So, here we go with the next drive-by reading of the I Ching, with a lesson filled with sunshine and promises. Everything about this hexagram seems optimistic, although according to Wikipedia, variations on its name include "aquas," which makes no sense at all (shades of blue?).

What's the character mean? The character for jin shows two swooping birds descending over the sun, and literally means to advance or go forward (onward and upward!). Master Huang here veers away from the dictionary and says... more

Curious why this is in a blog about Chinese adoption? Read this explanation.

OK, back to my notes on the Big Text of Chinese Culture, gleaning advice from one of the world's best sources of wisdom.

With da zhuang, we've gone from the last chapter's Retreat to a position of power. Obviously, we weren't running... more

So, back to my notes on the I Ching, that cornerstone of Chinese culture. If you want to know China, there's no way around the I Ching.

After the wise advice of the last hexagram, which was all about hanging in there and keeping on keeping on, we come to the inevitable stopping and backing away. Not all courses are worth following.

What's the character mean? The character for dun shows three footprints over a... more

So, as you may or may not know, I work in a rather odd newsroom while I'm not doing this thing on here.

While writing that previous entry on the hexagram heng and how it represents an unusual sort of marriage, I get assigned to write two stories based on news clips from China -- one on this married couple and one on this married couple.

Must mean *something*, mustn't it?

So, we're at the halfway point. Cool. Smooth sailing from here on out, as long as we persevere, right?

This is the inverse of the previous hexagram, xian, which was about newlyweds. This one is about long familiarity and lasting-ness.

What's the character mean? The character for heng shows a heart next to a boat traveling between two shores. Oddly, I was just looking at the clickable Dao de jing on... more

Here we are at xian (or hsien, in the old style), nearly up to halfway through the Book of Changes. Some scholars mark this as the beginning of the "Lower Canon" of the I Ching (pdf file). I'm not really sure what that means -- why there might be two canons in the book. Master Huang says the Lower Canon starts with a symbolic marriage (between xian and the next hexagram, heng) and has to do with... more

Like the previous hexagram, kan (and, for that matter, like the first two hexagrams in the whole book), this is a hexagram made by repeating the same trigram twice -- in this case, double li, the essence of fire.

According to some commentators, li and kan are what everything is made from. While all-yang qian... more

I'm a little bit fond of this particular (somewhat ominous) hexagram, because when I tossed the coins while in the process of adopting Daughter, lo, these three years ago, this was one of the two hexagrams that came up. I liked the fact that it has the (corny, old) connotation of "a journey over water." It's one of eight hexagrams made by doubling a trigram -- in this case, it's double-water, or more specifically, double-quickly running-water, like a rapid... more

So, we're up to Great Exceeding (dà guò), and nearing the halfway point of our glancing blow at the I Ching.

Why is this stuff on a blog about Chinese adoption?

Because it's a cornerstone of Chinese (and Asian) culture, showing up on everything from bus stops to names... more

Mmm. Back for more Chinese culture.

Like the last couple of hexagrams, this hexagram is associated with a tai chi movement -- in this case, fist under the elbow, which goes something like this. For Da Liu, the upper trigram ken represents fingers, and the lower trigram zhen (as ... more