Module5《GreatPeopleandGreatInventions》Pre-reading（外研版必修3）.ppt

1．Can you name some great persons in Ancient China? What are their achievements? 2．How much do you know about Taoism? ; Taoism is a philosophy or way of life that may have been started by a man named Lao Tzu who lived a little before Confucius, about 600 BC. Tao means the “way” or the “path”. According to the traditional story, Lao Tzu worked as a librarian in the emperor‘s library (this was in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty)．; Lao Tzu believed that the way to happiness was for people to learn to “go with the flow”. Instead of trying to get things done the hard way, people should take the time to figure out the natural or easy way to do things, and then everything would get done more simply. This idea is called wuwei, which means “doing by not doing”． Lao Tzu also thought that everything alive in the universe (plants, animals, and people) shared a universal (共同的) life-force. There were two sides to the life-force, which are called the yin and the yang. ; The yin (the dark side) is the side of women, the moon, things that are still (静止的) like ponds, completion and death. The yang (the light side) is the side of men, the sun, things that move like rivers, dragons, creation and birth. Everyone has some yin and some yang in them, and Taoism says that it is important to keep them balanced. Chinese doctors believe that a lot of illnesses are caused by too much yin or too much yang.; Because everything has this life-force in it, Lao Tzu thought it was wrong for people to fight each other in wars, killing the life-force, and that people should be sad when they had to fight, instead of celebrating their victories.; He also thought it was wrong for governments (or anybody else) to make a lot of rules and laws about how people should behave. This would only make people act the same way all the time, and sometimes they would go against the Tao, breaking the principle of wuwei. So Taoism was against anything with rules, like special food