Allan:
Sword in Mao's poem:
http://www.iusb.edu/~journal/1999/Paper8.html

Towering aloft
Above the earth
Great Kunlun
You have witnessed all that was fairest
In the human world
As they fly across the sky, the three million dragons Of white jade
Freeze you with piercing cold
In the days of summer
Your melting torrents
Fill streams and rivers till they overflow
Changing men
Into fish and turtles
What man can pass judgment
On all the good and evil
You have done
These thousand autumns?
But today
I say to you, Kunlun
You don’t need your great height
You don’t need all that snow!
If I could lean on the sky
I would draw my sword
And cut you in three pieces
One I would send to Europe
One to America
And one we would keep in China.
Thus would a great peace
Reign through the world
For all the world would share our warmth and cold

Optimistic...Mao foresaw the future two decades earlier:
" Marxists are not fortune-tellers. They should, and indeed can, only indicate the general direction of future developments and changes; they should not and cannot fix the day and the hour in a mechanistic way."
"It is like a ship far out at sea whose mast-head can already be seen from the shore; it is like the morning sun in the east whose shimmering rays are visible from a high mountain top; it is like a child about to be born moving restlessly in its mother's womb".

On heroism:
"We...have the spirit to fight the enemy to the last drop of our blood, the determination to recover our lost territory by our own efforts, and the ability to stand on our own feet in the family of nations".

SB,

I am a little confused, again... I honestly can

SOG also shares with the brand name of SOG knife. It's a compliment to say our SOG artists are sharp edge of a majestic sword.
How to sharpen your knife?

SB,
I believe that everybody is sharpening there tools in the most effective way there is, namely by practising shape, edge and value in the tempo everyone feels that he/she can digest.

What this tool is meant for is not for me to say, because I don

Allan:
Very impressed by your enthusiasm from Scandinavia.
What I thought that two sides of a knife to sharpen on are: spirit and matter. There are many other terms in the similar meaning: Painting is combination of idea and material.etc.

Hi SB,

I don

Thanks, Allan!
I've learned a lot from you and everyone here.
Reading an article about the Long March by an American student, as if looking at a mirror, I've realized how difficult to paint a profound portrait. His paper is quite good but missed some key points. A blemish in otherwise perfect thing.
__________________
www.portraitartist.com/wang

"Pierce through blue sky without ruining the edge of a sword", another phrase in Mao's Long March poem. Mao praised the heroes, especially himself. For the sword, he struggled more than two decades, overcame so many hardship beyond our imagination.

"Sharpen a knife will not waste time for cutting firewood".
Waste not, want not.
There are two ways to dull your knife's edge: overuse or rust. "Rather exhaust than rust"? why not balance it well.