Isn't He Adorable? : Thoughts on the Value of Translation

(photo by Makoto Kaku)

This afternoon I watched an NHK documentary on Donald Keene, a famous Japanologist who translated and analyzed a corpus of Japanese literature from ancient times to modern times.

He talked about how as a European literature major from Columbia university, he stumbled on Arthur Wiley's translation of "The Tale of Genji" at a  Times Square bookstore.

In his interview he described  "The Tale of Genji" as an escape to the uncertainties of reality.  The book was written simply for the sake of beauty and a beautiful society.  The moment defined the beginning of his career in Japanese literature.

I realized that his success stems from illuminating a part of the human experience that was unknown to the West. He had no competition because no one wanted to go to the wreckage of post-war Japan.

I'm REALLY jealous that he was able to live the life of a mind.   In many ways the life of a literary translator requires the mentality of an artist.  A computer could never translate literary text because translation isn't an algorithm that automatically converts one symbol to another. The first and foremost must communicate the feelings of the human condition.

I'm confused about how to express the relevance of the humanities.  Unlike Keene's career where communication and publication was heavily scrutinized, contemporary society has the opposite problem in that we are barraged with too much unfiltered information that it drowns out authoritative voices like Donald Keene.   The most popular person on the internet has the most credentials, not the person with the most comprehensive line of thought.

Personally I'm conflicted between getting a PhD versus finding an alternative path to study China.  I would have access to resources and connections to professional expertise on the humanities, but this resource is locked behind an ivory tower or digital subscription paywalls.  The alternative  is exploring the humanities without authoritative resources shaped by the internet.  How should this look like?

At least Donald Keene doesn't have to keep justifying the value of his work to the rest of society.  After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, Keene renounced his US citizenship and moved to Japan.  I've never met Keene, but it's safe to say that he's one of the few rare people in the world that lived a passionate life.

 

The View of Failure in Conventional History

The narrative framework taught in American history classes must fit the American Dream narrative.  Work hard and you can live the dream, regardless of your background.

But what if the individual is unable to accomplish one's goals?  Or goes against American culture?  Focusing on the individual level, the American history narrative is a stark dichotomy.  You are either a success or failure in the American Dream.  No individual historical figure is admirable after failure.

Americans associate the inability to accomplish a feat or reach a state as a "failure."  Failure is a subject we admonish, but rarely sympathize with.  When we "fail" in this sense, we blame out own ability or lack of resources.  We rarely accept it, regardless of who or what is responsible.

Su Shi was a failure in this context.  The emperor sends Su Shi away as political exile for going against the Wang Anshi reforms.  Su shi is unable to prevent suffering of his people and the eventual fall of the Northern Song.

Yet within a decade after Su Shi's death, his legacy was still a threat to Emperor Huizong.

 

(Also my favorite emperor in Chinese history.)

Lin Yutang points out heaven could not forgive the Northern Song's treatment of Su Shi.  A thunderbolt shattered a stone steele containing Su Shi's name and opposition party members to the emperor in Wende Hall, the place where Huizong's  government convenes. Emperor Huizong commented, "His stone steele is destroyed, but these people are hard to forget!"

Su Shi was unique in that he was both poet and politician in comparison to American history.  He was able to express his worldview through political maneuvering and artistic human expression.

I hope as I continue to read Lin Yutong's work, he can show me why I should admire the failings of Su Shi.

 

Su of the Eastern Slope 蘇東坡

I've been on hiatus studying for a test that could not test me.  I'm back on my blog!

I have to put "The Dream of the Red Chamber" on hold for this man, Su Shi:

(Yuan Dynasty, Painted by Zhao Mengfu)

I recently bought the Chinese copy of Lin Yutang's "The Gay Genius:  The Biography of Su Dong Po" delivered from Taiwan.

I have many reasons for reading Su Shi, but before I make any sweeping statements about his life, please read this poem first:

(Emperor Huizong "draft cursive" 12th century)

No, please don't read the draft cursive.  Heck, I can barely read it.  Su Shi's poem is a reaction to a friend who could write this script.

Su Shi, Shi Cang-shu's "Hall of Drunken Ink" (1068)

All worry and woe in life begins

from learning to read and write---

be able to roughly mark your name

and then you should call it quits.

What point is there in cursive draft

that flaunts the spirit's speed?---

the blur in my eyes when I open a scroll

makes me ill at ease.

Yes, i too have been fond of it,

but always I laugh at myself;

how can we cure this affliction

as it shows itself in you?

You tell me that in doing this

you find a perfect joy,

mind's satisfaction, not distinct

from spirit's roaming free.

Just recently you built a hall

and named it "Drunken Ink,"

comparing this art to drinking wine

that melts anxieties.

I see now that Liu Zong-yuan

wrote something not untrue;

such affliction may crave dirt and ask

as if it were haute cuisine.

Still we may say that in this art

you have achieved the heights:

worn-out brushes pile by your walls

like little hills and knolls.

When the whim strikes, one swish of the hand

and a hundred sheets are gone:

in a fleeting moment a splendid steed

bestrides an entire land.

My own script takes shape to my mood,

I have no special technique:

the dots and lines just follow my hand,

it's a bother to try too hard.

Then tell me why in your critiques

I am singled out for praise,

isolated words an scraps of paper

all find themselves collected.

Your script may be properly judged

no lower than Zhong or Zhang;

on a lower level my own is still better

than that of Luo or Zhao.

You should no longer sit by the pool

and practice so ardently,

in the end just take all that writing silk

and use it to stuff a quilt.

Owen, Stephen. "The Ornaments of "Literati" Culture." An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 640-41. Print.

During my darker, colder days of college, Su Shi knew the right words to speak to my soul.  His life by some standards may be seen as a "failure" because of his fall from political power.  Yet after a thousand years we remember him like an good old friend.

Lin Yutang puts it this way:  knowing a thousand year old dead guy isn't hard, you just need to write.  The living haven't finished telling their stories.  As the old saying goes, we can decide when the coffin shuts.

Time to Enjoy the Moon

(Portrait of Su Shi by Zhao Mengfu.  Yuan.  Source)

水調歌頭

Shui Diao Ge Tou

蘇軾

Su Shi

明月幾時有？把酒問青天。

When will the moon be bright?  I raise my wine to the blue sky.

不知天上宮闕，今夕是何年。

Not sure if the lunar palace, knows what year it is.

我欲乘風歸去，又恐瓊樓玉宇，高處不勝寒。

I wish to ascend with the wind to the top,  I also fear at the marble jade palace, its high and can't withstand the cold.

起舞弄清影，何似在人間。

I dance making a shadow, like you were in the mortal world.

轉朱閣，低綺戶，照無眠。

Orbiting through the red chambers, hanging low by the window, with brightness I cannot sleep.

不應有恨，何事長向別時圓？

You shouldn't respond with such hatred, why must you be full when people separate.

人有悲歡離合，月有陰晴圓缺，此事古難全。

Humans are sad, happy, seperated and together, the moon waxes and wanes. From old times it's hard to be complete.

但願人長久，千里共嬋娟。

But I long for people to live long, so from far away we can bask in your beauty.

Poor Su Shi, after living for years in exile you still pain to see you little brother. After 900 years, your longing for warmth and love still resonate today.

Regardless of whether you are enjoying mooncakes with tea and family, or contemplating your blessings in loneliness, just remember that with the vicissitudes of life, everyone has the yearning for love and belonging.  Feel the present, and count the people who love you.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

It Pays to Read: Reading is worth $960 an hour!

There's a story about a miser during the Victorian era who either kept a bond certificate or cash sitting in the bank for his entire life. When he withdrew his money, the buying power of his asset shrunk due to inflation. He ended up being poor at the end of his life.

What if you never read this story and lived this scenario? 43% of workers have less than $10000 for retire. Imagine how many more have no investment plan and are just shoving money into a savings account?

Reading allows you to relive the thought process of another human being. A good chapter book (no pictures) represents roughly a year to a thousands of years of human experience. If you read at a modest pace of 20 pages an hour, you could finish a 300 page book in 15 hours. Let's be modest and some author wrote a book in a year. Assuming that this writer was working 40 hours a week, for every one hour you read, you exchange 133 hours of the author's work!  If you assume that author is working at federal minimum wage, reading is worth $960/hr!

Let's say instead you read about ancient Rome. Let's exclude the author and count the total living hours of each Roman. On average there was roughly 50 million people living every year, and the Roman Empire was roughly 2000 years old. Let's say a book on the Roman Empire was 3000 pages. Assuming your 20 page reading rate, for every one hour of reading about Rome, you exchange roughly 76,000 man-YEARS of human experience! Instead of living and dying 1000 times, you can read for an hour!  If we assume the federal minimum wage again, that's $4.8 billion dollars an hour!  Take that quantitative easing!

I hope this is one reason to motivate you to read.

[caption id="attachment_389" align="aligncenter" width="300"] (My favorite book.  $15 USD) 

[/caption]

The New Academic

(Drool.  Source.)

People would invest more in academia if people saw its value.

