Music from Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

"J'avais tellement peur de ne pas te trouver
je suis serieuse de avec toi
maintenant je rire parce-que je me raconte
combien je suis bete comme je suis toute seule
j'ai parle avec maman de notre marriage
elle m'a evidenemnt traite de folle
elle puis ce soir elle m'a interdit de te voir
tu comprends, j'ai eu si peur

J'aime mieux partir de oportune ne plus revoir maman
que tu de port
nous nous mariront en cachette

oh tu sais maintenant s'en ne plus de importance
nous avons meme de notre temps
ce matin j'ai recu ce des feuilles et le route
et je dois partir pour deux ans

alors le marriage on de parlera plus tard
avec ce qui se passe a Algerie a ce moment
je ne reviendra pas d'ici longtemps

Mais je ne pourrai jamais vivre sans toi
Je ne pourrai pas, ne pars pas, j'en mourrai
Je te cacherai et je te garderai
mai mon amour ne me quittez pas

Tu sais bien que c'est ne pas possible
(je ne te quitterai pas)
mon amour il faudra pourtant que je partes
tu sonra que moi je n'en pensai que toi
mais je sais que toi tu m'e attendra

deux ans deux ans de notre vie
ne pleurre pas je t'en supplis
deux ans non je ne pourrais pas
calme toi et nous reste si peux de temps
ce peux de temps mon amour qu il ne faut ne pas gacher
il faut que essayer notre feuille
il faut que nous gardions de nous dernier moment
un souvenir en peut de tous
un souvenir qui nous rappelera dans la vie

j'ai tellement peur comme je suis seule
ne nous retrouveront en nous se ronde plus forte
tu connaitrera d'autre femme et m'oubliras
je t'aimerais jusque a le fin de ma vie

Guy je t'aime, ne me quittez pas

Mon amour.... ne me laissez pas

Viens, viens, mon amour, mon amour"

Post-Cyberpunk

The SF Site Featured Review: Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology

"we might say that 'post-cyberpunk' bears pretty much the same relationship to 'cyberpunk' that 'postmodernism' bears to 'modernism.' That is, although certain themes and ideas might be traced from one to the other, it would be wrong to see one as the starting point for the other, and indeed just as there are precursors of postmodernism that predate modernism, so there are precursors of post-cyberpunk that predate cyberpunk."

The Biggest, Most Violent Riot in Recorded History

James K. Galbraith laying the smackdown on Milton Friedman, 18 years ago.

31:23

The Eternal Snow Beauty

Thought more about the Eternal Snow Beauty (永远的尹雪艳) - the decadence, the morbid glamor of money and power, the utter lack of concern of the elite for the fate of the nation - and the disgust with the characters when comparing their frivolous lives to the idealism and heroism of the same period.

Bored, eating ramen

Have physics test on Thursday, need to study for 10 hours in order to get an above average t-score. Any ramen could taste good with spicy seasoning. DVD encoding, decoding, and re-encoding is so slow. Thesis presentation on Sunday.

apt. hunting checklist:
1.Location

a.Distance to work

b.Distance to amenities

c.Traffic

d.Ease of access

2.Apartment amenities

a.Pool

b.Weight room

c.Tennis court

3.Laundry

4.Utility bills

5.Apartment position

a.Direction

b.Floor level

c.How far from the gate

d.Edge of the complex

6.Security

a.Card

b.Code

c.Clicker

7.Noise

a.Insulation

8.Layout

a.Floor layout

b.Ceiling height

c.Gas vs. electric

9.Price

10.Maintenance service

11.Parking

12.Year built

A City of Sadness 悲情城市

Now I understand better the grievances involved.

Factors of Contemporary Nationalism

The Enemy of My Enemy

Yes.

Cure for germanophilia

I'm quite disappointed with the gullibility of German popular opinion. Especially when I held their intellectual life/standard in such high regards. Well, no longer.

edit 5/26/2009: Goethe's dictum lives, we have it better over here in America.

Encounters With A German

I said: "On the contrary, our media would never smear any other country in this manner. Do you know why so many Chinese students are willing to come to study in Germany? That is because ... " (I wanted to say that we liked Germany because the Germany that we saw on Chinese television is beautiful and developed, and that is why we want to come here to learn.)

But she interrupted me with an arrogant look in her eyes: "Because our education level is well-developed and our tuition fees are cheap. It is very simple."

I was offended by this rude interruption, but I continued to finish what I wanted to say. Then I added: "But once we arrive here, we found out that the German media never reports any good news from China. To a certain extent, we overseas students are disappointed in Germany."

She said: "We did not only say that China is bad. We also said that China is good."

I said: "Good. Let me ask you, what good things are there in China?"

She thought about it and said, "The Chinese economy is developing."

I said: "You don't need the German media to tell you that because the whole world knows that. So what good things have you heard about our government?"

She thought about it and could not come up with anything. But she immediately came up a victorious look and said to me: "Can you tell me what good policies the Mexican government has?"

I said: "I don't know."

She was delighted. She said: "You see, you don't know either."

I said: "I don't know because I don't care. I don't know if they have done something good, but I don't know if they have done anything bad either. But when it comes to a country that I care about (such as Germany), I would know their good as well as bad points. We learn about something from both sides. This is something that we were taught since middle school."

The Art of Being Found Out

"They were both about matters which concerned Lady Gregory most, about what she could not somehow keep to herself, what she wanted known and not known, and at once concealed with care and dimly disclosed: women who deceived their husbands and were discovered. The affair belonged to her nightmares, but it also belonged to a dark area in her psyche where she was ready to put herself in danger to have it known who she really was, and what had once made her happy both beyond telling and only too ready to tell."

