Giving Credit Where Ego is Due

Ever get annoyed that people take credit for work you've done, because they are so think so highly of themselves that they feel they deserve all the credit?

"All me."

Here's a story from Chinese history about stealing an author's work that puts others to shame!

The Search for Modern China by Jonathan D. Spence. p 92.
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The gujin tushu jicheng ("Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings from the Earliest to Current Times") was an enormous encyclopedia, the fruit of decades of scholarship by the scholar Chen Menglei.

Chen, helped by scores of other scholars, by Emperor Kangxi's third son- who became his patron - and finally by the patronage of Kangxi himself, sought to assemble all the finest past writings on natural phenomena, geography, history, literature, and government. The result, surely one of the largest books in the history of the world, filled 80,000 pages and contained over 100,000,000 Chinese characters. The copper type for printing this vast work was already set when Kangxi died.

Yongzheng, determined to ensure that credit for this great undertaking should not go to this particular brother, whom he hated, used the fact that Chen had once served with one of the Three Feudatories to declare him a traitor and have him banished to Manchuria. Yongzheng then erased all signs of Chen's editorship and all mention of his elder brother's involvement with the project. After a lapse of four years, which allegedly was used to "correct" the encyclopedia, it was issued as the work of Kangxi himself; one of Yongzheng's most trusted inner grand secretaries was listed as editor-in-chief of the "revision."
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Kicked Out 

LOL over twenty years of your life's work devoted to creating the biggest encyclopedia the world has ever known and right before it is finished, you get all the credit stolen and you get banished from the country? What a royal screw job!

Seriously think about it. An 80,000 page book that you put together (well not all by yourself of course - but still!) and some guy slaps his name on it, goes through and removes all traces of your authorship and claims it as his own. How could you top that?

If you ever feel bad about getting the short-changed by office politics, please just think of Chen Menglei!

The Oriental Woman's Burden

I'm reminded of a personal story. One year my mom purchased a book on gardening written in Chinese, which she appraised was a valuable resource. Her Chinese pride and the fact that the book was in Chinese led her to believe that Westerners did not know the information contained in the book and that she would enlighten them with her discovery!

I tired of her pestering and unfounded pride. She would point out passages to me and remark, 'See how knowledgeable the Chinese are! You can't find this sort of information in English books!' She resolved to spend time slowly translating the book into English for a Western audience. She even fancied publishing her translation in the distant future when it might be completed!

Well, I looked at the book and the style of its cover did not strike me as particularly Chinese. I noticed an ISBN printed inside the flap and looked it up. Turns out the book was originally written in English, and she was reading a Chinese translation! She gave up on her project before long, as I made fun of her to no end. She might as well have done what Yongzheng did, just slap her name on as the author - and saved the four years of pointless work to "revise" what was already completed!

I very much wanted to see what her book would've turned out like. Imagine that! A blind re-translation of translation, back into its original language! A game of 'Telephone' played between two languages with a dictionary. It would have been even funnier to wait patiently while she proudly showed off her shoddy English translation to me, then watch her clam up in red-cheeked embarrassment as I said, 'Yes. Very nice, but let's see how it compares against my English copy, the original!!'

The reason I didn't wait to reveal her mistake was not for lack of sadism on my part. I just knew she would never get around to translating much of the book at all, so I didn't want the juicy moment to escape. Were I to bring up her folly at a later time, she would've been completely forgetful and unrepentant about her ridiculous claims as well as her Trump-level ego! Only if you catch her right in the act does she not dodge her blame!