Less is more

“These people were often the butt of our ridicule, for we felt that why go abroad at all if you could not tolerate the hardship. If you are in Japan only to learn a bit of technology, it would in the final analysis mean little, being just skin deep, for you fail to gain true insight into Japanese character and mindset,” Zhou wrote.

More than 100 years after Zhou made this observation, I had the chance to listen to a Fudan University professor who, while giving us a lecture in journalism, digressed about the “humiliating” treatment he suffered at the hands of the British foreign devils while he was there on an exchange program.

“Do you know what they gave us to eat? Potatoes!”

By comparison, the British scholars on that same program in Fudan had been treated royally, with daily banquets.

Many of us still do not know why this generosity could not be reciprocated, but a professor should know the many benefits of moderation.

Nearly all Chinese experts on conservation of vital energy council moderation.

Longevity, according to Sun Simiao (581-682 AD), one of the greatest physicians in traditional Chinese medicine, should start with “three lesses”: less speech, less food, and less sleep.

This column, named after the old saying that “one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” stresses the importance taking another perspective.