sunrise
Just another brilliant sunrise in Yanqing. And, no, I still haven’t fixed the date and time on the camera.
oops
What I forgot to add to the previous post, but which can have a post of its own, is Hunan University’s claim to 1033 years of history:
学校起源于宋朝四大著名书院之一、创建于宋太祖开宝九年(公元976年)的岳麓书院，历经宋、元、明、清等朝代的时势变迁，一直保持着文化教育的连续性。1903年岳麓书院改制为湖南高等学堂，1926年定名湖南大学，1937年成为国民政府教育部十余所国立大学之一。中华人民共和国成立后，著名的哲学家、教育家李达为湖南大学解放后第一任校长，毛泽东主席亲笔题写了校名。
The school has its origins in one of the four famous academies of the Song Dynasty, the Yuelu Academy established in the 9th year of the reign of the Song Emperor Kaibao [Historians! Help! How should that name be translated?] (976 AD), which witnessed the trends and changes of such dynasties as the Song, Ming and Qing, preserving along the way the continuity of culture and education. In 1903 Yuelu Academy was reformed to become Hunan School of Higher Learning, setting its name as Hunan University in 1926. In 1937 it became one of the dozen state-established universities of the Republican government’s Ministry of Education. Following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the famous philospher and educator Li Da became Hunan University’s first post-Liberation president, and Chairman Mao wrote the school’s name with his own hand.
Indeed, Hunan University has a collossal statue of Mao on its campus, and I do remember seeing signs proclaiming its 1000th anniversary in 1976. Anyway, I like their logic, and I like how the history of Yuelu Academy has been claimed as Hunan University’s own.
roots, preservation
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on April 5, 2009
It’s definitely too early in the morning to be trying to get all intellectual, but this post of Professor Crane‘s got me remembering a couple of things. And this has turned into a long post that proves a claim I made in class the other day: I could very easily write 2000 or 3000 words on how writing class is boring. The students didn’t believe me, but the proof follows the jump:
清明
So it’s Qingming and we’re back in the village for the long weekend. It’s warm, the air is incredibly clear and the sun this afternoon was bringing back distant, faded memories of a life on some islands 11,000 kilometres south south east of here.
The sun is setting and Ba has just brought the sheep back. I stepped outside to take a leak and the sunset was beautiful- not in any spectacular way, but in a calm, understated early spring kind of way, so I thought I should share it with you:
Oh, yes, I really do need to persuade our camera that it’s 2009 already. Still, it has a habit of changing the date randomly. Hence our photos of our trip to Dalian being dated 2011.
And here’s looking eastward from outside the courtyard gate:
And yes, that tractor towing some kind of hoeing implement (sorry, but I don’t know shit about farming) is the most mechanisation I have yet seen “in the flesh” in rural China. Wide expanses of fields reaped by multiple combine harvesters or sprayed by crop dusters are scenes I have only seen on TV here.
Early spring? Definitely. We’re pretty close to Beijing, where leaves are budding and the first blossoms blooming, and we saw some blossoms from the bus as we came down the mountain into the basin. Then, because of the sheer number of people trying to get home for the holiday, we hired a car from Nancaiyuan, and as we sped along the north shore of the reservoir, we saw plenty of people either preparing the fields, planting or irrigating. But so far as I’ve seen, the fields up here at the base of the mountains are all still in the preparation stage.
Now, of course, the air outside reeks of woodsmoke as evening meals are prepared the old-fashioned way, the sun has gone and the last, stubborn rays of light are just about beaten back by the night. The temperature is dropping as quickly as it always does up here and I’m hanging out for dinner. It’s been a while since the weather was cold enough to justify buying baijiu down in Beijing, but I’m thinking a shot over dinner with Ba and the Daye who has been hired to work the fields while Ba recovers from having his finger chopped off might be a good idea.
anuvver ramble
Posted by wangbo in beijing public transport, news, random on April 3, 2009
So what’s in the news today? Not much that I’ve seen so far. My boss has 新京报/The Beijing News delivered to his office in dead tree format, and it seems to me that the dead tree edition has its advantages. One thing I noticed today was a page devoted to new subway lines including cool graphics showing their routes, and, in the case of a line running through Changping, how it was going to be tunneled under a canal so as to protect both the integrity of the water-course and the safety of the worksite. I also saw a page devoted to the current round of experimental traffic restrictions, their imminent demise, and their possible extension. Oh, and female fighter pilots. Now that’s just awesome: Women who can kick Tom Cruise’s arse… oh, wait… It’s even more awesome.
