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This interdisciplinary study examines the reception of Ařyurvedic knowledge and other Indian medical teachings in medieval China through analysis of Buddhist texts, including translations from Indian languages as well as Chinese compositions between the second and ninth centuries.
2014 | 256 pages | Cloth $59.95
Asian Studies / Medicine
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1. The Buddhist Medical Transmission
Chapter 2. Translators and Translation Practice
Chapter 3. Translating Medicine in Buddhist Scriptures
Chapter 4. Rewriting Buddhist Medicine
Chapter 5. Popularizing Buddhist Medicine
List of Abbreviations
List of Chinese and Japanese Characters
With translation there is transmission; without translation there is but obscurity.
—Sengyou (445-518)
The transmission of Buddhism from India to China in the first millennium of the Common Era ranks among the most significant and most well documented examples of cross-cultural exchange in the premodern world. Although the study of the global spread of Buddhism is most commonly undertaken by scholars of religion, this cross-cultural encounter involved much more than simply the transmission of religious or philosophical knowledge. Buddhism influenced many other aspects of Chinese life, including contributing to the economy, inspiring changes in the sociopolitical order, and spurring the adoption of foreign material culture. This book is a study of one, often-overlooked facet of this Indo-Sinitic exchange: the introduction of Indian medicine to China.
Knowledge about health and illness held a central place within Buddhist thought from the earliest times. Anatomical and physiological terminology was frequently invoked in early Indian Buddhist texts, particularly in descriptions of meditation practices and other ascetic discourses. Medical similes and metaphors were utilized in order to make accessible many aspects of the Dharma, including the most abstruse philosophical positions. Narratives of the healing exploits of deities, monks, and other heroes were a feature of the Buddhist hagiographic literature of all periods. Rites to dispel disease were central to the ritual repertoires of Buddhist clerics across Asia. Many Buddhist scriptures even go so far as to suggest that fully understanding the body is the very essence of the Buddha's teachings. Taken collectively, such Buddhist perspectives on health, illness, healers, patients, therapies, and bodies are today often spoken of by East Asian scholars and devotees as Buddhist medicine (Ch. foyi or fojiao yixue; Jp. bukkyō igaku).
Buddhist medicine, if I may employ that term here for purposes of convenience, is a moving target. It represents a loose collection of ideas and practices that originated in the Indo-European context in the latter centuries B.C.E., but that was modified and expanded as a result of cross-cultural interactions during the vigorous geographical expansion of Buddhism. Transmitted along the networks of land and sea trade routes, the core doctrines and perspectives of Buddhist medicine came to exert a powerful influence on medical thought and practice across a large swath of Eurasia. To this day, they continue to form the basis of traditional medicine in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Tibet, among other places. However, the history of how the tradition was locally received, understood, and transformed differed greatly from place to place.
The Chinese reception of Buddhist medicine was complex and multifaceted. Medieval China was culturally diverse and politically fractured, and therefore it—like virtually all other facets of Buddhism—was subject to multiple interpretations in different contexts. Importantly, China had long-standing and prestigious traditions of learned medicine that were the object of official patronage and that looked to a corpus of ancient classics for authority. China also had long-established repertoires of ritual healing, bodily self-cultivation, and alchemical experimentation that claimed to be able to heal, to prevent illness, and even to confer immortality. Over the long term, the impact of some aspects of Buddhist medicine on the Chinese medical world was profound: Indian-inspired healing deities, rituals, occult practices, and hagiography, for example, all proved to be enormously popular and permanent contributions to Chinese culture. At the same time, some doctrines that lay at the very center of Buddhist medical thought and practice were perceived as conflicting with indigenous precedents. In the long run, these failed to catch on and were ultimately either ignored or actively replaced by homegrown models within Buddhist discourses.
I am planning future publications that will provide in-depth analysis of the medical content of Chinese Buddhist texts, the relationship between this medical system and others throughout Eurasia, and the historical development of Buddhist medicine in a global context. The present book focuses on understanding the local reception of Buddhist medical ideas in China. While it starts with an overview of the transmission of Buddhist medical knowledge to China, the majority of its pages are dedicated to exploring the processes of translation involved in this historic episode of cross-cultural exchange. The many Chinese Buddhist writings under consideration in this book demonstrate that foreign medical ideas introduced along with Buddhism were voluminously translated, enthusiastically commented upon, and widely disseminated in China. At the same time, however, they show that translators went to great lengths to adapt Indian ideas and practices to domestic cultural and social contexts. Far from passively being influenced by transmitted knowledge from abroad, they actively retooled these imports to fit with Chinese intellectual concerns, to mesh with preexisting literary and cultural conventions, and to forward their own political and economic interests.
The examination of these dynamics of cross-cultural transmission and reception will bring into sharper focus several important facets of religious and medical history that are worth highlighting from the outset. In the first place, Chinese Buddhist texts dealing with medicine throw into question some of the basic assumptions about the history of Indian medicine, not least of which is the tendency to label all ancient Indian medical knowledge as Āyurveda. Clearly, there were significant currents of medical thought outside of the Āyurveda context. Second, and from a more global standpoint, these texts showcase the centrality of healing as one of the most important mechanisms by which Buddhism gained prominence outside of India. They demonstrate how the body and its processes of health and illness could be used as effective tools for translating Buddhist doctrines across geographic, ethnic, and linguistic divides, and how claiming medical knowledge helped Buddhists position themselves as cross-cultural mediators.
At the same time, the study of these texts also greatly enhances our understanding of the local religious and medical context in medieval China. That is the main focus of the current book. Focusing on the Chinese reception of Buddhist medicine underscores how the history of Chinese medicine is inseparable from that of Chinese religion, and vice versa. It helps us to understand the medieval Chinese religious and medical landscape, and the roles of Buddhist ideas, practices, and practitioners in that world. It sheds light on the multivalence of healing knowledge in medieval society and its significance as a site of political and social contestation. It highlights the importance of clerics as healthcare practitioners, the tensions between them and other groups of healing specialists, and the role of religion in their processes of differentiation. And, at a more fundamental level, this study strongly urges us to think of historical processes of cross-cultural exchange as creative moments that hinged on the translational activities of individual historical actors.
Cultural Exchange and Translation Theory
While it is familiar territory for scholars of religion, medieval China has received far less attention from historians of medicine. Those who have studied the period have shown that healing was a major facet of contemporary religion, and their findings have suggested that the Indian contributions to Chinese medicine should be analyzed in much more detail than thus far has been the case. To date, however, only a handful of scholarly books have been published in Western languages that concentrate on the interaction between religion and medicine in the period. Moreover, much of this scholarship has focused on a single cache of documents from the remote Silk Road oasis town of Dunhuang (in present-day Gansu Province), on the far periphery of Chinese civilization.
The scholarly assessment of Buddhism's contributions to medieval Chinese medicine has not been unanimous. The majority has focused on those medical ideas from the Indian context that were influential in China and has enumerated many concrete references to foreign doctrines in the writings of medieval Chinese physicians. A vocal minority has instead emphasized that the core doctrines of Indian medicine were misunderstood, misconstrued, and mistranslated in China. Whatever side they have taken in this debate, however, scholars have tended to focus on the similarities (or lack thereof) between the writings of Chinese physicians and the extant Indian texts from the Āyurveda tradition, rather than systematically examining the corpus of Chinese Buddhist literature on its own terms.
In my view, this interest in charting the correlations between Indian and Chinese medical traditions parallels the overriding concern in twentieth-century religious studies scholarship with measuring the influence versus the sinicization of Buddhism in China more generally. The prevailing approach to Chinese Buddhism until the past quarter century or so, this model emphasized identifying which Indian ideas and practices were transmitted to China, how these exerted an impact on native thought and social structures, and how they were absorbed, transformed, and eventually assimilated into the Chinese culture. In this type of scholarship, comparing Indian and Chinese writings to find similarities is understandably a common theme.
As criticisms of this influence versus sinicization approach began to take root in the 1990s and 2000s, however, scholars increasingly tended not to treat Indian and Chinese cultures as reified entities that came into contact with one another, but rather began to understand cross-cultural exchange at a more granular level. Explicitly or implicitly drawing on the theory of cultural systems as developed in the field of cultural anthropology, a significant body of scholarship has emerged in the past twenty years that emphasizes the complexity of the processes whereby foreign and indigenous practices, beliefs, and symbols interacted and intermixed. This approach has led to an increasingly nuanced appreciation of Chinese Buddhism as a syncretic composite of both Indian and Chinese cultural elements, as well as to a reevaluation of the many subtle Buddhist influences on medieval Daoism. Such a way of approaching the topic has led to seismic shifts in the study of Chinese religion. Rather than Indian influence and Chinese sinicization, many scholars now prefer to think in terms of Buddho-Daoism, and almost all emphasize the syncretism of Chinese religions.
Though syncretism remains a valuable tool for thinking about cross-cultural exchange, a radically different approach to the problem has also gained currency since the turn of the twenty-first century. Inspired by the cross-disciplinary linguistic turn prioritizing discourse analysis, many prominent North American scholars have abandoned thinking of culture as a thing or collection of things with the ability to influence or intermix. Drawing on models of culture as performance developed in the social sciences, many scholars have now begun to speak about Buddhism (or, often, Buddhisms) as a multiplicity of rhetorical categories that were continually and situationally negotiated by individual historical actors. They have spoken of Buddhism as a collection of repertoires or strategies, and have promoted the investigation of religious discourse as a site for the social and literary performance of identity. Robert Sharf perhaps articulated this position as clearly as anyone when he wrote the following lines:
The problem is that the category of syncretism presupposes the existence of distinct religious entities that predate the syncretic amalgam, precisely what is absent, or at least unrecoverable, in the case of Buddhism. . . . In the final analysis, pure or unadulterated Buddhism is little more than an analytic abstraction posited by Buddhist polemicists, apologists, reformers, and now scholars. . . . The authority of the word Buddhism lies not in its normative signification(s) so much as in its rhetorical deployments.Although some scholars, including Sharf, have vocally rejected the idea of syncretism, it is important to emphasize that both modes of current scholarship outlined above—what I call the cultural-systems approach on the one hand, and the discourse-centered approach on the other—have now developed in dialogue and in mutual interaction over the past decade or more. What is more, while approaches emphasizing influence, sinicization, hybridity, and syncretism may now be considered unfashionable in certain circles, acclaimed works unapologetically touting the ÒimpactÓ of Indian culture on China continue to appear, and older studies in this mold continue to be counted among the most engaging and worthwhile contributions to the field. In short, multiple approaches now coexist side by side as distinct methodological orientations available to scholars interested in the Indo-Sinitic cross-cultural encounter.