For the most of human history, historical artifacts and archives belonged to the rich and powerful. Today it's slightly better. I can walk into a natural history museum and look at prehistorical fossils, or extinct birds stuffed by taxidermists. But fossil are still sold like jackets on Rodeo Drive.

There were two valuable lessons that I learned from my classical Chinese class:

1) It's always tempting to impose your narrative about a subject, but be objective as possible or you lose truth.

2) Always know your source, or else anyone can impose their own narrative.

Science can recreate an experiment to examine if claims are true. If a word is smudged off a primary historical document, the word is lost to history, never to be seen again. Imagine if the word "people" was ripped out of the preamble of the US Constitution?

Data in the humanities is literally ink fading from old pieces of paper. It's inevitable that knowledge will be lost over time.

The internet is powerful enough store data through the ravages of time, but so far we've been poor at storing and disseminating academic work.

I don't want a PhD in the humanities because the process of getting one is prehistoric. For Chinese, I would have to study know English, Chinese and French/German. After 6 years of rigorous research, I would be in debt, unemployed knowing something that barely anyone can understand.

I don't want to belittle the work of graduate students. We need experts to be the gatekeepers of cultural knowledge, but this knowledge must be relevant to the public. The PhD in the humanities currently stores its knowledge in university libraries and locks academic work within paywalls. A person from the public can only access general factoids through Wikipedia and sift through disparate internet sources. There's no academic critique or analysis of cultural data that the public can ponder, and the general public has no medium to respond beyond the comment boards full of extremists and trolls.

I hope that the new generation of humanities PhD's finds a way to effectively distribute cultural data to everyone. I fear that if this doesn't happen, digital noise may drown the value of the humanities.

Until then I will keep blogging. Or as Haruki Murakami puts it:

“If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals . . . We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us -- create who we are. It is we who created the system. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009)”

Fancy words

Chinese is unique in that every character has it's own unique meaning and sound.  English uses the same 26 characters to phonetically sound out a word.

Whenever I see characters that I don't understand, one of the following things happens:

1.  I have no clue.

2.  I know what it sounds like, but I have no idea what it means.

3.  I have no idea what is sounds like, but I know what it means.

The Dream of the Red Chamber is describing Qing dynasty aristocrats.  Here's an example of my thought process when I encounter fresh text:

頭上戴著金絲八寶攢珠髻，

On her head she carries gold thread and carries 8 precious jewels something

綰著朝陽五鳳挂珠釵；

Some verb dealing with thread  when five brilliant phoenixes hangs a pearl pin

項上戴著赤金盤螭瓔珞圈；

On top there is a red-gold disk of something insect something something hoop.

裙邊繫著豆綠宮條、雙衡比目玫瑰佩；

On her dress a myriad of bean red palace? strips, a pair of horizontal rose amulet

身上穿著縷金 百蝶穿花大紅洋緞窄褙襖，

On her clothes gold threaded hundreds of butterflies with bright red flowers fine? something something some type of clothing.

外罩五彩刻絲石青銀鼠褂;

Her outside something rainbow stone cut green fox scarf?

下著翡翠撒花洋縐裙。

Underneath something jade-colored flower something something dress?

Here's David Hawkes translation:

Her chignon was enclosed in a circlet of gold filigree and clustered pearls.  it was fastened with a pin embellished with flying phoenixes, from whose beaks pearls were suspended on tiny chains.  Her necklet was of red gold int he form of a coiling dragon.  Her dress had a fitted bodice and was made of dark red silk damask with a pattern of flowers and butterflies in raise gold thread.  her jacked was lined with ermine.  It was a slate-blue stuff with woven insects in coloured silks.  her under-skirt was of a turquoise-coloured imported silk crepe embroidered with flowers  (Cao 91).


Geez, I have to be Tim Gunn to understand this high level of fashion vocabulary!

(He'd tell me "make it work!"    Source)

If you want a visual of who this person is, it's Wang Xifeng (王熙鳳)：

(Source)

I have 117 chapters to go...

Works Cited

Cao, Xueqin, David Hawkes, E, Gao, and John Minford. The Story of the Stone: A Chinese Novel in Five Volumes. London: Penguin, 1973. Print.

The Humanities Trump Absolutists (Part 2)

(Source)

...debate with Christian converter continued...

"If goodness doesn't from God, then where does it come from?"

I don't think some higher being appropriates goodness, like from moral Federal Reserve.

I'm not sure if you believe in the science of heredity, but the scientific reason for altruism derives for the need to pass genetic information.  So your siblings have half your DNA, cousins 1/4, etc.  There's the argument that it saves genetic information.

Mencius believes in 性本善, our nature was originally good.  Here cites the example of a the baby and the well.  Wells in ancient China weren't surrounded by a high barrier, it was literally a deep pit in the ground.  When one sees a baby crawl very close towards the hole, regardless of whether the observer desires to save the baby, we all have the gut reaction to fear the death of the child.  He argues that this gut reaction alone justifies the innate good nature of human beings.

"Yes, there are people who can reach a certain level of morality, but recognizing God brings you to His level of moral salvation."

Ah!  Here's what I find most disturbing:  non-believers are sent straight to Hell, regardless of their actions on Earth.  Confucius and Mencius didn't have Christ to die for their sins, do you expect me to believe that they're going Hell?  God sounds clingy and passive-aggressive.

Let's assume Mencius and Confucius was allowed to pass the pearly gates of Saint Peter.  I still don't believe in heaven and hell.  Let's assume there was some grouchy person who harbored extremely evil and violent thoughts, but never outwardly acted on them.  He goes to heaven, and his version of heaven is acting on those violent thoughts. Through your bible, it's not okay to commit for a finite lifetime, but God will provide an eternity of sinful acts if you're patient for your living life?  That doesn't add up to me.

I believe true moral salvation comes from processing one's experience and thinking critically about how to act with morals and compassion.  Everything else is trivia and propaganda.

"Mind I can get your phone number?  My church plans to have a bible study session."

Sorry, I don't give my personal information to strangers.

I finished my nachos.

The Humanities Trump Absolutists (Part 1)

(My Achilles heel.  Source.)

So I'm innocently eating nachos at a public eating area, and suddenly a religious person attempts to convert me.

I talk to Christian converters if I'm in the mood.  I listened to Christopher Hitchens over Youtube, so I decided debate.  Here's roughly the dialogue:

"So what's your exposure to Christianity?"

I don't like the influence of Christianity on culture because it's a presumed basis for Judeo-Christian culture.  I felt my public school education was heavily influenced by Christian values  (I don't say "under God" for the pledge of allegiance). Once I studied Chinese culture, I saw how religion can manipulate for political gain.

I'm skeptical of societies that base the premise of power and good on some monotheistic being.  Stepping aside from Christianity for a second, the Mandate of Heaven 天命 justifies the power of the emperor, and all of his subjects must "obey" (I use find quotes in my conversations).

Having moral authority can easily leverage political power.  If we look at the initial relationship between the East and West, specifically the 18th century when the industrial revolution begins in the world.  When the British Empire sends Lord McCartney to Emperor Qianlong's court, we see the clash of cultural titans.  McCartney refuses to kowtow because he believes divine authority is King George III, while Qianlong thinks he himself is a divine being.

As time passes, Britain jams its foot into China like a cheap salesman.  The British attempt to claim moral authority by depicting the Chinese as immoral heathens.

Before The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, Chinese Characteristics by Arthur Smith was the most popular book about China sold to the West.   It's written by a Protestant minister attempting to generalize Chinese culture.  Both books are horrendously biased, racist, and left an indelible impression about Chinese people.

"Yes.  I agree that immoral people use the word of God for immoral gain.  That's why we have Adam and Eve.  Because they ate the forbidden fruit, they've sinned and need to repent.  All of us sinned, so we need to move closer to God again.   Real experiences with God requires the individual to interpret the Bible themselves."

Are you familiar with Christopher Hitchens?  He calls himself an "anti-theist" because he's against any form of religion.

I agree with his argument with original sin because it has certain glaring contradictions.  The bible claims that all people have sinned and need to repent, yet the same God has a predestined plan for these beings and expect total subservience, or else said being will receive eternal damnation.  Humans only have a book written by someone else at earliest 100 years after Jesus' death to be the true word of God.  Humans can't even agree what happened yesterday, let alone something 100 years ago.  Why would God want flawed beings to serve Him?

"But it's only through the experience of God that one can be truly good."

So you're saying that only a superior being has absolute moral authority?  And everyone else who isn't divine is completely clueless?  What makes God different from the Emperor of China?

Here's what I think about goodness...

How Do We Make The Humanities Relevant?

Okay, you've heard  the cliché that internet is revolutionary and how everyone's life has changed, blah blah.

The internet is a Catch 22.  Information can easy disseminate, but its  horrendously huge size overloads the typical surfer.  Sometimes I read webpage after webpage, only to realize I don't remember anything.

So far the humanities was built from mostly rich or high status people.  Most academic work require similar professionals who painstakingly evaluate the thoughts another human being.

