The Chinese Attitude as Enjoyement, Continued

One would wonder, after viewing the Chinese life as primarily enjoyments even under horrid circumstances, how such an interpretation can possibly reconcile with the blatant fact that many rich and powerful Chinese living a luxurious, wasteful life still need petty enjoyments like a daily cigarette? 

The obvious answer would be, it ceases to be an enjoyment and becomes a habit, a necessity of life, just like what a cup of afternoon tea means to an English. But I would suggest a different angle here. It is well known that Chairman Mao was a notorious smoker. He smoked not only for joy, neither as a simple habit, but as a way to show off his power. This is quite understandable to most Chinese living under some boss, because, way before the Nazis invented (or borrowed?) the Führerprinzip (Leader Principle), the Chinese were practising it for hundreds if not thousands of years. The principle is quite simple: as long and as far as you're the boss, you can wield your power like Chairman Mao did to the people around him. A bureaucrat as small as a village secretary (村书记) can act as the emperor of the village, as long as no one above him is present, in that case he would immediately become the servant, the punching bag for the higher official. So, with such principle at work, any triviality can and will be used to show off power, such as smoking a cigarette in front of those who don't (and surely forcing other men to smoke), opting for a stupid slogan just to make things worse for your project, or hinting at you to give up your umbrella for your superior. 

Actually, this just happened to some civil servant who had an umbrella in his (or her) bag when neither of his two leaders, one above the other, had brought umbrella and it was quite a rainy day. The poor servant asked for help on one of the most popular Social Apps in China, the Little Red Book (notoriously after the traitor General Lin Biao's invention "Chairman Mao's Analects" just to suck up to Mao), and a comment from Shandong got near 10k likes which goes like this: "This is not your umbrella; it belongs to your smaller boss, and should now be handed to your bigger boss." What a snob.

For the Chinese, the close connection between enjoyments and power is deeply rooted in history and should never be forgotten. The connection between money and happiness is rather a late realization, for in a premodern society where the productive force so low that 90% of the population can hardly be fed, wealth will never be accumulated if political power is not involved. And if you don't have the wisdom of Yan Hui who died so early so timely, nor the wisdom of Zhuangzi who can turn any misforture in the world into some unknown pleasure, as when he said the most crooked wood was the most fortunate precisely because of its uselessness, you'd better learn some tricks in the power wielding business. This means that you try to turn every mundane daily behavior into power politics, so as to enjoy each and every one of them, not for the behavior itself, but for the satisfaction that power brings, watching other people obey despite their unwillingness, nah, especially for their unwillingness. Until then, you just don't know enough about the Chinese life of enjoyments.