Author: Texts With Tea
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How to Fortune-Tell with Dominoes
While doing some research to learn more about the dice game of Cee-lo. I stumbled on a paper by Stewart Culin, an American ethnographer, on Chinese games involving dice and dominoes. Scanning through it, I found a section, titled “FORTUNE TELLING WITH DOMINOES” which piqued my interest. However, the section did not go into specifics,…
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Comparisons Between the 5 Paragraph Essay and Baguwen (8-Legged Essay)
If you grew up in America and went to a public school, you likely learned how to write the famous five paragraph essay. What is the five paragraph essay? It’s composed of a paragraph for the introduction and your thesis statement, three paragraphs for evidence to support your thesis statement, and finally a paragraph for…
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Book Review of the Smiling Proud Wanderer by Jin Yong
There’s one word that I want to use to describe this novel: Sobering. In The Smiling Proud Wanderer by Jing Yong, we follow the adventures of the main protagonist, Linghu Chong, as he goes from a happy-go-lucky martial arts practitioner to facing the real world where he has to deal with the nasty world of…
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Bazi, the Four Pillars of Destiny: A Comprehensive Guide
Bazi explained, how it relates to the Chinese zodiac, and much more. The Four Pillars of Destiny, also known as Bazi (八字), is a Chinese fortune telling technique that attempts to calculate your fate based on the day and time you were born. Your birth chart will consist of four pillars/columns, one for the year,…
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My Path to Learning Classical Chinese
My path to learning Classical Chinese, also known as literary Chinese, is one that has been going on for several years. Growing up going to Chinese school every week, I’d say I can read the average Chinese book published nowadays without any major problems. Reading books that are written in Classical Chinese, however, is a…
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10 Steps to Learning Chinese Philosophy
How to learn Chinese philosophy? This seems like a daunting task at first glance. However, it need not be so difficult if you have a good approach to learning it. I will give some recommendations and provide some of my own experiences on how I approached learning Chinese philosophy that I hope will be helpful…
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I Ching Yarrow Stalks and Coins: A Helpful Guide to Consulting the I Ching
So let’s say you finally grabbed yourself a copy of the I Ching. You open up and realize that it’s full of hexagrams with descriptions tied to each of them. Then how do you consult it? Lucky for you, there are all kinds of ways to consult it. The most traditional way to consult it…
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What is Wuxia? Difference Between Wuxia Vs. Xianxia and Other Questions Answered.
What is Wuxia? In short, wuxia is a Chinese genre that is focused on martial arts. This is evident from the Chinese characters for wuxia, which are 武俠. The first character, 武, means martial, while the second character, 俠, means hero. However, there is much more to wuxia than simply Chinese martial arts and tales…
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Thoughts on Classic Wuxia Novels and their Future
If you’re reading this article, I assume that you already know what wuxia is. If you don’t, check out my article that answers basic questions on wuxia. When my uncle and my father recommended I take a look at some of the classic wuxia novels by Jin Yong, I’ll have to admit I was pretty…
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Poker, Dugu Nine Swords, and a Wheelmaker From Zhuangzi
What a poker game, a sword fighting technique in Jin Yong’s wuxia novels, and a wheelmaker in Zhuangzi can teach us about specific knowledge. You’re playing a game such as poker, and you have just bluffed your small hand. Your goal by bluffing is to scare all the other players into folding and quitting their…