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editor
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 Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 9:23 am Post subject: |
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Chan Is Missing
Directed by Wayne Wang
The Early Years
DVD
| Quote: | Jo (Wood Moy) pulls up in his taxi somewhere in San Francisco's Chinatown.
Passenger: Hilton, please.
Jo (thinking to himself): There a game I play - 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 -----
Passenger: Hey, what's a good place to eat in Chinatown?
Jo: Only three seconds. That question comes up under three seconds 90 per cent of the time. I usually give them my routine on the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese food and get a good tip. |
Chez Panisse Fruit
Hardcover
By Alice Waters, originator of California Cuisine
| Quote: | Featuring a recipe for comice pear crisp with roasted nuts so good you might change theway you feel about fall.
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| Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 2:11 pm Post subject: |
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British Homes & Gardens
Magazine Subscription
Her movements tell a story for which no language has words
May, 2005
| Quote: | Yuan-Yuan Tan's destiny rested on the flip of a coin. Heads, she followed the traditional Chinese path of her father's choice. Tails, she pursued her mother's dream and would attend the Shanghai Dance School. Luckily, that coin set the young dancer's career in motion. Her jaw-dropping performances have captivated audiences and judges at international competitions around the world. Today, Yuan-Yuan is a principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, and articulates what she does best:
"Ballet is not only about technique, but it is the way you move that tells the story."
(From a Rolex ad, p. 10) |
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| Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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British House & Garden
Magazine Subscription
Chinese Puzzle
Susan Crewe is surprised and delighted by the thriving modern cities of Shanghai and Beijing
May, 2005
| Quote: | ... It is one of the enigmas of modern China that its communist rulers are engineering a capitalist economy. In Shanghai, I stayed in the highest hotel in the world, travelled on the speediest train, looked down on the fastest-growing city, and spent a wonderful afternoon in the newly rebuilt Shanghai Museum among Tang camels, world-famous bronzes, some of which date from the twenty-first century BC, and an extraordinary suit of clothing made from salmon skin.
Not many miles away in the suburbs, live fish were being offered for sale in little bags of water. Releasing one from the Fangshen Bridge - the name means 'setting fish free' - is said to bring good luck. (-- p. 175) |
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:05 am Post subject: |
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Stalin
The Court of the Red Tsar
Hardcover
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
| Quote: | ... In the limousine out to Kuntsevo, the Chinese interpreter invited Stalin to visit Mao.
'Swallow your words!' Mao hissed in Chinese to the interpreter. 'Don't invite him!' Neither of the titans spoke for the entire thirty-minute drive. When Stalin invited Mao to dance to his gramophone, a singular honour for a visiting leader, he refused. It did not matter: the game of poker was over. While reserving for himself the supreme priesthood of international Communism, Stalin allowed Mao a leading role in Asia.
... No sooner had he arrived to rest than disaster struck in the faraway peninsula. Stalin had withdrawn from the UN to protest against its refusal to recognize Mao's China instead of Taiwan as the legitimate government but President Truman called Stalin's bluff by convening the Security Council to approve UN intervention against North Korea. The Soviet Union could have avoided this but Stalin wrongly inisted on boycotting the session, against Gromyko's advice. 'Stalin for once was guided by emotion,' remembered Gromyko. In September, the powerful US counter-attack at Inchon, under the UN flag, trapped Kim's North Koreans in the south and then shattered their army. Once again, Stalin's testing of American resolve had backfired badly - but the old man simply sighed to Khrushchev that if Kim was defeated, 'So what. Let it be. Let the Americans be our neighbors.' If he did not get what he wanted, Russia would still not intervene. (From The Lame Tiger, 1949-1953, pgs. 620-622) |
A new biography we're waiting for:
Young Stalin
Hardcover
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
Read an excerpt posted at the
Times Online May 6/07.
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| Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:43 am Post subject: |
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Soul Mountain
Paperback
By Nobel Prize winner 2000 Gao Xingjian
Translated from the Chinese by Mabel Lee
| Quote: | On this side of the bridge you eventually find an inn on an old cobblestone street. The wooden floors have been mopped and it's clean enough. You are given a small single room which has a plank bed covered with a bamboo mat. The cotton blanket is a suspicious grey - either it hasn't been washed properly or that's the original colour. You throw aside the greasy pillow from under the bamboo mat and luckily it's hot so you can do without the bedding. What you need right now is to off-load your luggage which has become quite heavy, wash off the dust and sweat, strip and stretch yourself out on the bed.
