-220AD) Music Bureau (yuefu) style.

塞上曲

蝉鸣空桑森，八月萧关道。
出塞入塞寒，处处黄芦草。
从来幽并客，皆共尘沙老。
莫学游侠儿，矜夸紫骝好。

Border Rhapsody A

Cicada chirping:
In empty forest of mulberry.
Early Autumn,
To the pass that takes us west.
We leave our borders,
Returning in the cold.
Everywhere, yellowed grass.

Men, from the other side of the country
Come together to grow old in dust and sand.
Un-educated, our traveling heroes.
Only interested in bragging about their horses!

塞下曲

饮马度秋水，水寒风似刀。
平沙日末没，黯黯见临洮。
昔日长城战，咸言意气高。
黄尘足古今，白骨乱蓬蒿。

Border Rhapsody B

Horses drink,
Then ford the autumn river.
Frigid water,
Wind like blades.
Expansive sand,
Never ending day or night.
Faintly, we see a river.

Long ago, there were battles at the great wall.
Everyone speaks of lofty heroism.
The yellow dust, spreading from the ancient times to today.
Bleached bones stick from the sand chaotically.

Dreams

Last night I dreamt. My Technicolor visions came in three parts: I was being chased by an intangible being of fear and anxiety (a polar bear?). I hid in a cave, but it was too narrow for me to maneuver. I tried to turn around to get out, but my foot was stuck. Panic induced hyperventilation. I slid a rock to escape and the sandpaper surface rasberried my fingertips. Next, I was in a kitchen. My wife’s family was cooking trout and mashed potatoes. But this second part wasn’t a reset button, I still had anxiety and sore hands. Suddenly, her grandmother started pouring sauce over the fish. It was wrong. I rushed up to stop her, shouting, “Don’t be such an idiot!” Which caused everyone to reprimand me for my lack of filial piety and, I was subsequently disowned. Then, I was watching Superman. Louis Lane was dead in childbirth, and someone had secretly taken a tissue sample from Superman. The sample was used to clone three Supermen. When Superman found out he rushed to save his “children.” Superman believed that they were the same as him, but their genetic redundancy didn’t prevent something dark from dwelling in their souls. His attempts to train them failed. All three combined their powers to kill their benevolent father. Not one for Jungian dream analysis, I can only conclude, “Weird.” There are redundant family themes in all three parts, but I’m not willing to reevaluate my relationship with the people I love based on the occasional, Qingdao-beer-induced nightmare.

Highly articulated dreams are one of the things that define us as human. But what we take from them is highly cultural. Next to God, they have more power over our lives and political destinies than anything else that’s (possibly) not really here. That’s why the Beats loved Zhuangzi and his catch phrase, “Am I a person? Or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a person?” There’s something undeniably humanist in this statement. After all, only humans can entertain the idea of being something other than we are.

Zhuangzi is one of the sources of a deep wellspring of Chinese actions and musings based on dreams. Dreams are everywhere. Here are two examples of dream inspired political action:

Various histories attribute the introduction of Buddhism into China to the influence of a dream. In 65A.D., a the Han Emperor Ming (r.58-75A.D.) dreamt of a giant golden man. The next day he asked one of his misters what it could mean. His minister replied that he had heard of such a figure worshiped in the far west. The emperor dispatched a mission to seek the figure out. They returned to Luoyang a few months later accompanied by two ‘western’ monks, and a white horse loaded with both scriptures and a statue that wan an exact copy of the ‘golden man.’

In 1008, the Song (960-1279) Emperor Zhenzong (r. 996-1022) dreamt that an immortal came to visit him. The immortal informed him that he would receive three ‘Texts from Heaven.’ He told his ministers, and soon after the texts started appearing. Although the texts have been unanimously declared apocryphal (his son buried them with him), his dream was viewed as a legitimate source for political action. It inspired the construction of a massive temple, and two hugely expensive imperial sacrifices.

On a more personal level, dreams were recorded by intellectuals as particularly useful for reflection. Man/y dreams are recorded in biji (usually translated as ‘jottings.’ Jottings usually consist of hundreds of small entries on anything (sometimes thematic). When complete then they would be published. In short, pre-modern blogs.).

Here’s are a couple of accounts about one of the people I’ve spent a great deal of time with, Yang Yi.

From a history of his home region, Pucheng Xianzhi:

楊億之初生也，母張氏夢羽衣人，自言武夷仙託化。既誕生，則一鶴雛也，盡室驚駭，貯而棄之江。其叔父曰：‘吾聞間世之人，其生必異。如姜嫄有棄，簡狄有契，是其類也。’追至江濱，鶴已蛻，而嬰兒具焉。

Before Yang Yi was born, his mother, neé Zhang , dreamt of a Daoist priest. He said that he was the reincarnation of the Immortal of the Wuyi [Mountains].

