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.

 

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.

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.

 

 

Reading in Chinese and Western Literary Traditions - Tang

An interesting quote about approaching Chinese poetry

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.

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.

Delicious Chinese Non-Food

Here are five things I love to taste that isn't technically Chinese food:

1. The green onions after everyone picked on the steamed fish
2. The spatula immediately after a stir fry
3. Red vinegar after I've dunked all my dumplings
4. Chicken skin exactly on a drumstick
5. Leftover oyster sauce after everyone picked the Gai-lan.

Physics Drives Me Crazy

Too tired from science today.

1Q84 Book Review

Spoiler Alert!  Avert your eyes if you haven't read this book!

 



 

If this book had a soundtrack, besides the obvious Janacek Sinfonietta, it would totally be this spy-thrillerish song from Level E's theme song.

My feelings for Ushikawa is comparable to my feelings for the novel.

Poor Ushikawa, I wasn't sure how to feel about this oddly neutral character.  I guess I felt a sense of loss for whem Ushikawa separated from his perfect family, yet his creepy life as a professional stalker prevented me from feeling sympathy.  He died like a someone trying to kill a fish for dinner.  He was Nobakov's gun and died for Tengo and Aomame to get together.

Aomame and Tengo's relationship was awkward.  We only had the moment where Tengo and Aomame were holding hands for a moment at elementary school to imprint their romantic/sexual identity for the rest of their lives.   Only the moment of orgasm for Tengo to telepathically impregnate Aomame through Fuka-Eri.

The story had to many holes and ignored the development of important characters.  Did Professor Ebisuno find what he wanted?  Where did Fuka-Eri wander off too?  What about the guy fondling momma Tengo's boobs?

Murakami toyed with the standard conventions of storytelling to skew the reader's sense of logic.  I was certain Aomame was going to shoot herself in the face when she tried to find the manhole cover in the 1Q84 world.  Aomame's love for Tengo is the only fact the she knows exists in both 1Q and 1984.  She puts the gun away and my sense of what Murakami was trying to do made sense.

Given that Aomame and Tengo lived in an irrational world in 1984, 1Q84 wasn't too big of a stretch.  Murakami convinces the reader that Aomame's and Tengo's thoughts of loving each other makes sense to the reader.  Their ability to be together is like the certainty of a single moon in the sky.

One may criticize Murakami for leaving so many unanswered questions to the reader, yet Murakami succeeds in trying convey the irrationality of knowing what true love is.  You can't be too analytical in this novel or your reasoning will lead you nowhere.  Remember this is a love story.  It's only a paper moon.

 

 

 

Dying Flowers

Unlike the rest of the country, living in Southern California enables you to prolong the heat of summer.  Sadly even the warmest of seasons fall victim to the periods of life and death.  As I was picking the last flower in my front yard, it reminded me of Lin Daiyu, a character from Cao Xueqin's The Red Chamber.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Red Chamber, it's a comprehensive book that saga that follows the rise and fall of an aristocratic Qing Dynasty family.  I initially interpreted Lin Daiyu as an overly emotional sick girl that complained to much.  But once I continued reading into her character and the movement of the story, I regretted my initial underestimation of her.

As the year 2012 is about to end, I couldn't help but not feel the present and it's ephemeral nature.  As Lin Daiyu feels pity for the fallen flower petals, she says in a few lines:

"儂今葬花人笑癡，他年葬儂知是誰?"

"As I bury flowers others laugh at my insanity, how will I know who buries me?"

"一朝春盡紅顏老，花落人亡兩不知!"

"Once spring ends the red face of youth ends, fallen flower and missing departed will never be known!"

The entire poem roughly translates to "Ode to the Flower Burial".   Here's a shortened English translation, and a the full Chinese text.

Death and endings are morbid truths that seems to have been erased, or at least blind-sighted by instant communication and high speed internet.  The internet is not a window into the future, or even the present. It's quick recall of information from the past.  Constant availability of quick information provides the illusion of power and immortality, but death and endings are truths that cannot erase.

Stop.  Smell the flowers.

 

My Poetic Idol

When I was at a coffee shop with a couple of my closest friends, they asked me which two people I wished I could spawn from.  I said Muhammad Ali and Su Shi  (That's, "Sue! Shhhh" for being  too loud in the library, not sushi you eat). I want to be a hydraulic engineer, politician, alcoholic poet that can knockout someone.

Of all the people I know in Chinese literature so far, Su Shi someone way ahead of his time, even by today's standards.  Every time I read Su Shi, he turns the most minute things turn into some heartfelt and touches my soul.  Whether it be about boiling water, or admiring is little plant from home, you can tell he writes with his soul.  My tagline alludes to a poem Su Shi wrote to his brother Su Che  (蘇澈　Pronounce "suture"):

和子由澠池懷舊

With Ziyou Fondly Remembering Mian Chi

( ZiyouPen name for Su Che)
人生到處知何似，應似飛鴻踏雪泥。

Where has everyone gone, like a flying crane that stepped into the muddy snow.
泥上偶然留指爪，鴻飛那復計東西。

By chance on the mud a clawprint, the crane flew east or west.
老僧已死成新塔，壞壁無由見舊題。

The old monk died and a new pagoda built, the ruined wall I do not see our couplet.
往日崎嶇還知否，路長人困蹇驢嘶。

Do you remember in the old days our rugged journey?  The road long, I'm tired and this old donkey whinnies.

Su Shi 11th century

(Translated by Daniel Tran)

The written word is like the crane's snow print.  In this case, Su Shi is writing to his little brother about the good times they had.  At the moment he writes this poem, traveling is still rough as he journeys into the unknown future.  What's most striking is his humor at the end.  An old Chinese man rides a slow donkey.

I'm a young Chinese dude typing on an old computer chair.  I blog fondly about the past and type slowly into the unknown future.

Note: I should be using pinyin, but I personally think it's non-intuitive to begin with.  I learned the Taiwanese pronunciation system and didn't learn pinyin until college.  Plus, I think it's fun if you want to know the pronunciation just for the moment.  Sadly, pinyin is now the international standard for pronunciation, so please don't use my half-baked system to methodically pronounce Chinese!

Note II: Stephen Owen does a much better translation of this poem