There's shouting and yelling next door. They're gambling and you can hear them picking up and throwing down the cards. A timber partition separates you and, through the holes poked into the paper covering the cracks, you make out the blurred figures of some bare-chested men. You're not so tired that you can drop off to sleep just like that. You tap on the wall and instantly there's loud shouting next door. They're not shouting at you but amongst themselves - there are always winners and losers and it sounds as though the loser is trying to get out of paying. They're openly gambling in the inn despite the public security office notice on the wall prohibiting gambling and prostitution. You decide to see if the law works. You put on some clothes, go down the corridor and knock on the half-closed door. Your knocking makes no difference, they keep shouting and yelling inside and nobody takes any notice. So you push open the door and go in. The four men sitting around the bed in the middle of the room all turn to look at you. But it's you and not they who gets a rude shock. The men all have bits of paper stuck on their faces, on their foreheads, lips, noses and cheeks, and they look ugly and ridiculous. They aren't laughing and are glaring at you. You've butted in and they're clearly annoyed.
"Oh, you're playing cards," you say, putting on an apologetic look.
They go on playing. The long paper cards have red and black markings like mahjong and there's a Gate of Heaven and a Prison of Hell. The winner penalizes the loser by tearing off a strip of newspaper and sticking it on a designated spot. Whether this is a prank, a way of letting off steam, or a tally, is something agreed upon by the gamblers and there is no way for outsiders to know what it's all about. (From Part 1, pgs. 8-9) |
Label France
French Magazine but only for the Chosen French Few
Interview with Gao Xingjian
"Literature makes it possible to hold on to one's awareness of oneself as human"
By Jean-Luc Douin of Le Monde
April, 2001
| Quote: | On October 12, 2000 Gao Xingjian became the first writer in Chinese to be awarded the Nobel prize for Literature. A victim of the Cultural Revolution in China, this dissident of the Tian'anmen generation, a political refugee in France since 1988, became a naturalised French citizen in 1998.
Novelist and playwright, he lays claim to writing liberated from all the rules. In La Montagne de l'âme [Soul Mountain], his masterpiece, he retraces a ghostly journey through the interior of China in the footsteps of Lao Tseu, far from the "world of dust'. His narrators alternate "I," "you" and "it," depending on whether they are talking about everyday life, giving an introspective monologue or engaging in philosophical speculation; the use of "we" is banned, because it stands for the idea of mass thought against which the writer has been vaccinated. (-- p. 34) |
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| Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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From Impossible Odds:
National Geographic Traveler
Magazine Subscription
My CHINA
Annual Photography Issue
January/February, 2008
| Quote: | Olympic Park Tableau
Beijing
The future rises before the eyes of construction workers helping to build the new "Water Cube," the main swimming venue for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Designed by Australian and Chinese architects, the Water Cube features a facade that appears to be made of large water bubbles. In reality, they are sections of plastic film pumped full of air. London-based photographer Ian Teh was drawn to the night scene because of the "slightly surreal quality of the image - its curious mix of lighting, wacky modern architecture, and workers who look like they could be having a picnic. Many of these workers come from faraway provinces and live in the countryside. They have never seen this kind of avant-garde architecture, and it is quite likely they will never afford a ticket to see the Olympic events in these spaces. I have a huge respect for these men, for their camaraderie, their strength of character, their kindness, and their desire to improve their difficult lives." Teh says the 2008 Olympics are important ot the Chinese, as they provide an opportunity to introduce their nation to the world. "I've traveled to this country for the past ten years and seen a great many changes, but none have been so great as those of the past few years. Japan, South Korea, and some countries in Southeast Asia have had their economic booms, but the changes in China are far-reaching in their impact on the nation's people and the world, and no one is sure what the outcome will be. When I'm in China, I feel like I'm in the eye of a storm. And being in the eye of a storm, one can sense a great excitement all around. But it is also hard to know what is really happening." (Caption with photo, p. 76) |
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| Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 12:09 pm Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
Travel & Leisure
Magazine Subscription
Boomtown Beijing
Gearing up for next summer's Olympics,
Beijing is a city in transformation, remaking itself f
or the 21st century at full tilt. Yet even as entire
neighborhoods are dismantled and futuristic sky-
scrapers rise, Michael Z. Wise finds a growing
awareness of the value of historical preservation..
November, 2007
| Quote: | The highlight of a visit to the new Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall is the extraordinarily detailed scale model of the city that projects what China's capital will look like in the year 2020. English-speaking guides dressed in scarlet-and-black silk tunics offer assistance to foreign visitors as pulsating lights flash over the exuberant mock skyline. The government-operated urban planning museum is housed in a four-storey building the size of a major U.S. department store, and the model - a testament to the city's current explosive growth - covers some 3,200 square feet.
