Neo-Confucianism

His name is Liu Zhi.

And he was part of a movement, sort of... renaissance, intellectual renaissance of of Muslim scholars in China who were so ingrained or they had in them ingrained the Confucian ideology that they took upon themselves to write about Islam in various facets, but in the local intellectual idiom of Neo-Confucian philosophy.

So it really is a kind of synthesis of Chinese and Islamic cosmology and theology and metaphysics.

So that's what my first book was about.

Yes, that is so fascinating.

And I also see that throughout the book, women's faces and bodies become like this terrain on which urbanization, Vietnamese modernism, and also the values of Neo-Confucian appeals to a national essence, meet and collide, turning women into what you call the nation's visual ambassadors.

And the book itself opens with the satirical figure of Miss Anna Fiume, Could you please speak more about this very, very fascinating, interesting figure of the modern woman? And how did changing one's appearance become a way of negotiating what Vietnam itself might look like in the modern world?

There's a lot of questions that you asked in that one question.

So how did this promise of self-creation make cosmetics such a politically charged object in Vietnam?

Well, and, you know, to add to that, okay, so as a literature person, you're going to totally get this, is there was, I have to be careful about how I do this, because in the 1920s and 30s, I don't know if you found this in your work, there's a lot of discussion of what Vietnamese history was and our historical traditions, which may or may not have been the historical traditions, but that's what they feel the historical traditions were.

And that's what you see with the Neo-Confucianist.

Like some of the stuff that they were like, these are historical traditions, like, but it's, But to them, they think that's the historical traditions.

Yes, that is so fascinating.

And I also see that throughout the book, women's faces and bodies become like this terrain on which urbanization, Vietnamese modernism, and also the values of Neo-Confucian appeals to a national essence, meet and collide, turning women into what you call the nation's visual ambassadors.

And the book itself opens with the satirical figure of Miss Anna Fiume, Could you please speak more about this very, very fascinating, interesting figure of the modern woman? And how did changing one's appearance become a way of negotiating what Vietnam itself might look like in the modern world?

There's a lot of questions that you asked in that one question.

So how did this promise of self-creation make cosmetics such a politically charged object in Vietnam?

Well, and, you know, to add to that, okay, so as a literature person, you're going to totally get this, is there was, I have to be careful about how I do this, because in the 1920s and 30s, I don't know if you found this in your work, there's a lot of discussion of what Vietnamese history was and our historical traditions, which may or may not have been the historical traditions, but that's what they feel the historical traditions were.

And that's what you see with the Neo-Confucianist.

Like some of the stuff that they were like, these are historical traditions, like, but it's, But to them, they think that's the historical traditions.

They sought to actualize what their predecessors tried to symbolize.

To the Neo-Confucian mind, the cosmic law was not reflected in the phenomenal world.

but the phenomenal world was the cosmic law itself.

Eons were but moments, nirvana always within grasp.

Pimakol, if you missed our Pimakol episode, this was actually part of the original design of Seoul right when the Joseon Dynasty was founded.

And they were designing the city, and the prime minister said, well, since we're a Neo-Confucian – well, they didn't use Neo-Confucian back then, but since we're – following Confucian ideals.

You know, when people are, when, when people of the upper levels of society are walking down the street, that means all the people on the lower levels have to stop whatever they're doing and bow down, get down on the ground and prostrate themselves.

That's not really practical when you're trying to run a city.

There are exams.

Neo-Confucian.

I can't talk about Neo-Confucian without life.

But, like...

We have.

Make more.

Yes.

And, like, the sort of parts of Neo-Confucianism that would like purity.