Speaking of people whose motives are most tangled and whose psyche is most damaged...

中国式离婚 Chinese Style Divorce

I am through episode 9 and I have to say the quality of the series is good. There are some jarring details (such as the scene in the school open house where only the people clapping where the main actress speaking, or the music on cue) due to low production values that bother me, but they are not detrimental to the main story. The minimalistic opening theme music with the 二胡 （erhu) is appropriately bleak and soul searching.


Update: after episode 9 the quality drops off considerably...

The Myth of Republican Shanghai

There has been a trend to revive Shanghai along the lines of its 1930s Republican splendor. Party functionaries, economic planners, and Taiwanese businessmen (many scions of pre-revolutionary Shanghai industrialists) support the revisiting of the past either out of the imperative of development, nostalgia, or lack of better ideas.

This plan is desirable for many reasons. It rebuilds a wellspring of early 20th century Chinese polity and memory. Even as it attracts wealthy overseas Chinese back with the rebuilding of the days of their parents' innocence, it also builds a centrally located industrial and financial center to counter balance regional development inequalities (Beijing in the north, Chongqing in the west, and Hong Kong in the south. Although this obsessive focus on Shanghai has had the opposite effect of exacerbating regionalism.)

Apparently, this revival of Republicanism came at a fortuitous time when the Qing dynasty was mined out of its cultural capital. Soap operas now bubble with Republican era war dramas and old KMT costumes. This fantasy is convenient for everyone. Contemporary China is too boring a copycat of western society to make good TV dramas, not to mention government censorship makes any meaningful commentary bothersome. It is one thing to win film awards in Venice, quite another to make it at home.

Which bring me to my observation that such a reappearance of Shanghai as a colonial city of the past is really lacking in foresight and imagination. Part of this thinking has fostered the delusion that traditionalism associated with the period, the co-oping of Confucianism by the KMT, should also be used as a model for guiding China. Corruption, decadence, national weakness, such are the things the revival of Republican era wants to paint as a mini-golden age of Chinese history. Pardon me if I find this farce unimpressive.

That song in Lust, Caution

'The Wandering Songstress'



If I remember correctly, it was also sang in Lust, Caution.

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

This film is in a superior class of romance movies, however, I think that a receptive audience needs to have an emotional investment to really appreciate it? Someone who has fallen or may yet fall in love; the movie does not mix well with modern cynicism about romance.

Excuses excuses

8:35 PM
basti: It is a very good excuse.
By focusing on a single girl.
It works very well to both dismiss and excuse all of your hesitations and failures.

Sinking

"One may live to a hundred, but his youth lasts only seven or eight years. What a pity that I should have to spend these purest and most beautiful seven or eight years in this unfeeling island country. And, alas, I am already twenty-one!
"Dead as dried wood at twenty-one!
"Dead as cold ashes at twenty-one!
"Far better for me to turn into some kind of mineral, for it's unlikely that I will ever bloom.
"I want neither knowledge nor fame. All I want is a 'heart' that can understand and comfort me, a warm and passionate heart and the sympathy that it generates and the love born out of that sympathy!
"What I want is love.
"If there were one beautiful woman who understood my suffering, I would be willing to die for her.
"If there were one woman who could love me sincerely, I would also be willing to die for her, be she beautiful or ugly.
"For what I want is love from the opposite sex.
"O ye Heavens above, I want neither knowledge nor fame nor useless lucre. I shall be wholly content if you can grant me an Eve from the Garden of Eden, allowing me to possess her body and soul."

If there was only a wharf here

I've been thinking about Australia's apology to Aborigines. The first thing that came to mind is Standing on the Wharf, Weeping

American Gangster

American Gangster turned out to be a disappointment. You can take any three episodes of The Wire and make a better crime drama.

It's raining

as water streams without interruption...

Origins of the enlightenment and liberal humanism

Floating Medicine Chests

I like this refreshing look at the origins of the enlightenment and liberal humanism as a gradual evolution of science, commerce, government, and philosophy when they are mobilized toward improving and extending human life.

Scandinavia, and if you want, Finland

Knew most of the Sweden stuff, like the fighters jets(Grippen), IKEA, Saunas. I didn't know Thor would ally himself with the Norwegians. And... poor Finland, at least they have Nokia.

The Wire

The fifth season of The Wire!

The opening theme song is "Way Down in the Hole"



Season 3 intro is not bad either:



Season 4 intro is perhaps the closest in spirit to the show, as it shows the next generation seeking salvation in such an overwhelmingly pessimistic city:

Generation of Giants

The earliest batch of missionaries in China are apparently in a league of their own.

This makes me think of all the people I know who speak and write better Chinese than I do even though they were born non-Chinese.

河殇 River Elegy

河者,黄河也, 母亲河也; 殇者,夭折也

《黄河船夫曲》:

"你晓得，天下黄河几十几道湾哎? 几十几道湾上,几十几只船哎? 几十几只船上,几十几根竿哎? 几十几个那艄公嗬呦来把船来扳?"

A 20th century capital that could have been

After reading Eric Hobsbawm's article on Weimar Germany, I have come to a better understanding of cultural and intellectual capital (capital as defined in accumulated goods, stock).