People arguing against the humanities say the results of this process are irrelevant to the present.  It's old, snobby, and too high-brow for the average person.  Who has time to go the library to borrow paper when you can download?  Humanities journals cost thousands of dollars to subscribe annually, Netflix is only $8 dollars a month.

Those in history who had access to this material were either filthy rich, or cloistered within a scholarly community.

People are more willing to fund STEM related degrees because STEM can demonstrate it's relevance to society.  A person with a STEM degree can quantify and solve society's utilitarian problems.

But modern culture is insufficient to satisfy the present moral needs of the individual.  It can't express death because its still progressing forward.  The general public wants a predictable sitcom.  Harry Potter needs children.

Unlike a blogpost or a movie, the humanities wants to express human beings before they disappear.  I don't literally mean an act of death, but all the humanities subjects recognize that the human must die.  Documenting material accounts for their existence.

Sadly modern academia fortresses the wealth of the humanities away from the general public.   Physical libraries only hold books that it assumes a certain number will read.  Public education only wants to follow standardized tests and government curricula, students don't have time to learn.

How Do We Make The Humanities Relevant?

I don't think a large, accessible, open source institution exists yet, but the internet might be the start to an answer.

Institutions that traditionally hold knowledge are slowly eroding in legitimacy. Resources like the links on UnCollege are building communities that study without professional instruction.  Of course, internet self-study isn't the silver bullet.  It can't provide the instant reaction of another human being.

I dream that 10-20 years from now traditional public education as we know it will disappear. We'll have so much Youtube videos that any person interested in any subject can watch a lecture.  We would completely erase the neurotic need to subdivide students by age, and again by subject, and then again by grades.  Active students create their own projects, choose their own mentors/communities, work with their own style.  Because isn't that what happens when they leave school anyways?

I end by repeating this open ended question:

How Do We Make The Humanities Relevant?
Comment to conversate!

First Impressions

The Red Chamber Chapter 3

From the strange netherworld of talking rocks, we finally reach the setting of the main plot with the Rongguo mansion.  My favorite character in the story Lin Daiyu meets everyone in the family, I assume the first time.



(This photo is the 2010 remake of The Dream of the Red Chamber)

The  2010 remake is eye candy.  When I found it, I realized it was better than my imagination.  Here's essentially the video of the 3rd chapter.  Even if you don't know Chinese, body language tells you everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tanlyBZoVRQ

Reading the book the second time, new details about the beginning that gave me chills.  But let's stick with Lin Daiyu for a moment.

Here's a teenage girl at the prime of her youth who just lost her mother.  Her father just sent her to her maternal family to be taken care of. Her maternal family is one of the most powerful people in China,  She has to quickly shift from her personal problems and fit in because she's an outsider.

First impressions are like a facebook picture, it only gives you a shell.  But once we crack the shell and see more of the individual, we can't fully determine the goodness of the other person.

I make terrible first impressions.  In the beginning I would introduce myself with the wrong name.  I'm an introverted person.  It takes all of my effort to not choke on my own saliva or defecate in my own pants.  But once I tell myself that the stakes aren't high, and most of the time other people's judgment doesn't matter, I've gotten better about it.

When I first read this scene, I thought Daiyu would feel at ease with rich family wanting to ease the pain of death.  But I didn't consider her status before entering the mansion.  Other than familial obligations between the Rongguo estate and Lin Daiyu, Daiyu is completely alone.  She doesn't know if she can receive unconditional love like what her parents provide her.  She has no idea what these new people value.

Before stepping into a room full of new people, everyone is trying to weigh and calculate value of each other.  If one is going with trustworthy companions, one feels safer in this setting because their reactions can give more clues and details about strangers.  Then again, your certainty could be dead wrong.

The only thing you can do is guess.

 

 

Are We Average?

Chapter 2  The Dream of the Red Chamber

When Yu Cun and his friend talk about the Ning and Rongguo mansions, they discuss the high birth of the founders of that family and how unique cirumstances place them high in society's ranks.

Baoyu's father also hires a monk to display objects and asks the baby Baoyu to choose what he prefers.  Instead of the scholars brush or money, Baoyu chooses women's accessories like makeup and jewelry.  Baoyu's father assumes Baoyu will chase women and be a wastrel in the future.

Yu Cun then discusses how ethers of good and evil concentrate in certain areas, and people who possess extremes of ether has great power to do good or evil while everyone else remains "average" in their respective places.

Christopher Hitchens points out that the Christian concept of God having a unique plan for the individual is ludicrous when one tries to reconciles original sin.  If humans are faulty, why would God entrust the individual to serve Him?  And if humans are fallible, how could the individual interpret or understand the doings of God?  Hitchens argues that "uniqueness" through perfecting God's vision is an excuse for an individual to feel self-entitlement.

Hitchens tells us recognition our averageness and insignificance puts us in awe in relation to the grand scheme of the universe.  He tells us to look at images from the Hubble Telescope and realize that the universe is unique for what it is.

The quintessential breeding ground for average is public schools, especially high school.  There's standard behavior codes and curriculum that everyone must follow.  I still remember the those drab grey "guidelines" manuals.  You paradoxically have to find some way to be unique for college in this environment!  If you think you're special then you're obsessed with average.

Average is a relative and ambiguous term, like conservative and liberal.  You can't average something without looking at everyone else, but who cares what other people think?  Mark Twain said it best:  everyone has a story to tell.  Uniqueness is the average.

Comment to conversate!

 

Why the House Always Wins

The Dream of the Red Chamber Chapter 2



That zero means millions of dollars in profit!
When Jia Yucun (賈雨村) was going out for a walk, he encounters a dilapidated temple.  The two columns at the front of the door has a couplet:

身後有餘忘縮手

When there's plenty behind, one forgets to hold back

眼前無路想回頭

When one there's nothing ahead, one thinks of turning back

There's something called the sunk costs fallacy.   It says one makes decisions about current conditions based on how one invested in the past.

Here's an example I used for my niece that simplifies gambling.

Let's say we bet on a coin toss game and I'm the house.  If it's heads, I win a dollar.  If tails, you win a dollar.  If we decide to play one round, one dollar is at stake.  If we decide to play 100 rounds, 100 dollars at stake.

If we assume the coin is fair, most likely you and I will win 50 dollars.  There might be a chance that I win 49, and you win 51, or visa versa.  There's also the possibility that I win 1 dollar, and you win 99.  But the probability of getting a 49-51 state is much higher than 1-99.

Here's a cute website about binomial probability.  You do the math.

But let's simplify things for the math inept.

Let's go back to the coin toss.  If you win, I give you a dollar.  But if I win, you have to give me 1.01.  After 100 rounds, most likely you WIN 50 dollars, and I WIN 55 dollars.  No big deal, right?

Ah, but let's look at this way, I LOST 50 dollars to pay your winnings, but you LOST 55 to pay my winnings!  If we just take the difference between what was lost and won for each person, I WON five bucks, you LOST 5 bucks.

But if you're a little sunk in the hole, you can win it back right?  SUNK COSTS FALLACY!!!!

1000 rounds?  I win $50.

10,000 rounds?  I win $500.

What if I lived in a world where many people agreed to play against much more than their odds for 24 hours a day?  It would be like some sort of cash gathering machine!

It's called a casino!

Comment to conversate!

The Book Opens with a Dream

SPOILER:  The Dream of the Red Chamber Chapter 1.

Most people fall asleep by trying to blank out their minds, or sing a tune inside their heads.  I have to the think of the weirdest possible thing and follow the logic.  For instance, I might think about the United Nations roll call with all zoo animals, or ostriches might try to sell different kinds of sand on the home shopping network.

For some reason odd situations turn into though provoking dreams.  Last week I dreamt I was a children's raffle and I was sitting next to the President Obama and the Supreme Court.  We were discussing whether the common man had the moral capacity to judge fairness for other people.  I was sitting next to Justice Kennedy, while Sotomayor dyed her hair blonde.

The Dream of the Red Chamber opens with a talking rock.  The story of the stone, which happens to be the alternative title to the book, is about the stone's dream to experience the mortal world.  The story is already written on the stone, so the author forces the reader to frame the story as a recollection of the stone's dream in the mortal world.

When we were kids, our uncorrupted imaginations dreamt of fanciful realities that felt possible to exist.  Dreams feel possible because kids lack the capacity to account for reality.

There were three things I wanted to be when I was a kid:  a power ranger, the president of China, or a food critic.  I learned about the communist party in China.  My parents discouraged me from spending my life critiquing food, there's Yelp for that.  I still want to beat up someone of comparable stature though, that's number 1 on my bucket list.

Sometimes having the temptation of a dream is better than it becoming reality. Sometimes its a reason for living.   Sometimes it can be a foolish fantasy.  Here's a blog post from Mark Mason about someone's rape fantasy almost coming true.

So what does Cao Xueqin think?  Here's his poem that sets the tone for the rock's dream:

滿紙荒唐言

Man1 zhi3 huang1 tang2 yan2

Paper full of gibberish

一把辛酸淚

yi4 ba3 xin1 suan1 lei4

All full of bitter tears

都云作者癡

dou1 yun2 xuo4 zhe3 chi1

All say the writer is crazy

誰解其中味

Shei2 jie3 qi2 zhong1 wei4

Who can understand the meaning of all this?

