I edited and expanded this old blog entry for a new blog that I created named "Blabber." Blabber will be my public blog on books, pop culture, the past and the current, and other things of the universe, featuring a more formal writing, as opposed to this blog Carpe Diem, which consists of more casual writings about my personal life.
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Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones showed me both the China I already knew and the China I have no clue about. Peter Hessler, a typical elite white American, spent seven years in China first as a peace corp volunteer than as a journalist and a freelancer. He was present right at the center of many historic events such as the period when Falun Gong was banned from China. He read so many famous and obscure Chinese literature and research on China. He had developed profound friendships with so many Chinese and foreign people, both prominent individuals and common folks like you and me. I truly believe the China this man has seen and met far exceeds the China that most average Chinese themselves know.
Many Chinese people think that they know a lot and like to make comments about China, but in reality they are just using ignorance as a weapon. On the other hand, when a foreign white man like Peter Hessler begins commenting on the current events of China, many Chinese people--before even reading a word of his book--presume that there is no way he would be able to objectively, correctly, and thoroughly evaluate China simply because he is not Chinese like they are. In some way, I believe that Peter Hessler knows more about the Chinese people and Chinese mentality than Chinese people know themselves. Unlike many writings on China I read, I do not sense bias in his writing. He does criticize China at many points throughout the book but he does so in what I believed a highly objective manner. During a conversation with my economics professor, he commented on Peter Hessler: "this man obviously loves China, but that doesn't mean he has to be sentimental about China." Too many Chinese people including myself are sometimes overly sentimental about China. We feel the right to mock the government ourselves but get ridiculously outraged when a foreigner tries to say the same thing--except not in mockery, but in a more constructive manner.
I vaguely remember my former high school English teacher Ms. Armstrong said about mockery in writing. It was something about how if you only rely on that then there would be no meaning to your writing. I didn't really understand what she said at the same--I was, and we all were, at a cynical age when we just want to mock the entire world that displeases us so much. We put ourselves in such a high moral position that our eyes can't let in a grain of dust. Through all the mockery that we have done, however, we begin to lose the bigger picture--how do we fix the problems, and then how do we prevent us from making the same mistakes again?
The Chinese people are like our high school selves. They mock, they criticize. But when they come to the very cruel realities that they mocked and criticized--in private, they conform and they yield. They sigh and say that this is just how the things work, and how life is.
The popular and controversial author, blogger, and racer Han Han recently wrote a blog post titled "Just truth, or the truth we want," in which he talks about a seemingly shady death of a Chinese who refused to give up his home and land to the government. There was a huge outcry on the internet and in the media, questioning the "truth" provided by the officials and suspecting the death is a result of murder. Many doctors and experts of other fields investigated and concluded that it was just an accident, but the outcry grew ever louder and these doctors and experts became the new targets of conspiracy theories and so on. Han Han wrote that he rather believe in the opinions of the doctors and experts than the popular suspicions, which are based on little to no evidence. That is, however, not the point. It is sad that the people would always jump to conclusions when things like this happen. He wrote that the government has been so opaque with its operations in the past that it is making simple and straightforward matters seem shady. The government should reflect upon the reason why it has lost the trust of its people. Han Han once again eloquently expressed his opinion, which is certainly not anything ultra progressive or uncommon, logically and convincingly.
Well, if we examine the other party in Han Han's story, the conclusion is people like the truth that makes most sense and entails most drama. Our judgment is often clouded by our emotions and prejudice. To make my point brief, Peter Hessler is not one who is clouded by the popular conceptions and prejudice of what China is. He writes with beautiful fluidity and honest language. He is certainly one of the most inspiring figures of mine.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Green Mushroom.
Yesterday I bought a green mushroom plush at Morning Glory. The Super Mario Brothers' green mushroom collectible. I bought it because 1) it was 50% off; 2) I've always wanted it. Actually, I first bought a red Mario plush. But I realized what I really wanted was the slightly more expensive mushroom, so I returned the Mario and purchased the mushroom.
Anyway, the point was I felt freakishly happy after I bought the mushroom. Normally I consider buying stuffed toys as retarded. It's not "cool." It's not something that nineteen-year-olds do. But then I thought--who cares--I like Super Mario Brothers, and I like mushroom. This is something that defines the quirkiness of me. I am childish, and I am proud.
