Positively Negative

If I were to write a cheesy romance novel, I'd begin by saying the heroine is tired of loneliness instead of simply looking for love. Few people have experienced everlasting love, but everyone knows loneliness, and negative feelings just resonate more with us. Negativity was behind every conflict in human history, it was the humiliation of the 1918 Armistice that drove Hitler to conquer and accepted the surrender of France at the exact same spot, in the same railway car in which the 1918 Armistice was signed to avenge the defeat of World War I. I don't think there are many examples of wars waged with the same sort of fervor out of love, most likely, we are motivated by Pearl Harbor and September 11.

Even before the tiger mom brouhaha hit the Internet, I knew we were all raised by tiger parents, it was much later that I realized I had also inherited the same critical attitude towards others, especially to my own children. Bert, in our culture, we accept that parents are blameless as long as we believe the motive is benevolent,  it was in that mindset that we got so emotional on your birthday. In my own mind, my negativity is justified by my fear for you not getting a fair shake in life. If I had introspected, I would've realized one has to find his own way to harness the negative energy, I would've reacted in a similar manner myself.

This little blog has been difficult for me to write, I abandoned it more than once and loped off all the defensive paragraphs, I belabored the wording and only managed to make it worse. Bert, look at the picture, other people may see a nice garden, but the gardener can see nothing but weeds and bugs, thanks for reminding me to enjoy the garden for a change.

Elementary School Tang Poetry

Li Bai (701-762)

For most Chinese, poetry is almost synonymous with Tang poetry. It was 李白 Li Bai's poem 夜思 we first learned in elementary school, ambitious parents train their kids to recite many of the 300 Tang poems from 唐詩三百首, the saying is once the poems are memorized, even if you can't write, you'd do well by just plagiarizing. This is even more true today, every Chinese New Year celebration TV program from China invariably has some foreigners reciting Tang poems in fluent Mandarin, we are fascinated by how our beloved Tang poetry is appreciated by clever foreign devils.

Unfortunately, we had not received much training in poetry ourselves, worse, to memorize the poems for homework, I usually just machine gun the words as if they might leak out of my brain if I don't use them before expiration.  Tang poems are extremely rigid in form 格律, the rhyme of the entire poem must follow the official rhyme table and the tone of each word must follow certain accepted patterns. These poems are meant to be sung or 吟, an art lost generations ago. By the time I was a kid, only old "rancid bookworms" 酸秀才 would recite poems with any musicality, it sounded ancient and self absorbing that I found it unattractive. Today, I don't have homework and I can afford to, at least, slow down a little bit, I pause slightly as we were taught in elementary school, for example, the very first 5 word poem we learned，夜思 :

床 前 - 明 月 光  　
疑 是 - 地 上 霜
舉 頭 - 望 明 月  　
低 頭 - 思 故 鄉

instead of 2 words, pause, and 3 words, it is 2,2,3 for 7 word poems:

誓 掃 - 匈 奴 - 不 顧 身  　
五 千 - 貂 錦 - 喪 胡 塵
可 憐 - 無 定 - 河 邊 骨  　
猶 是 - 春 閨 - 夢 裡 人

and the words just go together and it works for all Tang poems.

Since Tang Dynasty, China was ruled by foreign invaders twice and the spoken language had changed a lot in 1,000 years. The 1st poem doesn't rhyme in modern spoken Mandarin, but it is correct by the official rhyme rule. (For Tang poems, the even lines must rhyme, line 1 is optional, all other odd lines must not rhyme.)

1/3 Epiphany

I had a painful bout of gout (I love saying that) about 3 years ago after a Cancun vacation. I blame it on the drinking and rich foods and hope it's a one time thing. Last week, my left foot hurt like it was twisted but I couldn't remember how, it is just too frightening to even think about that... Yesterday, after a full week without exercise, I finally felt very little pain walking and decided to bike to the beach. Cycling has become the new golf and Ocean Blvd is full of slightly over weighed cyclists on $5,000 bikes, good time to sandbag on my 30 pound touring bike wearing my Levi's cutoffs, except this time I couldn't keep up with the fat cyclists.

In the afternoon, I thought I would test my foot running instead.  Aided by runner's high, the epiphany I attained during the run was: "long term is good, short term is evil". It began with the thought that the pain could be stopped by a pill but that's not a good solution. Likewise, eating a pint of ice cream is good in the short term but bad in the long term. Money matters? Same sort of reasoning applies, to us Chinese anyways. It also extends to religions, suffer in this life for eternal life or reincarnation. We are making the same trade-offs and mechanically labeling short term gratifications "bad" and long term gains "good". Too easy, fuck Nietzsche, good and evil is this simple!

Soon the pain returned and I had to stop after 4.4 miles and everything about life became clear as mud again. 3 hours of exercising was 12% of yesterday, I doubt the eventual long term payoff would be anywhere near 10%, the effort is most likely a net loss.  In the famous Chinese Zen story 當頭棒喝 , the monk in question was hit hard in the head 3 times before his epiphany came, each blow was accompanied by loud shouting. I consider my painful exercise day as my 1st installment.