* I left the pinyin and tone because

the sound of the words are rhythmic.

What are/were your dreams?  Have they changed over time?  Comment to converse!

The Power of Narrative

SPOILER ALERT!  GAME OF THRONES!

Here's a conversation between two bureaucrats of within the fictional kingdom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH7sIOBJqLA

Start from 1:48 onwards.

Narrative is the most powerful motivation behind human action.  Without narrative, action has no relation of consequence and becomes chaotic.

American history has no utilitarian purpose.  One can't build roads and bridges with this knowledge, yet American history is taught for the good majority of public school education.  Americans roughly agree that all men are created equal and the individual can determine one's fate in life.

But why aren't we taught Norwegian history?  Are the past actions of Americans more important than the peoples of Norway?  Wouldn't that imply that one group of people are more important than another?

To a large extent, American history is public propaganda.  Instead of our education system providing critical thinking tools to analyze and contextualize history and culture that an individual may value, any other culture that doesn't relate of fit within the narrative is implicitly sub-par.

One could counter by noting that studying the movement of American history charts a path of progression and improvement.  Without understanding this evolution we do not see how the thoughts of the past are relevant to our core beliefs today.

Hogwash.  Sociology and philosophy provide enough reasons to justify compassion to our fellow man, but to assume knowing history is reason enough to justify present actions and conditions is a dangerous lie.  Blind attachment to narrative is a cheap and lazy way to justify our actions.

The American narrative believes that the Constitution and democracy is the source of its current advance.  Our moral narrative justifies capitalism and our right to profit.

The Chinese narrative believes its age and history gives it precedence to be "superior" to any other foreign culture.  The name Zhongguo literally means "center country."

Narrative is not absolute truth.  It's only a frame.

This is the lesson I learned from "The Dream of the Red Chamber" (紅樓夢)。

So far my blog has been a semi-random mish mash of little curios in Chinese literature.  At first I thought following Chinese literature anthologies like DeBary and Bloom or Stephen Owen could carry an interesting narrative framework, but a chronological framework is only useful for academia and reference.

From now on my blog will discuss Chinese culture from the standpoint of "The Red Chamber."  Hopefully the narrative frame will be interesting as it was 300 years ago.

 

 

Learning Mandarin

Pai Mai is training the main character Uma Thurman in Kill Bill 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEjI0A9iMow

When I see Uma Thurman, I can't help but think about my early days in Chinese school.

My Chinese school had central A/C, but starting out was painful, boring, and repetitive.

My first Chinese teacher was a former radio news reporter in Taiwan, so her Mandarin Chinese was pitch perfect.

Everyday weekday after "English" school was 3 hours of "Chinese school."  For the first six months I didn't write a single character.  We reviewed the Taiwan phonetic table known as Zhuyin Fuhao and practiced pronouncing every permutation.  Here's a table:



Multiply this by 4 and you can pronounce any character in Chinese!  Although the list is intimidating, English fills up an entire book!

The first set of words I wrote was my Chinese name, 陳俊祥。 If a single stroke was off, you had to re-write a page worth of your name, or around 150 times!!

The first character I learned besides my name was "好。" The radical for girl and boy are smooshed together to make 好， and it makes perfect sense because that's how you greet people.  The conversation oddly turned to why procreating children is good.

Every character was written in these neat little white boxes like this.



One mistake and you had to rewrite a character in another column 14 times.

I got plenty of hand cramps like Pai Mai's training.

I wrote sentences in 1 year

I wrote paragraphs in 3 years.

I wrote essays 5 years.

Before entering college I knew HOW to study Chinese, but I didn't know WHY.

Then I knew why.

During the last day of my language class, my college Chinese teacher gave us this advice:

"Right now you are all at the peak of your Chinese ability.  For most of you will slope downward gradually and forget.  But if you want to maintain what you have I only have one word:  Read.  There is no shortcut.  No trick.  Just read as much as you can."

Something within me still wants to learn this beautiful ancient language. Although I can carry a basic conversation, I'm still too far from an educated Chinese person.

After 17 years, my hands still cramp.



 

La Mian Chinese Noodle Recipe in English! 牛肉拉麵

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahr-bIm6MrU

0:44  1 clear, 2 white, 3 red, 4 green, 5 yellow

0:54  Let’s introduce the ingredients! Beef, Noodle flour, scallion, daikon, cilantro, salt, msg, pepper, LYE / SODA WATER/ alkali powder (BE SURE THIS IS FOOD GRADE AND SOMETHING YOU CAN FIND IN A SUPERMARKET, NOT A HARDWARE STORE!)

1:12  PROVERB: A SOUP BEFORE A MEAL, SURPASSES GOOD MEDICINE

1:14 STEP ONE: Make beef broth *Throw the meat in like the video

1:27 It’s healthy

1:31 STEP 2: Mix the Noodle dough 1:39 For every 1 kg of noodle flour, add 10gram of salt and 5 grams of lye/soda water

1:42 As the old saying goes, “Salt is the bones, lye/soda water are the nerves”

1:50 Add water little at a time, DON’T POUR TOO MUCH!

2:01 Mix it until it barely clumps together Skim off the fat, this is a clear soup after all! LA MIAN CAN STRENGTHEN THE BODY! Making noodles is good exercise, like a dancing child!

2:29 WHEN YOU’RE READY GIVE ME A CHANCE to dance

2:31 BOIL THE BEEF ON HIGH UNTIL ROLLING BOIL, then TURN HEAT TO SIMMER AND COOK FOR 40 MINUTES

2:35 After mixing the dough to a ball, let the ball REST FOR 5 MINUTES

2:55 Get some oil and start rubbing (phrasing, lol) Come over here and feel it up (phrasing, lol)

2:57 *scrolling text Alternate with your left and right, you can exercise your upper body (phrasing, lol. Look, he’s trying to seduce you)

3:08 STEP 3: Drop the noodles (I am not kidding, the first character is also slang for male genitalia.)

3:39 Dropping the noodles is the key

3:42 When the noodles twist and rotate, make sure you go both clockwise and counterclockwise. The thinner the dough, the weaker it becomes. Also, don’t forcefully pull the noodles, feel the elasticity of the noodles and let the noodles stretch itself out.

4:05 Oh, my big stomach is in the way.

4:15 rub some more oil

4:26 Let’s flavor the soup salt, msg, pepper

4:45 1. Pull with the strength of both arms. 2. pull with uniform energy

4:55 Flatten

5:04 Pull, pull, then dust with flour

5:09 Again, don’t fight against the noodle and feel, or it will break

5:30 BOIL WATER, THEN THROW IN NOODLES. DON”T IMMEDIATELY STIRE THE NOODLES! LET SIT for 5 MINUTES BEFORE TOUCHING NOODLES

6:50 Add your toppings and you’re done!

6:58 LOSING IS SUCCESS’ MOTHER!

7:05 Let’s review!

1. Bring the meat to a boil and then simmer for 40 minutes

2. Mixing dough: 1 kg flour, 10 grams salt, 5 grams lye/soda water

3. Pulling noodles: Pull firmly and evenly, but don’t rush!


**Editor's note:  I didn't translate every detail, just the basic gist and funny stuff.  Feel free to leave comments for comments, concerns, and future requests.

Reading in Chinese and Western Literary Traditions - Tang

An interesting quote about approaching Chinese poetry

The Best Graduate Student in Religious Studies: Xuanzang

Xuanzang took a round trip from China to India by foot during the early 7th century.  Talk about the ultimate backpacking trip!   This map charts his journey:



(http://www.silk-road.com/artl/hsuantsang.shtml)

When I think about his journey, I can't help but think about graduate school.  He's arguably the best graduate student in world history:

• He realized that China didn't have comprehensive detail about Buddhism and needed more credible sources.


• He defied the emperor Tang Taizong's orders went against everyone's advice.  Makes modern visa issues seem like a trifle.


• He did amazing fieldwork.  He learned dozen foreign languages and befriended many locals.  Plus there's the whole let's make a loop around India thing.


• Buddhism in India was on the wane, so he went just in time before Buddhist knowledge became irrelevant in India.


• As John Keay in A History of China puts it, he brought 500 trunks, an ENTIRE LIBRARY's worth of Buddhist text carried by HUNDREDS of monks.  He brought an ENTIRE UNIVERSITY with him!  Sadly, one of his elephants fell in a precipice.


• Emperor Tang Taizong ordered 'Great Pagoda of the Wild Goose' to house all of Xuanzang's precious text.  It's essentially a university for Xuanzang.  I use the present tense of the verb "is" because IT'S STILL THERE, 1400 years later!  Take that Cambridge!

(Shablam!  All in it's jpeg glory!)

It's easy to bash humanities graduate students and say that their work serves little to no practical purpose towards humanity.  Then I think about this pagoda, and how Xuanzang permanently changed the moral values of east Asia.

I'm still considering graduate school in Chinese literature.

