Engine Break-in - How did you do it?

[jape]

Going all poetic today, are we? It's an elegant aphorism, Jape, and adds depth to our discussion of running in a new engine! (Translation: Just as distance tests a horse's strength, so time reveals a man's heart.)Your Chinese is improving rapidly!cheers

I don't understand a word really! I have been trying to understand the Chinese, preparing fro my trip. I do not travel just as a sightseer usually. When I find a phrase or any material on China, as I do other things, I note it down and try and use it in my own ideas. This one turned up in a book by chance and I used google translate to be sure it was correct in context. It felt very apt to your, and my, emotion of getting to love our 'horses' and finding our own hearts as we did, in the riding and the familiarity.

It offends me when some here and elsewhere portray the Chinese as stupid, ignorant, ill-equipped for commerce and manufacture etc. I don't see it that way at all. Convoluted, opaque to our own mindset perhaps, difficult even for old china hands such as yourself with knowledge of the subtleties. But certainly not stupid!

Our own western races are usually the crude, self-centered, blinkered and arrogant ones.
And all races can be murderous, devious and misguided.
The red gang and the green gang are one and the same.
Best not to be colour-blinded I think.

The very phrase, 'breaking in', is as with horses, too blunt - and does not explain the process. it is 'easing in', even if done firmly. As with 'horse-whispering', the alternative, you have to understand the beast. If you do, you love it.

That phrase or proverb is subtle indeed and can be read more than one way.