In a sign that old dichotomies are moving toward a new synthesis, in the past few years a number of innovative scholars have begun to explore ways of bridging the gap between cultural- systems and discourse-centered approaches. For example, several recent studies have provided methodologically rich analyses of how cross-culturally exchanged Buddhist iconographic elements were self-consciously and strategically deployed in order to negotiate site-specific political circumstances. Rather than collapse their analyses into any single framework, these scholars have explored the dialectic between transregional traditions and local reception, and have explicitly focused on the unstable and symbiotic nature of this relationship.
Like those other studies, my approach to Buddhist medicine is also interested in forging a Middle Path between the local and the translocal. Rather than focus on iconography, however, this book focuses squarely on the cross-cultural transmission and reception of ideas. The underlying theoretical model I employ is to approach this process primarily through the lens of translation. I am attracted to translation theory as a conceptual tool for bridging the gap between the cultural-systems and discourse-centered approaches because even the most basic analysis of translation necessitates integrating both.
Translation, of course, lies at the very heart of the Indo-Sinitic cross-cultural encounter given that it was primarily through translated texts (both written and oral) that Buddhist knowledge was imported into China. While a good portion of this book is about translation proper (i.e., the reencoding of foreign language texts in Chinese), however, I am following the common practice in translation studies of using translation as a heuristic device or organizing metaphor to talk about a wide spectrum of processes of intercultural communication. Here, I use the term to refer to any and all practices of mediating, negotiating, or explaining cultural differences through literature. I explicitly intend to include both interlingual translations (i.e., texts transferred between languages) as well as the wide range of intralingual translations of Indian knowledge (i.e., writings that further explained and interpreted interlingual translations for Chinese audiences).
One of the most basic premises of translation studies is that acts of translation are much more complex than simply the transfer of a text encoded in one language (the source text) to an equivalent text in a second language (the target text). Figure 1 presents a simplified version of a widely known model of translation introduced in the 1960s by one of the godfathers of translation studies, Eugene Nida. Nida's model is by no means the final word on translation, and it has been expanded, refined, and rejected by many scholars since. Be that as it may, precisely because of its simplicity, this diagram serves as a useful starting point to discuss some of the central concerns of this book.
In the first place, the diagram draws attention to the intermittent steps in translation in between the source and target texts, in which the translator analyzes the meaning of the text in its original cultural and linguistic milieu, mentally transfers this meaning from the source language to the target language, and restructures his understanding of the text in this new context. Following the diagram's flow from left to right, one way to think of Indo-Sinitic cross-cultural exchange is as the movement of a constellation of words, concepts, metaphors, symbols, ideas, tropes, and other structures horizontally across the diagram from the Indian cultural-linguistic system to the Chinese. From this perspective, Buddhist translators can be thought of as occupying an intercultural space: through each act of transfer, they imagined and built conceptual bridges between two distinct semantic worlds. They adapted foreign ideas to fit into new linguistic structures and cultural categories, and expanded domestic systems to accommodate fresh inputs. That is to say, one way to look at the practice of translation is to see the translator as an active mediator between cultural-linguistic systems.
An important issue that arises in this way of thinking about translation is the problem of equivalence. Can a text or passage or word mean the same in its source and target contexts? How do meanings shift in the process of transfer? Are there certain ideas that simply cannot be translated? There is a long tradition of asking these sorts of questions in European translation theory, and of making distinctions such as word-for-word versus sense-for-sense equivalence, going back as far as Cicero (106-43 B.C.E.) and St. Jerome (ca. 347-420 C.E.). Nida himself differentiated between what he called formal and dynamic equivalence—the former referring to the literal translation of terminology that prioritizes the semantics of the source text, and the latter referring to looser translations that recreate the source text's social or cultural function in the new setting. As we will see in Chapter 2, similar distinctions were made by medieval Chinese translators.
While not necessarily couching their work in translation studies terminology, it is precisely on equivalence that most of the existing scholarship on Buddhist translation and cultural exchange has concentrated. The influence versus sinicization approach mentioned above, for example, is in large part a debate over to what extent Buddhist ideas were expressed in formal versus dynamic terms in Chinese texts. I will discuss the translation of Buddhist medicine from this perspective in more detail below. However, scholars of translation have long argued that a fuller understanding of translation necessitates shifting focus from the movement of cultural-linguistic elements horizontally across Nida's diagram to also understand in as much detail as possible the processes taking place at the bottom of the chart.
One of the thorniest problems in the study of translation is that while the structural aspects of the translation process—the textual inputs and outputs, as well as the larger systems texts are embedded within—can in most cases be studied extensively, the interpretive acts performed during the transfer take place within the black box of an individual human mind. While scholars of translation have interrogated living translators, tracked their eyeballs while they worked, and subjected them to neurological study in order to gain a sense of their understandings and procedures, this is obviously impossible with historical translators. Specifically in the case of medieval China, we are even further constrained by a paucity of records written by translators reflecting on their craft. The limitations of the sources prevent us from gaining anything near a complete picture of medieval translation practice. Despite the obvious challenges, however, the field of translation studies provides a wide range of tools to think about the myriad factors that inform the decisions of translators, and I argue that we can use some of these approaches to think more deeply about the medieval materials.
For example, rather than concentrating only on the equivalence or lack thereof between source and target cultural-linguistic structures, we might gain an even better appreciation for translation as an active and creative process if we borrow from translation theorists the ideas of foreignizing versus domesticating translation strategies. Though perhaps seemingly similar to the formal-dynamic distinction, this approach does not hold up the source text as the authoritative point of reference by which the target text is measured. Rather than focus on how much of the original is transferred and how well, the latter approach is concerned with the translators' strategic crafting of their target texts. The questions that now draw our attention include: How do translators actively mold translations in order to fit with certain expectations, achieve certain rhetorical goals, or elicit certain responses in their intended audience? When and why does a translator invoke the source context through the use of unfamiliar foreignizing words, grammatical structures, or imagery? When and why does he deploy domesticating terms with indigenous resonances that might signal to his readers that a foreign text is compatible with the target cultural-linguistic system? Of course, foreignizing and domesticating are themselves not fixed entities, but ever-evolving registers of expression. They are the products of the norms (including the assumptions, imaginations, and rhetorical practices) of the recipient culture, which also must be explored.
The study of historical instances of translation thus requires understanding not only the source and target texts and cultural-linguistic systems, but also as much of the local social situation as possible, including the translator's intended audience and interpretive communities, the prevailing conventions and expectations of these groups, the sociopolitical and ideological environment, the intellectual and economic stakes, and so on. I need not belabor this excursus into translation studies any further than I already have. The long and short of it is that, taking Nida's simple schematic of an act of translation as our point of departure, we rapidly arrive at the conclusion that an adequate account of the reception of Buddhist medicine in China involves a number of factors beyond simply an evaluation of how accurate Chinese translators were in capturing Indian ideas.
This study integrates the various aspects of translation introduced above, concentrating on the following:
Let me acknowledge clearly here that we cannot ever gain complete access to the black box and definitively determine what our medieval translators and authors were thinking when they took up their ink and brushes. However, I will argue in the chapters to come that we can indeed peek inside and come to some reasonably solid conclusions about translators' intentions, concerns, and thought processes. As I will show, an analysis of the above factors, read against the social and cultural contexts in which translation took place, can tell us much about the multivalent meanings of religion and medicine for medieval Chinese people.
Contents of This Book
The body of this book is divided into seven thematic units. The introduction you are currently reading sets up the basic frameworks for my analysis and contains a few preliminary notes about the sources, terminology, and translation conventions I employ. This is followed by Chapter 1, which opens by describing the religious and medical vocabularies that prevailed in China prior to the introduction of Buddhism. These cultural-linguistic elements represent the raw materials available to translators from which they could construct equivalence, as well as important interpretive lenses through which translated Buddhist medical knowledge could be understood and explained. However, the bulk of the chapter is concerned with broadly introducing the range of Indian medical ideas, practices, and institutions imported from abroad and the texts that introduced these to China. I also summarize the widespread influence of Indian medical ideas on medieval Chinese medical texts, ranging from the writings of medical officials to Silk Road manuscripts.
Chapter 2 shifts from a focus on the transmission to one on translation practice. It opens with a discussion of the translators and the environment in which they worked. I then provide an overview of how translators used foreignizing and domesticating terminology in order to both draw their readers into a foreign world and fit their target texts into the Chinese context. I also introduce in this chapter what I call the religiomedical marketplace, or the competitive social environment in which religious and medical healing specialists contended for patronage and cultural capital. I show that choices about how to translate Buddhist medical ideas helped to position Buddhist clerics vis-a-vis their competition, and that seemingly small translation decisions could carry an inordinate amount of weight in how well they could negotiate the medieval Chinese social and political landscape.
Next, Chapter 3 outlines in broad strokes the norms that emerged in the Chinese translation of the medical content contained in Buddhist scriptures. I discuss a large corpus of extant texts, focusing on how they translate five core medical metaphors that are found in Buddhist literature across multiple languages worldwide. In China, I argue, these metaphors were translated in different ways in order to appeal to different domestic audiences. Translators writing texts for the internal consumption of the monastic community, the sangha (Skt. sa?gha; Ch. seng or sengjia), utilized more formally equivalent or foreignizing language, while those writing for wider audiences relied heavily on dynamic equivalents that tapped into domestic vocabularies. I suggest that such differences are not accidental but relate to the strategic purposes of the translators, which I examine in some detail.