I have a new twitter!  Feel free to add me: @TPolmelo.  Feel free to comment on grad school or any other thoughts as well!

Kitsch Helps Us Come to Terms With Horror

Spoiler Alert!!!: Scottsboro Boys, Bleach (Anime)

Kitsch is difficult to define, but I like to put it this way:  It's something that tries to exaggerate meaning when it's not there, like a gilded cardholder or pink flamingo garden ornaments.

Sometimes when the world pushes inhumanity to the extreme, and a serious objective narration of the account may not suffice because any attempt to recreate its essence will in some way demean it.

I recently watched the Scottsboro Boys at the Ahmanson Theater.  It's about the wrongful persecution of a group of nine African-American teenagers in Alabama during the Great Depression.  Two Caucasian Alabama women accused the boys of gang raping them.

It was doubly kitschy because it was a circus act within a broadway musical.  The audience knew that obvious inconsistencies, like African American boys playing the part of southern Alabama women, but the musical progresses and gradually stings the audience of the pain of the inmates.

My favorite song was "Southern Days."  Before the verdict was read to the boys, all of them were imagining how they would spend the moment leaving jail.  When all expound their hopes, the interlocutor enters the scene and attempts to convince the boys to remain in the South.  With forced faces they all begin to sing a folk song about the South.

These lines completely shifts the tone of the number:

HOW THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
COME BACK TO ME!
LIKE MY DADDY HANGIN’ FROM A TREE.

It completely shatters the song's attachment towards Southern nostalgia.

Nostalgia is the greatest threat to history.  At least censorship or forgetting history allows room for one to wonder if pain occurred, but nostalgia erases history AND seduces one to accept a comfortable narrative.

The danger of nostalgia also reminds me of Japanese anime.

(source)

When Ben Lewis interviews Takashi Murakami, Murakami talks about how after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after 30 years Japan creates children's television shows that depicts cartoons of this image.

I didn't realize this until I wrote this blog, but the reverberation of this incident is STILL in modern day anime.

SPOILER ALERT FOR BLEACH!!!

This video is the climax of the Bleach series.  Fast forward to 25:00:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMFTwjj7lO0

I'm skipping vital details, but the flowy hair guy has to kill the evil butterfly looking thing.  The entire Bleach series hinges on this moment, but if you have no idea what's going on, this final explosion of raw power from the protagonist is eerily similar to an atomic blast.

Victims of the atomic bomb blinded and deafened by the explosion explain how they saw something as bright as the sun, and couldn't hear anything because their eardrums would rupture from the shockwave.

When we look back into a traumatic history, we cannot recreate the event to convey the feeling.  Ironically kitsch allows us to look without altering the feelings of history.

 

 

Meditation and Emptiness

It's hard to figure out what you're emptying before you start meditation. Page 437 of DeBary and Bloom's Sources of Chinese Tradition Volume One illustrates emptiness within a Western context is something pessimistic and existential. *Buddhism instead follows that if all phenomenological events, or events based on sensual perception, are unreal, then the only reality is Emptiness (sunyata).

"The ultimate Emptiness was here and now, everywhere and all- embracing, and there was, in fact, no difference between the great Emptiness and and the phenomenal world (samsara).  Thus all beings were already participants of the Emptiness that was nirvana; they  were already Buddha if only the would realize it."  (DeBary and Bloom 437)

The sunflower also illustrates sunyata.  My apologizes for forgetting the source, but the logic goes like this:  What is a sunflower?  Is it the water that quenches it's thirst?  Is the the sun that gives it warmth?  Is it the nutrients?  These are all necessary, but insufficient conditions that define the sunflower.  The sunflower is all and none of these things at the same time.   Our personal sensory and mental frame that defines the existence of the sunflower in this particular way.  Emptiness is not the lacking of something or negative space, it's a state of non-being, lacking identity and context.

When I meditate, I imagine myself as a raindrop in a vast ocean.  My monkey mind loves to imagine itself rising to great heights and crashing to the earth.  But once I sink deep into the ocean, I encounter the great void of the great dark ocean.  It's that feeling of staring across the dark ocean at night.  A sudden visceral truth about nature puts me into shock, but I can't rationalize or explain this experience.

For the curious beginner, Australian Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm gives a simple and light-hearted take on breathing meditation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCUQdIbfWwQ

Give it a try!  No purchase necessary!

Citation:

De, Bary William Theodore, Irene Bloom, Wing-tsit Chan, Joseph Adler, and Richard John Lufrano. Sources of Chinese Tradition. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. Print.

*If you want to be nit-picky this is from The Three-Treatise School.

Money is the Catalyst to Culture

Citing Ayn Rand irks many people, but she did make a strong point about the role of money. In Atlas Shrugged,  Rand claims money isn't evil.  Money is a stack of semi-precious metal and paper.  She defines it as the representation of one's work, and people define through consent the numerical value behind money.

Some argue that because money is the instrument that can acquire weapons and illegal narcotics, it must be the root of evil.  But money also commissions art and creates incentive to research medicine.  The way we use money defines our culture.

Let's consider the modern yuppie.  Said person pursues a position in banking to accumulate wealth so that the person may enjoy front row tickets to see Beyonce or eat expensive steak.  We claim that this person is living excessively with little to no regard to the rest of society.

Backtrack to 11th century Northern Song China.  A businessman trades his goods at a profit so that he may cultivate his fields for the best tasting tea.  The emperor offers the grand prize of exclusive rights to sell him tea.  Everyone competes and refines their methods until someone wins.  Again, tea has little to no utilitarian value to society.  Is it wrong to enjoy a cup tea?

Is it because of the recentness of modern culture that we can say it lacks "cultural" value?  Imagine if something we now consider lowbrow, like Justin Beiber's lyrics, became classical canon for future English textbooks centuries from now?

Regardless of what your taste is for tea or Justin Beiber, we can't deny that both were the products of the movement of money.  All elements of culture require human energy to produce.  If the definitions of human morals are also the product of human energy, couldn't I make the touchy claim that morals are also made of money?

I'm Going to Slow Down on Blogging for a While

Yes, I know, it's sad, but I have to start studying for a very important language test for an awesome chance to work at a very prestigious organization.  I won't name names yet, but it's for a place I'm willing to sacrifice almost anything to get.

But this will also be an excellent opportunity to update everyone on my learning progress, so I'm going to update you on my studying progress about once a week or less.  This week, I'm going to look up the most common words used in academia and start translating!

Anthony Bourdain is My Inner Narrator

(Source)

A good chef told me three conditions must be satisfied before a customer enjoyed their food:

1)  Is this customer hungry?

If the customer just ran a marathon, anything tastes good.  I remembered  my half marathon the oranges at mile 10 were ambrosia.

2)  Is the customer with friends?

Customers are less likely to complain about their food if they have good company.  Unless you manage to piss off the whole table.

3)  Is there money in this guy's pocket?

If one is too worried about personal finances, nothing tastes good.

Then, you can blame the restaurant.

Food writing isn't so much about the edible material on the plate, but the narrative behind the edible.  One would never imagine a sun-damaged former drug addict chef from New York City would be one of the most powerful food critics on earth.  Many people would drop everything to have a beer or meal with him.

Why?  He has an interesting narrative.

Take for instance his trip to Finland in a reindeer restaurant:

"Like reindeers?  I do!  I like 'em on my plate, while Santa looks in mute horror as he's duct taped and ball-gagged!"

He's very honest and direct with his thoughts.  He's also self-deprecating or insulting his own culture (America) when commenting, but he's always careful not to offend the culture he's visiting.

One of his best episodes was his trip to Saudi Arabia.  Before dinner when his hosts are praying to Mecca, he reminds his Western audience to appreciate the present beauty this foreign culture.

Paradoxically Anthony Bourdain has the easiest and hardest medium to critique.  It's relatable to everyone because unlike movie, print, or art, everyone alive has some visceral experience with food.  At the same time it's the easiest way to offend someone if one expresses disgust with another culture's food.

I don't believe it's necessary to shock or offend to get good blog views.  As my blog keeps developing, I will try my best to tell it like it is with my inner Bourdain.  So long as you're honest, relatable, and clear, you have a story worth telling.

Why I Don't Believe in Heaven

So the random number generator landed on.... wait for it...

Buddhism!

Most people imagine the morbidly obese version. or the one that snorts cocaine on South Park, but I like the more traditional one with the depiction of enlightenment:



(Although, maybe he was morbidly obese if he still wasn't skin and bones after fasting for 49 days.)

Buddhism was one of the last major religions of China.  It was sort of like the free love movement in the US during the 1960's.  Conservatives thought it would be the end of society, while liberals were fighting "the system."

Theodore and Bloom in "Sources of Chinese Tradition" pointed out that when Buddhism entered China, China was the first foreign civilization that had a writing system, so initial Chinese texts on Buddhism record the transition from skepticism to eventual *acceptance.

When I was sitting on the grass of my campus quad, a Christian came up to me and asked if I believed in Jesus and internal salvation.