Just outside the museum, which is located in the heart of the capital near Tiananment Square, construction proceeds at breakneck speed. Beijing's latest transformation, driven by the turbocharged expansion of the Chinese economy and the city's intense desire to present a new face for the 2008 Olympics, is producing a resounding clash between the past and future. Although wall text in the museum proclaims a "perfect fusion" of the two, the rampant destruction of narrow lanes lined with courtyard houses dating back six centuries alarms many Beijingers who fear their heritage is on the auction block.
Yet amid the wide-scale demolition and new construction, some of the city's most prominent historic landmarks - the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Temple of Heaven - are undergoing their most comprehensive restorations ever. These, too, have sparked controversy, with ciriticism coming from the UN agency that oversees world cultural heritage, concerned the makeovers will leave these centuries-old structures looking freshly minted. (-- p. 260) |
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:44 am Post subject: |
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Genghis Kahn
and the Making of the Modern World
Hardcover
By Jack Weatherford
| Quote: | ... Usually by age four, children had mastered riding bareback, and eventually how to stand on a horse's back. While standing on the horse, they often jousted with one another to see who could knock the other off. When their legs grew long enough to reach the stirrups, they were also taught to shoot arrows and to lasso on horseback. Making targets out of leather pouches that they would dangle from poles so that they would blow in the wind, the youngsters practiced hitting the targets from horseback at varying distances and speeds. The skills of such play proved invaluable to horsemanship later in life.
Other games included playing knucklebones, a type of dice made from the anklebones of a sheep. Every boy carried a set of four such knucklebones with him, and they could be used to forecast the future, to settle disagreements, or simply as a fun game. ... (-- pgs. 21-22) |
| Quote: | | Reportedly, Jamuka then boiled seventy young male captives alive in cauldrons, a form of death that would have destroyed their souls and thus completely annihilated them. Since seven represents an unlucky number for the Mongols, this story of seventy cauldrons may well have been an embellishment for dramatic effect, but the Secret History makes clear that whatever he really did, in the wake of this victory, Jamuka horrified people greatly and harmed his image. ... (-- p. 41) |
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 9:58 am Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
The Complete Illustrated Guide to
Feng Shui
How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese
Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness
Paperback
By Lillian Too
| Quote: | Activating the Wealth Sector
Every aspect of your business that involves cash and profitability should be located in the money or wealth sector (the southeastern corner of the building). This is where you should place the cash register or accounts office.
Feng Shui masters advise using old Chinese coins to activate this sector. Coins have always been a symbol of prosperity in China, and the usage of old and antique coins as amulets and for Feng Shui purposes is fairly widespread, even up until the present day. Ancient Chinese coins are round and have a square hole in the center. The method involves tying three old coins together with auspicious red thread, then attaching them to the top of your invoice and order books to attract excellent business and wealth luck.
There are several variations of this practice. You can use eitht coins to magnify the effect. You can also hang replica coins on the wall of the sales manager's office, or you can display them on your desk. Proprietors of retail outlets can also create a pathway of eight stepping stones, designed in the shape of coins, leading up to the shop's main entrance in a symbolic gesture in the hope of attracting wealth to the fronto door. (From Success in Business, p. 186) |
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 11:07 am Post subject: |
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The Post-American World
Hardcover
By Fareed Zakaria
| Quote: | We are now living through the third great power shift of the modern era. It could be called "the rise of the rest." Over the past few decades, countries all over the world have been experiencing rates of economic growth that were once unthinkable. While they have had booms and busts, the overall trend has been unambiguously upward. This growth has been most visible in Asia but is no longer confined to it. That is why to call this shift "the rise of Asia" does not describe it accurately. In 2006 and 2007, 124 countries grew at a rate of 4 percent or more. That includes more than 30 countries in Africa, two-thirds of the continent. Antoine van Agtmael, the fund manager who coined the term "emerging markets," has identified the 25 companies most likely to be the world's next great multinationals. His list includes four companies each from Briazil, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan; three from India; two from China; and one each from Argentina, Chile, Malaysia, and South Africa.
Look around. The tallest building in the world is now in Taipei, and it will soon be overtaken by one being built im Dubai. The world's richest man is Mexican, and its largest publicly traded corporation is Chinese. The world's biggest plane is built in Russia and Ukraine, its leading refinery is under construction in India, and its largest factories are all in China. By many measures, London is becoming the leading financial center, and the United Arab Emirates is home to the most richly endowed investment fund. Once quintessentially American icons have been appropriated by foreigners. The world's largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. Its number one casino is not in Las Vegas but in Macao, which has also overtaken Vegas in annual gambling revenues. The biggest movie industry, in terms of both movies made and tickets sold, is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Even shopping, America's greatest sporting activity, has gone global. Of the top ten malls in the world, only one is in the United States; the world's biggest is in Beijing. Such lists are arbitrary, but it is striking that only ten years ago, America was at the top in many, if not most, of these categories.