As much as I love the internet and as much as I love 新京报‘s website for its elegant simplicity- or perhaps for its simple elegance- the dead tree version still seems to offer so much more in terms of layout and sheer tangibility of the news. Yes, that was deliberate.
So now, having spent so much time with the dead tree version of 新京报 over the last few weeks in downtimes between classes when I haven’t had time to read anything in any depth let alone translate it, I now find myself aware that today’s 新京报 has some pretty cool looking stories which I have half-read and which look easily translatable, but which I have to find on the dead electron version of the paper.
But they’re not the same. Here‘s how that Changping subway line is going to duck under a canal and the routes of several new lines (Fangshan, 9 and 15) but without the cool graphics I saw on the dead tree edition, and without all the new lines I’m sure I saw on paper.
One thing that does worry me, though, is the need to drill through what looks to me like a fault line:
昌平线施工最大的难点位于北六环地震断裂带上，虽然此处长度仅200米，但经过专家多次论证，排除高架和地下两种方式，最终选择地面铺轨的做法。
The biggest difficulty in the construction of the Changping Line lies on the North Sixth Ring Road faultline. Although this section is only 200 metres long, after several discussions among experts, it was decided that a surface-level railway was better than either an elevated or an underground railway.
Now, I’m really unsure on the translation of “地震断裂带“. It doesn’t appear in that form in any dictionary at my immediate disposal (and I’m too tired lazy to go searching too far), but I am getting variations that suggest “faultline”. The rest of that translated section lzh proofread, so argue with her, if you dare. But faultline? Are there really faultlines so close to the city?
Don’t get me wrong, I was born and raised in a city with a major -and active- faultline running right through the centre of the city, on top of which sat the city’s road and rail connections with the rest of the island, and several equally active and only slightly less major faultlines unnervingly nearby. But just as my Chinese colleagues in Changsha couldn’t quite figure out how the 5 Kiwis their school had hired laughed at the concept of Changsha’s spring weather being changeable, I could never get my head around Beijing being vulnerable to earthquakes.
And yes, I know, Tangshan. Year I was born and Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong died. I’ve met no shortage of people who lived through that quake and remember it. Most memorable is the driver/general dogsbody of the oil school that served as my escape from Tianjin who, while delivering me to an oil company just north of Deshengmen I had been farmed out to, said words to the effect of “Well, what the fuck are they doing with all these tall buildings? What happens in the next Tangshan quake? Y’know, all the roads were cracked up back then.”
He was also heard to complain about how “乱 (chaotic)” the Houhai area had gotten. Cos, y’know, it was good back in the old days when everybody knew their place and the consequences of stepping out of line just weren’t worth it.
And he has a point, and I half agree with him, but didn’t I start out rambling about developments in Beijing’s public transport and the difference between the dead tree and dead electron editions of 新京报?
And wait… just how much space did Line 9 get in that article? Far less than in the dead tree edition, I’m sure. And how did Line 13 suddenly pop up at the end?
And how is it that the pictures of people involved in the discussions on the traffic restrictions are so much uglier in the dead electron version than in the dead tree edition? But still, it seems to be the same article, and seems to suggest that the traffic restrictions, with modifications, will continue. The modifications being that the restrictions will apply between 7 am and 8pm and that the 5th Ring Road (and I presume, everything outside the 5th Ring) will be a free-for-all. Also… how to explain this…. Well, with the restrictions being based on the last digit on the licence plates of cars, with cars being banned one working day per week based on the last digit of the licence plate, and that one day per week being rotated, the rotations will be extended to one every three months. An example: If plates ending in 1 or 0 were banned on Mondays, under the new rules, that Monday ban would last 3 months, and then be rotated, so that 1s and 0s were banned on Tuesdays while 2s and 9s were banned on Mondays, and that would last three months until the next rotation. I hope you see what I mean, but by no means take this as a trustworthy exposition of the policy in question. First of all, my example is purely an example and is meant to be taken hypothetically. Secondly, I’m simply too tired to figure it all out properly.
