"Hillary and Rice"
There is a Japanese book titled "Hillary and Rice" written by a Japanese female essayist named Yukiko Kishimoto.
I suppose we had better focus on descriptions about Ms. Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State of the U.S., especially in this age of the War on Terror.
The essayist mentioned two Japanese men who had met with or saw her, separately in many academic occasions, when Ms. Rice was in her 30's.
The two Japanese men described alike Ms. Rice as a Venus or a truly rare beauty.
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In ancient China, it is said that there were Four (or Five) Beauties who were extremely beautiful and prominent.
Among them, about a woman called Diaochan (Chou-sen in Japanese), whose life was not recorded in any historic documents but believed to have existed, it is said that she was so beautiful that the moon hid herself in nearby clouds when she was praying under the moon for peace of the Han Dynasty her father was serving.
She has been thus called a Beauty Making the Moon Hide.
(In East Asia, everybody thinks that the moon is beautiful.)
There is also another related expression created in ancient China but still known in Japan: a Beauty Making Fish Drawn, Goose Fall, and Flowers Shamed.
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The beauty Diaochan was used successfully by her father to drive a fatal wedge between two powerful warriors who were both enemies of Han.
This episode became a prologue of a long historical story based on civil wars in China in the 2nd and the 3rd century.
Japanese seem to love the story called "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" more than contemporary Chinese do.
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The female essayist who wrote the book "Hillary and Rice" was interested in the remarks of those Japanese men about Ms. Rice.
The actual expression they used is "Zessei-no-Bijyo," which literally means a beauty that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.
If two decent Japanese men testified that a certain foreign girl was a truly rare beauty, I think she must be.
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What I hope is that Ms. Rice is actually a very different type of ladies from the ancient legendary beauty Diaochan.
Anyway, God's teaching to me has nothing to do with a beauty except such one as "Do not believe what you see but what you feel."
I feel that she would not let others feel the way she does not like, which I would rather respect.
"TAKEN OUT OLD THINGS AND NEW THINGS"