First, it spoke of a subject that is the source of some chagrin, the fact that I would have gotten more out intellectually in learning German than French. The article affirmed for myself that my instincts were correct - German had more intellectual capital in the course of the early 20th century. Foucault, Sartre were just leaves in the wind when you consider the people who came before them:

For the basic achievements of the Weimar Republic and the reasons non-Germans take an interest in it are not political but intellectual and cultural. The word today suggests the Bauhaus, George Grosz, Max Beckmann, Walter Benjamin, the great photographer August Sander and a number of remarkable movies. Weitz picks out six names: Thomas Mann, Brecht, Kurt Weill, Heidegger and the less familiar theorist Siegfried Kracauer and the artist Hannah Höch. One could as easily add, say, Carl Schmitt on the (rare) intellectual right, Ernst Bloch on the far left and the great Max Weber in the middle.

And on culture, what does Paris has to offer really aside from this populist belief in a foreign and romantic location where the business at the end of the day is to consume our imaginative trysts:

The prestige of Paris, ‘capital of the 19th century’, obscured the fact that it no longer had major innovations to offer between the wars except for Surrealism, itself largely derived from the multinational Dada of the Zurich Central European refugees.

Having visited Paris personally, I can speak with some measure of agreement that a visit to the city would not change anything drastically say, your notion of destiny, or gaining a new sense of purpose.

I digress to compare German to French, Berlin to Paris not because they are apples to apples or oranges to oranges, but because it is personally resonating. The article itself captures a moment in time when intellectual and cultural capital are at their zenith in a place that has vanished.

One Night in Beijing

I like the 京剧 parts of this song

the original:


sang by Shin:



sang by Xiao Jingteng (extremely impressed by his ability to sing both parts, he sings the best rendition in my opinion):

"Recital is the unsophisticated assassination of poetry."

The NY Times is behind the times on China by 6 months

On the traffic reduction strategy of Beijing to clean up the air before the Olympics, take a look at these two newspapers

this - by NY Times in January 2008 versus this - by the Guardian in August 2007

Just another in a string of lazy and inane reporting by the New York Times.

LRB reviews Lust, Caution

A review of the movie 色，戒.

I think a lot of viewers miss the point of the movie, and think this is suppose to be a spy thriller:

Lust, Caution is billed as a film about sex and espionage, lots of both, and occasionally it looks like such a work. All its interesting moments, however, are about something else: style, masquerade, glances, silences.

on screen dimensionality:

Each character in the movie has a movie running in his or her head, and when a young woman called Wong Chia-chi (played by Tang Wei), about to become a temptress setting up a collaborationist Chinese official for assassination, sits in a cinema and weeps copious tears, we know she will never be able to cry in this way outside the movie house. She is watching Ingrid Bergman, in Intermezzo, I think, and no one in her film – either in Lust, Caution or in the fiction she is acting out in the story – will ever declare his love, or say anything, as directly as Leslie Howard does in that Western melodrama.

the cinematography:

...the tender reconstruction of old Shanghai, the wartime mood, the sheer beauty of so many of the frames – makes the political thriller seem implausible, or even irrelevant, it also points us towards the work’s deepest concerns, already more than hinted at in the story (‘She had, in a past life, been an actress; and here she was, still playing a part, but in a drama too secret to make her famous’; ‘Her stage fright always evaporated once the curtain was up’).

Another HBO Show

Addicted to The Wire.

Went through seasons 1 and 2. Season 1 is better.

This had me thinking when will A Song of Ice and Fire debut on HBO. I hope they won't gut it, or worse, show us the ending before the books are all published. In all likelihood I think that is probably the greatest harm it can do to the book series.

瑶族舞曲

The English Speaking World and China

The Pew Research Center on How the World Sees China noted an interesting fact:

(Interestingly, for reasons not apparent from these data, the English-speaking countries covered by the survey -- Great Britain, Canada, and even to a lesser extent the United States -- have decidedly more favorable overall views of China than do non-English-speaking Western nations.)


Study link here

Hmm....Inter-anglo regional rivalry? Better cultural exchanges between the English speaking world and China? Commerce (U.S. has been the main beneficiary of free trade, although some would think otherwise)?

I think it is the high level of academic and cultural exchanges because nowhere else can you find better analysis of China than in the English speaking world. Examples are here, here, here, here, and here. To name a few.

People back in China always wondered why study about China in the United States. It is because the studies are more rigorous.

Lost in Beijing

For the first half of the movie I couldn't decide whether it was a comedy or a tragedy. Especially the scene with Elaine Jin and Tong Dawei, those pairs of shades are just hilarious.

They really miscast Tony Leung Ka Fai for his role. Maybe because I associate him more with his role in Election, but the only way I saw he could be hurt is going fishing with Simon Yam. And here his "everything is OK la" personality just reinforce the invulnerability that ties to his years of wuxia and triad movie making. Invulnerable personality = bad for tragedy dramas.

Saw the uncut version of the film. And I have to say that unlike Tang Wei, Fan Bingbing got let down by a bad script. Not to say Fan Bingbing doesn't look pretty, but I liked Zeng Meihuizi (her name sounds so Japanese, wouldn't be surprised if she is). Her role wasn't big, but it was more believable.

Zhanjiang on the margins

Massive traffic accident that occurred on the Yuzhan Expressway in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province

Well, that is my hometown in the news, however bad it may sound, any news is better than no news. I miss Zhanjiang, hope it is doing better now that they executed all those corrupt officials.

Some background: Zhanjiang is the southernmost deep water port in China, situated on the Leizhou peninsula of Guangdong, across Hainan island. Its location is a resource not unlike that of port cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore. There is a French village in Zhanjiang, although I have not the occasion to visit it. Obviously, this came from French occupation of Zhanjiang in the latter part of the 19th century when late imperial China was loosing all sorts of wars and giving concessions away.