Later she gave birth to a crane chick. Everyone in the room was frightened, so they laid it aside and then abandoned it in a river. The hatchling’s paternal uncle said, “I’ve heard that in this mundane world of men, there are those whose birth’s must differ. This birth is of the same sort as Jiangyuan having Qi , and Jiandi giving birth to Ch’i. ”[1] He searched on the bank of the river, and its crane form having already been shed, [found] a baby boy.

From the Song Shi, the standard history of the Song dynasty.

楊億字大年，建州浦城人．祖文逸，南唐玉山令．億將生，文逸夢一道士，自稱懷玉山人來謁．未幾，億生，有毛被體，長尺餘經月乃落．


Yang Yi, known by the literary name ‘Great Year’, was from Pucheng, Jian Prefecture. His grandfather was Wenyi, the Southern Tang Director of Yu Shan. When Yi was to be born, Wenyi dreamed of a mendicant. [The Mendicant] claimed that an person from Huaiyu Shan was coming to pay his respects [to him]. Soon after, Yangyi, with a coat of hair over 8 inches in length covering his body, was born.

---

[1] Jiangyuan was the wife of the mythical Emperor Di Ku. She gave birth to Qi after becoming mysteriously pregnant due to stepping into the footprint of a giant. She abandoned the child numerous times, but after observing a number of animals come to his aid, she decided to keep him. For the full story see:

Anne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction, (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1993), 118.

Jiandi gave birth to Qi after swallowing the egg of a black bird.
Ibid.,, 256.

Children and Morality: Or, I was a Bully

Something I wonder is, “Why am I moral?” This isn’t to say that I doubt the existence of an objective morality or moral action (not very scholarly or post-modern of me, I know), only its foundations. I went to Sunday school, but I slept through class. I watched violent movies, played violent video games, and was an elementary school bully. I broke a kid’s glasses because he annoyed me; I threw a ball of ice at, and injured, a different kid because he annoyed me; and I put snow in the backpack of another kid because, well, he annoyed me and had my name. So what precipitated my change from a low class, insecure, angry, manipulative youth into an unyieldingly (perhaps inconveniently) moral young adult? My answer is not part of this blog, but the question of how we learn “morality” is.

I would argue that the most influential Chinese philosopher is Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200). Confucius as both a fictive and historical persona is certainly more famous, but Zhu Xi told the scholarly elite how to read The Analects. For better or worse, the scholarly elite, responsible as they were for running the state, decided what morality was.

One of the most important acts of Zhu Xi and other Song (960-1279) period philosophers was their revalidation of Mencius and his ‘love thy neighbor’ philosophy. This predicated a major philosophical shift best summarized in a single Zhu Xi quote: “Love and hate are feelings (qing), whereas love of good and hate of evil are part of human nature (xing).” [1] So, there you have it, love of good is part of human nature. We are all ontologically pure.

But if it were that simple we would all be unfailingly moral, living in a society free of crime and MTV. The Neo-Confucian (as Zhu Xi, his predecessors, and the inheritors of his tradition are called) hypothesis was on shaky ground from the start. It was then decided that despite our Heaven granted, fundamentally pure human nature, our psychological selves are subject to change after gradual habituation. Born pure, we immediately start to accrue defilement from our environment. The only solution was to begin immediate moral inculcation.

Which brings me back to children and morality. Pre-modern children’s education manuals are everywhere. Intellectuals were puzzled by the process of creating a moral society, and they quickly realized that it’s best to ‘get em’ while they're young.’ One of the earliest and most popular texts for early childhood moral education is the San Zi Jing 三字经, or Three Character Classic. Written by Wang Yinglin 王应麟(1223-1296), the text is a little over three hundred characters long and some fifty, three-character-long parallel lines. The text was chanted to aid memorization, so future little Wang’s first exposure to study would most likely have been spent internalizing and digesting this enthralling work. From there, little Wang would have memorized a few more important childhood primers (there are heaps of these) before getting to the more complicated stuff. After all of this, his/her parents could hope to have a morally upright and filial child. So, without much further ado, here’s the beginning (A very free translation):

人之出，性本善
When a person is born their nature is good.
性相近，习相远
Our natures are alike, [but] through circumstances vary.
苟不教，性乃迁
If we’re not instructed, then our natures change.
教之道，贵以专
When pursuing education, focus is the key.
昔孟母，择邻处
[So] Mencius’ mom moved to live near the school.
子不学，断机杼
When her son didn’t study, she threw him into the loom.
窦燕山，有义方
At Douyan Mountain, there was a righteous house.
教五子，名俱扬
They taught their five sons and all attained their fame.
养不教，父之过
Being raised but not taught, is the father’s fault
教不严，师之惰
Being taught without expectations, is because the teacher’s a lout.
子不学，非所宜
It’s not right, for the child not to study
幼不学，老何为
and if when young you don’t inquire, when you’re old you can’t retire.
玉不啄，不成器
So polish the jade, to become something.
人不学，不知义
If a person doesn’t study, they’ll know nothing.

---

[1] Quote from:
William T. Rowe, Saving The World:Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 104.

This was really just a new phrasing of the Chinese Buddhist philosophical concept of Buddha Nature (foxing).