Don't get me wrong, Jesus is a pretty chill and awesome guy, but to me heaven doesn't make any sense.  Let's say you spend your life living "to the bible," but your ideal of heaven is murdering people and watching them writhe in pain, didn't that defeat the purpose of living a good life?  This version of heaven is someone else's hell!   I don't think God would spend His time actualizing "300" for one's pleasure.

Or what if a grumpy person who lived out in the woods hated all of humanity, but didn't act on his immorality.  Does he get a fast pass to heaven too?

I don't believe in heaven because salvation comes from understanding and acting good, not acting good for the sake of heaven.  It takes more than good behavior to reach this higher state of being, whether you call it heaven or I call it nirvana.  It takes having full faith and acting  on our goodness an compassion that makes us good people.

Or I could be dead wrong, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster rules all.  All hail His carbohydrate complexity!



(Source)

*The Chinese are still struggling with the Dalai Lama.  It's official, my blog will be banned from mainland China!

Eels

I watched a nature documentary on eels and how they will die like any other living thing that appeals to human appetite.  Pacific Island culture rely on the movement of eels from salt water to fresh water to forecast the coming of winter.  A native Pacific Islander taught some modernized children about the importance of eels within their culture.  He said eels were "the foundation of  civilization" because it revealed truths about nature.



(These eels most likely hatched in the northeastern United States!)

Civilization begins when humans begin to control patterns in nature, instead of nature controlling humans.  All civilization begins with some postulate about natural truths.

Before Mr. Bacon Lover starts seeping his ideology into every discussion about Chinese culture, Shang Dynasty bone divination provides a glimpse into a crucial postulate about Chinese culture:

Fate has been predestined by nature.

After performing a ritual, the diviner would interpret some message about the future.  Sometimes they're completely wrong, but it provides people comfort "knowing" how to prepare for the future.  Since society collectively accepts the fate of these messages, everyone can see how their lives fit within this natural order.

For the most part, Chinese culture (and I use this term loosely) builds corollaries on this postulate.  But the industrial revolution modernization that comes with it is a huge shock to Chinese culture, because suddenly the will of an individual has the possibility to overcome the preconceived natural order of Chinese society.

Can human ability define fate?

During the 2008 opening ceremony of the Chinese Olympics, of all the characters in the Chinese language to be displayed by their human powered typesetter, they choose "和," or harmony.  The act demonstrates the beauty of being in complete harmony of the order around us, and the individual contributes to harmony.  But as we continue to explore Chinese literature together, the collective can also stagnate growth and be closed minded to improvement.

As I start to read "Sources of Chinese Tradition" and leave the Shang Dynasty, from this point onward I will put the page numbers in a number generator to prevent myself from viewing literature in chronological order.  One of my professors said that reading culture in chronological order implies some sort of progression or development.  Rather, literature and our thoughts are amorphous that waxes and wanes to the conditions of society and nature.

Quick Update

Instead of reading An Anthology of Chinese Literature, I will read, " Sources of Chinese Tradition" by De Bary, Bloom, and Alder The text focuses more on prose and argument than literary aesthetics. Plus I got it for a dollar at the clearance section of an awesome bookstore.



http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Chinese-Tradition-Vol-1/dp/0231109393

My copy was formerly owned by Bonnie Bae. Whoever you are, I have all your comments!

The Death of a Language

Within one or two generations, my native dialect of TeoChew Chinese will disappear from the face of the earth.

We'll still have DVD recordings and academic linguistics articles that will preserve the existence of the language, but I'm sure no one after the time mentioned will be taught this language from one's parents.

I only know one person on earth today who can speak this dialect before modern China's education system homogenized the whole country to Mandarin, and the Chinese diaspora from WWII forced TeoChew people to move to difference foreign cultural environments.

But even by extinction standards, something weird is going to happen.  Anyone who knows Chinese characters will know exactly what visual text it saying, and can reconstruct pronunciation with proper sources, but connotation will be lost.  It's like someone 100 years from now watching The Simpsons.

So what's the responsibility of my generation?

Do nothing.

It may sound a bit defeatist, language can't just serve the purpose of entertainment, first and foremost it has be practical. Emperor Qin Shihuang and Sugata Mitra  know that effective communication of power requires the same group to use the same terms of communication.  Let's face it, everyone who wants to profit from business at some point must know English.

Is something get lost from not knowing a language?  Sadly, subtle points of thought and wit will be erased.  But in exchange, I get to use a language that is the keystone to my ancestral language.  The corpus of knowledge gathered from the humanities is majority English.  If children 100 years from now wanted to reconstruct TeoChew, or any other dying language, they just need dictionaries, academic journals, and audio-visual material to raise language from the dead.  Researched and written academic material is the DNA of language.

But who's going to take the time and effort to learn an archaic language?  A reliable narrative of China only existed in the English language barely 50 years ago.  Yet people are now beginning to see how this narrative provides a complex view of China.

So long as a person is curious about a story, language will not die.

Random:

If you're curious about TeoChew Opera, these children are adorable.

"Educational"

"I don't want to do that, it's too educational."

The English languages uses the word "educational" as an adjective, describing something that has a quality related to education.  But how did it have a derogatory connotation?

"Learning" is more innate.  An individual arrives at a realization.  "Education" appropriates knowledge from  institution or external entity.  The former is active, while the latter is passive.

I've recently been reading this excellent blog about homeschooling by Penelope Trunk.  Here are a few brief points about her views on educating kids:

1.  Kids can more efficiently teach themselves how to learn if you give them room to be self-motivated.

2. Kids in public schools are taught to passively regurgitate information for a standardized test, not solve complex problems in society.

3.  The structure of the public school system is too rigid to allow for kids to learn for themselves.

4.  The subjects taught in public school education are mostly useless to the real world.

5.  The social environment in public schools is about competing with young immature children, while the working world requires collaboration with adults.

I had to unlearn habits that were enforced from public education.  Education was something you did at school, completely separate from our personal lives.  Public education discourages you from allowing your self-motivation to fully explore the complexity of learning.  You can only learn in a given amount of time and test from an arbitrary outline.

Maybe that's why people don't spend time reading.  It's not that we lack the ability, but somehow we think learning takes place in a finite amount of time.  After graduating, the time to educate ourselves is "gone."  All we only look forward to work, retirement, then death.

I'm still wondering after leaving college whether I truly "educated" myself.  Outside the context of grades and a career, can we still "educate" ourselves?

Sometimes I wonder why I'm still studying Chinese after leaving college.  Then I remember this quote from Mencius.

學問之道無他, 求其放心而已矣

The way to learning requires nothing else, just search for what you let go of in your heart.

                                                     ---孟子  Mencius

Clear Bright - Qingming

(Here's the full scroll.)

Qingming (清明) literally means "clear bright." For those of you unfamiliar, today is Qingming, a special holiday where many Chinese visit their ancestral graves.  The living will visit the graves of their ancestors, give the gravestone a good clean, and offer food to deceased relatives.  And for the pyro deep within us, burn paper money.  It's a day of veneration, reflection, and catharsis.

Ritual gives us a set of instructions on how to act without breaking social convention. It simultaneously exposes our insecurity about a given subject.  I remember when my grandmother was will alive, I was always incredibly careful not to break little taboos.  The words number "4", "the world," and "yes" have the same homophone to death.  It also didn't help that "death" my dialect used "death" and an emphatic marker.  So if it the weather was hot, you might say, "YUAH SEE," or "hot as death."

My friends on the other hand have hilarious views of death.  One of my friends wants his bodies to be stuffed by a taxidermist so he can be placed on a rocking chair on his porch.  We all assigned each other a death letter, and would all agreed we would somehow die by that letter.  Mine was "p."  During one of my trips to New York, a pipe exploded in the middle of the street.  I was exactly on that street the day before it exploded because I recognized the picture on the New York Times.

I don't like the mainstream views of death. The Judeo-Christians construct the concept of "heaven," some distant place where the deceased are neatly tucked away in distant paradise.  They get an eternal version of Florida while God is the real estate broker.  Death becomes something distant from the living.  Oh, and there's hell if you didn't maintain your moral credit rating.

The west celebrates death with Easter, the death of Jesus, and Halloween, who knows what that is.  Halloween is the weirdest day on the calendar.  How did culture decide that children should dress up as demons and beg for candy from random strangers?  Maybe death wants sugar.

Chinese ritual denies death.  Ritual offerings are arranged such that the dead enjoy the feast set up by living descendants.  Burning paper money is to maintain a good standard of living in purgatory.  One of my cousins mentioned that if everyone sent money to their spiritual relatives, wouldn't there be massive spiritual monetary inflation?  I should burn a federal reserve along with the spiritual money.

We fear death because it forces us to examine it's antithesis, life.  Both Halloween and Qingming proffer living good deeds in in change for a good spiritual life.  Bad people go to hell, or have no descendants to provide credit for purgatory.  Let's face it, we will all have to die at some point in time.  For those who practice Qingming and are literally keeping in touch with death, I hope this ritual helps the living find clarity.