From here all the natural resources in the South China Sea are within reach. Having blessed with such ideal location, Zhanjiang has the potential to become another trade center like Hong Kong. However this dream has been difficult to materialized due to practical considerations and other reasons.

Presently, Zhanjiang is the headquarters of the South Sea Fleet. From here China commands large portions of the South China Sea. The strategic location of Zhanjiang meant that economic development takes second priority to security.

Zhanjiang is also headquaters to CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corporation), who facing increasing competitive pressure from domestic and international companies after the company failed to acquire Unocal. I can only imagine what a blow the failed bid is to Zhanjiang's development. But that is not the reason by a large on Zhanjiang's slow economic development.

Organized corruption: any Chinese living on the Mainland today would take it as a matter of fact. In the case of Zhanjiang, the mayor, party chief, custom officials, and 200 other government officials, including elements of the navy were prosecuted and indicted in collusion and smuggling. 6 were later executed in 2000. Their corruption strangled the economic development of the city for years.

Failure to exploit its geographic potential while let slip the discipline of the navy in this strategic location is such a waste. If the city is mine for 10 years, I will turn it into another Guangzhou. Let me govern it for 20 years, I'll transform it into Shenzhen, another 10 (30 total) and I'll transform it into Taipei, add another 10, Hong Kong. Hell, since the navy is there already I throw in something extra and make a Singapore out of it after 50 years.

1977 Exam Opened Escape Route Into China’s Elite

The class of 1977 had a 4.7% acceptance rate.

俺 We

Beijing Opera dialog from 投名状 (The Warlords), scene of the sworn brotherhood of the three protagonists:

赵:俺,赵二虎...
庞:庞青云...
姜:姜午阳
众:弟兄三人
姜:欧血为盟, 神灵鉴, 义字当天对地天, 不求同生求同死
众:祸福共当, 肝胆悬

Zhao: We, Zhao Erhu...
Pang: Pang Qingyun...
Jiang: Jiang Wuyang
All: Brothers of three
Jiang:Sealing pact with blood, let the gods bear witness, the human ties formed today before heaven and earth, we ask not to be alive together but ask to die together
All: Misfortunes and fortunes endure by all, with spirits stern

投名状 The Warlords

Of all the stories about the crucible of China's 19th century tumult, this one manages to convey well the decadence, corruption, machination of politics, heroism, and the tragedy of power.

Particularly clever is the artistic license the movie used to portray the three heroes of this period: Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, and Li Hongzhang. They are given different silhouettes and there are three old men in the movie who come across as corrupt bureaucrats. This pays homage to the theory that Zeng Guofan masterminded the assassination of Ma Xinyi in 刺马案, one of the four unsolved cases in the late Qing period.

What impress me the most is the incorporation of Beijing Opera in the movie. I like the nuanced expressions on the opera troupe's faces and how their intensity is transferred to the main actors. Makes me wish I studied about film and how to direct them.

And best friends shouldn't fight over a woman, because whoever wins everybody looses....Unless the woman in question is Xu Jinglei, in which case everything is fair game.

Google Notebook - Good but Not Perfect

I have been using it for quite a while now, and I have to say it is really good. The option that I really wish it has is to save pictures directly to Picasa so even if the source website does down, the notebook will still show the original pictures.

One effect of the notebook is that it cut down the number of my blog posts. But that can be both good and bad.

Course of a Christmas Dinner Conversation

Invited to the annual Christmas dinner at parents' friend's house. Every year, the conversations are somewhat embarrassing if not just out right hilarious. It made my day that I discovered that people of my parents generation have a good sense of humor when it comes to arranged marriages.

So the story went - a person (and if you think this is about to take a ethnocentric turn, you are not wrong. For how could it not? When you gather a bunch of people who were as weather beaten as those of the Cultural Revolution generation, and put them around a family dinner table in America, the subject inevitably turns to how good their descendants in America has it going), he went through three years of college in UoH, did not graduate, and went back to China to find himself a bride. There he listed four conditions in his er... request, I guess.

Bride candidates must be:

1) Not from a big city
2) Not from a cadre family (so no princesslings)
3) Not from a rich family
4) Not from an intelligentsia family

So he found a bride who came from a small and humble village in the Northeast and he and his children lived happily ever after.

This is all told by a person having married a well educated women from a big city. The conditions are a bit medieval, people around the table said, but then everyone went on to praise the person for his pragmatism and insight.

Merry Christmas! Love and well wishes all around, especially for bride candidates!

What Does It Mean to Be Modern?

The mantle of Lu Xun weights heavily, and those of us Chinese left to construct a modernity from a nation that is catching up all live in his shadow.

I think that the Chinese people of this generation is the best to take on questions of modernity. Tempered by a more open environment, all the while having inherited the spirit that passed on by the revolution: that our destiny lies in our hands. Not to say we haven't been confronting this problem for the past century, but if we fail to face this problem now, when we are just embarking on a true awakening of the Chinese people, then how would we develop? I think we should not expect this awakening to be uplifting, rather it would be the realization that we took a step, and another, and another, awaits.

Christmas Gifts

Merry Christmas!

Gifts/or somethings worth revisiting, current goal is to find new things next year, but some of these are due to repeat:

Books:
One China, Many Paths
To The Storm: The Odyssey of a Revolutionary Chinese Woman (makes me feel like a child when I compare myself to the people in this book: intelligence, willpower, experience)
The Hedge Knight
A Game of Thrones (He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood)
Selected Poetry of Rabindranath Tagore

Blogs:
Danwei

Magazines:
The London Review of Books (seems like my education [the parts worth mentioning] consists mostly of this magazine)

Movies:
Bourne
Election, Triad Election
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Smiley's People

Language Police:
"Mikhail Mikhailovich, I challenge you to a duel!"