... in fact, the share of people living on a dollar a day or less plummeted from 40 percent in 1981 to 18 percent in 2004, and is estimated to fall to 12 percent by 2015. China's growth alone has lifted more than 400 million people out of poverty. Poverty is falling countries housing 80 percent of the world's population. ... In .... China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey, Kenya, and South Africa - the poor are slowly being absorbed into productive and growing economies. For the first time ever, we are witnessing genuinely global growth. ... It is the birth of a new global order.
A related aspect of this new era is the diffusion of power from states to other actors. The "rest" that is rising includes many nonstate actors Groups and individuals have been empowered, and hierarchy, centralization, and control are being undermined. Functions that were once controlled by governments are now shared with international bodies like the World Trade Organization and the European Union. Non-governmental groups are mushrooming every day on every issue in every country. Corporations and capital are moving from place to place, finding the best location in which to do business, rewarding some governments while punishing others. Terrorists like Al Qaeda, drug cartels, insurgents, and militias of all kinds are finding space to operate within the nooks and crannies of the international system. Power is shifting away from nation-states, up, down, and sideways. In such an atmosphere, the traditional applications of national power, both economic and military, have become less effective.
The emerging international system is likely to be quite different from those that have preceded it. One hundred years ago, there was a multipolar order run by a collection of European governments, with constantly shifting alliances, rivalries, miscalculations, and wars. Then came the bipolar duopoly of the Cold War, more stable in many ways, but with the superpowers reacting and overreacting to each other's every move. Since 1991, we have lived under an American imperium, a unique unipolar world in which the the open global economy has expanded and accelerated dramatically. This expansion is now driving the next change in the nature of the international order. ((From the chapter entitled, The Rise of the Rest, pgs. 2-4) |
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| Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
The Post-American World
Hardcover
By Fareed Zakaria
| Quote: | America's Best Industry
"Ah, yes," say those who are more worried, "but you're looking at a snapshot of today. America's advantages are rapidly eroding as the country loses its scientific and technological base." For some, the decline of science is symptomatic of a larger cultural decay. A country that once adhered to a Puritan ethic of delayed gratification has become one that revels in instant pleasures. We're losing interest in the basics - math, manufacturing, hard work, savings - and becoming a postindustrial society that specializes in consumption and leisure. "More people will graduate in the United States in 2006 with sports-exercise degrees than electrical-engineering degrees," says General Electric's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt. "So, if we want to be the massage capital of the world, we're well on our way." (footnote omitted)
... What hope does the United States have if for every qualified American engineer there are 11 Chinese and Indian ones? For the cost of one chemist or engineer in the United States, the (2005 National Academy of Sciences) report pointed out a company could hire 5 well-trained and eager chemists in China or 11 engineers in India. (-- pgs. 187-188) |
Yes, but get this:
| Quote: | ... A group of professors at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University traveled to China and India to collect data from governmental and nongovernmental sources and interview businessmen and academics. They concluded that eliminating graduates of two-or three-year programs halves the Chinese figure (of engineering grads) ... and even this number is probably significantly inflated by differing definitions of "engineer" that often include auto mechanics and industrial repairmen. ... That means the United States actually trains more engineers per capita than either India or China does. (footnote omitted)
And the numbers don't address the issue of quality. As someone who grew up in India, I have a healthy appreciation for the virtues of its famous engineering academies, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). ... In fact, many of the IITs are decidedly second-rate, with mediocre equipment, indifferent teachers, and unimaginative classwork. Rajiv Sahney, who attended IIT and then went to Caltech, says, "The IITs' core advantage is the entrance exam, which is superbly designed to select extremely intelligent students. In terms of teaching and facilities, they really don't compare with any decent American technical institute." And once you get beyond the IITs and other such elite academies - which graduate under ten thousand students a year - the quality of higher education in and India remains extremely poor, which is why so many students leave those countries to get trained abroad.
... In both India and China, it (McKinsey Global Institute study on emerging global labor market, 2005) noted, beyond the small number of top-tier academies, the quality and quantity of education is low. Only 10 per cent of Indians get any kind of postsecondary education. ... Wages of trained engineers in both countries are rising by 15 per cent a year, a sure sign that demand is outstripping supply. ...
