ABSTRACT
The title of this compendium is Tigers’ Roar, yet China is more often associated with the dragon. And with the ethereal comes a distant time and place, both past and future. Legend has its own texture and maneuverability in a history of what once was and what could be. To examine China is to examine legend. From epoch to epoch, the nation has engaged in a search for a new ethos—new values and norms peculiar to the Chinese people. Mass introspection was a political and philosophical odyssey that paralleled the rise and fall of dynastic cycles and domestic turbulence. When the Emperor failed in his heavenly mandates to do “good” and provide for the citizenry, a new search ensued; Confucianism in Chinese society has tended to be cyclical, accented with a Sisyphean quality.