Following this discussion of the broader corpus of translated scriptures, Chapter 4 moves to consider how individual authors reinterpreted translated Buddhist knowledge in indigenous Chinese compositions. Though examples of intralingual translation rather than translation proper, these authors played just as important a role in the Chinese reception of Buddhist medicine. Throughout this chapter, I focus on the relationship between an author's social and intellectual context and his translation decisions, demonstrating that even the same individual might modulate his strategies when writing for different audiences. I also identify a series of historical shifts in strategy that took place between the sixth and ninth centuries. As contact with India deepened and China became more familiar with Buddhist ideas, interpreters of Buddhist medicine began to utilize more foreignizing vocabularies that marked Buddhist medical knowledge as authentic, unique, and even incompatible with Chinese knowledge.
Chapter 5 switches gears and tells a diametrically opposed story about another genre of Buddhist literature. This chapter explores how Buddhist medical ideas and ideals were incorporated into popular narratives. In these tales, rather than emphasize the source context, authors worked to resituate Buddhist healers within the domestic Chinese literary world. In the hands of these intralingual translators, foreign healers were recreated as familiar characters from indigenous genres. Monks offering healing services to the laity were represented as important actors in contemporary society, and their therapies were molded to appear highly compatible with indigenous Chinese cultural expectations. Such narratives circulated widely and ultimately played a larger role than any other form of literature in introducing the Chinese populace to Buddhist healing. These stories contributed to making certain aspects of Buddhist medicine universally known and enduring parts of the Chinese religiomedical landscape.
Finally, a short conclusion briefly discusses the decline of Buddhist medicine as a vital doctrinal system after the ninth century. I identify shifts in the reception environment as a principal reason why Buddhist medical knowledge became less important for elite physicians outside of Buddhist circles in the ninth to twelfth centuries and beyond. This section also wraps up with a summary of the basic arguments forwarded here. At the back of the book, I have provided a list of Chinese and Japanese characters, bibliographies of historical sources and references, and an index.
From the above synopsis, it should be apparent that this book is not a social history of healing in medieval China, an exegesis of Buddhist medical thought, or a word-by-word analysis of translation technique—although it does a little of each. Rather, it represents an initial foray into a broad range of Chinese Buddhist texts on medicine, the language and rhetorical strategies employed in their translation and authorship, the goals of the people who produced them, and the contexts in which such writing was undertaken. I will probably spend less time discussing the translation of specific passages or specific words than the reader might expect, preferring to pay attention to a wider spectrum of translation practices. Because my analysis and conclusions are framed broadly, many individual stones have been left unturned, and I intend to return to a number of these in future publications. For now, my chief goal is to reconstruct something of the vibrant medical world of medieval China and of the place of translated Buddhist knowledge within that milieu.
Sources for This Book
Historical sources consulted in the preparation of this book include both canonical and extracanonical Buddhist literature, as well as a number of Indian and Chinese medical texts that lie outside the Buddhist sphere altogether. My focus, however, is the Taishō-Era Newly Revised Tripitaka (Jp. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō), a one-hundred-volume compilation well known to all scholars of East Asian Buddhism. My analysis includes primarily those texts that were composed or translated in China between the second and the mid-ninth centuries C.E.—which constitutes the main period of translation activity that introduced Buddhist medicine to East Asia.
My choice to focus on the Taishō Tripitaka perhaps requires some explanation. Assembled by scholars in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, this compilation of texts includes a selection of historical sources that were gathered from all over East Asia. Though it has the word Tripitaka in its title, which is most commonly translated into English as canon, it does not constitute a proper historical canon as it was never recognized as an authoritative compilation by any premodern group of Buddhists. In recent years, many scholars have turned away from this heterogeneous collection as they have become increasingly excited about recovered manuscripts, local temple gazetteers, stone inscriptions, and other newly excavated or rediscovered sources. Scholarly excursions into this virgin territory have had a reinvigorating effect on the field of Buddhist studies, and in many cases have overturned long-held assumptions. At the same time that these new directions are being explored, however, the Taishō Tripitaka still remains an invaluable source for certain types of research. For a study of the history of Chinese translation strategies across a wide expanse of geography and time, for example, this collection is the natural starting point. Not only does it contain a broad sample of premodern Chinese Buddhist literature, but it is fully digitized, allowing for accessible corpus-level analysis. Ranging from major sutras and commentaries to relatively obscure texts, the Taishō Tripitaka includes virtually all of the most historically influential writings of the Chinese Buddhist tradition that are extant today as well as a cross-section of other less influential pieces. While there is much work to be done on the history of Buddhist healing in any number of local contexts across China, a study of the medical knowledge in this particular collection is a necessary undertaking in order to provide both a baseline and point of departure for any such scholarship.
Received Buddhist texts do raise some potential sticking points that are worth contemplating, however. For one, this study must proceed under different assumptions about how texts work than studies of contemporary translation might. We must recognize that Chinese Buddhist texts belong to a world in which notions of authorship operated differently than they do in the modern West. Persistent borrowing and adaptation of material among writers (whether from the same or from rival groups) without attribution was the norm. In addition, our received texts come down to us via generations of copyists and editors who thought nothing of adjusting texts to suit the prevailing ideologies of their times. While some scholars have decried such activities as plagiarism and censorship, it is simply how authorship worked in premodern China. Consequently, in this book, I use the term author cum grano salis, intending to refer to the name attached to a particular version of a text. I do not mean to infer that this individual was the sole person who contributed to its composition, or that the text we have today is necessarily a fully faithful copy of his original.
The idea of the translator of these sources is just as problematic. An unknown but significant percentage of Chinese Buddhist translations were anonymously done, although these texts were often backdated and given false attributions retroactively for polemical purposes. Even when we are confident about the name and date, we must bear in mind that most texts were not translated by a single individual. Rather, as I will discuss in more detail in Chapter 1, Buddhist texts were most frequently the output of a committee: symbolically headed by that individual, but in actuality composed of numerous individuals with varying linguistic and literary expertise. When I talk about the translator of a text in this book, I do not mean to exclude all of the other individuals involved in the translation, reinterpreting, and rewriting of a text. While I ascribe certain motives to Chinese Buddhist translators, I am fully aware that we cannot reconstruct the deliberations of translation assemblies or separate out the intentions of the individuals who constituted them.
Another issue that confronts us is the one-sidedness of the corpus available to us in the present day. The vast majority of Chinese Buddhist scriptures are today available only as target texts, the source texts having been lost long ago. Even when there are recensions of these texts still extant in Indian languages, these represent different, usually much later, editions rather than source texts in the strict sense. In only extremely rare cases were the Indic texts from which Chinese translators worked preserved to the present day. While this lacuna might on its face seem to present an insurmountable obstacle for a project such as this one, in actuality, a focus on a monolingual corpus is not that unusual in translation studies. While it would be nice to have our translators' sources, enough comparable Buddhist and medical literature exists from the Indian sphere that we often can make informed estimates of what missing source texts may have said when appropriate. In my research, I have most frequently used for these sorts of comparisons the Pāli Buddhist Canon and the three most influential classics from the Āyurveda tradition. In fact, however, this book does not spend any time comparing source and target texts. I am most interested in examining Chinese translations as examples of Chinese literature written in the Chinese target context. That is to say, the lack of Indic source texts sharpens our focus on the reception end of the translation process and underscores our commitment to treating translations as facts of target cultures.
One final consideration worth mentioning is that, due to the lack of source texts, what does and does not constitute translation is not always clear from our historical remove. Many of the writings associated with Chinese Buddhism are known or suspected to be pseudotranslations (often called apocrypha), texts that were newly composed in China but were passed off as translations from Indian languages. As I will discuss in detail below, it is impossible to make clear categorical distinctions between texts or parts thereof that adhere closely to the source texts, those that represent creative reinterpretation, and those that are all-out fabrications. Most Chinese Buddhist texts combine the whole gamut of approaches, and, because we have no source texts to compare them against, we are often unsure what portions of a text are examples of what kind of approaches.
In fact, however, the issue of what does and does not constitute translation is easily settled when we think of translation in broader terms. Once we include both inter- and intralingual translation in our definition, then all medieval Chinese Buddhist texts count as translations. Even if they are not translations proper, all are the product of authors' attempts to explain, elucidate, and engage with foreign knowledge. All Chinese Buddhist exegetes and thinkers grappled with how to understand, explain, and mobilize foreign ideas in ways that were meaningful to their readers. Anthologizers, catalogers, collectors, and other rewriters of preexisting material were no less involved in translational activity. Far from mindlessly compiling, they selected from existing sources, extracting texts from one context, and recasting them to fit another. Even cases of outright appropriation—for example, when a Daoist author lifts passages or entire texts from Buddhist scriptures—can similarly be understood as a type of translation. By adapting existing material or redeploying it in new compositions, all of these authors infused borrowed materials with new meaning and resituated them in new frameworks, in effect translating them into new social, ideological, and intellectual contexts.
All of these translational acts—whether translation proper, pseudotranslation, rewriting, adaptation, or a mix of all—involved similar processes of extracting an idea from a source context and restructuring it in a new target context. But how translators derived meaning from the sources available to them and how they chose to express those ideas in new linguistic, cultural, and ideological frameworks varied greatly. While Chinese Buddhist target texts invariably are intricate mosaics of Indian and Chinese cultural-linguistic elements, as we will see below, there are important patterns that emerge upon closer inspection. It is precisely on reading these patterns to see what they reveal that we will focus in the pages to come.
Some Notes on Terminology and Translations
The anthropologist Joseph Alter has written that the broad categories commonly used by scholars to compare different cultures, such as religion, economics, philosophy, and science, reflect reality only partially. Their usage, he argues, produces frameworks of analysis . . . that are completely at odds with histories of contact and sustained cultural communication. This mismatch between scholarly categories and historical realities is especially problematic in a study of the history of Buddhist medicine.
