It is a great pity that many people in the West still do not appreciate that one of the oldest and perhaps least understood Chinese virtues is our stoicism - the ingrained ability to suffer all kinds of hardship and in many cases eventually not only survive but overcome and succeed. No matter how tough the going becomes, we persevere... and almost without exception never give up. Could this also be the secret of China's success?

For more than 20 centuries this admirable trait has been passed down from father and mother to son and daughter. Until the 1980s, when China opened up to the world, thanks to the vision and ambition of Deng Xiaoping, we were an agrarian society, but no place on earth was so constantly blighted by the foibles of nature than China was. Here we had farmland under water from incessant rain, and there, incongruously, the cruel hand of drought held the masses in the grip of starvation.

Consider the torment and suffering of untold generations of the peasants wresting life's staples from the earth in those provinces across which the Yangtze twists and winds its way from the mountains to the sea. Not for nothing was the flood-prone Yangtze described so often as "China's sorrow".

Down through the ages Western philosophers have clothed stoicism in such grandiloquent verbal trappings of "submission to divine will and freedom from passions". Try explaining that to the millions of starving Chinese peasants who, century upon century, were forced to dig up the sun-baked earth, hoping their fingers would encounter stringy roots to eat. Or those who clawed with their fingernails to wrench the bark from trees, then tried to cough up enough saliva from their parched throats to soften the bark through constant chewing, before gradually swallowing the ball of muck!

Stoicism is also the quality that empowered Chinese migrants to overcome prejudice and enmity as they began new lives not only across other parts of Asia, but in the Americas and in Britain and across Europe. And just look at them now!

The West of course is well aware of stoicism, but seems to relate it to ancient Greek disciples of the philosopher Zeno of Citium (circa 300 BC), who taught a doctrine of submission to divine will, coupled with freedom from human passions. The theory of stoicism even enjoyed a vogue in Rome for a time, appealing to zealots among the warrior class. Thus did the West embrace the beliefs of stoicism millennia ago. But on the other side of the globe were stoics of another stripe. The Chinese actually became Humanity's first hardscrabble stoics because the harsh realities of Mother Nature simply gave them no choice.

Another point about our stoicism is that it has helped shape our earthy sense of humor, sometimes descending to the macabre as a defence against the inevitable. Widely-read Chinese author Liu Zhenyun in his novella "Remembering 1942" recounts some examples of this black humor as recollected by his grandmother, who lived through the Henan starvation catastrophe of 1942. It is estimated that three million starved to death either through the sheer callousness of the Japanese occupation forces or perhaps through the incredible insensitivity of the opposing Nationalist army.

The peasants turned their backs on their misfortunes and conjured up some pithy jokes: Old Mr Zhang uses up all his remaining strength as he tries to keep his place among the mass of starving refugees fleeing down the road. But after many li (500 meters) his strength ebbs, his legs turn to rubber and he falls to the ground. Too dog-tired to get up again, he lies there thinking about his old friend, Mr Wang, who died three days earlier. "I outlived him by three days," he says to himself. "I've done well." He dies with a satisfied smile on his face.

Folklore abounds with still blacker tales touching on a gruesome aspect of how some people managed to survive - by resorting to cannibalism, which was no stranger to Henan in those dreadful days. Like Zhang, a Mr Li has taken to the road to seek succor in the township far beyond the hills but, exhausted and dizzy, he collapses by the road and falls unconscious. Some hours later, lying there in the moonlight, he is awakened by somebody removing his trousers. Then a bolt of pain sears his leg. The intruder is trying to cut a slice of flesh from his leg. Mr Li's screams of pain bringing this rebuke from his attacker: "Quiet! Can't you see I'm starving."

The author is deputy chairman and secretary-general of China Energy Fund Committee, a think tank on energy and China-related issues.

(HK Edition 01/05/2013 page3)