And these female fighter pilots? China’s first group has just gotten their wings, it seems, and the article suggests that their training was no-holds-barred, just as strenuous as what their male counterparts are put through. Not just that, but the article points out that 16 countries have female military pilots, including China the USA and the UK, and that of those sixteen, China, the US, the UK, Spain, Germany, Israel, and Pakistan have already trained female fighter pilots. It also claims that the first female fighter pilots made their apperance in the Soviet airforce in World War 2, with some even becoming ‘aces’ by shooting down five or more enemy aircraft. Apart from them, American and UK female fighter pilots have undertaken combat missions. The USA has the largest number of female fighter pilots, with 300 in the airforce who have been able to undertake combat missions since 1993.
Alright, I think that’s more than enough rambling for now. I still think the dead tree edition of 新京报 is better than the dead electron version, but whatever. I’ll enjoy the joys of paper and pass on what I like in electrons.
remembering grandad
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on March 28, 2009
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Just got a phone call from my sister to say that my grandfather has passed away. Apparently Mum was pretty upset when she phoned my sister, understandably, so I’m not sure when he died, just some time earlier today. And I’m not sure of Mum’s whereabouts, but I think it safe to assume that if she’s not yet in Auckland, she will be very soon. Last Thursday he was given 48 hours to live. 48 hours turned into a week and 2 days. I’m not sure what I feel right now. Sad, obviously. A little stunned, somehow. But I’ve been expecting this news for over a week now. Relief, yes, his suffering is over, he can rest now.
Anyway, the following is a little something I wrote a few days ago:
Remembering Grandad
It’s been a long time since I last spoke to Grandad, and even longer since I last saw him. Last time I saw him he was much smaller and frailer than the Grandad of my memory, but I suppose that’s only natural. Even so, that was a good ten years ago.
The Grandad that will always be Grandad in my memory was a big, strong man, and not just strong, but wise. He seemed to know everything, even more than my Mum knew. He was certainly smarter than any of the teachers at school.
Somehow, although I have vague memories of Grandma and Grandad living elsewhere, most of my memories of Grandad seem to happen at their house in Whakatiki Street, Upper Hutt. Quite possibly these memories are all messed up and confused- human memory is a strange beast that’s just as good at distorting or inventing as it is at recording. But Whakatiki Street seems to be the location for most of what I remember of Grandad.
There was a large tree, something palm-like, but that had grown wide instead of tall, occupying a large part of the front yard. Of course, there were gardens. Flowers along the side of the driveway, and naturally a very large vege patch taking up about half the backyard. There was even a small hothouse.
Every time we visited there was something different happening in the garden. Maybe the veges were walled off behind windbreaks made of sackcloth, or maybe ripening strawberries were protected from the birds under chicken wire stretched over wood frames. I seem to remember a huge load of mouldy oranges being tipped on the garden for fertilizer, and a trip to some mysterious place halfway across the Haywards to pick up sacks of chicken manure. And somehow all this gardening seemed to be a natural part of Grandad. It was what he did. He made things grow, and in so doing, he brought veges out of this soil he cultivated, veges which Grandma would turn into delicious, hearty meals.
And then inside the house there were always toys, and sheepskins laid on the lounge room floor. Inside or out, there was never any shortage of things for us kids to play with, and we had a grand old time. If it wasn’t toys, then Grandad always seemed to have a ready supply of paper and pencils and pens to draw with.
But what I remember the most is the stories. There were many stories, but somehow most were from the War. And all his war stories were the funny things, the crazy things young men get up to when they’re far from home and have the spare time. And I remember Grandad telling me all these funny stories and laughing about all the crazy stuff he’d got up to during the War. And I’m glad he told me what he did and where, because growing up meant I could check out for myself what actually happened during the War on Guadalcanal and in Italy. And I’m glad I did that and learned something of the War, because there was so much that Grandad never told, so much that he simply summed up by turning to me with that “thousand yard stare” in his eyes and saying, “War is hell, Chris, war is hell.”
And that is it, the one thing that is irrevocably burned into my memory, Grandad with that haunted look, the look and tone of voice that hinted at stories that could never be told, and that one phrase: “War is hell, Chris, war is hell.”
wrong
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on March 24, 2009
I’m finding a couple of core assumptions in this article just plain wrong. The first is this:
Twitter may be a cutting-edge technology, but it is thriving because it taps into primal forces. The ranks of its users rose about 900 percent last year because it increases that most cherished human value — freedom, both for information and individuals.
