We recently hosted visitors from Malaysia at our place in the Czech Republic, happily guiding them around Prague and several places beyond the capital, including a few that were new to us, too.
There was much conviviality as the six of us explored beautiful Czech cities and towns, sampled hearty local cuisine and slipped effortlessly into the distinctive Malaysian-Singaporean patois – a lively hybrid of English, Chinese, Malay and some Indian vocabulary and syntax – that comes naturally to many of us back home.
It was a lovely 10 days, and it brought to mind a famous Chinese rhetorical question: “Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?” The line comes from the Analects, the foundational collection of teachings by Kongzi (551-479BC), better known in the West as Confucius.
The Analects is a collection of sayings and conversations attributed to Kongzi and his disciples, compiled by his students and later followers. Its 20 chapters span politics, ethics, education and philosophy. For anyone wishing to understand Kongzi, it is among the most direct and important surviving sources.
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