Hiding in Words

Remember the Milk

Crane Wang — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:30:42 +0800

I am somewhat inclined to mess up all the stuff by forgetting it. When there are too many things to do, this inclination is likely to give me huge collateral damage. So I came to own several notebooks to write down all the tasks on hand. And the new problem is, I always forget on which notebook I wrote something important.

You might be familiar with similar situation, at least second-handedly. As a joke goes, Little Jackie always forget what he has planned to do. So he writes everything down on a notebook. So, last night little Jackie wrote on his notebook, “remember the milk”. And this afternoon, he utterly had no idea what to buy when he entered the near-by store. He did get nervous, because he believed the notebook was with him. And the notebook was not there.

To remind yourself about the milk and other more import stuff, try ,,Remember the Milk” instead of a notebook.

There are many to-do-list tools available on the web, and RTM is not the best one. But it is the most convenient and it adds up new features all the time. Another excellent online task manager is Mangbar, a Chinese website, and English version is also available.

Mangbar does have strong functionality, and is especially suitable for teamworking. You can have “projects” hosted on Mangbar, and projects are further divided as “tasks”, which consists of “steps”. For each project, you can upload pics, docs, notes and share all that stuff with your collegues online. This is really magnificent and all too great, useful and complicated for remembering daily tasks. Remember the Milk is just great enough, quite lite-weight and utterly easy to use. More importantly, RTM provides a lot of considerate features allowing you to sync with your mobile phone and keep all the important things on mind.

The most useful stuff for me, is the service for Gmail (actually it is a Firefox addon, so you need to use Gmail and Firefox.). When you open Gmail, RTM will be loaded on the right side of the interface of Gmail. Now, I can see all the tasks I need to do while I read emails. Keeping everything on mind, and remember the milk. Now I can always stay organized, (or at least pretend to be organized.)

This is how it looks like when RTM for Gmail add-on is installed in Firefox

“Harmony” Came Back Quickly After the Earthquake

Crane Wang — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:50:06 +0800

On the website of the Government of Sichuan Province, where a ruthless great earthquake happened on May 12, there used to be a piece of news saying that a local government of Ngawa Prefecture (阿坝州, near the epicenter of this big quake) successfully tracked and stopped the rumor in Barkam County (马尔康县) that “There would be an earthquake in the coming days.”

After the earthquake, heated debate aroused around the early signs and predictions of the earthquake. And this news, was quietly removed from the government website.

I wrote a posting on my Chinese blog quoting the tracking of “rumors”, and was ordered to be deleted by the Web police.

There has been signs of “uncensored” reporting and more space of free speech right after the earthquake happened. And the modern communication technologies such as the Internet and text messages helped a lot in the enhancement of the space of free speech. And the government and government-backed “mouthpieces” were really swift in responding to the catastrophe.

And quickly, the Propaganda Section of “the” Party followed in to restrict the media the second day. A friend of mine works at a renowned newspaper in Southern China, and he said, he “saw the photocopy of the document ordering to stop independent reportage and to quote ‘the truth’.”

Now, on China’s TV, you can only see a lot of information. But the highlight is on high-officials like Wen speaking slowly on getting “complete success in the relief effort” (and Hu talks even slower than Mr. Wen, the Premier), despite the innumerable deaths lying quietly in the debris. Like the government media have done in every natural and man-made disaster, every effort and every success are interpreted as the result of sticking to the party-line.

Chinese Modern Arts at Today Art Museum

Crane Wang — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:49:18 +0800

There are three exhibitions right now in the nearing Today Art Museum. The museum is quite near, I can walk there in minutes. The exhibitions are Hei Feng: Pay Honour to the Past and Future, “Love You” by Jan Peter van Opheusden and the Interrelated Horizon.

Pay Honour to the Past and Future

Hei Feng was born in the western province of Gansu of China in 1965. He studied Chinese drawing at university and went to America where he kept his art career as a painter.

There are paintings as well as sculptures in this show. And the most eye-catching is this bull. This dog and the flying men (angels?) over head are also very common. This is the head of the bull:

And, this is the other side:

Look into the anus, you can see communities, cars and walking people inside.