Higher education is America's best industry. There are two rankings of universities worldwide. In one of them, a purely quantitative study done by Chinese researchers, eight of the top ten universities in the world are in the United States. In the other, more qualitative one by London's Times Higher Educational Supplement, it's seven. The numbers flatten out somewhat after that. Of the top twenty, seventeen or eleven are in America; of the top fifty, thirty-eight or twenty-one. Still, the basic story does not change. With 5 per cent of the world's population, the United States absolutely dominates higher education, ...
... In India, universities graduate between 35 and 50 Ph.D.s in computer science each year; in America, the figure is 1,000. ...
I went to elementary, middle and high school in Mumbai, at an excellent institution, the Cathedral and John Connon School. Its approach (30 years ago) reflected the teaching methods often described as "Asian," in which the premium is placed on memorization and constant testing. This is actually the old British, and European, pedagogical method, one that now gets described as Asian. I recall memorizing vast quantities of material, regurgitating it for exams, and then promptly forgetting it. When I went to college in the United States, I encountered a different world. While the American system is too lax on rigor and memorization - whether in math or poetry - it is much better at developing the critical faculties of the mind, which is what you need to succeed in life. Other educational systems teach you to take tests; the American system teaches you to think.
It is surely this quality that goes some way in explaining why America produces so many entrepreneurs, inventors, and risk takers. In America, people are allowed to be bold, challenge authority, fail, and pick themselves up. It's America, not Japan, that produces dozens of Nobel Prize winners. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, until recently Singapore's minister of education, explains the difference between his country's system and America's. "We both have meritocracies," Shanmurgaratnam says. "Yours is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. We know how to train people to take exams. You know how to use people's talents to the fullest. ..." (-- pgs. 188-193) |
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:36 am Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
Questions for Dambisa Moyo
The Anti-Bono
The economist talks about why we should stop sending aid to Africa, why no one feels sorry for the Chinese and the trouble with relying on celebrities.
By Deborah Solomon
April 22/09
| Quote: | You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years. Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.
Maybe that’s because they have so much money that we here in the U.S. are begging the Chinese for loans. Forty years ago, China was poorer than many African countries. Yes, they have money today, but where did that money come from? They built that, they worked very hard to create a situation where they are not dependent on aid.
What do you think has held back Africans? I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.
If people want to help out, what do you think they should do with their money if not make donations? Microfinance. Give people jobs.
But what if you just want to donate, say, $25? Go to the Internet and type in Kiva.org, where you can make a loan to an African entrepreneur.
Do you have a financial interest in Kiva? No, except that I’ve made loans through the system. I don’t own a share of Kiva. ...
What do your parents do? My mother is chairman of a bank called the Indo-Zambia Bank. It’s a joint venture between Zambia and India. My father runs Integrity Foundation, an anticorruption organization.
For all your belief in the potential of capitalism, the free market is now in free fall and everyone is questioning the supposed wonders of the unregulated market. I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no. (-- p. 11) |
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 12:52 pm Post subject: |
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Charlie Chan at the Olympics
DVD
With Swedish actor Warner Oland as Chan, Sr. and
Keye Luke as Chan, Jr.
| Quote: | Chan's No. 1 son, Jimmy, a contender in the 100-metre swim at the 1936 Summer Olympics and detective wanna-be, learns that Pop Charlie made a surreptitious switcheroo to obtain the highly coveted mystery invention presumably intended as a de-coder of war intelligence.
Chan, Jr.: But when did you get it, Pop?
Sr.: Took opportunity to acquire same during excitement in girls' dormitory.
Jr. Then no wonder you weren't worried when Hopkins got away.
Sr. Important lesson for good detective. When all players hold suspicious cards, good idea to have a joker up sleeve. |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 9:39 am Post subject: |
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Five-fold Happiness
Chinese Concepts of Luck, Prosperity, Longevity, Happiness and Wealth
Small, richly illustrated Hardcover
By Vivien Sung
| Quote: | | The character fǔ, represents 'good fortune,' 'blessings,' or 'luck.' Since ancient times, the desire for fǔ has been widespread, and its popularity is reflected in many applications of decorative arts, architecture, and clothing. Beginning in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), a large fǔ character would often be found at entranceways of buildings to bring continuous flow of good fortune through the door. Phrases and pictures express this thought, such as "the God of Luck brings fortune,' fǔ sing gao zhao, and 'an abundance of luck and long life,' duó fǔ duó shòu. Symbols for luck include the bat, the ru yi scepter, the fruit known as Buddha's hand, and the God of Luck. (-- pgs. 18-19) |
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