From Davis with Blog Titles

• More Jackie Than Jet
• Water, Water Everywhere
• Esso Asso Nation
• Wherever You Go, There You Are

Everyone is Using Battle School Slang

Ho
kuso
toon
jeesh
buggers
the enemy's gate is down ...

--- spoiler alert ---

"Come on," he said to Valentine one day. "Let's fly away and live forever."

"We can't," she said. "There are miracles even relativity can't pull off, Ender."

"We have to go. I'm almost happy here."

"So, stay."

"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."

So they boarded a starship and went from world to world. Wherever they stopped, he was always Andrew Wiggin, itinerant speaker for the dead, and she was always Valentine, historian errant, writing down the stories of the living while Ender spoke the stories of the dead. And always Ender carried with him a dry white cocoon, looking for the world where the hive-queen could awaken and thrive in peace. He looked a long time.

--- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

Run, Beijing, Run

2:03 half marathon

Blog Titles: October 2013 Edition

• There Will Come Soft Rain
• Green Plum Bamboo Horse
• Run, Beijing, Run
• That 80s Show

Blog Titles: July 2013 Edition

• The Death of a Socialist Girl or Vpered Tovarishchi
• The Flag of My Disposition
• We Were Always Older Than Drew Barrymore
• The Ancient Secrets of Farming

Blog Titles: Spring 2013

• Letters I’ve Been Meaning to Write
• Outlaws of the Marsh Action Figures and Others
• Songs You Never Hear at Karaoke Bars
• Geography Comes Alive
• Life in a Smowing City

A Friday Afternoon at the Summer Palace

It was the third straight day of lovely Beijing fall weather. The north winds have cleared the skies of PM2.5 particulates, leaving but a few clouds on a blue background, calling for a Summer Palace tour on a lazy Friday afternoon. Just before 2 PM, I filled my water bottles, changed into my running gear and headed out to the subway. The number 4 line runs right past Peking U.’s East Gate, a mere stone’s throw from my office. The number 4 line also runs past the northern entrance of Yiheyuan (Yi-he-yuan, i.e., the Summer Palace). At 2:15 PM, I was at the Beigongmen, or North Palace Gate, entrance of the Summer Palace. I walked around the hill (topped by FoXiang Ge, or Buddha Fragrance Temple), and started to run at 2:20 PM, as I reached the Marble Boat on the north edge of Kunming Lake. 

17 Arches Bridge (photo taken June '12)

I carefully negotiated the crowd along Changlang (the Long Corridor) and only started to run my usual pace, at 2:36, after the crowd started to dissipate after the Shiqikong Bridge (17 Arches Bridge).

The bridge next to the South Gate

I reached the southern most gate at 2:41 PM, and headed to Xidi (West Dike). My left knee started to hurt a little from the pounding on the stone slab paved walkway. So I started to slow down a bit and shuffle (instead of bouncing). The view from the southern side of Kunming Lake was breathtaking. Unfortunately, I only had my Nokia (dumb) cell phone with me and so you will have to settle for these poorly snapped photos.

View from Xidi

By 2:56 I reached the bifurcation point on Xidi, where I took this photo. Ten minutes later I ended my run at the bathroom just west of Shiqiao (Stone Bridge). I stretched a bit at stone bridge where boats between Kunming Lake and Suzhou Jie (a make-believe version of a Suzhou waterfront row). When I finished stretching my hamstrings, I looked up and saw a tourist snapping a photo in my direction --- and so I probably ended up in a photo folder on somebody’s computer, stretching in front of the Stone Bridge.

View towards Suzhou Jie from the Stone Bridge

Miscellany. Unfortunately, for some reason, the current version of google maps doesn’t allow me to mark up my run around Kunming Lake:

https://ditu.google.com/maps?q=%E9%A2%90%E5%92%8C%E5%9B%AD&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=39.99366,116.275134&spn=0.016308,0.031414&sll=39.982382,116.291656&sspn=0.124431,0.251312&brcurrent=3,0x35f051505892a34f:0x6ea89d0cc8fe038c,0,0x35f05137c865ad63:0xd348af83c67dc389%3B5,0,0&hq=%E9%A2%90%E5%92%8C%E5%9B%AD&t=h&z=15

but measurement using baidu maps showed that the long way around Kunming Lake, by taking the farthest branch on Xidi, is around 6.5 km.