Revelations

Miss the opening music from Eve: Revelations so here it is.

羊毛出在羊身上

Tenku Senki Shurato

old anime

Drugs bring Beijing into Burma

One of Lindsey Hilsum's thoughtfully written columns

Koyaanisqatsi

I love this movie. It will be the first thing I play once I get a 1080p LCD TV.

Bai Chongxi

Bai Chongxi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I always heard that Bai Xianyong's father was a famous KMT general, but I didn't really know how significant he was until I started doing research on Du Fu's identification with Zhuge Liang. One thing led to another and I stumbled upon Bai Chongxi.

Banksy

awesome stuff

Metamorphosis One

梦中之情何必非真

"Love in dreams need not be unreal."

In many ways, writing about dreams is about the intimation of something that need not be unreal.

What promise? What shadows? Why such sadness?

Papers of Yesteryear

Was just reading over some of my high school papers and wow... they are so terrible yet so good at the same time. Nowhere has an amalgamation of Victorian style diction explained simple things with such pretense and naivety. The first steps of writing are so incoherent, messy, and infantile. In all respects expressing myself more genuinely as a person than the last minute hacked together papers I write in college.

We don't write for ourselves anymore, even this.

Battle on Redgrass Field

The Hedge Knight

"You are no knight.
I know you. You are Florian the fool."
"I am, my lady. As great a fool as ever lived, and as great a knight as well!"
"A fool and a knight?
I have never heard of such a thing."
"Sweet lady, all men are fools, and all men are knights, where women are concerned."

The insanity of France's anti-file-sharing plan

L'État, c'est IFPI

Things look ill for the relevance of France's existence in the 21st century. It's conservative attitude about preserving "culture", and the tendency for it to exercise state power for arbitrary interests will be the cause of its demise.

Books versus documents: what's wrong with so-called "e-books"

Almost spent money to buy a Kindle, which in retrospect is still a pretension

Need to read: Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style

Japan and China: National Character Writ Large

How a country's writing system reflects its attitude towards outsiders

Cultures with a sense of exceptionalism is neither optimistic or happy.

Raising a Child With Roots in China

demographics question

China Pursues Major Role in Particle Physics

China's past roles in particle physics and the mythical beast of the I.L.C.

Japan's trial run for migrant workers

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Japan's trial run for migrant workers

Peony Pavillion

What struck me about Bai Xianyong's lecture was the hilarious way he described the different junctures in the play where the audience clapped. The Taipei audience would applaud after an aria was sung well, but in Suzhou, the audience will start clapping when the male and female leads approach and make contact with one another.

the script

Die Meistersinger

Madness, Madness!
Madness everywhere.
Wherever I look . . . .
People torment and flay each other
In useless, foolish anger
Till they draw blood.
Driven to flight,
They think they are hunting.
They don’t hear their own cry of pain . . . .
When he digs into his own flesh,
Each thinks he is giving himself pleasure.

So close to greatness...

The Withcer is a kick to the teeth of normative high fantasy genre. Its storyline is steep in its observation of Eastern European folktales and legends. What sets it apart from its neighboring Western cousins is the unflinching narrative of grimness.

Small town melancholy and the errors of travel

Driving to Austin-Bergstrom evokes all sorts of associations, one of them is the feeling that you are without doubt in a small town.

Peering out of the windows in the plane while in transit, I wondered how will skylines look at night when cities switch over to 5500k incandescent lighting? I tried to imagine night cities transforming from gold to silver, like this:

色，戒 Lust, Caution

In some ways the times we live in are similar to those of Eileen Zhang. Dying for a cause, being a pawn for a higher power, where decisions such as choosing who we love is affected by nationalism. And sometimes, we make mistakes that we do not regret.

The music behind Triad Election

A view of the music production process behind the modern rework of the triad genre



‘For the residents of the island, to be “Hongkongese” has never meant being Chinese,’ he explains. ‘The political upsets of the past century have given rise to a major dichotomy between these two notions. Over the past nine years, changes seem to have gradually filled the gap that separates us. China has freed itself from the yoke of an archaic communist regime to become an economic superpower. The policy of One Country/Two Systems guaranteed Hong Kong political autonomy [but] the residents of Hong Kong look upon all these changes with concern, fear and confusion. Under the veil of economic stability, questions concerning political autonomy remain unanswered. In the shadow of that ambiguous giant known as China, what does being Hongkongese mean? In Election 2, even the gangsters ask themselves questions.’

Crocodile detained

Australian crocodile kept in cell

现实一种

Criticism of Chinese society, a people suffocated by its environment, where it sharpens the physical sense and intellect but leaves empathy and compassion undeveloped.

Is it fair if we use it as a explanation for behavior of some Chinese people in the U.S.? Where we are often perceived as intelligent but emotionally cold people?

How do we reconcile it with our experiences? The community and kinship within a extended Chinese family? That, against the isolation of the suburbs in another country? Of teamwork and call-you-by-your-first-name-while-stab-you-in-the-back type of false courtesy that exist among one's colleagues?

Questions, questions...

Inviting Writers to Drink

"So I urge you to cease your songs of the snow,
and in turn drink sadly the rose-cloud wine.
When we sober up, we cannot pass over
this ocean of sorrow, vast without shore."

- Meng Jiao (751-814)

Froth and Bubble

The Museum of Broken Relationships Storms Berlin

Piano

Wish I know how to play the piano, "just like almost every Asian kid".

Funny, I still remember who said that (approximately).