These two following paintings shows the once sensational news stories: the nail house, when the house owner opposed government-backed re-construction movement; and paper baozi, when bad restaurant owners fill waste paper in baozi, a popular steamed food :

In this world no one can be sure that they are safe and secure. We all need something protective to ease our anxiety, for example, a condom.

In Hei Feng’s exhibition, there are also flying “Angels”, they are absolutely not the kind of Angels of ordinary definitions. Those Angels all have exaggerating penis. Also, there are dogs with flowers in the anus, young men wearing a condom on the head trying to “see the world in another way” by standing on his hand, and Tiananmen controlled by two hands. Also there are the bird nest(Olympic stadium) and the huge egg(National theater), with newly born little birds:

You might notice a crow in the sun. That is an allusion of Chinese mythology, in the beginning, there were 10 suns in the sky, each a child of the Heaven. And a hero named Hou Yi shot 9 suns down, all those suns turned out to be huge crows.

The boat was interpreted as Noah’s Ark.

There are clear political meanings in some of these paintings. In Hei Feng’s studio, there are some items that are not exhibited: erected penis with wings and cities and skyscrapers. (Pitiful forgot to take a photo)

— —

Interrelated Horizon

“Interrelated Horizon” is an exhibition of several artists.

This really took me aback.

“Goodbye and Sleepless Nights” is a series of paintings of this style: naked sexy yet twisted men and women:

I’m very interested in the scripts that are shown downstairs:

This, is called “Intimacy“.

Technorati : art, paintings

Languages and Equality of Ethnic Groups in China

Crane Wang — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:55:02 +0800

In China, there are 56 (this number is disputed by some) officially recognized ethnic groups, or nationalities in the government vocabulary. You can hardly state the country is a “nation state”. However the majority of the population is Han people; and many of them are totally unaware of the existence of other ethnic groups.

In the Chinese language (which is actually the language of Han people, the ethnic majority), the language is known as 汉语 (language of Han people) or 中文 (language of China). 中文 is the more preferred word in most cases, and 汉语 is generally used when then other ethnic groups in China are mentioned in the context. In this sense, the language of the ethnic majority is understood to be the language of the whole country, and naturally, the existence of other languages and cultures on the same territory are forgotten. In Japanese and Korean languages, similar unawareness also exists. The language of Han Chinese is called 中國語 (language of China), suggesting this language is the one and only language that is spoken in China. The good news is the media are more aware about the cultural diversity in China after recent Tibetan protest (in some cases violence), although this is largely due to the ethnical conflict nature of the series of protests. For example, in the coverage of CNN and French magazine Le Point, ethnicities of Han, Hui and Tibetan are especially noted.

A friend of mine is of Mongolian origins. She had some difficulty in introducing herself to foreigners: apparently she looks Chinese. Being raised in the city, she is quite modernized and she largely thinks, lives and does everything the same way other people do (most of them Han Chinese). Most Mongolian people who grow up in the city don’t speak Mongolian any more. I believe other ethnic minorities would have similar sad language transition as well.

The government policy to keep everyone equal is setting up autonomous regions. The government and many other people think this is a good idea to preserve cultural diversity and protect ethnic minorities. Ironically, Indian reservations in the United States are interpreted as restriction over the freedom of Native Americans by Chinese government. In the five autonomous regions and many other autonomous cities and towns in China, languages of the ethnic groups other than Han are used equally in government agencies and courts. Education for minority ethnic groups is given in their languages. In the street, signs and shop advertising are made bilingual. But this equality between cultures is only made available in those autonomous regions (mostly poor and underdeveloped) and not in other area in China.

To make a real equality between ethnic groups, it would be ideal that all the attempts of ethnic equality are made in all places in China. When a Tibetan or Mongolian needs public service in a mostly-Han area, he or she should be given language service and be treated equally, and vice versa. The “vice versa” thing is really not kidding. I know in many minor crimes, ethnic minorities would be less punished than Han Chinese.

The biggest problem is that the Chinese government is cocky about the GDP it achieved by raising land price and totally indifference about equality of ethnic groups, respecting different religions and freedom of the Chinese people (including ethnic minorities and Han Chinese).