At the southern end of Kunming Lake (June '12)

Since the photos taken with my Nokia were rather poor, I had to fill this blog partially with old photos of the Summer Palace. Perhaps I should finally get a smartphone? (The alternative would be to remember to carry my Canon S95 on my runs?!?!)

View of Buddha Fragrance Temple from the east (June '12)

Blog Titles: Xinjiang Edition

A Very Uighur Ramadan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• 42° 57' N, 89° 4' E or

A New Yorker in Yarnaz

 

• Hotan Express or Where Have You Gone, Uncle Kurban?
• A Bazaar by Any Other Name

To make Turpan raisins, you'll have to start with Turpan grapes

• How to Make Turpan Raisins

Apres Sarah, le Deluge

So my friend Sarah from Scripps came in for (of all things!) a climate meeting last week. We had a great time walking around Beijing the previous Sunday and even had time for a pedal-boat outing on one of my favorite ponds in the center of old Beijing.

Sarah was flying out Sunday morning at 1 AM and so I thought I would take her around town again. At around 10 AM, I headed to the Friendship hotel, and that's when the rain started. it was a mere shower when we headed to the subway station. I had other plans to go out of the city (Xiangshan,  Tanze Temple, ...), but decided, since the forecast was moderate rain during the day (with torrential downpour in the evening), we would be better off going to Yihe Yuan, i.e., the Summer Palace, whose northern entrance is next to a subway stop and conveniently on the same line that ran past the Friendship Hotel.

 

It was probably moderate rain when we got to the Summer Palace. There were still a lot of people going in and so we decided we would chance it. But instead of heading straight up the hill to see the temple (Foxiang Ge, or Buddha Fragrance Temple), I decided we should walk around and head straight to Kunming lake and the main part of the Summer Palace. The downpour continued as we walked on the northern part of the lake and along the famed long corridor/pavilion (hand painted). Still a lot of tourist groups walking in the rain, though just about everybody was waiting under cover (pavilions all around). There were stretches that the foot traffic was horrible.

Many tourists were taking the ferry in the Summer Palace (photo by Sarah)

Still we pressed on and made it to the 17-Arches Bridge and then over to see the little island on the other side. The rain was coming down with no sign of letting up. So we decided to leave, but heading back to the subway was not really an option. I didn't think going back and fighting tourist traffic was a good idea. So we headed out the new east entrance where I knew there was a bus terminal with multiple bus lines heading back into the city, some in the general direction of the Friendship Hotel.

At this point, it was raining heavily. The torrential rain in the original forecast was probably wrong by 6-8 hours. I think the city government started to ratchet up the storm warning, but Sarah & I, with only my dumb-phone, didn't have access to this information. Anyway, at the bus terminal, all 3 bus lines went past the Purple Bamboo Garden, which is reasonably close to the Friendship. Close to the northwest corner of the Purple Bamboo Garden, there was also a quiet restaurant (with decent Dongbei cuisine and free wifi) and so we got on the first bus that came.

The Purple Bamboo Garden is about half way between the edge of the old city and the Summer Palace and is along the water way that connects the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace. Supposedly the Empress Dowager would stop at the Purple Bamboo Garden, meditate at the Wanshou temple, before heading to the Summer Palace --- these trips were done entirely by boat.

The 374 bus followed the canals which ended at the southern corner of the Summer Palace and followed the water way to the Fourth Ring road. There the bus deviated from the water way and turned into the multitude of office and residential buildings within the Fourth Ring loop. Eventually,  the bus went past the water way again where the canal came out of the Purple Bamboo Garden, passed Wanshou Temple and then under the Third Ring road.

The snack stand across the street from the restaurant (photo by Sarah)

The 374 bus station at Wanshou temple was on the west (opposite) side of the Third Ring road. As Sarah and I walked over the canal, we were amazed by the flux of water and the waves that raged below. We had to take the overpass across the Third Ring, and past Wanshou temple to get to the restaurant. The small lane leading in was already partially flooded.

