I miss Confucius

When I was growing up, especially in the 1950's but even into the 1960's, traditional Chinese wisdom was often encapsulated and shared via the saying of the ancient wise man Confucius. Virtually every Chinese adult quoted from him and his works. It was presented in a somewhat silly way in American movies, where the "China man character" would be quoting Confucius, but in hindsight, that was not such a bad thing because my generation was first exposed to traditional Chinese wisdom through those types of "sound bytes." Anyway, knowledge of and reference to Confucius withered not just because of the Communist rejection of tradition (which thankfully is being moderated and even reversed now) but because like the West, the East got all cynical and modern and above the sayings and wisdom of their elders.

Anyway, I've been thinking on and off about this the past year, how I miss hearing the once ubiquitous references to sayings by Confucius.