“That’s how history is formed in their minds,” he says. “It’s through these important people and events. But while studying Chinese history, you learn that maybe some of these events didn’t happen, or they were very minor, or a lot of other things happened that were in fact very important. The Chinese say that every five or six hundred years a sage appeared. In reality I would say it’s more fluid, more complex; there’s a lot more stuff going on. Obviously, that’s no way to teach history. You can’t just say, ‘There’s a lot more stuff going on.’ It’s inevitable that you have to pick out certain
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