There was no one else at the restaurant. A waitress greeted us and sat us at the first table next to the window. (It happened to be where I sat the previous time.) I ordered an appetizer of garlic-ed eggplant and some scallion pancakes. Also ordered some bitter melon. Sarah wanted to try their Kung Pao Chicken and so we ordered it. During the brief respite between ordering and food showing up, I used my Kindle 3G to check if the (inbound) aircraft of her flight was on-time. The plane had already landed. We were amazed that Air France could afford to keep one of their planes at PEK from 3 PM to 1 AM. (Presumably, they got the 1 AM take-off slot at a good deal.)

During lunch, the rain seemed to have let up and so we relaxed and stayed perhaps longer than we should have. But at 4:30, the downpour was heavy again. At 5 PM, we thought that it was not letting up any time soon, and so we headed back to the Friendship for Sarah's luggage.

By the time we got out of the subway next to the Friendship Hotel, the torrential portion of the original forecast had started. Luckily it wasn't very windy yet. We started to think of the various options for Sarah to get to the airport. The road traffic already seemed horrible. I thought there would be flooding at various places in the city (underpasses of highways, etc.), and that even if we could hail a taxi, there's a chance that the driver would refuse to go, or the taxi would end up stuck in traffic somewhere.

So we debated the option of subway vs. airport express bus (the Friendship is a stop along bus line #4). The concierge at the Friendship was more than happy to call a taxi (though I doubt any would show up), and suggested the airport express bus as an alternative. In the end, we decided on the airport express bus as it was closer than the subway and it didn't require any transit changes (vs. 2 different subway lines and the airport express shuttle). The bus would follow the Third Ring road to the Airport Expressway and so, chances are, it would be okay. We walked indoors within the Friendship for as long as we could. Then we dashed the last 200 meters to the bus station. The bus came pretty quickly and I saw Sarah off safely. And then I headed to the subway to head home. This was at around 6:30 PM. Little did I know that I am about to head into some severe flooding.

The subway ride itself was fine. And then I exited to heavy rain and very rapid water flow along the Fourth Ring road. I took the overpass across the Fourth Ring and headed back to our apartment. On the north side of the Fourth Ring road, the water level was only up to the sidewalk and so I thought nothing of it. I rotated my backpack so that it hung in front of me to keep my Kindle dry and heading further north.

Then I saw a bunch of cars stopped way before the next traffic light. There were already a few abandon cars at the light. I kept walking. The water level on the sidewalk kept rising and rising as I walked. It was already knee deep when I got to the light (and the last intersection before our apartment). I turned the corner and realized I had no idea how deep the water was. It was not quite car handle level at street level and I was still on the sidewalk. It was the last 200 meters and I could see un-submerged sidewalk about 50 meters away. Besides, it was still pouring and the water level was still rising. So I had to press on.

Luckily the deepest portion was only mid-thigh level and eventually I made it through to the lane leading to our apartment complex. There a passenger was helping a taxi driver to push the stalled cab off to the side. There was no security at the gate, which was left open. As I walked on the grounds, I saw the drain covers repeatedly tossed upwards by the water backing up.

I put everything in the wash and then took a long shower. Multiple text messages showed up while I was showering. Many friends who went out to the mountains had to abandon their cars and find a village to stay at. My wife made it safely to her mother's at around the same time I made it back to the apartment. The flooding there wasn't nearly as severe. I told her that she should just spend the night. There wouldn't be any taxis or busses, in any case.

The rain kept pouring and pouring. From our 11th floor apt, I saw more and more abandoned cars. Each of them making boat waves before going in too deep. And yet they kept driving in ...

At around 10 PM, the rained started to let up a bit and the water level started to subside. Finally at around 11 PM, I could see the wheels on some of the abandoned cars, as the last buses with the previously stranded passengers started to finish their routes and to head to their respective bus terminals.

Some numbers:

·         37 71 deaths (1 struck by lightning)

·         Estimated 20 million USD in damages, not counting the

·         5 million damaged cars

·         An average of 17 cm rain fall within beijing city

·         3 underpasses had water levels > 2 meters

On the bright side, Beijing's main reservoir (Miyun reservoir) added > 28 million cubic meters of water on Saturday. Equivalent in volume to 14 times that of Kunming lake (Summer Palace).