In the first place, we must ask ourselves, just what do we mean by the term medicine in the context of medieval China? Historians of Chinese medicine have given the lion's share of their attention to the learned strands of healing historically associated with the members of a particular social group called in Chinese yi (conventionally translated into English as physicians). This focus is perhaps understandable given that the healing system advocated by physicians—itself also called yi (in this context conventionally translated as medicine) or yifang (medical techniques)—enjoyed increasing official favor and eventually became the dominant learned medical discourse from the eleventh century onward. The doctrines and practices associated with the word yi also constitute the basis of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a modern hybrid therapeutic system that is increasingly popular across the globe today. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to assume that the yi were the only practitioners in the long history of China that were taken seriously by patients or that produced sophisticated treatises on health, illness, and the body. If we aim to gain a more comprehensive picture of the Chinese medical world, it is imperative to investigate the history of other groups of healers—despite the fact that they may not fit neatly into the modern understanding of the word medicine.
In the medieval period, one obvious area needing further research is the activities of religious healers. In China prior to the eleventh century, religion was not a thoroughly separate category from medicine. (I use the word religiomedical when I want to explicitly flag this overlap for the reader.) The origin of the medical system of the yi, it might be noted, was commonly attributed to the deified culture hero known as the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), who was a figure of widespread philosophical and religious importance in early China. It centered on understanding the intricacies of the ethereal cosmic vapor called qi and the resonances of yin and yang, which were the same concerns that undergirded multiple Chinese religious, divinatory, and cosmological traditions.
If religion thus lay at the heart of medicine, then, conversely, every school of thought we might want to identify as religious in early China forwarded its own systematic model of how the body worked, what one needed to do to keep it functioning optimally, and how to respond when it broke down. Healing fell well within the realm of expertise that the clerics, priests, religious leaders, and ritual specialists of all persuasions arrogated to themselves. Moreover, judging by the huge volume of popular medieval literature about healing and healers, it was also one of the chief social functions that was expected of them by the laity.
If it is not the case that there was a systematic and secular medicine opposed to doctrinally unsophisticated traditions of religious healing in the medieval period, it is also not a question of elite versus folk therapies. As I will discuss below in detail, Buddhist monks actively competed against physicians, Daoists, spirit healers, and other religiomedical practitioners for patients of all social classes. Their competitions played out on a field that was largely unified by shared expectations, conventions, and assumptions. There are many indications in the historical record that healers of all of these types were taken seriously across all levels of society, and that their therapies were recognized as legitimate and prestigious even by emperors.
Given these facts, I am of the opinion that historians of the medieval period lose more than they gain if they reserve the category of medicine for the yi, and relegate other groups to the residual category of healing. This bifurcation seems anachronistic in that it grants physicians more authority than they probably enjoyed in the medieval era and sets them off too distinctly from their contemporaries. In this book, I would rather use the English word medicine in an intentionally broad and fuzzy way in order to encompass the whole range of practitioners and to draw attention to the fluidity and interactions between them. When I want to refer to the yi in particular, I will use the term physicians, and I will refer to their ideas and practices as classical Chinese medicine.
Since this volume is primarily a study of translation practices, there are many aspects of medicine I will not have the opportunity to discuss here, no matter how expansively I use that term. I will not have much to say about medical institutions, material culture, or artistic representations, for example, which I will leave to future publications. Out of necessity, I am also limiting the scope of this book to medicine associated with the physical body. Though there is an argument to be made that mental health should be included as well, if I were to attempt to do so, I would have to consider virtually every Buddhist text, as the vast majority of them claim to be intervening precisely in that arena. Other realms of Buddhist knowledge that connect closely or overlap with medicine but have also been omitted from this discussion include pharmacology, astrology, divination, calendrical sciences, alchemy, martial arts, hygiene, and longevity practices. Each of these constitutes a distinct field of study with its own large body of literature, and in my opinion they are best taken up in separate projects.
Building on this discussion of the scope of the term medicine, my use of the term Buddhist medicine requires additional clarification. I am aware of only one example where medieval Chinese writers use a term that might be translated as Buddhist medicine (foyi)—and it is not entirely clear that that is what is meant in this particular case. There is no equivalent term in Indian Buddhist texts, suggesting that this was not thought of as a distinct field of knowledge in the original cultural context. Not all Indian medical knowledge transmitted to China was associated with Buddhism, either. As I will discuss in the next chapter, texts about Brahmanical medicine (presumably meaning Āyurveda, but this is not certain) were also introduced into the Middle Kingdom. When I use the term Buddhist medicine here, I do not mean to clump all transmitted Indian medicine together nor to suggest that the ideas under discussion here were exclusively Buddhist. Rather, I use the term as a convenient label for discourses about medicine that were introduced to China via Buddhist translations and that were elaborated upon in Chinese Buddhist compositions. As will become clear below, I am not interested in retrospectively reifying the category of Buddhist medicine, but rather in exploring its construction and continual renegotiation in medieval China.
Though the use of the term foyi did not come into common currency until the middle of the twentieth century, it is clear that Chinese authors in the medieval period did think of the medical knowledge contained in Buddhist scriptures and commentaries and practiced among the sangha as patently Buddhist. Most often, Buddhist writers discussed medical knowledge under generic headings such as treating illness (zhibing), the suffering of illness (bingku), and nursing the sick (zhanbing), but they make abundantly clear that the knowledge contained within is meant to be understood as Buddhist through both the context and the paratext of their compositions. In fact, as I will examine rather closely in the remainder of this book, over the course of the medieval period, authors were increasingly concerned with marking out what constituted Buddhist medical knowledge, with presenting it as superior to contemporary alternatives, and with policing these boundaries against unorthodox intrusions.
The examination of such writings reveals the changing contemporary understandings of what medical ideas counted as Buddhist. Frequently, medieval Chinese Buddhist writings on medicine are characterized by their engagement with doctrines and practices that originated in the Indo-European cultural sphere and that were introduced into China as part of the transregional transmission of Buddhism. This was not a unified or homogeneous body of knowledge, however, since Buddhist texts entered China from any number of South, Central, and Southeast Asian territories over the span of centuries. At the same time, Buddhist authors also frequently worked indigenous Chinese vocabularies, ideas, and practices into their compositions. This book will not dedicate any significant amount of space to explicating the doctrines and practices that make up medieval Buddhist medicine, as this will be done in future publications. Rather, it is those processes of negotiation, inclusion, and exclusion that are our central concern here.
Moving now to a discussion of the translation conventions employed in this book, I am acutely aware of the ironies of writing about cross-cultural translation while simultaneously engaging in it. I will be the first to admit that I am, by the very nature of this project, translating the medieval Chinese historical experience in order to bring it under the gaze of the Euro-American academy. In order to write as contextualized an account as possible, throughout the book I have made an effort to try to describe the medieval Chinese cultural and social world in my own words rather than by performing a series of acts of translation proper. On the occasions that I do engage in translation proper, I have often defaulted to the translation terms listed in the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (below, DDB), a collaborative scholarly work that is now beginning to set translation norms in the field of Buddhist studies. However, though I have striven for a certain level of consistency with my colleagues, like most translators, in the end I present the reader with an idiosyncratic mishmash of equivalents of various types.
For the most part, I have tried to use English whenever possible so that this book will be accessible to nonspecialists. The first time I bring up a technical term, I give the most commonly occurring Chinese and Sanskrit equivalents, leading with the language that is most pertinent to the context I am speaking about. In discussions of the Chinese context, I only provide the Sanskrit if a Chinese term is clearly to be understood as a translation of a specific Indian word. Where such connections are not immediately apparent, I do not provide speculative back-translations that privilege the source over the target context.
Some sinologists object to the use of Sanskrit in discussions of Chinese Buddhism altogether, and I think there is much to commend that position. For example, I agree in principle with the argument that the word Tripitaka (Skt. tripiṭaka; Ch. sanzang; lit.three storehouses or three treasuries) is not literally applicable to the Chinese canon, as the Sanskrit implies a collection that is divisible into three parts but such divisions never were strictly adhered to in China. Likewise, I agree that the word sutra (Skt. sūtra) is not interchangeable with the common Chinese translation jing1, as the first refers to a specific subcategory of Indian Buddhist literature and the latter is a catchall word for a variety of genres of scripture and secular classics. Nevertheless, for the purposes of clarity and dialogue with scholars of Buddhism across Asia, I have used the Sanskrit in these and similar cases.
Throughout this book, I have normally translated medical terminology, whether Indian or Chinese, into English. When doing so, I have capitalized technical terms to distinguish them from their everyday English usage (e.g., Great Elements, Wind, Liver). However, I have left important keywords such as tridoṣa untranslated because of the lack of concrete translation equivalents in English. In all cases, I have briefly defined these terms when they are first mentioned. When using Sanskrit and Chinese words that have entered common English usage (e.g., qi, yin-yang, sutra), I leave them unitalicized and without diacriticals.
Like most scholars today, I use Hanyu pinyin to romanize Chinese characters. This transcription system reflects the modern Mandarin Chinese pronunciation, which has strayed far from the prevailing modes of speech in the medieval period. The historical drift in the pronunciation of characters becomes an issue in this study when speaking of the Chinese transliteration of Sanskrit. For example, when I give the Chinese transliteration of the name of the legendary Buddhist physician Jīvaka as Qiyu or Qipo, the reader must keep in mind that the Early Middle Chinese pronunciation would have been much closer to the Sanskrit than the pinyin suggests.
Finally, I have been flexible on whether individual people should be identified by Chinese or Sanskrit names, deciding on a case-by-case basis and defaulting to their most commonly known appellations. I have applied this same logic to names of deities, using English, Chinese, or Sanskrit terms as the case may be.
I hope by making the above choices I have made this book more readable and more accessible for a general audience. Of course I recognize that, like in all instances of translation discussed throughout this book (and, indeed, in all translations anywhere), there are both gains and losses that result from my decisions.