Marat/Sade

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Directions of The Marquis de Sade

Marat:
[speaking to Sade across the empty arena]
I read in your books de Sade
in one of your immortal works
that the basis of all of life is death

Sade:
Correct Marat
But man has given a false importance to death
Any animal plant or man who dies
adds to Nature's compost heap
becomes the manure without which
nothing could grow nothing could be created
Death is simply part of the process
Every death even the cruelest death
drowns in the total indifference of Nature
Nature herself would watch unmoved
if we destroyed the entire human race
[rising]
I hate Nature
this passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-face
that can bear everything
this goads us to greater and greater acts
[breathing heavily]
Haven't we always beaten down those weaker
than ourselves
Haven't we torn at their throats
with continuous villainy and lust
Haven't we experimented in our laboratories
before applying the final solution
Let me remind you of the execution of Damiens
...
...
...
That
was a festival with which today's festivals can't compete
Even our inquisition gives us no pleasure
nowadays
Although we've only just started
there's no passion in our post-revolutionary
murders
Now they are all official
We condemn to death without emotion
and there's no singular personal death to be
had
only an anonymous cheapened death
which we could dole out to entire nations
on a mathematical basis
until the time comes for all life
to be extinguished

Marat:
Citizen Marquis
you may have fought for us last September
when we dragged out of the gaols
the aristocrats who plotted against us
but you still talk like a grand seigneur
and what you call the indifference of Nature
is your own lack of compassion

Sade:
Compassion
Now Marat you are talking like an aristocrat
Compassion is the property of the privileged
classes
When the pitier lowers himself
to give to a beggar
he throbs with contempt
To protect his riches he pretends to be moved
and his gift to the beggar amounts to no more
than a kick [lute chord]
No Marat
no small emotions please
your feelings were never petty
For you just as for me
only the most extreme actions matter

Marat:
If I am extreme I am not extreme in the same
way as you
Against Nature's silence I use action
In the vast indifference I invent a meaning
I don't watch unmoved I intervene
and say that this and this are wrong
and I work to alter them and improve them
The important thing
is to pull yourself up by your own hair
to turn yourself inside out
and see the whole world with fresh eyes

Rain began three in the morning. By nine the wind started and my glasses, being large as they are, would catch the perspiration of breathing. It is a bit chilly outside and I had to run back home from the bus stop to put on a jacket.

爸爸爸

I grow tired of this preoccupation with backwardness, corruption and provincialism in Chinese popular culture and contemporary literary memory. Having said that, I despised reading yet another satire, 爸爸爸. It is no different than watching the mindless dramas and TV shows, except just imagine having that told to you as a story in a mocking tone as oppose to watching:

1) nasal gazing historic dramas which falls further into two categories:
a) costume dramas that dulls the viewer's senses, that which not only do not encourage people to look to the future but glorify a backward, hideous, and pitiful past where China was shut off to the outside world
b) pre-civil war 1920-30 Shanghai, whore of the orient, how good it was for the rich and corrupt that pay no attention to the nation's survival. You too, as oppose to the intended revulsion, will secretly admire their decadence
2) imitation of the worst type of schadenfreude western reality TV shows

With a TV I can alway skip it, the unfortunate thing with a novel is that you don't realized how much time was wasted until after you grind through parts or all of the reading. Utterly lacking in the Chinese literary memory are science and pluralism. The world is spinning too slowly. I wish it were fast as to throw Chinese people out of their seats.

To the Last Salute

Was expecting something more from this book, but oh well.

Ghost in the Machine

A Profile of Hu by FT

Freedom of space saved us from nuclear armageddon

Sputnik 'was force for world peace'

von Trapp's career before before The Sound of Music

Also reading this one:

Paul Kagame - a Lee Kuan Yew of Africa

Time for Africa to insist on defining its own future

Naipal writes of his friend Anthony Powell

Reviews: 'A way in the world' by Ian Jack | Prospect Magazine October 2007 issue 139

Emergence of the Market that is the E.U. Subsumes Democracy In Its' Wake

Just finished reading Perry Anderson's article on the delusions of Europe as the new city on the hill.

Pensée unique - an ironic description and a critique of the tendency for French opinion to align with those of the European Union.

Y - The Last Man

How to make money off oil companies

1. Find a productive well
2. Buy up all the land around it
3. Find out how much the well is producing, potential reserves would also suffice
4. Take your findings to court
5. Count your monies as they roll in
6. Repeat


Disclaimer - you can only do this in Texas

How they fare over the Atlantic

This financial crisis could be a historic chance for Brown

"In the long history of Labour as a governing party, nothing - but nothing - has been as politically destructive as financial crisis. The slump of 1931, the devaluations of 1949 and 1967 and the IMF bail-out of 1976 inflicted mortal wounds that destroyed four Labour prime ministers and sent four Labour governments to their electoral graves. Collectively these events had an even more devastating effect, cumulatively undermining the plausibility of the entire 20th century Labour governmental project and barring the way to a sustained British social democratic settlement on European lines."

Drunk in Autumn Woods

“In olden times Hutou (Gu Kaizhi) had three incomparable attainments; now I have three kninds of madness: I am mad, my words are mad, and my painting is mad. How can one achieve true madness? Now I shall present this piece of madness to my venerable elder, Mr. Song; then I shall have achieved true madness.”

He ends, “This is only to provoke a laugh…” and signs it.

Next day he added another quatrain:

“In a moment, smoke and clouds can return to their previous form:
The whole sky is full of red trees spreading fire all over heaven.
I invite you to get drunk with my black brush strokes;
To lie and watch the frosted forest where the falling leaves spin.”