P.S. Sarah's bus got to the airport without a hitch. Her Air France flight was on time, but because of a mis-parked aircraft, the actual take-off was an hour late.

Blog Titles (Late July 2012 Edition)

• Apres S, le Deluge
• The Lunar Calendar in a Gregorian World
• A Tale of Three Cities
• Summer in the Dead of Winter
• Feudalism As Usual
• Run, Beijing, Run
• Idioms for New China

Books I Have Given Away

At the end of PVG’s first year at my former place of employment, I presented him with a copy of A Wild Sheep Chase. For a while, it was my go-to gift book. Not only does it give a suitable introduction to Haruki Murakami (who’s probably my favorite writer), but, on this occasion, I wanted to remind P. that it was all “a wild goose sheep chase.” (And in that sense, the English translation of the title of 羊をめぐる冒険 gave it an extra colloquial flavor not in the original title.)

For a while, B. (WR, Jr.), P. (FJSR) and I had (and, at that time, probably the only) North American copies of Norwegian Wood (the translation by Alfred Birnbaum). I had asked a friend of mine to send me 3 copies of the 2-volume Kodansha paperback edition from Tokyo. Vintage finally acquired the rights to the Jay Rubin translation and published it in the US in 2000.

One Hundred Years of Solitude. I read a couple of times the Rabassa translation before I started to give it to various friends. (I have even given a Chinese translation to my Taiwanese cousin Kevin, but I must say that the Chinese translation was horrible!)

When I left Cambridge, Massachusetts for the ivory towers of the University of Chicago, I gave DBAJ most of my science fiction collection. Years later, when D & MRJ. (now married and with compounded last names) visited me in New York, I gave M. my copy of an English translation of Half of Man is Woman. M. lost it on a NYC subway car (and now a new copy of this paperback is listed for $82.27 on amazon dot com).

I gave DS an English translation of Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum, and, after he read it, he gave me a copy of Pather Panchali. (A Bengali classic for a modern Chinese epic). I also gave EAS the same Howard Goldblatt translation of Red Sorghum, and he blamed me for not being able to drink red wine for months.

To AD, RG, MF, … I gave Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land. RG was annoyed when he first realized that it was, after all, not fiction. (“The slave of MS H.6 first stepped upon the stage of modern history in 1942. His was a brief debut, in the obscurest of theatres …”)

To KKY, most recently I gave books by Peter Hessler.

I gave AK a copy of River Town, but he thought was a loan and gave it back to me. I gave another copy to CN. I bought a used copy of River Town on alibris recently and plan to give it to away as a belated birthday or an early Christmas present.

I gave my own copy of Cryptomonicon to T. (AGF). (In return, T. gave me a copy of The Shadow of the Wind in anticipation of my trips to Barcelona.) I bought a few more copies of Cryptonomicon and have given all but one away.

I gave LPW my copy of Guns, Germs and Steel, Greg Egan’s Incandescence and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She bought copies of GGS and Incandescence, gave my copy of Incandescence back to me and gave me a new copy of GGS. Now that copy of Incandescence is sitting in Shanghai in DC’s office, and a brand-new GGS is on (seemingly permanent) loan to KL.

To TC, I gave Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Possession, …, on her birthdays over the years.

To Sandra and Alissa, I gave Percy Jackson & the Olympians, The Wee Free Men and Nicholas in Trouble for Christmas 2009.

To Ryan, I gave The Complete Calvin and Hobbes for Christmas 2007.

To Tiffany Brooke, I gave, among many other books, Banner in the Sky, Howl’s Moving Castle, The Chronicles of Narnia, and various volumes from the Harry Potter and the Petit Nicholas series. A copy of The Alchemist is also sitting in one of the bookcases in our Beijing apartment for if and when Tiffany shows up next.

Lately I have given out copies of Cloud Atlas (to ATS, MB, …) and, when I didn’t have a copy handy, have told various friends that it’s the book to read.

To my wife, on one of my visits from Cambridge UK, I brought The Chinese Century (when I was in the UK and the Spence book came out there first). Just to name a few other books that I have given her: Jon Lee Anderson’s biography of Che Guevara, William Hinton’s The Great Reversal, National Geographic’s The Photographs, The Complete New Yorker, Chinese Propaganda Posters, … On our one year anniversary, I gave her The Days Are Just Packed, and wrote opposite the frontispiece a quote from a Robert Browning poem.