I’ll Continue Blogging

Crane Wang — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:56:27 +0800

My website was blocked for more than half a year by the [bleep]ing Chinese government. And finally I decided to move the site back to China, which cost me a lot of extra money. I’ve recovered some previous posts from Google cache, of course all the previous comments are lost (pity…)

I’ve registered cranewang.net, which now directs here as well. I hope there will not be any trouble any more for me and for my blogs. And I hope I can keep blogging in both languages. It’s rather late right now, gotta go to bed.

Oops, skin color matters

Crane Wang — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:57:22 +0800

When I was eating out with my friend, who is an African European, we talked about “white Europeans often eat beef that is not thoroughly cooked, sometimes still with blood in it.” And I translated to another guy like “Europeans eat beef that is not well cooked.”

Here I subconsciously and mistakenly thought Europeans are WHITE. And my friend said “so I am not usually considered a European.”

Ummm, say if I was in Europe or America for years and even if I was well Europeanized or Americanized, I would still be referred to as an “Asian.” They call this kind of people “bananas” in America, because they are as “white” as the American people and their skin is yellow.

But my friend told me he would be referred to as “the black”, instead of “an African.”

I have to admit that Chinese people are actually a little tiny bit … racist, although this word is too strong. Most people would “naturally” feel the white are “higher” than “the Asians” and sometimes they don’t think the black people are as good. But most times this tendency is very subtle and often ignored. It embarrasses me when people tell unkind jokes about foreigners and I have to laugh with them to be polite.

I guess this is because China is not internationalized enough. And I hope things might be better as time goes on and as China develops.

I begin working today

Crane Wang — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 02:11:59 +0800

I graduated more than one month ago and fooled around for quite a long time. And then in the end I realized how tasteless a meaningless way of life should be. So I turned to a job site and began sending CVs translation firms. Until last Thursday, I finally get a job offer. It should admitted that doing document translating is kinda boringly interesting. It’s a little boring because you have to sit there and keep typing like a machine (but in the end, what kind of job isn’t like this? Haha). It’s interesting because this profession will make you an walking encyclopeda that knows everything because you need to do all kinds of translation.

My office is 1km south of Guomao Subway station, located in a modernistic and artistic community named “Pingod”. Near the office building, there is a gallery (Today Art Museum) in a futuristic formality. There’s a bookstore here too, selling books about designing, modern arts and movies. In front of the gallery and bookstore there are sculptures of Laughing People created by Yue Minjun. And also there is a metal symbol of Maoist China’s ordinary and non-individualist people.

It’s good to be here, with arts surrounding. But, I’m working here, not enjoying moder arts.

PS: Let me post a photo of the sculptures. Isn’t this thing quite well-known?

The Kite Runner

Crane Wang — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 08:44:29 +0800

At the very beginning, this book touched my heart quietly and powerfully with the first sentence: “I became what I am today at the age of twelve.” This strong feeling followed me while I was reading most parts of the story. I do believe it really is powerful and devastating.

But I thought quite a lot times, when I finished certain chapters, that the story could just end here. When something shocking and powerful happened, I would ask what else more do I want to know? Let it finish right there no more, and it will be a great book. But it went on relentlessly, and many plots turned out to be less successful, or somewhat plain. I do like the ending thought, and it left all readers a great range of imagination. They may live together happily as if nothing happened to Hassan, to Amir, to all their lives. They may have the happiness that should be enjoyed by any man and woman in the world.

If there was nothing happened at all in Afganistan, everything could be all right as ever. If there were no wars, no political dirty tricks, no Russian invasions, no Taliban takeover, if clashes among political powers could stay out of the way of daily lives of the people, this piece of territory can remain as cherished as every other place in the world. Painfully, all of those did happen. Former king was pushed aside, russian soldiers came with tanks and kalashnikovs, and Taliban drove in with blood stains.

Yes, in the end the American came in rescue. Social order could be rebuilt at that time, democracy might finally came, and peaceful life would come back in the end as well, if they were given more help and attention. But again sadly, Afganistan was again totally forgotten in newspapers and on TV screens right after American troops invaded Iraq. And what now, even after this book about Afghanistan once became bestseller? Same old same old.