Ministry of Miscommunications

One of my cousin thinks that I am a gambling addict:

5:59 AM 青: Hi,最近好吗？
me: 还可以
现在在学校吗？
青: 是啊。
6:00 AM 你现在那边应该是早晨吧？
me: 早上6点钟
6:01 AM 青: 好早啊。你不用睡的啊。
me: 还没睡呢
6:02 AM 刚刚才回家
青: 哦，做什么去啦？
6:03 AM me: 打牌
青: 晕！！！！！！
你在堕落啊。
6:04 AM me: 什么？
6:05 AM 青: 就是你为了打牌通宵不睡。给我就不行。
6:06 AM me: 不是你平时打的牌
6:07 AM 是游戏牌
叫做什么magic - the gathering

棋王

"I very much regret using oil to express my discontentment toward life, and using books and movies, these types of things that could be had or could not be had, to express my dissatisfaction toward life, because he honestly looks at these as things beyond baseline. He wouldn't worry for these things. I suddenly feel drained, partly agreeing to his statement. Yes, what else is needed? Am I not feeling pretty well? No need to eat this meal and worry about the next. No matter how dilapidated the bed, it is still one's own, no need to scurry around for places to find a place to spend the night. But for what am I often worried about? Why am I predisposed to want to read some particular book, film, these types of things. Just turn on the light and people will fully wake up, what am I getting at/what purpose am I trying to achieve? But I faintly have these desires in my heart that cannot be fully explained, yet I can convey they are related to some things in life."

Thief: The Dark Project

One of my favorite games of all time:

Art, science, industry, Ayn Rand, megalomania

"A man chooses, a slave obeys."

Rapture - the towering achievement of "objectivism", laid bare to those of us who want to pluck the mind, and the abyss, of genius. Unfettered from petty morality, and held up by the gods of art, science, and industry...

Down with the second round of simplification!

Even Simpler Than Before--化　境　神　似

Just came across 象 in place of 像. My immediate reaction is, life without blood?! What travesty!

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

The wellspring of our nightmares

It seems our goal in life is to put more distance between us and every other human being.

Lived in an apartment most of time so far. Childhood apartment in Nanyou/Zhanjiang, 5th floor, the sea breeze, view of the hospital and the rice fields. 2 bedrooms, 1 dining, plus kitchen and bathroom, all subsidized by CNOOC. Personally didn't know how great the neighborhood was in comparison to the other crappy districts, it didn't matter. My parents' goal in life was to get to somewhere better.

Grandparents' house, transit point. three generation under one roof and 3 floors, which only two have living spaces. Spaces didn't mattered because we have friends and family. Being a kid didn't require a lot of spaces back then. But now, with 3 kids and 3 families living in just 4 bedrooms, you can just feel the tension grinding down the kid's emotional development.

Irving, 1994, second floor, loud air conditioners on first floor makes a quiet night of sleep a luxury. A downgrade from 3rd world first class to first world 3rd estate. Another apartment closer to high school, but what did it mattered? High school for many was not the infinite American possibilities in Friday Night Lights.

Being stuck, from generation to generation, in lower middle class is the wellspring of our nightmares.

Bought an iPod. Was struck by how consumer hostile the whole thing is. Scrambling of music files, refusal to organize by user's existing folders. No drag and drop, lack of seemless transfers between computer and player. Ugh, the thought that I actually paid for this thing makes me sick.

Just give me a mp3 player that I can just drag and drop folders to play music, in addition to the ability to use it as a mass storage device.

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations Of Jasper Morello

It was like this: you were happy

It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

You were innocent, or you were guilty
actions were taken, or not
at times you spoke and at other times you were silent
mostly it seems you were silent
what could you say?

Now it is almost over
like a lover your life bends down and kisses your life
it does this not in forgiveness
between you there is nothing to forgive
but with a simple nod of a baker at the moment he sees the bread is finished
with transformation
eating too is a thing now only for others

It doesn't matter what they will make of you or your days
they will be wrong
they will miss the wrong woman
miss the wrong man
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

- Jane Hirshfield

Rises and Rises Again

The Bourne Identity (2002)

There are some espionage writers who use the form as a way of probing troubling geopolitical realities and vexing ethical dilemmas. Ludlum, who died last year, was not one of them. But at a moment when big, dumb thrillers like ''The Sum of All Fears'' find themselves suddenly burdened with expectations of relevance, the utter and systematic irrelevance of ''The Bourne Identity'' to anything currently or formerly happening in the world comes as something of a relief.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

As an action-movie travelogue, ''The Bourne Supremacy'' is unusually evocative. From its beaches of Goa to Berlin's clotted skyline to Moscow in the snow, its city lights glowing, it imparts a glamorized sense of tourism under duress.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

For Bourne, who rises and rises again in this fantastically kinetic, propulsive film, resurrection is the name of the game, just as it is for franchises.

Friends, conversations, legacies, declines, self renewing ideas

Companies increase pay rates at lower rates than inflation, so overtime the value of what people actually get paid become less and less. Employees fight back by working slower, accomplishing less, and become generally lazy. The phenomenon that starting salaries for companies are non-negotiable is a sign of this "matured" labor market.

The only counter example in recent memory to this gradual, but inevitable, decline into economic malaise is Silicon Valley in the late 1990s. It was just a few years before the dot com bubble that the labor market saw much fluidity. Everything: salary, benefits, stock options for joining a high tech company can be negotiated. Yet it was only a brief respite, then the labor market regressed back to the mean.

The British train system, built by Empire wealth and money, and if it breaks down today, the contemporary U.K. economy cannot afford to build a new one.