But I am always drawn back to the one children’s book I most often give away. Emily Cheney Neville’s It’s Like This, Cat.

Some times, even now, when I am in a pensive mood, as I look out of a window or a doorway or as I stand at the threshold of a door or a gateway, I envision myself in that pose. I’ve never lived in Gramercy Park---the closest was my 4 years at Stuy or my years in Chelsea---and when I first read the book as a kid, had no idea where Gramercy was. But, for some reason, when I think of explaining New York to friends, when I start with “It’s like this …,” (when there are so many other lines I could start with) I would always have this image in the back of my mind.

Miscellany and Afterthoughts. Of course, by now, all my books are my wife's books.

Think tannin for the reason that EAS couldn't drink red wine after reading Red Sorghum. Think tannin and how the novel's protagonist accidentally made the best sorghum wine...

Maybe CF will finally read It's Like This, Cat.

I wrote this blog not only to remind myself of my bibliophile friends, but also as a warm-up piece for the upcoming Stuyvesant HS reunion.

Blog Titles (Mid Sept 2011 Edition)

I know, I know, I still need to write "Water, Water Everywhere"... but more blog titles for now...

• Four Days in September (2011)
• It's Like This ... or Books I Have Given Away
• Childhood's End
• Games People Play
• E-s- A--o Nation 
• Phyllis and Wilma
• As We Get Older and Stop Making Sense

Blog Titles (Mid July 2011 Edition)

• Water, Water Everywhere
• The Literary Heart is a Lonely Hunter
• E--- A--- Nation
• Ten Dime Open Heart
• Waiting for J.K. Rowling

(CQ/CC)TV Imitates “Movie Night”

An example of my wife's movie posters

At the beginning of the year, for a few weeks, CQTV (Chongqing TV) was showing “Red Movies” almost in sync with my wife. (as if someone was watching us …) My wife even wrote an e-mail to CQTV to thank them for starting a “Red Movie” series. Her e-mail included some of the movies she had shown and had planned on showing, but CQTV never replied.

 

In any case, here’s the list of movies (26 so far) that my wife has shown on “Movie Night” (starting last year on Nov 26)

 

 

11/26 我们村里的年轻人 Our Village Youngsters (1963)

12/03 冰山上的来客 Visitors on Icy Mountain (1963)

12/10 林则徐 Lin ZeXu (1959)

12/17 战火中的青春 Youth in Battle (1959)

1/07 五朵金花 Five Golden Flowers (1959)

1/14 李双双 Li Shuang Shuang (1962)

1/21 闪闪的红星 Sparkling Red Star (1974)

2/18 林海雪原 Tracks in the Snowy Forest (1960)

2/25 槐树庄 Locust Tree Village (1962)

3/04 祖国的花朵 Flowers of Our Motherland (1955)

3/11 今天我休息 My Day Off (1959)

3/18 锦上添花 (“Icing on the Cake”) (1962)

3/25 霓虹灯下的哨兵 Sentinels Under Neon Lights (1964)

4/01 林家铺子 The Lin Family Shop (1959)

4/08 红色娘子军 The Red Detachment of Women (1961)

4/15 铁道游击队 Railway Guerrilla (1956)

4/22 祝福 Blessing (1956)

4/29 花好月圆 A Perfect Marriage (1958)

5/06 大浪淘沙 Gold and Sand (1966)

5/13 山间铃响马帮来 A Horse Caravan (1954)

5/20 春蚕 Silkworm (1933)

5/27 枯木逢春 Withered Trees Revive (1961)

6/03 地道战 Tunnel Warfare (1965)

6/10 古刹钟声 The Bell Rings from an Old Temple (1958)

6/17 换了人间 Our World is Different (1959)

6/24 天山的红花 Red Blossom of Tianshan Mountain (1964)

The list included movies based on novels/novellas/short stories by famous writers (Lu Xun’s “Blessing”, Mao Dun’s “Silkworm”). There was also a ballet (“The Red Detachment of Women”) which was also one of the 8 Model Plays / Revolutionary Operas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_model_plays).

