The Quatrain of Seven Steps
How Elon Musk’s Humankind Tweet Became A Twittle
Let’s get twittle to Mars!
I never thought I’d find myself thanking Elon Musk for causing such a fuss on Twitter.
I knew he had a reputation for being random and provocative with his tweets. His Twitter avatar says is all!
His recent ‘Humankind’ tweet was a case in point. It sent Twittersphere and Weibotron into parallel orbits for several days, and had many scratching their heads and wondering what the freak he was up to.
Humankind
煮豆燃豆萁
豆在釜中泣
本是同根生
相煎何太急
I was blissfully ignorant of the whole palaver until I came across an English translation of the tweet’s Chinese characters.
It’s a poem!
Elon tweeted a poem!
In Chinese!
Not that it was his poem to tweet. He was quoting someone else’s poem — without citation — tut tut! Oh, the things these billionaire celebs get away with! 😆
In case you’re like me and have been caught out napping at the foot of the literary font, the poem is of considerable cultural significance to the Chinese, dating back to the Han Dynasty. That makes it around 2,000 years old. The poem is known as The Quatrain of Seven…