Erich Hartmann

It's funny how my brain works, like a html document with many hyperlinks, it just flys off to faraway places at the slightest provocation, you may say more than half of my classroom hours were wasted that way.  As I was posting the Boxer Rebellion picture on my previous post, I just couldn't wipe the image of this Boxer kid off my mind, I'm hyperlinked to many years ago when I was a teen in Vancouver, BC.

I stumbled on the biography of Erich Hartmann in the library, it was probably the first book in English I read from cover to cover for entertainment. I went to a Chinese language school in Hong Kong and my English has always been poor, so at that time reading an entire book in one sitting was unthinkable.  Erich Hartmann was a Nazi fighter pilot with the most victories, 352 confirmed kills. In aerial combat, 5 kills would make you an "ace" and Hartmann was the ace of aces (e.g. Chuck Yeager had 11.5 kills). I was hooked when I saw how he stalked the enemy, how he got within 20 meters, so close that the windshield of his Bf-109 was completely blocked by the victim's aircraft. I knew then I'd be happy to trade my own life for the next few seconds of puling the trigger and flying through the debris.

I don't reveal my secret feelings to others much less on a blog, I suspected some other boys might have the same secret violent nature until video games came along, apparently, every male shares the same fantasy! Look at the young Boxer, he might be canon fodder, but at the moment he's happy, intoxicated by the adventure, the joyful thought of killing and being killed.

I remember Erich Hartmann not only because he was aces' ace, he was also a men's man. I re-read his biography a little bit online and my memory was quite good, the part about surrendering to the Russians by choice to stay with his men is still moving. He witnessed the relentless raping of German women and was accused of war crimes, after he was released from Russian Gulag 10 years later, he said this about the Russians:
"One thing I've learned is this: Never allow yourself to hate a people because of the actions of a few. Hatred and bigotry destroyed my nation, and millions died. I would hope that most people did not hate Germans because of the Nazis, or Americans because of slaves. Never hate, it only eats you alive. Keep an open mind and always look for the good in people. You may be surprised at what you find.”

In real life, I am a nerd and I believe all wars are immoral, however, the word warrior has a positive connotation in every culture I know.


I have to include some pictures:
Hartmann was born in 1922, first 6 years of Hartmann's life was spent in Changsha 長沙, his father was a German doctor in China. Erich is next to the Chinese boy.

How do you go from this 

to this?

Ladies And Children Not Admitted (April Fools)

Readership has waned to a pathetic level, I apologize for using the Royal Nonesuch trick from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The setting is after a few unsuccessful attempts to put up a "Shakespearean" show, two con artists known as the duke and the king added the "ladies and children not admitted" line to sucker Arkansans to Royal Nonesuch, insinuating x-rated content.

“There,” says he, “if that line don’t fetch them, I don’t know Arkansaw!”


In my previous posts, I confessed sometime we don't see the elephant in the room, other times we see the imaginary clothes of the Emperor. These childish stories are poignant because they ring true, adults simply don't have the courage to tell the truth all the time.

Turned out the entire show was just the king prancing around totally naked. Even it was true that the show wasn't suitable for ladies and children, the audience felt cheated, 50 cents was rather steep for a few laughs. Not wanting to be the laughingstock of the town people, the patrons agreed to praise the show instead so everyone would be in the same boat. Like the internet stock market bubble, Royal Nonesuch played to a full house for three days until they ran out of fools, the duke and the king were then chased out of town by the angry mob, not to mention class action lawsuits...

Headless Boxers (and Japanese)

The Boxers

I like Mark Twain, I think his books are often too long but his intellect always comes through. One thing Mark Twain said will always stay with me, he said "I am a Boxer" when the Boxer Rebellion 義和團 was considered barbaric and shameful by all educated Chinese. I'm thankful Mark Twain recognized the fighting spirit of the Chinese, the same way I think Americans woud fight tooth and nail if we were invaded.

Of course we can do away with the ignorance of the Boxer Rebellion. The Japanese did most for the fighting for the Eight Nation Alliance 八國聯軍 as you can see in the second picture. I don't know what's the deal with the US and NATO in Libya, 110 years after the "rebellion", I hope we're not as much a fool on this April fools' day.


Update:
I found Mark Twain's I am a Boxer passage, as I said, how can you not admire his intellect?


Why should not China be free from the foreigners, who are only making trouble on her soil? If they would only all go home, what a pleasant place China would be for the Chinese! We do not allow Chinamen to come here, and I say in all seriousness that it would be a graceful thing to let China decide who shall go there.
China never wanted foreigners any more than foreigners wanted Chinamen, and on this question I am with the Boxers every time. The Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other people. I wish him success. The Boxer believes in driving us out of his country. I am a Boxer too, for I believe in driving him out of our country.