PS: In chapter 13, there were words like:

The novel was released in the summer of that following year, 1989, and the publisher sent me on a five-city book tour. I became a minor celebrity in the Afghan community. … That was the year that the cold war ended, the year the Berlin Wall came down. It was the year of Tiananmen Square. In the midst of it all, Afghanistan was forgotten.

and in the Chinese transaltion, the Tiananmen Square killings was omitted (censored?).

God Bless John, My Friend.

Crane Wang — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 17:33:55 +0800

When we started our first blog on blogspot.com on learning English and reading, he randomly picked up John as his ID. It was 2003, when we finished high school and both entered university.

John was my best high school friend. He was clever and devoted in school, good at math and physics, and eventually got enrolled in a top 20 university in China studying computer science. I had never dreamt of going to study in a university as famous. He is much of the academic kind of students, hardworking. Everyone believed he would ultimately become a prominent scientist.

John is serious about everything and he believes that people are generally good. When he arrived in Beijing as a university freshman, he kept his simple belief in the goodness of city dwellers.

Wudaokou is one of the most internationalized parts in Beijing. The top two universities in mainland China locate here, international students from every corner of the globe study and appreciate Chinese life here. One day when John was shopping there, an old trickster came up and told John a sad story about his family and that he needed some money to find his lost daughter. Without any hesitation, John picked out one hundred and gave the old guy. After walked away a few minutes, John turned back and asked the old guy if he needed more.

It was a long time later that John had realized that old guy was a professional story telling beggar. John was teased for quite a long time by friends on this. John replied with a big smile on his face, “I just thought I can help him out.”

John insisted he should do something positive in his university years. At the second year he told me he had been considering seriously about joining the Communist Party. I ask him loudly why, I have always doubted the Party that pretend to be accountable and great. John answered with his usual seriousness party committees in university departments are not as hypocrite, they are really working for benefiting the students.

But last year, John changed a lot and that gave me a big surprise. He asked me if I was interested in the Bible and invited me to a religious venue. What I expected was something like a lecture on biblical stories and western culture. It was in a very ordinary apartment hidden in all these apartment building complexes in north-west Beijing. I was totally shocked by the religious atmosphere in that barely-furnished little apartment. After the mass I asked the organizer in a low voice I probably would accept a god and a Christ, but perhaps not as described in the Bible. The middle-aged lady was taken aback by my question, and told me the choice is up to me, as I have my “free will”.

I talked with John in the summer sun of Beijing about the belief. I have to say I only want to believe in what I want to believe in. I want absolute freedom in choosing what I believe. The communist party has been telling fascinating fake stories, and trying to seize people’s mind for a long time. I escaped from their illusionary and hypocrite ideology. And now, when encountering Christianity, I cannot be sure if I can still keep my little freedom of questioning and believing in what I believe. Giving up questioning, even Christianity, means giving up other possibilities of learning and accepting other explanations and philosophies of the whole world. I’m not ready to jump into a certain predefined way of thinking.

But I totally understand John’s choice, and God bless John.

John kept on the same track, and went on further. Graduate students are really eager to get a good job and make good money. Or many would choose to pursue further study in post-gradate schools or abroad. And John, an excellent student in Computer Science, would have chosen a much brighter path. But he gave up all that and chose another way of life. He began working in the church (which I guess is not accepted by the government and literally illegal to Chinese government).

The last time when I saw him was Easter Day. I just had an interpreting course and worrying if I’m going to find a good job and if I can have enough money to sustain my life in this big, noisy, crowded city.

And John had a blissful emotion. I wondered why. He simply replied, “It’s Easter Day.”

The Enchanted Symbol

Crane Wang — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 22:44:53 +0800

The Enchanted Symbol
Donald Barthelme’s Perspectives of Meaning of Life in the Glass Mountain

Donald Barthelme was an American writer famous for short stories and fictions. He had been writing in a post-modernistic manner even before the term had been coined. His writings had been considered bizarre and unacceptable by many. In most of his stories, he would employ avant-garde styles and techniques. Sentences were broken, scenes were fragmentized. His language is full of fabricated words and typos. His narration is incoherent. All these could easily be noticed before people really get into his writings.

