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The latter version also commendably offers the convenient function of being able to display the respective Chinese characters in all their English equivalents.

Instead of my own words, without exception I have used proverbs and quotations from all over the world, whose fields of meaning either coincide or at least overlap with the key words of the appraisals. With this wordplay I know I am in good company, since the creator of the Mystery, Yang Xiong by himself "... employed sylences, ambiguities, incongruities, and non sequiturs to focus the reader's attention. He also loved games of witty wordplay (highlighting of me) in which he could best his opponents and interlocutors." (Exemplary Figures, Fayan/ Yang Xiong; translated by Michael Nylan, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2013, page XII.)

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The following also motivated me to be more generous with the original texts: Even if we insist along with Aristotle that a statement cannot be true and false at the same time, the distinctiveness of language is a pipe dream. Why else would Lao-Tzu hurl at us with the first sentence of his treatise: "The truth that can be expressed is not the ultimate truth!" And Goethe: "As soon as you speak, you start to err." Nietzsche makes it scarce: "Every word is a prejudice", but by no means less determined Wittgenstein: "... and what one cannot talk about, one must be silent about it." - These powerful words have shown the limits to the "celebration of language".

 

Finally, the peculiarity of the Chinese language (lack of time, case and gender as well as the confusing ambiguity, often only from the context, in ancient texts only hermeneutically resolvable, should be mentioned. So "玄" can mean e.g.: profound, sombre, mysterious, subtle, abstruse, black, incredible, unreliable, occult, surreal, mystical, meditative, silent, pretending, fatuous,  magical, deceptive, changeful. In ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinise, Axel Schuessler, Honolulu. 2007" I also find: deceit, magic, illusion, practice sorcery, playfulness.

 

In order not to stray too far from the original, I always consulted the expert translation by Michael Nylan for comparison, to whose historically knowledgeable and sensitive comments I owe a lot for understanding the Mystery.

This eventually results in a relatively autonomous canon of answers, a Mystery-wordplay, so to speak, reminiscent of T'ai Hsüan Ching and I Ching and mimics its systematics so stringently so that I believe that it is justified to access it according to Shao Yong’s guidelines. -  And Yang Xiong would certainly have turned a blind eye to this as well.

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In any case, this interplay of oracles-quotes-wisdom-proverbs from different sources and different epochs, shows once again that people all over the world and at all times, were not only similarly involved in the same conflicts, but also evidently - despite all cultural differences - sought to master their lives with a similar kind of common sense

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The app's wallpapers are details from masterpieces of the following great artists: Ma Yuan (1160-1225), Huang Gongwang (1269-1345), Wu Zhen (1280-1345), Ni Zan (1301-1347), Wang Meng (1306-1385), Li Zai (unknown-1431), Shen Zhou (1427-1509), Tang Yin (1470-1524), Wang Shiming (1592-1680), Kung Hsien (1618-1689), Hua Yan (1682-1756), Hokusai (1760-1849), Hakabayashi Chikkei (1776-1833), Hiroshige (1797-1858), Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890).

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For Nicolas

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