The U.S. highway system, the best in the world and built back in the 1950s. There are no projects of such magnitude that the U.S. government is investing in today.

In a sense we are living on inherited legacies. The government no longer invests, yet collect the same amount of taxes. Ex. the telephone tax. If the private sector is suppose to supplant government investment, where are the tax cuts to the people?

Perfect markets, rational behaviors... the stuff of dreams.

Those funny Austrians

Mises.org just published an article titled:
The Death Camp of Communist China

it begins with: A hysteria of sorts has been generated by reports that some of China's products lack quality control. Some cat food has been tainted. A few cell phone batteries have blown up. Cough syrup contained stuff that makes you sick. And so on. In response, the Chinese government actually executed its regulatory head of food and product safety, Zheng Xiaoyu.

hmmmm, a most pertinent subject matter, yes? but wait for the bait and switch

it goes on to saying: It's a scandal, in fact, that few Westerners are even aware, or, if they are aware, they are not conscious, of the bloody reality that prevailed in China between the years 1949 and 1976, the years of communist rule by Mao Zedong.

Ok... so the opening was just polemics to support the body of the work. Maybe there is merit, let's read on

Having read the above, you are now in a tiny elite of people who know anything about the greatest death camp in the history of the world that China became between 1949 and 1976, an experiment in total control unlike anything else in history. Many more people today know more about China's exploding cell-phone batteries than they do about the hundred million dead and the untold amount of suffering that occurred under communism.

therefore we arrive at the morally virtuous conclusion that: When you hear about shoddy products coming from China or wheat poorly processed, imagine millions in famine, with parents swapping children to eat in order to stay alive. And what do China's critics today recommend? More control by the government. Don't tell me that we've learned anything from history. We don't even know enough about history to learn from it.

In short, according to this article: regulation of food safety in China, or any type of quality control mandated by the Chinese government would be in essence a return to totalitarian control, and *gasp*, first step on the slippery slope back to communism!

Think of all the people that will die if the Chinese government have its way and force the food companies to adhere to food safety! Pleasssssse, save the children!!!!!~

Austin

Back in Austin this weekend. It was suppose to take 3 hours, I drove here in 2. The weather here is unusual in what seems in Houston as completely normal, endless rain.

Don't miss school anymore. At least, with no reason to. Internship is going very well, and I want to start working full time, learn for a few years and go work overseas - in London, Amsterdam, or Dubai. There is no one here at the moment for whom I would stay for. All I need to do is to take a deep breath and finish.

And what was the last 4 years but holding a long breath. People, their insecurities and fears have moved on while I stood still. Now it seems the path before me stretches into the horizon without a single person in sight. What remains feels... like exhilaration.

Time to start running... going to grab this opportunity and run as fast and as far as I can, until nothing around is recognizable, until the faces of people are no more than mists in memory.

Rice and Political Autarky

I was curious as to the dietary staples of the Middle East. Upon inquiring a Jordanian friend of mine, Rami, on whether rice is grown and eaten in huge quantities in the region, the answer was "no".

Why doesn't the Middle Eastern countries grow rice? Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent is one of the earliest areas to cultivate rice, yet one ponders why the present day Middle East does not continue this tradition.

At first I thought it was a shift in life style, something like the Second Consonant Shift in the German language, but instead of a change in language, there was a change in diet. One could come to the conclusion that the present state of food in the Middle East is just a natural evolution of habits, cultural interaction, climate. Upon closer examination, perhaps only the first two explanation can withstand scrutiny. Modern day Middle East is fully capable of growing rice, despite people routinely mistakes the Middle Eastern countries as being full of deserts.

When I posited habits and cultural interaction as factors in the change of diet in the Middle East, I wasn't expecting the answer to be so cynical. Today, the only Middle Eastern country that grows rice is: Iran. Another country is just starting to grow rice again: Syria. Rice growing is a method of exerting independence from foreign powers. When you start to grow your own food from the land, as oppose to relying on subsidized food imported by the express policies of the regime, the population gains a degree of autonomy.

Iran under the Shah did not grow rice, but now it is the biggest rice growing country in the Middle East.

Syria is only growing rice because it is afraid that the U.S. will embargo them.

The regimes in the Middle East lack the willpower to invest in their own agricultural system. Or anything else for that matter; no agriculture, no industry, everything is imported. The populace is kept dependent on the autocratic regimes that put the whole country on perpetual life support.

A Friend Whom I still Remember and Wish to Know

Six months ago I asked one of my female cousins about how her best friend is doing. The three of us went to the same elementary school back in Gaozhou, and I had a crush on her best friend. I had my hopes.

I found out that she was studying to become a clinical psychologist. It was an odd choice, my cousin mentioned, because the recognition and treatment of psychological disorders is not widely talked about in Southern China. Reminiscing about her, it didn't seem odd at all. She was quiet, had good grades, and hid a tremendous will. The imagination that one can change things and people around her for the better is a universal dream. Becoming a clinical psychologist is a... romantic way of realizing it. But why not? If a person can be happy in changing society for the better, then they deserve pleasure in their choice of jobs.

"She has a boyfriend", my cousin said. Ok, fair enough, I thought to myself - when you really want to know, then the truth is inevitable.

"Her boyfriend is wealthy too, he comes from a family that is pretty successful in commerce" Right, directly to the business then.

After struggling to word everything carefully, I asked my cousin if she had a picture of her friend. She asks, puzzled, "For what?"

When I said it was for reminiscence, cousin retorted back, "What is there to reminiscence about?"

I had to chide my cousin to get away with it all. Yet... what is there to reminisce about?