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President Donald Trump says he doesn't "remember much" about a March 2016 meeting with his campaign foreign policy adviser that is now front-and-center in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump says: "It was a very unimportant meeting. It took place a long time ago. I don't remember much about it."
Trump's former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials. Papadopoulos later told agents he used that gathering to offer to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The White House argues Papadopoulos was merely a campaign "volunteer" whose claims shouldn't be taken seriously.
Source: abcnews.go.com

subset: commoncrawl


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Le Toy Van Sugar Plum Sitting Room
Regular price £19.95
Tax included.
Sugar Plum lounge room furniture pack.
Includes a sofa, chair, fireplace, bookcase, TV & accessories as shown.
- Suitable from 3 years
- Dimensions: Sofa = 13 x 4.5 x 6cm
- Material: Wood
- Scaled for all Le Toy Van doll's houses.
- Dolls sold separately
🚚 Free standard delivery available on all orders over £10 🚚
Join our Rewards Program to collect points every time you shop!


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"There really isn't a point where things just can't get weirder, is there?" That's FBI consultant Peter (Joshua Jackson) talking to his mad genius dad (John Noble) in the season premiere of Fringe, and it's as good a summary as any to describe Fox's wigged out sci-fi series.
Thursday's Season 2 premiere, "A New Day in the Old Town," literally starts with a bang, then races through the characteristic cavalcade of invasive technologies, gruesome surgeries and wisecracks. Be warned: The year's most startling grand entrance marks the return of Anna Torv, who continues to anchor the action as stern FBI Agent Olivia Dunham.
Judging from this debut episode, producers plan on hewing to the formula that made Fringe last year's highest-rated new scripted series among 18-to-49-year old TV viewers. Torv (pictured above, with John Noble) holds down the fort as the intense investigator whose mission has become increasingly personal. Jackson hits just the right sardonic notes in portraying natural-born skeptic Peter Bishop while Noble, as scientist Walter Bishop, sticks to eccentric form by going off-message with food-related obsessions between his gruesome experiments.
New this fall is feisty Junior Agent Amy Jessup, capably played by guest star Meghan Markle.
From where we sit, Fringe keeps it fresh for season two … or does it? Weigh in below with your thoughts on the Walter / Peter sideshow, Agent Olivia Dunham's new situation, Meghan Markle's acting chops and the unexpected twist from corporate whip-cracker Nina Sharp (Blair Brown).
Also after the jump, check the clip of Fringe cast members striking poses for a photo shoot.
In the video embedded above, Joshua Jackson and John Noble horse around during a photo shoot in Vancouver, the show's new home base.
Follow us on Twitter: @hughhart and @theunderwire.
See Also:
- Fringe Stars Hit Twitter During 'Tweet-Peat' Finale Rerun
- Fringe Renewed for Second Season of Weird Science
- Anna Torv Talks Up Fringe Personalities
- Abrams on Fringe: Science, Conspiracies and 'The Pattern'
- First Look: J.J. Abrams' Fringe
- Fringe Gets Its Own 'Pedia,' New Promo Posters
- Fringe Comic Plants More 'Pattern' Seeds
- Fringe Pilot Leaks Online 3 Months Before Premiere