 

Record of The Yueyang Tower 岳陽樓記

作者，　范仲淹

By　Fan　Zhongyan

Translated by Yoyo

1046 AD, Northern Song Dynasty

慶曆四年春，

In the spring of 1044

滕子京謫守巴陵郡。

Tong Zijing of Ba Ling was banished as governor.

越明年，政通人和，

Passing into the next year, governance was successful and people were peaceful.

百廢具興，乃重修岳陽樓，

100 things that were cast aside are now reintroduced, thereupon the Yueyang Tower was retrofitted.

增其舊制，刻唐賢今人詩賦於其上，

And more added to the establishment.  Carvings of the poetry of Tang worthies are at the top of this place.

屬予作文以記之。

It is entrusted with essays in order to commemorate it.

予觀夫巴陵勝狀，

Ba Ling has a fine and exquisite appearance in my opinion.

在洞庭一湖。銜遠山，吞長江，浩浩湯湯(音：商) ，橫無際涯，

At Dong Tang Lake, distant mountains swallow the Yangze, magnificent and mighty, it is vast with no boundary.

朝暉夕陰，氣象萬千。

Dawn is radiant and dusk is gloomy, atmosphere and scenery has 10000, 1000 aspects.

此則岳陽樓之大觀也，前人之述備矣。

This place is Yueyang Tower's great spectacle, people of the past narrate how they were possessed.

然則北通巫峽，南極瀟湘；

This place also connects north to Wu Xia.  To the extreme south there is the Xiao and Xiang River.

遷客騷人，多會於此。覽物之情，得無異乎？

Banished travelers and poets all meet there to perceive the scenery.  How would they feel differently?

若夫霪雨霏霏，連月不開﹔

As for the incessant rain falling fast, for continuous months they do not open,

陰風怒號，濁浪排空﹔

Dark wind wails incessantly, muddy waves soar,

日星隱曜，山嶽潛形；

The sun and stars are hidden, Shan Qiu a hidden form;

商旅不行，檣傾楫摧﹔

Business and travel cannot traverse,

薄暮冥冥，虎嘯猿啼﹔

The mast topples and the oar breaks, the tiger growls and the gibbon cries.

登斯樓也，則有去國懷鄉，

When one climbs the tower, they are away from the capital and long for home country.

憂讒畏譏，滿目蕭然，感極而悲者矣！

There is anxiety for slander and fear of mockery at court.  One's eyes are full of desolation.  One's emotions are full of sadness.

至若春和景明，波瀾不驚﹔

As for spring's peaceful and bright scenery, waves are undisturbed

上下天光，一碧萬頃﹔

up and down the sky glows,  all jade green for 10000 mu.

沙鷗翔集，錦鱗游泳﹔

Sand gulls flock together, beautiful fish swim;

岸芷汀蘭，鬱鬱青青；

Angelica by the river, rich and luxuriant;

而或長煙一空，皓月千里﹔

Pervasive mist fills the sky, bright moon thousands of li away;

浮光躍金，靜影沉璧；漁歌互答，此樂何極！

Floating golden light dances, deep beneath the water the jade disk, brother fisherman call each other, this is the fullest extent of joy!

登斯樓也，則有心曠神怡，

When one climbs the tower, the heart opens and the spirit rejoices,

寵辱皆忘，把酒臨風，其喜洋洋者矣！

The emperor's favor forgotten, grasping wine and facing the wind, there is vast joy among us!

嗟夫！予嘗求古仁人之心，

Ahh!  I always search for benevolent heart of the ancients,

或異二者之為，何哉？

How would there be a difference in people's emotions?

不以物喜，不以己悲；

They're not happy for this, or sad for this;

居廟堂之高，則憂其民﹔

The neighboring shrine's height, there is anxiety for the people;

處江湖之遠，則憂其君；

Situated rivers and lakes are distant, there is anxiety over the land;

是進亦憂，退亦憂，然則何時而樂耶？

There is anxiety at court, leaving the court, how is there time to be happy?

其必曰：「先天下之憂而憂，後天下之樂而樂」

This must be said: "Before all under heaven, I will be anxious if there is anxiety.  After all under heaven is happy, then I will be happy."

歟！噫！微斯人，吾誰與歸。

Aye, if not this person, who will I turn to?

時六年九月十五日。

The time is 6 years, 9 months, and 15 days.

(Source)

It still exists after 1800 years!!!!

I failed Eileen Cheng

Eileen Cheng will rise from her grave and slap me for not finishing the translation of "Love in a Fallen City."  Instead, I will read "Sex, Lust."  No, it's not porno!  It's another work by Eileen Cheng.

I shall instead announce a new project!  I will re-read "An Anthology of Chinese Literature" in chronological order and review one out of every ten pieces or so.  I will occasionally jump to another dynasty if I feel like it.

My Ethnicity

"Where did your family come from?"

This is a heavily charged question that plucks a delicate nerve.  Depending on context, I'm mostly happy to answer.

My ancestral family lived 300 to 400 miles NE of Hong Kong.  The city is swampland, on Hanjiang river delta.



The place is famous for scholars sent to exile.  Han Yu wrote a memorial dissuading the emperor from allowing the Buddhism to enter Tang China.   "Offerings to the Alligators" was a political satire about him using the will of the emperor to banish alligators.

Why do we have an innate curiosity of this question?  Why does do people frame the identity of another person within this context?

I'm personally not offended when people ask me about my family history, but I'm frustrated that the answer to this question doesn't go beyond the stereotypes and closed off world-views.

For instance, my parent's generations constantly complains about how my generation is "forgetting the past," and that something is irrevocably lost with modernization.  Yet they too have been altered by modern times.

Cultural history is important in that it provides a chronological outline of the chain of events that produce the people of the present.  From an anthropological view, modernity thrusted us far away from out ancestral norms.

I initially believed out heartless modern world was lacking some moral high-ground of the past.  My study of China in  college helped me weave the rich narrative that connects the ancient past to the present.  I felt certain that my understanding of history and culture would show where to find this moral high-ground.

There's only one person on earth I trust when she describes my family history.  She lived through some of the most traumatic events of modern Chinese history with my own family (They were neighbors).  After one month of  graduating with a Chinese major, I had the mindset of a Chinese scholar, ready to enlighten me on the darkest parts of my family history.

I asked her if I could record her biography and preserve history for the next generation, she said,

"No.  I don't want to relive the painful moments of my life and have it exposed to everyone.  People shouldn't use me to cling onto past.  It's good to not repeat the mistakes of history, but one also has to be aware the present can change and count the blessings of the present.  Longing for an ideal to exist again blinds you from the happiness in front of you."

Our attachment to the nostalgia of family history is like an old favorite pen without ink.  It was able to communicate our thoughts from the past.  We still cling onto it, even though it no longer serves a purpose.

The past people we admire the most weren't historians or soothsayers, but the ones who defied circumstance and upbringing to do good at that moment.  History tells us that we should value the present pursuit of happiness.

Power

(Source)

I'm entering this weird "I must know everything about the Supreme Court" phase.  I know, we've all been through that.

When the Constitution first established it's three branches of government, the legislative branch was a given.  All the states wanted some control of their respective jurisdictions.  And the executive was easy because who wouldn't want the awesome quarter-back sized George Washington to lead?

The judicial branch was a shambles.  At the very beginning, the appropriations to power were still being debated.  It's no wonder the first supreme court had a convicts, drunks, and senile men.  But as time progressed, the judicial branch uses the premise that all men are created equal to rationalize how power is distributed.

Fast forward in history and I'm listening to the supreme court hearing on same sex marriage.  It's the first time I've listened to to supreme court hearing, and it struck me we how oddly casual it felt.  Granted their choice of wording and arguments are carefully crafted, but the justices and lawyers are laughing at certain point of their argument.

When I think about the premise of power in China, the concept of "天命", or Heaven's Mandate, vested power onto the Emperor.  Here's how a discussion of administering power might look like.

During 3:00- 5:00 of the clip gives you a few reconstructed views of the palace.  In 664 AD on the first day of the lunar calendar, a huge celebration was thrown for the first day the Tang Royalty would move into the palace.  This monstrosity makes the Forbidden City look like an outhouse.

At 14:00 to 16:00, the clip talks about the formal etiquette of court official to the emperor.  The long sticks they're holding are requests from the emperor.  Ivory for the highest officials, and bamboo for the lower.   Speaking out of turn, standing on the wrong position, or even holding the requests crookedly would penalize one month's salary!

But if we strip the pomp and circumstance, this dialogue on the Analects greatly expresses China's view on where power originates.

1. The Duke of Sheh informed Confucius, saying, "Among us here there are those who may be styled upright in their conduct. If their father have stolen a sheep, they will bear witness to the fact."

2. Confucius said, "Among us, in our part of the country, those who are upright are different from this. The father conceals the misconduct of the son, and the son conceals the misconduct of the father. Uprightness is to be found in this."

Legge XIII.18.

Confucius claims that one is upright when one protects the social order and recognizes the inherit power of the superior, regardless of the superior's conduct.   Social order comes at the cost of an unequal society.

