Kong Shangren’s The Peach Blossom Fan (桃花扇) is a semi-satirical historical fiction kunqu style love opera set during the Manchu invasion in 1643-1645, though it was written much later in 1699. The story is fundamentally didactic; by abandoning convention, Shangren couches a serious message in the period equivalent of a romantic comedy. He shows a world collapsing around a pair of lovers (who ultimately fail), constantly hammering a single thesis: you are always better off knowing the truth, no matter how terrifying the potential consequences. Self delusion inevitably leads to catastrophe.

This is a pretty obvious observation; even for the 17th century. The brilliance of the work is how effectively Shangren captures the way in which even virtuous individuals – either through fear, adherence to predilections, or a desire for normalcy are self-convinced into an illusory existance, and led to ruin.

Southern Ming officials maintain their idyllic lifestyles by turning Nanjing’s imperial court into a replica of the recently fled palace in Beijing – and fill it with the same pleasures and distractions – including an intense interest in opera and theater. An opera within the opera urges the very same rulers to “stop living a fantasy at the opera, and confront reality.” The obvious irony was hopefully not lost on theater watchers at the time.

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Traveling to central China presents an interesting constrained optimization problem of the form:

happiness[tony] = f(readingindex)

readingindex = f(complexity,obscurity,lengthofbook,fontsize,v)

Where v is a vector of other stuff I’ll make up later. This hackneyed psuedo-equation suggests that my satisfaction is purely a function of the books I bring along. This is not an unreasonable assumption, given that the only other necessary things to pack are really: clothes, and medicines. Since medicines are physically very small, they don’t factor into my choice set. Since I can buy tailored clothes in China for a fraction of the cost here, I don’t plan to bring very many. 

So how to optimize the book problem? As per the original equation, it’s necessary to find tomes that are interesting, re-readable (=incomprehensible), unrelated to China (escapism), and physically not large (no differential equations textbooks, though this would fit the other criteria perfectly). Obscurity also helps, since it’s always possible to travel to one of the huge book houses in Shanghai or Beijing to pick up the latest UK editions of popular works. With all of this in mind, here is my initial packing list:

The Economics of Time and Ignorance
Mario Rizzo and Gerald O’Driscoll

It’s difficult to sing the praises of this book highly enough. I’ve read it twice through already, though comprehension is still at about 10%, leaving ample room for further (mis)interpretation. It also provides a reasonably good overview to modern Austrian economics, as I understand the discipline. 

An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning
Peter Eccles

Much like being able to tie a tie, or change oil, knowing how to write original mathematical proofs is something every guy should know how to do. 

Time and Realism
Yuval Dolev

Another (physically) small book that provides an overview of the competing “presentist” (the present is privileged over the past and future – there is a ‘now’) and ‘eternalist’ (past, present, and future are not mutually exclusive categories; labeling them as such is a heuristic convenience that keeps we people from going crazy) camps in the metaphysics of time debate. As a text, it’s good enough for providing good explanations of both views – and does so in the first two chapters. The rest of the book is devoted to exploring how both views presuppose ontological status of tense (?) and how this makes both views untenable. Apparently, Dolev then presents a third option for how to view metaphysical time. (I haven’t gotten that far yet – again, one of those things that requires numerous reads to digest, all in a beautiful 100 page package). 

Gravity’s Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

In case I run out of pills. Neuroticism can be channeled.  

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