> No… but reducing Chinese philosophy’s differences from the West to a consequence of tilling rice paddies is pretty bad…no?

It is, so why are you doing it?

> but damn if this doesn’t smack of it, nonetheless.

I recommend you fix your terrible perception then.

> I don’t even think he’s intending racism; he’s probably just so enamored with the sense of the exotic that he is absent-mindedly and inaccurately placing cause and effect relationships therein.

Of course: what seems to be true is "probably" true.