Meanwhile, Donald Barthelme was regarded as a great author and his writings “profoundly meaningful.” He had gained wide recognition and much reputation and received many awards. If you try to see through the seemingly incomprehensible surface and go a bit deeper into the text, you will find his deceptively meaningless sentences highly philosophical.

As a significant figure of post-modernism, he surely had brought about a lot of innovations in literature and played a great role in the history of literature. In his unconventional way of narration, he had reveal to readers his own perception and observation of the world and his deep understanding of the situation of people in a highly developed capitalist society, and in an age when people no longer hold faith in their minds. People feel lost both in reality and in their spiritual world.

In this regard, his short story The Glass Mountain is a good example. The short story was first published in the collection City Life (1970) in which he characteristically mixed the mundane and the fantastic in stories. Like what he had done in his first novel Snow White (1967), Donald Barthelme retold old fairy tales in a totally different way intentionally.

The fairy tale of the Glass Mountain originally appeared in the Yellow Fairy Book edited by Andrew Lang. As in many repeatedly told stories, the original tale was quite stereotype in the aspects of aspiration and masculine heroism. A beautiful and wealthy princess was enchanted in a castle on top of a slippery and solid glass mountain situated in a mysterious land. Knights from every kingdom came to scale the mountain to disenchant the princess and marry her. But none of them succeeded. At the foot the Glass Mountain, there gradually formed a high heap of corpse of brave and unfortunate knights and their horses. A youth was quite familiar with the legend told again and again. He grew so curious and ambitious that he decided to reach the top. Determinedly the youth managed to climb up the mountain on his hands and fight the eagle guarding the castle. Finally he became a mighty and wealthy king and married the princess.

In Barthelme’s version, I tried to climb up a magnificent glass mountain situated “at the corner of Thirteenth Street and Eighth Avenue,” which “looks like” an office building. Everyone in town was told there’s a mysterious “enchanted symbol” on top of the building. I managed to reach the top of this great mountain with two plungers in both hands. Down on the ground was a high heap of fallen knights and horses. Passers-by were looking up and cursing the stupid act of climbing up in search of the “enchanted symbol.” While I was climbing up, I doubted the why I was climbing now and then. When I ultimately reached the top and discovered that the so-called “enchanted symbol” was a princess, I was disappointed and threw the princess down to the ground.

While the former one is quite a customary tale, the latter one is quite different from old telling, both in form and in content.
The first thing that you will notice is that Donald Barthelme had written the story as if he was making a list. The whole story consists of a hundred items. Donald Barthelme had surprised the readers by his unique unexpected form of writing. One of his stories was called Sentence, and indeed, the whole story was written in one single sentence. In his Explanation, Donald Barthelme inserted meaningless black blocks into the text, and the text was in the form of FAQ. The rebellious form of Barthelme’s writing was offensive to some, but at the same time, this is also one reason of his distinctness.

Deeper into the content, we might find many more different points between this story and the old story. In Barthelme’s narration, the immense glass mountain was not in a mysterious place where people would accept the possibility of fairy tales, but in a modernized big city in which people live their real lives and eliminate any possibility of untrue stories. Some people were rather indifferent of my exploration; they continue with their own lives just the same. “28. In the streets were hundreds of young people shooting up in doorways, behind parked cars. 29. Older people walked dogs.” People obsess in their pleasures. Some of the pleasures are pretty dirty and guilty, drug injection for instance. Other people were cursing me. They don’t think climbing up the Glass Mountain and suffering pains to fight the eagle worthy. They don’t believe the enchanted symbol is meaningful either. And to the failed endeavourers, they will not be merciful. “My acquaintances were prising out the gold teeth of not-yet dead knights..”

Most modern people do not even try to make achievements any more. They do not hold beliefs in their minds either. I asked myself “Does one climb a glass mountain, at considerable personal discomfort, simply to disenchant a symbol?” and “Do today’s stronger egos still need symbols?” I decided the answers to both questions should be “Yes.” It is very obvious that I am the only person in modern time to give affirmative answer while many people were busy shooting drug and walking dog, many people were cursing me. The whole world seems to be deteriorating as the streets are covered by dog shits “in brilliant colors” and the elms trees have been cut down by powerful saws.