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Whenever we visit our favorite Chinese restaurant, for soup we always order Hot & Sour Chicken Soup. Its not the only soup we like but this is the family-favorite kind so it has to be this. Here I'm sharing home-made Hot& Sour Soup recipe which is definitely restaurant worthy! and will keep you warm through the winters.
Why I'm calling it restaurant worthy is because its very close to what you get at the restaurant and it tasted really really good. Although its not like the authentic Chinese Hot & Sour soup, as in this part of the world we've transformed the Chinese dishes according to our tastes and requirements. As the name suggests its Hot & Sour, here the 'Hot' comes from the chili and garlic paste and pepper whereas the 'Sour' comes from vinegar.
Many Hot & Sour Soup recipes include Mushrooms, bamboo shoots, Tofu etc. These ingredients may not be available in some areas or can be hard to find so with this soup you can include anything that is available i.e. your choice of meat or vegetables.
If you're a veggie lover and don't want chicken in your soup, you can always skip that part and follow the rest and enjoy Vegetable Hot & Sour Soup – it's that simple 🙂 To dress up the Soup it is served with different sauces that
This recipe is very easy and I'm sure you'll be in love with this Hot & Sour Soup!
Hot and Sour Chicken Soup
- 6 Cups Chicken Stock
- 1 Cup Chicken (boiled (cubed or julienne))
- 1/2 Cup Carrot (diced small)
- 1/2 Cup Cabbage (shredded)
- 2 Tbsp Soy Sauce
- 1 Tbsp Red Chili sauce with garlic
- 1/2 Tbsp Black Pepper Powder
- 2 Tbsp White Vinegar
- Salt to taste
- 1 Egg
- 3 Tbsp Cornflour
- In a pot bring chicken stock to a simmer, add chicken, soy sauce, red chili sauce with garlic, simmer for a few minutes
- Now add carrot,cabbage, salt, black pepper powder, white vinegar and bring to a soft boil. let simmer for 2-3 minutes. Do a taste-check here and adjust seasonings according to taste
- Now mix cornflour in water and add to the soup while stirring till soup has thickened and reached desired consistency
- Bring the soup to simmer and pour beaten egg in a thin stream in to the soup. Let stand for about 10 seconds and give it a stir. You can do this in 2-3 additions
- Soup is ready! Serve hot with the soup dress-up sauces
- Garnish with spring onions and serve with crackers, bread sticks or croutons
Soup Dress-up Sauces
- For Red Chili Sauce: 1 tsp red Chili powder, 1/4 cup white vinegar and a pinch of salt. Mix all these ingredients together into a sauce
- For Green Chili & Vinegar: 2 Green Chilies, sliced, 1/4 cup white vinegar. Add green chilies to vinegar to serve with soup
- For Preparing Chicken Stock: Take 2 Chicken breast pieces, add these to a pot of water along with salt, black pepper corns, garlic cloves and sliced onion. Let chicken cook, once tender remove the pieces from stock and strain the liquid. Chicken stock is ready. You can even use chicken carcass for preparing stock
- For a bit crunchier vegetables don't cook them for long
- Consistency of the soup can be thick or runny you can adjust that by increasing or decreasing the amount of cornflour+water mixture
- For Vegan version of the soup: Use Vegetable broth instead of Chicken broth, Omit Chicken and egg


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Things to Know About Pregnancy and Child Birth in Malaysia
Expatriates in Malaysia will go through a whole new experience if they are expecting a baby and would like to get childbirth facilities in hospitals at Kuala Lumpur. The private hospitals in capital city of Kuala Lumpur offer all modern advantages including trained doctors, latest facilities and staff that are fluent in English. Besides the advantage of low costs, these hospitals also provide emergency facilities and top quality medical care under the supervision of experienced doctors and nurses. These hospitals combine traditional care and natural childbirth techniques within a medical environment to provide the best of both worlds to their patients.
Expenses and facilities – The healthcare system in Malaysia works on three cost principles. The health insurance plans of local Malaysian origin do not cover maternity and childbirth expenses as they do not want to be responsible for complications that might arise during childbirth. However this does not affect expats as the average cost of check ups during pregnancy and natural childbirth is only around $2500 USD while a cesarean section childbirth is doubled at $5000, which is way lesser than costs of similar procedures in United States or Europe.
International health plan which is takeing care of expats by providing 95 percent of the costs related to maternity, childbirth and post operative complications that are likely to occur. Most multinational companies that have expatriate employees working in Malaysia cover them under health insurance plans to avoid any health related expenses.
Pre-post natal services – As most expats like to get themselves treated in familiar surroundings during pregnancy and childbirth, they can choose from pantai hospital, gleneagles and prince court medical center which employ experienced doctors and well trained medical staff. Besides ensuring that their patients are comfortable, they also prepare couples for their first few days with the new born. Now there are special wellness clinics that help women during the initial weeks of confinement after childbirth to help them acquaint themselves with childcare like bathing, giving massages etc.
Support groups for pregnancy and childbirth – To support expat pregnant women during the entire pre natal period, support groups have been set up at various locations that assist them through various stages with books, exercises and foods norms. After the baby is born women are offered classes on healthy eating habits, growth phases, and exercise for toddlers to help them grow.


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Our managing team
The UK Executive has responsibility for setting Mazars' national strategy, within the overarching framework of the international strategy.
Mazars in the UK has voluntarily committed to applying the Audit Firm Governance Code published by the Financial Reporting Council. Our support for that commitment to the professionalism, openness and risk management principles of the Code is set out in our published Transparency Report and other sections of our website. We are committed to dialogue about matters covered by the Code and you can read more about this here.
Mazars' governance structures and management set an appropriate tone at the top through policies and practices. We seek to maintain a culture of openness which encourages people to consult and share problems, knowledge and experience in order to achieve quality work in away that properly takes the public interest into consideration.
The UK Executive
Elisabeth Maxwell Head of Clients & Markets
Bob Neate Head of Audit
Jac Berry Partner - UK Head of Quality and Risk


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"Can I help you with that? I feel bad about not doing more to help."
"Hey, Josh, don't be silly, you are our guest. No one's gotten you a plate yet?"
"Nah, I think Luis was the first in line but I wanted to wait for you. Where have you been anyway? I think I've shaken hands with thirty people today but I couldn't see you anywhere."
"Oh, I was helping in the kitchen. Let's get you a plate; I'll just put these down first."
They looked for Luis once they had their plates but he had already served himself dessert and was standing while he ate, deep in conversation with a group of second cousins from his dad's side.
"You sure have a big family, are all of these people related to you?"
"Yeah, I know it's probably overwhelming. My sister Sandra has three kids and my sister Stella has six, and their husbands are here of course. Everyone else is from my Dad's side. Three of his brothers came over and one of his sisters and their kids and spouses, and some of their kid's kids and spouses.
"It's just so different to what we do. I'm an only child so when I was younger we'd visit my grandparents and have dinner with them but since they passed away we don't really celebrate anymore. My parents usually go on vacation during Thanksgiving."
"I can't imagine that, What do you usually do on your own?"
"Well last year Luis stayed in town and we invited some people over but I usually just stay in with a Hungry Man meal or go out to eat."
"Oh, well I hope you'll eat with us again next year. You shouldn't be along on a holiday."
"Thanks, I appreciate that. Hey, I thought I saw a table outside, do you want to eat there?"
"Well,I guess, sure okay."
Lucy led the way to the table out on the backyard patio. Her brother in laws, Pete and Rico were hovering at the end of the yard talking football and watching two of Stella's younger boys practice their passing skills. She didn't mind someone being out there, it made her feel less awkward.
"This food is delicious, especially these rolls."
""Thanks, but my mom did most of the dinner. Make sure you save room for pie."
"Oh definitely the pie is the thing! I practically crave pumpkin pie all year round."
"That's funny I'm the same way. I love a big piece of pumpkin pie with a dollop of whipped cream right in the middle, it's nirvana."
That got a laugh out of Josh and Lucy felt a little silly for going on and on about pie so there was a lull for a while. They looked on as Stella's youngest Matthew tackled his big brother, Joey.
"Now that kid has skills. I never did get into football when I was younger, when I moved here though I learned that it's like a religion in Texas."
"I think Luis said that you came here from Minnesota?"
"Yeah, we moved to Dallas when I was sixteen after my dad got a job as an English professor at the university. At first it was a real culture shock, but I adapted pretty quickly. I definitely like the winters more here than I did in Minnesota."
"But don't you miss having snow in winter? I'd love to see a white Christmas at least, that's really rare here."
"I do miss the snow but I don't miss all the shoveling. It's a pretty good tradeoff, and if I ever did miss it enough I could go back to visit."
"How long have you lived in San Antonio?"
"About three years come December. We used to go to San Antonio every other summer to visit and I was determined to live there some day. I love the culture and the feel of the town. I mean, I like your town too, but San Antonio is the one place that I felt drawn to right away, if you know what I mean."
"I do, I've always felt that way about Corpus Christi."
"Really? I like Corpus, I like Port Aransas better though."
"Well, I mean, I like the ocean. We used to go to Corpus a lot when we were younger. We'd rent a room in Corpus and then spend all day on Padre Island. It was fantastic. I would paddle out as far as I would dare and just stand and let the waves crash over me, it made me feel so alive. I know that's corny but it's true! I always said that I'd love to live near to the ocean someday, but it's hard you know. My mom has a fit anytime I talk about moving."
"But Luis moved to San Antonio, she didn't get upset about that?"
"Oh she did, but Luis is a man. I'm a woman, it's just different.
Anyway she finally gave in to Luis because it has to do with his education. Mom won't understand me wanting to move just because the ocean makes me happy."
"Well, I think you have as much a right to be happy as Luis does. Lucy, don't ever say no to what your heart really wants, there's no quicker way to become a bitter, jaded person than that. I've seen it happen too many times."
She smiled. She wouldn't say all that she was thinking, she couldn't let him know how flustered he made her feel or how she had never met anyone like him before. She couldn't say that among the things that her heart now wanted, he seemed to be vying for a prominent place.
This is a continuation of my Nanowrimo novel;for part 13 go here. All past parts of this can be found on the A Family Secret page. Thanks for reading!