 

There were movies about national heros (“林则徐 / Lin ZeXu”) and about an ordinary policeman’s Sunday (“今天我休息 / My Day Off”). There were movies that featured spies and traitors (“Tracks in the Snowy Forest,” “The Bell Rings from an Old Temple,” “A Horse Caravan”). There were movies about the farming collective (“李双双 / Li Shuang Shuang” and “天山的红花 / Red Blossom of Tianshan Mountain”), about land reforms (“Locust Tree Village”), and about coal miners (“换了人间 / Our World is Different”). There were movies that featured ethnic minorities (“Five Golden Flowers” and “Red Blossom on Tianshan Mountain”). There was even a movie about the effort to get rid of schistosoma (血吸虫), a parasitic blood-sucking worm (“Withered Trees Revive”).

 

There are also many now famous songs in these movies (e.g., “Sparkling Red Star,” “Flowers of Our Motherland,” “Tunnel Warfare,” …) And quite a few movies formed the basis for recent TV serials (“Visitors on Icy Mountain,” “Tunnel Warfare,” “A Horse Caravan,” …)

 

These movies were made by the major studios, Beijing Movie Studios (“The Lin Family Shop”), Changchun Movie Studios (“Visitors on Icy Mountain,” “Five Golden Flowers,” “Flowers of Our Motherland,” …), Haiyan Studios (“Li Shuang Shuang,” “My Day Off,” …), Tianma Studios (“Sentinels Under Neon Lights). Later Haiyan (literally Sea Swallow) and Tianma (Sky Horse) studios merged with other studios in Shanghai to become the present day Shanghai Movie Studios.

 

August First film opening

Quite a few movies were made by the August First (八一) Movie Studios (“Tracks in Snowy Forest,” “Tunnel Warfare,” …). August 1^st, 1927, the date of the Nanchang uprising, is used to commemorate the establishment of the PLA.

 

"Tunnel Warfare" Movie Poster

Movies made by August First opens with a sparkling red star and to the tune of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army March 中国人民解放军军歌.Being part of the PLA, August First Studios made quite a few 军事教育片 (literally, “military education films”). The most famous of these popular “military education” films, “Tunnel Warfare,” or 地道战, has its basis in the series of tunnels in the villages in Hebei province.

 

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjMxNjk2NzY=.html

 

Wok furnace as tunnel entrance

During the War Against Japan, these tunnels were part of a cat-and-mouse game between the villagers and the invading Japanese army. The tunnels, connecting many houses (and even neighboring villages), allowed the villagers to hide and retreat when the Japanese attacked. “Tunnel Warfare” showed that the villagers would disguise the entrances to the tunnels by using water well, wok furnace, and even mangers in the stables. The film also detailed the various intricacies and subtle features that allowed these tunnels to be gas-, fire-, and water-proof and made the Japanese advances difficult.

 

The week after the 6/03 showing of Tunnel Warfare, (almost on cue) CCTV News Channel had a news segment on Tunnel Warfare, featuring Bao Ding, one of the Hebei villages. Bao Ding now has a museum dedicated to the tunnels:

 

http://www.crt.com.cn/sdjd/news/rzddz.htm

 

http://chengde.abang.com/od/wenhuabaozang/a/hongzhan_p1.htm

 

http://www.daodao.com/Attraction_Review-g658402-d1765392-Reviews-Tunnel_Warfare-Baoding_Hebei.html

 

Miscellany and Afterthoughts.

 

Bo Xilai, the Chongqing party boss has been criticized for CQTV’s revival of Maoist movies

(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/world/asia/09parody.html,  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/22/red-songs-chinese-cultural-revolution, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/205ae0aa-8628-11e0-9e2c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1QfpfEbLh)

 

The recent surge of “Red Movies” on TV is to commemorate the 90^th anniversary of the founding of the CCP on July 1st.  Of course, I have no doubt that my wife is being “watched,” what with her associations with various leftist organizations…

 

Over the last week, CCTV showed “Visitor on Icy Mountain,” “The Red Detachment of Women” among other Red Movies. And last night, my wife showed “Landmine Warfare” (地雷战), the companion movie to “Tunnel Warfare.” (At long last, we got to learn how to set landmines…)

 

Surprisingly to me, the music of the PLA March“中国人民解放军军歌”was written by a Korean 郑律成 in 1939. Here is a version of the lyrics

 

向前向前向前!