Everything in modern society has got worse than in the medieval age, when knight were brave to try there best in search of a meaning in life. This is not what modern ordinary people concern. All the preceding climbers are knights, and no modern person would risk their life to challenge the Glass Mountain, or to reach self-establishment and find the meaning in life through their own struggle, except “me.”

Although I am trying to climb up the Glass Mountain and am willing to rescue the princess as keenly as the knights do, I do have new methods. I know this is not medieval age any more and I know “The best way to fail to climb the mountain is to be a knight in full armor – one whose horse’s hoofs strike fiery sparks from the sides of the mountain.” The tools that “I” use are plungers and climbing irons. While the hero knows clearly that he belongs to a totally new age and he has already shifted his way of life in some degree. He thinks there would be new meanings in life and he hoped the enchanted symbol could be something new. The situation of “mine” resembles the stand of a modern man dwelling in big cities in search of success. They are not strong enough to be able to chase a success. Nevertheless they are largely influenced by old habits and clichés. Thus one would make up his mind to pursue the meaning bravely and abruptly before he has really well prepared for the hardship. On the lonely way of chasing a success, I am often frightened and feel not up to the mission. “It was cold there at 206 feet and when I looked down I was not encouraged. A heap of corpses both of horses and riders ringed the bottom of the mountain, many dying men groaning there.” And when I faced the eagle, “I was afraid. I had forgotten the Bandaids.”

While I was unplugging the plunger and moving up a little, “A knight in pale pink armor appeared above me… He uttered the word ‘Muerte’ as he passed me.” The moment when I have fought the cruel eagle following the instructions in the old fairy tale and stepped into the castle, I found that the so-called “enchanted symbol” does not have any new meaning to me at all. A beautiful princess is as empty and pointless as any cliché. “Muerte” uttered by the falling knight does not only mean his own death, also it means that “my” faith in the meaningfulness in life is going to an end, and die.

To the hero himself, every preceding generation has told him the same thing and he is indoctrinated the whole value system. The fairy tale of the Glass Mountain and the symbol meaning of it are among the aged recounting.

I was told that there is a deeper meaning in life other than everyday chores and it in on the top of an immense glass mountain which is hard to scale. I am willing, although not very self-determined, to challenge the glass mountain despite all this suffering. In the heart of the hero, he was hoping for something of more grandeur to appear rather than a princess. After long suffering, I have in the end found out what an “enchanted symbol” really means and been disappointed. But it was only then, that I have the chance and the liberty to choose and realize what he wants despite all the clichés of the society.

It is safe to say that Donald Barthelme will not be happy with the highly industrialized and modernized society in which people no longer find any meaning or pursuit. In such a situation, people do not find themselves in need of anything else. They feel every desire of them is now fulfilled and every need satisfied. On one hand the world is developing rapidly, and in terms of materialism, people fill happy. On the other hand, people are now satisfied with their temporary pleasure and refuse to accept any faith, religion, pursuit or even meaning of life. Still there are lonely endeavourers trying to give and example of meaningful life like the hero of the story and Donald Barthelme.

But if we ask the hero again the question “Do today’s stronger egos still need symbols?” What would the answer be?

Donald Barthelme has repeatedly asked this question in his stories and novels. He does an anatomy on human beings in modern society and exposes their illusions that can never be realized, their weakness that can never be eliminated. The society consists of all kinds of persons. “I” am pursuing and disappointed. Many were disillusioned and satisfied with what they have got. Still there are many people who find gratification in abnormal activities. In this short story and in all his writings, Donald Barthelme has asked many questions about the defections of capitalist society and the abilities and disabilities of human beings. Donald Barthelme has shown us many possible answers but none of them could be a real answer. Barthelme has doubts and questions and he is positively finding answers but unfortunately he could never find them. The only thing he could do is to represent the fragmentized and uncertain human life and society in fragmentized way. Although he has never given clear answers of how to solve the problem of human beings, undoubtedly Donald Barthelme does reach a height in literature.

Text of the Glass Mountain fetched from http://www.fti.uab.es/sgolden/docencia/glassmountain.htm