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Last night, at the Celebrity Theater in Phoenix, Arizona, undefeated Schenectady native, Trevor Bryan, fighting in the heavyweight division under the guidance of legendary promoter Don King, took on Phoenix-area native, B.J. Flores, in a 12-round main event for the WBA interim heavyweight title. This interim belt would lead the winner towards larger fights and fellow champions. Trevor Bryan dominated Flores from the opening bell. Flores said after the fight that he was coming into the bout thinking he would outbox Bryan. That was not the case.
Bryan cut of the ring the entire fight with his superior size and speed negating Flores' strategy. He knocked Flores down a reported six times before the final knockdown in the fourth round and the fight was stopped. Last night's victory was an important step for Bryan, who's been inactive recently in his career. Bryan beat a formidable opponent in Flores, who had challenged for the WBC cruiserweight title in 2016 and was attempting to make a name for himself at heavyweight. It appears that Don King is beginning to push Bryan as this was a good win that should lead to better opposition in the future. As Bryan mentioned after the win he's ready for anyone that's willing to face him.
Great to see Schenectady's own back in the squared circle!


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The heat was on Mayor Bloomberg yesterday as he visited a cooling center in Queens – only to find out that the air conditioner was broken.
Hizzoner stopped by the Theodora Jackson Adult Center in Jamaica to reassure seniors that the city is doing everything it can to keep them cool.
But as he walked in the door, the temperature rose – it was several degrees warmer inside than it was outside.
A half-dozen fans blew full blast in the center's cafeteria as the mayor tried to keep his cool.
"Sorry, the air conditioner broke, but I'm told they are on site and it will be fixed in about an hour," Bloomberg told reporters after the event.
"Fortunately, today the heat wave seems to have broken, but let me remind everybody that very hot weather can be life-threatening."
"I didn't think it was that hot, actually," he added.
And, apparently, neither did the seniors – many of whom were bused there from nearby senior centers that had working air – conditioners just to see the mayor.
"It's a wonderful opportunity," said 76-year-old Phyllis Kildare, who normally goes to a senior center in Rockaway to cool off. "We get to know what he's really thinking."
"I like to know there is somebody taking interest in us," she added as she fanned herself to stay cool. Another woman told The Post she didn't even come there to cool off.
"I'm just here to see the mayor," she said as she tried to get near the mayor to take a photo.
One worker at the center even suggested closing the doors to the cafeteria to keep what little cool air there was inside.
But the mayor didn't break a sweat.
During a press conference with reporters after his visit, he let his staff take the heat.
Edwin Mendez-Santiago, who runs the city's Department for the Aging, stood next to the mayor and tried to reassure him that he was on top of things.
"Beginning this spring in preparation for the summer, we made sure that we called all of our centers to check on the status of their air conditioners," he said. "Wherever someone needed a window unit replaced we've done that. We're taking care of any repairs."
Mendez-Santiago said the air conditioning would be fixed within an hour. But at 5:30 p.m. it was still broken.
The mayor's press office – which is known for promptly e-mailing a press release to reporters right after an event is over – apparently didn't want to draw attention to the event. No press release about it was sent out.


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The Zoi Meet real-time transcription app instantly translates 12 different languages, and displays the translated text onto the Blade Smart Glasses.
The company most known for providing Wi-Fi in airports will be working alongside Verizon to help the carrier bring its 5G service inside.
At this month's NYC-held CE Week exhibition, a panel addressed the topic of 5G and its potential impact on the quality of livability, workability and sustainability beyond entertainment and smartphone performance.
Verizon has added 20 new cities to its roster of 5G network locations. In doing so, they are also accepting pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G – the first phone with 5G integrated into its hardware.
Verizon's wireless, 5G Home and Fios broadband customers will soon be able to enjoy premium content and services from YouTube TV.
Verizon has unleashed the world's first commercial 5G network in parts of Chicago and Minneapolis. But, only those with a Motorola moto Z3 with a 5G moto mod accessory will be able to access the service.
Yesterday, Verizon launched its 5G Ultra Wideband network in designated areas of Chicago and Minneapolis making them the first carrier in the world to accomplish this feat.
This week, Verizon successfully tested the first-ever 5G data transmission on a smartphone, using a 5G moto mod on Motorola's z3 smartphone.
Verizon announces a business restructuring that the company says helps it prepare for growth opportunities as the 5G rollout gets underway in 2019.
With full-blown 5G connectivity seemingly on the verge of deployment, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg will deliver a keynote at CES 2019.


text:
The roles John Stamos could have had
Did you know Ryan Murphy, the creator of "Glee," "American Horror Story" and "Scream Queens" actually wrote "Nip/Tuck" for John Stamos? Well, not only did Stamos turn that down -- but there was a role before that that the "Grandfathered" star was also offered, about three male hookers. So, why did he turn it down? "He wanted to do three male hookers, like 'Charlie's Angels,' who'd go in and save relationships by having sex with the husband and the wife. Maybe I was too afraid then," Stamos told Details magazine about the role he turned down. Naturally, the actor has worked his whole life to at first try to shake that "Uncle Jesse" shadow he lived under before eventually starting to own it. "I fought it for years. I was wrong."
Musical feud continues
The war is on between Chris Brown, 26, and Drake, 28. The two have never been able to squash their beef, and it's been reignited thanks to a song on the Canadian rapper's new mixtape, which references Chris' ex, Karrueche Tran. Now, the "Loyal" singer has issued a response, and he's really angry.
Are you excited about Trevor Noah taking over "The Daily Show"? Go to hollywoodlife.com and let us know.


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I love buying stuff on online platforms during their mega sale events. Not the first time doing this on Lazada, so I roughly knew what to prepare for.
My vacuum cleaner is 8 years old – bought it when I moved into my brand new BTO. Since then, it has worked tirelessly. It was the Philips SilentStar and it is remarkably quiet on low-power settings!
With wear and tear, the motor is getting cranky and I can never understand how we are only using the 5th disposable vacuum bag after so long?! Parts were disintegrating too .. so I looked for an alternative.
Everyone knows Dyson is
overpriced cool but expensive. Even an older (2017) model V7 typically costs $699 to $799 at retail rate, depending on where (Courts, Best Denki, Harvey Norman, Best Denki, Tangs) you buy it.
Must buy newest meh? Personally, I'm OK with an 'older' model. My logic is simple – if I have been surviving well on a Philips vacuum cleaner from year 2011, of course having a Dyson from year 2017 would count as a massive upgrade.
Specs is important har? Different models have different specs, obviously. V7 is a 'lower end' model in comparison. Meaning lower suction power and the battery capacity is smaller – however, BTO is small enough for way less than 30-minutes worth of cleaning. I can probably squeeze in two sessions. The advantage is that V7 is lighter in weight and easier on the wrist!
Despite everything I've mentioned, it is obvious that I can never convince myself to buy a Dyson V7 at retail rate. That's where Lazada sale comes in – one can stack vouchers and promo codes on top of merchant-given discounts. Ha – let that sink it.
Well? The V7 is listed at $599 offically but almost always having $50 off at Lazada. So we can get it at $549 on normal days.
Specifically for the Lazada mid-year sale, Dyson threw another $50 off (price dropped!) on the selling price even without the use of any vouchers. Nice – $499 now.
To entice consumers (probably to clear older stock), Dyson had a promo to collect vouchers before the event for $100 off for specific models, including the V7 (but not for V6). Awesome – $399 now.
Lazada's sale mechanism is pretty awesome, because there are daily or limited time cash-value vouchers that can be collected before the sale period, and then stacked on top of the merchant/seller's own voucher during purchase. In this case, it was a $20 off cash voucher. Fantastic – $379 now.
And then to top it off (I know, it seems ridiculous at this point I'm almost feeling guilty) during payments, know that certain banks' credit cards enjoy a discount that further stacks on top of the price we're paying. You will only see it at the payment screen. In my case, it was for POSB/DBS credit cards for another auto-applied voucher for $30 off. Amazing final price – $349 now.
Throw in the rest of my rebates from past purchases and tadah! Screenshots below just so you know I'm not bullshitting here. Collected another $14 in 4% rebates for future use (LiveUp membership) and earned almost another 1,400 miles by paying with DBS Woman's World Card too 🙂
I usually don't splurge on much stuff, and definitely there are knock-offs you can get at about > $100. Besides, I didn't mind spending my side-hustle money to reward ourselves plus improve our quality of lives in the process.
Why not try out the same tactic during the next online sale?
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While I am a bit dubious about this list, who am I to argue with Time who pulled together what they deem to be the top ten viral videos of the year.
Of course "Dancing Matt," who I have a ridiculous and irrational high level of hatred for, is in there.
Western Spaghetti is a lot cooler and so up my street; basically, it is a very a clever cooking simulation which rocks.
I was just thinking about Christian The Lion, the best video ever. Animals can love too - hurrah!
Hamster on a Piano is nothing short of hilarious and so cute - I love these guys. Sadly did my cat Crumpet who ate Honey Bunny the hamster one Christmas. Not that I am still upset about it of course.
The first Barack one (yawn)…
Great Super Mario video - would you expect anything less? Me neither.
Political Infomercial showing how you can pretend you give a crap about the election.
Star Wars According To A Three Year Old - I was really into this until the parents started acting like total arses in the comments section of the video in an impressive own goal!
School children do a spoof of T.I's Whatever You Like. These kids are so happy. Love it.
No Frills Flying
Best of Video Online According to Time
Cowbag — December 31, 2008 — Pop Culture
References: time