It's a somewhat comforting to know that when we in America debate about the most pressing social issues of our time, we can allow our humanity to show. A reminder that power derives from our ability to rationalize the human condition at the present moment, not from some authoritarian narrative.

Please feel free to comment.  Also, how do I make a contact page on wordpress?

Love in a Fallen City 傾城之戀 Part 7

http://www.rain8.com/article/class10/1512.htm

by Eileen Chang 張愛玲

Translated by Yoyo  幽柚

Part 6

流蘇突然叫了一聲，掩住自己的眼睛，跌跌衝衝往樓上爬，往樓上爬……上了樓，到了她自己的屋子裡，她開了燈，撲在穿衣鏡上，端詳她自己。還好， 她還不怎麼老。她那一類的嬌小的身軀是最不顯老的一種，永遠是纖瘦的腰，孩子似的萌芽的乳。她的臉，從前是白得像瓷，現在由瓷變為玉——半透明的輕青的 玉。下頜起初是圓的，近年來漸漸尖了，越顯得那小小的臉，小得可愛。臉龐原是相當的窄，可是眉心很寬。一雙嬌滴滴，滴滴嬌的清水眼。陽台上，四爺又拉起胡 琴來了。依著那抑揚頓挫的調子，流蘇不由得偏著頭，微微飛了個眼風，做了個手勢。她對著鏡子這一表演，那胡琴聽上去便不是胡琴，而是笙簫琴瑟奏著幽沉的廟 堂舞曲。她向左走了幾步，又向右走了幾步，她走一步路都彷彿是合著失了傳的古代音樂的節拍。她忽然笑了——陰陰的，不懷好意的一笑，那音樂便戛然而止。外 面的胡琴繼續拉下去，可是胡琴訴說的是一些遼遠的忠孝節義的故事，不與她相干了。

Suddenly Liu Su shouted, covering her own eyes, rushing and tumbling down the stairs, down the stairs... up the stairs, to her own room.  She opened the lights, threw herself onto the dressing mirrors and closely looked at herself.  Not bad, she wasn't too old.  Her dainty body type mostly hides old age, a forever slim waist, child-like sprouting breasts.  Her face, in the past was white like marble, now marble turned to jade-- half clear young jade.  The beginning of her lower jaw was round, over the past few years it slowly sharpened, making her little face more prominent, small, and cute.  Here face was wide as it was small, but the space between her eyebrows were wide.  I pair of sweet, delicate, and clear eyeballs.  On the balcony, 4th Brother was playing the huqin.  With the rise and fall of the melody, Liu Su couldn't help but tilt her head, with a slight glance fluttering by, gestured with her hands.  She faced a mirror and started to perform.  That huqin wasn't listened to as a huqin, but a flute and qinse played with the deep hidden temple dance. She shuffled to the left, then shuffled to the right.  Each of her steps was like writing an ancient musical beat lost in translation.  She suddenly laughed, softly, a laugh of malicious intent, suddenly the music stopped.  The huqin outside continued to play, but the huqin was telling a distant story about didactic morals that no longer had anything to do with her.

這時候，四爺一個人躲在那裡拉胡琴，卻是因為他自己知道樓下的家庭會議中沒有他置喙的餘地。徐太太走了之後，白公館裡少不得將她的建議加以研究 和分析。徐太太打算替寶絡做媒說給一個姓范的，那人最近和徐先生在礦務上有相當密切的聯絡，徐太太對於他的家世一向就很熟悉，認為絕對可靠。那范柳原的父 親是一個著名的華僑，有不少的產業分佈在錫蘭馬來亞等處。范柳原今年三十三歲，父母雙亡。白家眾人質問徐太太，何以這樣的一個標準夫婿到現在還是獨身的， 徐太太告訴他們，范柳原從英國回來的時候，無數的太太們急扯白臉的把女兒送上門來，硬要□〔左"提手"右"亞"〕給他，勾心鬥角，各顯神通，大大熱鬧過一 番。這一捧卻把他捧壞了。從此他把女人看成他腳底下的泥。由於幼年時代的特殊環境，他的脾氣本來就有點怪僻。他父母的結合是非正式的。他父親有一次出洋考 察，在倫敦結識了一個華僑交際花，兩人秘密地結了婚。原籍的太太也有點風聞。因為懼怕太太的報復，那二夫人始終不敢回國。范柳原就是在英國長大的。他父親 故世以後，雖然大太太只有兩個女兒，范柳原要在法律上確定他的身份，卻有種種棘手之處。他孤身流落在英倫，很吃過一些苦，然後方才獲得了繼承權。至今范家 的族人還對他抱著仇視的態度，因此他總是住在上海的時候多，輕易不回廣州老宅裡去。他年紀輕輕的時候受了些刺激，漸漸的就往放浪的一條路上走，嫖賭吃著， 樣樣都來，獨獨無意於家庭幸福。

At the moment, 4th Brother was by himself stroking the huqin, actually because he knew that the family meeting downstairs had no extra room for his voice.  After Madam Xu left, the Baigong place couldn't avoid investigating and analyzing her opinion.  Madam Xu calculated being a go-between for Bao Luo and someone named Mr. Fan.  Recently that person and Mr. Xu had family relations at the mining company.  Madam Xu regarded their family very quickly with familiarity, believing absolutely they were reliable.  That Fan Liuyuan's father is a famous overseas Chinese person, having industry distributed throughout the Sri Lanka Malaysia region.  Fan Liuyuan is 33 this year, mother and father are deceased.  Everyone in the Bai family interrogated madam Xu, why this proper husband until now is still a bachelor.  Madam Xu told them during the time Fan Liuyuan returned from England, countless mothers jostled and forced their daughters to his door, determined (With the "raise" of the left hand, and a "sigh" with the right) to give away their daughters to him.  Locked in constant strife, all showing their magic touch, a period of big hubbub and excitement, all flattering him to death.  From then on he saw women as mud under his feet.  Due to the unusual circumstances of his childhood he had an eccentric temperament.  His parent's ties were unofficial.  His father once went abroad to investigate.  In London for the first time he meet an overseas Chinese social flower, and the two secretly married.  The birthplace of the mother was also hearsay.  Because she was afraid of the first wife's wrath, the second wife didn't dare return home, so Liu Fanyuan grew up in England.  After his father passed away, although the first wife only had two daughters, Liu Fanyuan  originally wanted to go to court to prove his identity, which became a thorny problem.  He alone stayed in London, and overcame some odds.  Afterwards suddenly he received his rights to inheritance.  To this day the Fan clan still have a grudge  towards him.  As a result the time he stayed long periods of time in Shanghai, easily knowing he could not go to his old hometown in Guangzhou.  When he was young he suffered some provocation, and gradually walked an unrestrained path, chasing women, gambling and eating.  He did everything, alone without thinking of his family's happiness.

白四奶奶就說："這樣的人，想必是喜歡存心挑剔。我們七妹是庶出的，只怕人家看不上眼。放著這麼一門好親戚，怪可惜了兒 的！"

4th wife Mrs. Bai said, "This kind of person enjoy being deliberately picky.  Our 7th Sister is common, I'm just afraid people will look down on her.  Letting go of such good family, no wonder the son is pitiable!"

三爺道："他自己也是庶出。"

3rd Brother said, "He himself is a commoner."

四奶奶道："可是人家多厲害呀，就憑我們七丫頭那股子傻勁兒，還指望拿得住他？倒是我那個大女孩子機靈些，別瞧她，人 小心不小，真識大體！"

4th Wife said, "But he's amazing!  But him with our dumb 7th Sister, think we can hold onto him?  If only my oldest daughter were more clever, don't even bother with her.  If other people aren't careful, they should know better!"

三奶奶道："那似乎年紀差得太多了。"

3rd Wife said, "Apparently the age difference is too big."

四奶奶道："喲！你不知道，越是那種人，越是喜歡年紀輕的。我那個大的若是不成，還有二的 呢。"

4th Wife, "Hey, don't you know?  With people more that way, they like them young!  If the biggest won't work, I still have a second!"

三奶奶笑道："你那個二的比姓范的小二十歲。"

3rd Wife laughed, "The second is younger than Mr. fan by 20 years."

四奶奶悄悄扯了她一把，正顏厲色地道："三嫂，你別那麼糊塗！護著七丫頭，她是白家的什麼人？隔了一 層娘肚皮，就差遠了。嫁了過去，誰也別想在她身上得點什麼好處！我這都是為了大家好。"

4th Wife quietly tugged her, with a serious tone said, "3rd madam, don't be silly!  Protecting 7th girl, who is she in the Bai household?  Separated by another mother's belly, the difference is huge.  After marrying her off, no one's even going to bother thinking for her benefit!  I'm doing this for everyone's good!"

然而白老太太一心一意只怕親戚議論她虧待了沒娘的七小姐，決定照原 來計劃，由徐太太擇日請客，把寶絡介紹給范柳原。

Yet Mother Bai was single-minded fearing the family discussion was unfairly treating the motherless 7th sister, deciding to follow the original plan, going with Madam Xu's date to invite the guest, and introducing Bao Luo to Mr. Fan Liuyuan.