Sorry, but no. People don’t cherish freedom. They like to say they do, but they don’t. The most cherished human value is companionship. Society. Company. Community. Just being part of a larger group and having people to blether inane nonsense with. That’s all. That’s what people want. Most people would give up freedom without a second thought if they realised that accepting it would call their sense of belonging in a community into question. Humans are, after all, rather skitterish, fearful creatures.
Now, my little experiment with Twitter is all of a day and a half old, and so is extremely limited, but my early impression is that this community is precisely what Twitter provides. I mean, there’s a bloody good reason why the term “social network” was coined. It’s got nothing to bloody do with freedom and everything to do with acting out online the very same community-seeking behaviour we perform in the real world. And how many studies now have shown that regular internet users actually have more real-world social encounters? (I’m too lazy to google it right now) Isn’t that proof enough that what SNS users- be they facebookers, twitterers, kaixinwangers or whatever- are after? And after all, social networking is the stated goal of all of these websites, something they all advertise as a key function of the service they provide, whereas “freedom” is very rarely mentioned.
And reading on, no, I’m not convinced, not even close to it, that Twitter and its social networking brethren allow us that magic combo of narcissism and control or freedom from the unpredictability of direct interaction. Online communication, after all, is at least as unpredictable as face-to-face interaction. That’s not what these things are about. Social networking services are about precisely what they call themselves: Social networking. It’s about being part of a community. That’s all.
Now, allow me to get all preacherly (I am, it must be said, descended from a long and distinguished line of preachers): The beauty of all this SNS stuff is that we can now build communities that are no longer limited by borders, timezones, warzones, ethnic or national differences, or any of that nonsense. The only limits now are in our own linguistic abilities, and anybody can learn a new language or two. And that, friends, is an awesome thing. We can befriend and build communities with people scattered over the continents from a multitude of backgrounds, thereby expanding our horizons and deepening our understanding of the world.
Preaching done.
Ok, that’s the way I see it. All this newfangled internet stuff, from email and blogs all the way through to whatever nonsense replaces Twitter as The Next Big Thing, is all about community. Nothing more, nothing less.
So I succumbed. I swore I wouldn’t, but the pressure grew too high. I’m now on twitter, under the username southofthemill. So go ahead and add/follow/whatever they call it me.
Why southofthemill? It’s a reference to the neighbourhood of Beijing I live in, the specific area of southern Chaoyang District. There is no longer a mill here, but judging by the place names, there once was one probably slightly north and west of where I sit typing this.
One step closer to the Matrix…
worn out
It’s a beautiful, clear, clean spring day outside, but I just don’t have the energy to get out and enjoy it. First of all, work has been busier than ever, I mean, I really don’t think I’ve ever been busier at work. Secondly, the news from home is not good. But it’s the kind of news that leaves me with nothing to do but wait for the inevitable.
In the meantime, Xiao Han celebrates the spring equinox with some beautiful pictures of the Summer Palace. Those photos contain a lot more flowers than I’m seeing around here, although I am seeing many subtler signs of spring.
So here I am, trying to get up energy for the coming work week, and waiting for news whose contents I already know, but whose exact timing remains stubbornly uncertain.
food for thought
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on March 21, 2009
其实，你不去了解对方，又怎么知道你就了解自己？
In fact, if you don’t go and understand the other side, how could you know that you understand yourself?
That’s from Yang Hengjun’s excellent and thought-provoking post on walls. Well worth a read.
And he’s fair about it, too. Although he starts with a conversation with a Chinese researcher who doesn’t seem to comprehend why it might be a good idea to go check out what people outside the notorious gfw are saying on his subject, he looks at it the other way, too. There are plenty of people outside China- and, in my experience, foreigners inside China- who have plenty of academic knowledge of China but zero understanding of the Chinese point of view.
Nor is this simply a China/The World problem. I would say it applies everywhere, to any particular pairing you may choose. And to throw in a note of pessimism: I would say most people in this world don’t ever bother to see things from The Other’s (or any other’s) point of view. It’s not so much that people “lead lives of quiet desperation” as that they lead lives of willful ignorance.
Not that I claim any particular understanding for myself- of myself or any others. I’m no different and just as quick to retreat into my tribe when confronted with something different. But I do think it’s worth remembering Yang Hengjun’s words and making the effort to go and understand the other side, if for no other reason than to expand your own mind and understanding.