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Tuesday, May 01, 2018
Formative albums list; the top 29, with a gesture at 30.
3 comments:
- David M. said...
I think that "1894" is our definitive album. It was only supposed to be a stopgap "small" album (intended to feature "Be Like Us") before starting on another "Snivel"-sized recording project (which got split into "The New Switcheroo" and "The Night Smells Like A Dog"), but we had just started playing live as just Paul and I to see where that went, and the little "live in the basement" idea really blossomed. As a concept album, which it is, it's unlike any other album I know of (it's practically science fiction), and as an expression of who Paul and I were as musicians and as friends, it's the most revealing and accurate. It's also our best-selling cassette album, probably because "Be Like Us" and "Work, Drink, Fuck, Die" are on it. I'll leave the question of what the best thing we ever did was to everybody else, and of course they are all my beautiful children, but what NO FUN came to mean to me was one thing only, and if I needed to choose one NO FUN thing to represent my friendship with Paul, it would be "1894".
- Unknown said...
Is No FUN on Spotify? London Calling should have been a single disc. Darkroom did well here. Face the Day was a big hit.
- David M. said...
No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones. Wasn't it Joe Strummer that said "Give me the child and I'll give you the man"?


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CLUNL is structured as follows:
Board of Directors, presently constituted by:
Rute Costa – Chair
Raquel Amaro
Susana Correia
Scientific Council, constituted by all the integrated researchers with PhD.
Scientific Council Coordinating Committee, constituted by the Board of Directors and the Principal Investigators of each group.
Assembly of Researchers, constituted by all the integrated researchers of CLUNL.
Advisory Board, presently constituted by:
Jean-Paul Bronckart (Université de Genève) – Coordinator
Alain Rouveret (Université Paris 7)
John Humbley (Université Paris-Diderot)
- Presentation
- Organization
- Team
- History
- Statutes
- External Expert Opinion
- Young Researchers Group
- Library
- CLUNL Affiliation


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By Lily MontasserDec 60
The high-end sneaker to know now.
By Lily MontasserSep 150
Because sometimes you need to start the season fresh.
By Lily MontasserApr 110
You need this festival-ready boot for all your desert dancing.
By Nina LouieOct 300
Sneakers, a Stones tee, and all sorts of stripes.


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System X Envelope, Wave Runner, System X Oscillator, System X Filter and CEMVelope are among Frequency Centrals most popular products.
Looping Envelope Generator
Roland System 100M ADSR clone
Wavetable Digital VCO
Phase Shifter
Moog Rogue VCF/VCA clone
LM13700 based Multimode Filter
DIY version of System X Envelope (Roland 100m 140 ADSR Envelope clone)
VCF with VCA
Roland 100M VCO, modified for Euro
Roland 100M based VCA for Eurorack
CV processor/generator
Multi-waveform sync-able LFO based on Electric Druid's TAPLFO2D
Roland 100M Sample & Hold / Noise
Moog Taurus Mk.1 VCF/VCA Clone
4 stage Phaser
8-bit Digital Wavetable Oscillator
CV to trigger/gate generator
EHX Big Muff-based fuzz
Clock Divider
CV Mixer
ARP dual VCO
Multimode Filter
Copy of Roland System 100 VCF
Sequential Circuits Pro-One based ADSR
Analogue Synth Voice
Roland 100M-based VCAs
Passive 1-to-4/4-to-1 switch
Boolean logic
VCF / VCA based on Moog Taurus Mk.I
ARP 2600-based Voltage Processor
Roland 100M VCO
LFO module
Synth voice based on XVCO / Raging Bull VCF / System X Envelope
Uses CV to generate gates/triggers
"Whiteface" ARP Odyssey Mk1 based ARP4023 VCF
Roland System 700-based state variable filter
MORE VCAs
Roland System 100M-based VCF
Binary Step Sequencer with 30 patterns
Flexible one-shot and cyclic event generator
Electric Druid's wavetable oscillator
4 bit to 16 step analogue sequencer
Envelope Generator
Stable CEM3340/AS3340-based VCO
Roland 100M VCO based module for MU
Roland 100M VCF
Roland 100M ADSR based module for MU
Dual VCA
Randomness module
DSP-based stereo chorus/tap delay/plate reverb
DSP based stereo chorus/tap delay/plate reverb
Digital Bass Drum
Digital Snare Drum
Scale, offset, amplify, clip. Or just use it as a 4 input mixer.
Hardwired synth voice with an East Coast feel
Roland System 100M ADSR clone (v1 Silver Panel)
Voltage Controlled Filter
Clock divider based generative sequencer used to create in-the-moment licks and riffs.


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The Art Of Writing.
Kimberly Franco, Staff Writer
February 8, 2017
People don't often associate writing with art. However, I believe writers are true artists. It takes a lot to use words properly and effectively. Often a person's favorite author has a particular set of skills to jump start an imagination. A good author takes the readers mind on a joy ride, fastening...
Three Books That Have Changed My Life!
Kimberly Franco, Staff Writer
January 23, 2017
Reading can allow you to view the world in a whole new light. Over the years I have read books that have impacted my life dramatically and have helped me improve my writing and thinking. Three books that have affected my life are 'The Secret' by Rhonda Byrne, 'Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom...
The Art of Procrastinating
Kimberly Franco, Staff Writer
December 21, 2016
A deadline can sit on your heart like a 600 pound gorilla who is pounding at its chest demanding you to get to work. But procrastination melts into your skin and seeps down into every cell. The relax frequency goes off in the brain and distractions pop up like kids in their costumes on Halloween. But...
The Legend of Santa Claus
Kimberly Franco, Staff Writer
December 15, 2016
The myth goes like this, a jolly man in red climbs down your chimney at night. He gobbles down the milk and cookies. He leaves you a gift, he decides if you are worthy or a lump of coal goes under the tree. Though no one really knows him, due to his secret layer in the North Pole, his impressionist's...
Beauty Sickness
Kimberly Franco, Staff Writer
November 16, 2016
The way we see ourselves speaks volumes on how we feel. However, if beauty is in the eyes of the beholder then why do we have to live up to idealistic standards? Who decides who are the idols? When did one version of beauty speak for all? For years I felt bad about myself. I have tried and still try...
5 Rules for Success
Kimberly Franco, Staff Writer
November 3, 2016
Everyone would like to be successful but how? Here are my person steps to success that I am trying to implicate to my life as much as possible. However people do fall short of what they say they are all about at times, so a rulebook or game plan can keep them focused. I hope it can help you as well. Ru...
Stand Up Against Domestic Violence
October 28, 2016
Love can make a person do crazy things. Someone that is in love can easily be manipulated and fooled. Love is so innocent that one can easily lose an eye and become blind. A person can believe that they're helping someone when they really are causing nothing but pain. A lover can tell a person in love...
Power of the Eyes
Kimberly Franco, Staff Writer
October 22, 2016
When a gorgeous face starts, then those sparking eyes start to pierce. Looking back deeply and no words have to be said. You feel an instant connection. Then see ones true beauty. Each set of eyes unique and special in it's own way. William Shakespeare once said, "The eyes are the windows to the...
Monogamy is Dying!
Kimberly Franco, Staff Writer
October 5, 2016
Once upon a time, you would see a fair maiden. You would dream of being with her. You would work up the courage to speak to her. You would court her and take her out on dates to get to know her. If she was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside, you would think about marriage. You would...
No Feelings!
Kimberly Franco, Staff Writer
September 28, 2016
You're with a group of friends having a great time, light music in the air and smiles everywhere. Then one of your friends gets a call from an ex and their mood completely changes. The smiles melt into frowns. The music stops and the air gets thick. When another friend yells out, "Get out of your...