我们的队伍向太阳,

脚踏着祖国的大地,

背负着民族的希望,

我们是一支不可战胜的力量.

我们是人民的子弟,

我们是人民的武装,

从无畏惧,

绝不屈服,

英勇战斗,

直到把反动派消灭干净,

毛泽东的旗帜高高飘扬.

听!

风在呼啸军号响,

听!

革命歌声多嘹亮!

同志们整齐步伐奔向解放的战场,

同志们整齐步伐奔赴祖国的边疆,

向前向前!

我们的队伍向太阳,

向最后的胜利,

向全国的解放!

 

And if you want to sing along to the opening of August 1^st Studio movies, you should start at the very last stanza, “同志们整齐步伐奔向解放的战场 …”unfortunately, I don’t have the time to redo the film openings with sing-along-bouncing balls …

 

Addendum 7/09/11. Thanks to JM for pointing out that it should be the "Nanchang uprising" or the "Nanchang rebellion" and not the "Nanchang revolution." 

 

All but one movie title translation were found online (baidu or elsewhere). Some of my choices would have been "Red Flowers on Tianshan" (shan is already mountain) and "Visitor on Snowy Mountain." In any case, I couldn't find a translation for the movie 锦上添花 and so used what I thought was the closest in meaning. The original Chinese idiom literally means to "add flowers on top of silk." In fact, 锦 is no ordinary silk. So adding (embroidering) flower patterns on top of an already extraordinary piece of silk seems to me to be adding "Icing on the Cake."

Finally, here is my translation (with my wife's help) of the last stanza of the PLA March:

Comrades march together towards the battlefield of liberation,

Comrades march together towards the frontiers of (our) motherland,

Onwards onwards!

Our troops stride towards the sun,

Towards the final victory,

Towards the liberation of our country!

We Are All Watching Li Na

Another Snowy Run in the Forest Park

Another snowy day, another run in the park. 5.5 km loop in park.

Here are some photos taken with my new phone (still have yet to join the smart phone revolution).

View of the hill from point B

Instead of running south (which is the view here) at point C, I turned north

There are various paths (pedestrian and vehicular) up the hill. Here's a pedestrian path viewed from point D.

 

 

There are many wooden bridges crossing the swamp area. Here's a view from point E.

I never did manage a 50 min 10 K last year --- My best 5 k was 22 minutes (though not in race conditions). But that's not going to stop me from making my 2011 New Year's Resolution:

• Over 1000 km in 2011
• A 2-hour half marathon

What Time Is It Over There?

These calls invariably come when I least expect them.

After I got to HP & QF’s, before I even sat down, HP asked me to call my girlfriend at the lab and told me that there was something urgent. I asked HP for an explanation, but she told me that it was better if ZW told me herself. Over the phone, ZW told me that her labmate JJ had gone to Yellowstone with her husband CJ and CJ’s sister, and that CJ, while fishing had slipped and fell into one of the tributaries of the Yellowstone River. In my mind, I was hoping ZW would tell me, in the next sentence, that CJ, a terrific swimmer, had somehow found his way to the downstream riverbank, but, alas, they found CJ downstream, have already cremated the body and that JJ and CJ's sister were on their way back to Chicago.

After my father’s condition seemed to have stabilized, we decided that my brother could safely fly back to New York from Taipei. That very night I actually had a very good night’s sleep, the best sleep I had in a long time, thinking in the back of mind that the worst had passed. But my mother’s call next morning woke me up. She said that my father could not be awaken. I rushed to the hospital and all along I was thinking that by the time I got there, my father would be awake and would greet me with his usual even-tempered ease, telling me I need not rush.

It was Barbara who called me at my NYU office that early April day in 2001. She told me there was news about Rupert and I had better sit down. I stupidly asked B. if Rupert had gotten married without inviting me to the wedding. (ZW and I had gotten married a few weeks before. Traditionally, the Chinese mourn for three years, but if I could marry within 100 days of my father’s passing, my marriage would dampen the family’s loss. )

But, alas, Barbara said that Rupert was found dead in his hotel room at the EGS meeting in Nice. The cause was undiagnosed type II diabetes. (I immediately remembered that the previous year, when Rupert came to visit, he had already lost a lot of weight. He proudly claimed that his diet and exercise, biking everyday between his flat and Imperial College, had finally paid off.) It was the week after Spiegelfest, most of our friends were still in NYC and we gathered at Ed and Barbara’s to remember Rupert. (But I can’t remember which single malt I had at Ed and Barbara’s.)