Anyway, the point was I felt freakishly happy after I bought the mushroom. Normally I consider buying stuffed toys as retarded. It's not "cool." It's not something that nineteen-year-olds do. But then I thought--who cares--I like Super Mario Brothers, and I like mushroom. This is something that defines the quirkiness of me. I am childish, and I am proud.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Reality check.
Barnard--and just NYC in general--really has a way of getting to you. The pea coats, the boots, the makeup (which I don't do because I don't know how)--in a population as diverse as the one in Barnard/New York, these are the things that girls from all different cultures share. I certainly do not object to this new and higher level of aesthetic awareness; I expected it and looked for it. Besides, this isn't even the point. I just don't know if NYC/Barnard is bringing me happiness at all. I'm not miserable. I'm quite happy with spending most of the time by myself doing things I particularly like without outside influence. I just feel like I can't connect with the campus or the people on the campus and something that should give me the deep satisfaction of a college life is seriously missing in action.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Crossroad
It was not long ago. But I almost forgot about it. I may have done so deliberately, until reminded by Jonathan Safron Foer’s book Eating Animals.
Two years ago—maybe? My mom’s colleague gave her three little chicks. They were meant to be eaten, eventually. There is no doubt about that. The chicks, though, were too small to be eaten, so we kept them in a cardboard box and fed them for a while—how long was a while? A few weeks? Few months? I don’t remember. What I do remember is that my brother takes them out everyday to the backyard to play. Initially he just let them out of the box and wander on their own, but sometimes the chicks would wander off into someone else’s backyard across the street, causing the neighbors to complain. Since then my brother would watch them as they played, and put them back into the box in the end. He got pretty good at this—taking the chickens out and making them go back. I don’t know how much he enjoyed being a shepherd of the three chicks, but he would squat down and watch the chicks frolic for a long time, sometimes eve playing with them. The chicks grew slowly—perhaps too slowly. There was a point when we felt like it was just too much to feed three chicks in our garage (which was really smelly at that time because of those chicks) that grew at a glacier speed. We couldn’t keep them anymore. They were still small. We discussed the possibility of just letting them go, but for some reason it died down. Then we finally had to kill them. My mom killed all kinds of animals. For crabs, because they release toxins after they are dead, she would clean, brush, and cut off their tentacles while they are still alive and the butchering reached the climax when she stick chopsticks through their eyes. I don’t know if she still does it. Probably. But I don’t watch her kill crabs anymore because it’s too hard to watch. When she cut off the tentacles, I imagined my limbs being in chopped off like that. When she sticks the chopsticks through the crab’s eyes, I imagined my eyes being treated like that. It was just too much. But I still eat crabs.
The point is, she did not kill those chickens. My step-father, who grew up in a farm and had probably killed lots of chickens, did. My mother said she just couldn’t. But my brother watched as my step-father slit the chicks’ throat open. I didn’t. I ran upstairs because I couldn’t bear the shrieking. Nobody except my step-father ate the chicken meat that night.
I haven’t finished Eating Animals but it’s already influencing me little by little. I don’t order chicken at the pasta station anymore. I still eat meat, but I try to avoid it as much as possible. Foer described his status years after college, when he was not yet a firm vegetarian, as “a vegetarian who occasionally eat meat;” I’m an omnivore who eat vegetables and fruits most of the time.
I never liked animals. Not chickens, not crabs, not dogs, not cats. If I have the energy to love animals, I rather love human babies. I get angry every time I see commercials calling help for dogs because why would anyone be so concerned about dogs when there are millions of people in the world dying of hunger, disease, and all other problems? But that’s not to say that I’m not moved by Foer’s book. I don’t think animals are as important as human beings only because I’m a human being and I naturally put my species on a higher priority than other species. But I do believe that animals obviously can feel pain. Cutting of crabs’ tentacles hurt them as much as cutting off our legs hurt us (imagine that without anesthesia). In the past I avoided the question regarding the ethics of eating animals, telling myself that eating animals is just something that people do—it happens, people eat meat. But now I can’t tell myself this anymore. It just doesn’t cut it. I’m not even going to talk about the conditions at the factory farms—just what right do we have to enslave any animal for their meat? “Enslave” is actually not an accurate term. What we are doing to these animals is trillions times worse than what people did to slaves in the history.