From the Orlando Sentinel (Dec. 2, 2002): A fatal crash on Sunday morning tied up the end-of-the-holiday rush. One person died on Florida's Turnpike, when several cars collided just south of St. Cloud.

Troopers said D--- C--- [dashes mine], 22, of Gainesville was traveling north on the turnpike when her car went into the center median. She lost control and hit another car, troopers said. C--- was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center in serious condition. In the other car, one person died and a passenger was seriously injured.

I was already in bed when ZW got the e-mail about Hong. Hong and her boyfriend had gone to Orlando for Thanksgiving. She was in the car that was hit. Supposedly her death was immediate. We basically stayed up the night waiting for e-mails and phone calls before we went to Hong’s PhD supervisor’s lab to tell him the bad news.

What Time Is It Over There? In Tsai Ming-liang’s (蔡明亮) 2001 movie, “What Time Is It There?” (“你那边几点？”), the sidewalk watch vendor Hsiao Kang, had lost his father. A woman, Shiang-chyi, just before departing for Paris, convinced Hsiao Kang to sell her his own watch, which gives time in two different time zones.

Hsiao Kang, in his longing for Shiang-chyi, started to set watches to Paris time to synchronize with Shiang-chyi’s watch. First, he set the watches he was selling, and later, he set any watch or clock that was available. Meanwhile, Shiang-chyi, alienated in Paris, tried to find love with a Chinese woman, but mostly wandered the streets by herself. At the end of the movie, she fell asleep at a bench in the Tuileries, while some street boys took her suitcase and dumped it in a pond. The suitcase drifted but eventually Hsiao Kang’s dead father appeared and pulled it ashore. The movie ended with the dead father walking towards the ferris wheel in the Tuileries.   

At the beginning of the movie, after the father passed away, we see Hsiao Kang sitting in a car, in mourning, and holding a round case of the father’s ashes. Approaching a tunnel, he says out loud, “Pa, we’re about to going through a tunnel. Please make sure to follow us.” (And if the car were to pass a bridge, he would remind the spirit that they were about to go across a bridge.) We see wall-to-wall compartments for urns of ashes. We see monks chanting Buddhist scriptures. I went through these and many other mourning rituals when my father passed away. Years ago, our extended family bought a lot where our family member would eventually end up. Now my father’s ashes sit in a compartment next to my grandparents.

The Sting. I don’t quite program my music list on all my long flights. But for quite a while, between PEK and JFK, I would listen to Elgar’s Cello Concerto (Jacqueline Du Pre, Sir John Barbirolli and the London Symphony Orchestra), Puccini’s La Boheme (Mirella Freni, Luciano Pavarotti, Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic), Chopin’s Nocturnes (Arthur Rubinstein) and Bach’s Goldberg Variations (both Glenn Gould versions). And, usually, on my way back to New York, to get my mind back on New York time, I would watch two episodes of Futurama (“Jurassic Bark” and “The Luck of the Fryish”).

But on this day on my way back to PEK from JFK, I put on “The Sting” (Episode 12 from Season 4 of Futurama).

In this Futurama episode, Leela, Bender and Fry were sent on a mission to collect honey from giant space bees. (This very mission killed the previous Planet Express crew.) After managing to collect honey from the giant bee hive, Leela found a baby queen bee and decided to bring the bee along so that they could make their own honey. But once back on board the Planet Express ship, the baby queen bee awoke and attacked. Fry threw himself in front of Leela to protect her. The stinger went through Fry and pricked Leela. Bender managed to pick up the baby bee and ejected it through the airlock. But by then, Fry laid dead on the floor, and Bender cried,

“Who will make Bender waffles just the way he likes them now?”

Miscellany. After I put up this blog with only a title, a few friends asked me why I left a blank entry. The truth is I could not bring myself to write the blog that was supposed to be there. I still cannot.