I find myself at a crossroad, not knowing what to do.
Two years ago—maybe? My mom’s colleague gave her three little chicks. They were meant to be eaten, eventually. There is no doubt about that. The chicks, though, were too small to be eaten, so we kept them in a cardboard box and fed them for a while—how long was a while? A few weeks? Few months? I don’t remember. What I do remember is that my brother takes them out everyday to the backyard to play. Initially he just let them out of the box and wander on their own, but sometimes the chicks would wander off into someone else’s backyard across the street, causing the neighbors to complain. Since then my brother would watch them as they played, and put them back into the box in the end. He got pretty good at this—taking the chickens out and making them go back. I don’t know how much he enjoyed being a shepherd of the three chicks, but he would squat down and watch the chicks frolic for a long time, sometimes eve playing with them. The chicks grew slowly—perhaps too slowly. There was a point when we felt like it was just too much to feed three chicks in our garage (which was really smelly at that time because of those chicks) that grew at a glacier speed. We couldn’t keep them anymore. They were still small. We discussed the possibility of just letting them go, but for some reason it died down. Then we finally had to kill them. My mom killed all kinds of animals. For crabs, because they release toxins after they are dead, she would clean, brush, and cut off their tentacles while they are still alive and the butchering reached the climax when she stick chopsticks through their eyes. I don’t know if she still does it. Probably. But I don’t watch her kill crabs anymore because it’s too hard to watch. When she cut off the tentacles, I imagined my limbs being in chopped off like that. When she sticks the chopsticks through the crab’s eyes, I imagined my eyes being treated like that. It was just too much. But I still eat crabs.
The point is, she did not kill those chickens. My step-father, who grew up in a farm and had probably killed lots of chickens, did. My mother said she just couldn’t. But my brother watched as my step-father slit the chicks’ throat open. I didn’t. I ran upstairs because I couldn’t bear the shrieking. Nobody except my step-father ate the chicken meat that night.
I haven’t finished Eating Animals but it’s already influencing me little by little. I don’t order chicken at the pasta station anymore. I still eat meat, but I try to avoid it as much as possible. Foer described his status years after college, when he was not yet a firm vegetarian, as “a vegetarian who occasionally eat meat;” I’m an omnivore who eat vegetables and fruits most of the time.
I never liked animals. Not chickens, not crabs, not dogs, not cats. If I have the energy to love animals, I rather love human babies. I get angry every time I see commercials calling help for dogs because why would anyone be so concerned about dogs when there are millions of people in the world dying of hunger, disease, and all other problems? But that’s not to say that I’m not moved by Foer’s book. I don’t think animals are as important as human beings only because I’m a human being and I naturally put my species on a higher priority than other species. But I do believe that animals obviously can feel pain. Cutting of crabs’ tentacles hurt them as much as cutting off our legs hurt us (imagine that without anesthesia). In the past I avoided the question regarding the ethics of eating animals, telling myself that eating animals is just something that people do—it happens, people eat meat. But now I can’t tell myself this anymore. It just doesn’t cut it. I’m not even going to talk about the conditions at the factory farms—just what right do we have to enslave any animal for their meat? “Enslave” is actually not an accurate term. What we are doing to these animals is trillions times worse than what people did to slaves in the history.
I find myself at a crossroad, not knowing what to do.
6:51 AM 10-29-2010
Last night I volunteered at the men’s homeless shelter for the first time. I would actually say that I had a good time. Or at least, a worthwhile time. They slept in beds that can be pulled out from a large cabinet. There were ten cabinets in the room, a row of table and chairs around it, and plenty of space to walk about. It didn’t feel like a very different world, but it undoubtedly was. The things they talked about—-the other homeless shelters, subsidized housing, gifts that came from donations—-were so far away from my life that I had a hard time realizing that their words were, in fact, deeply, deeply real. They talked about the injustices in another large homeless shelter, how it has a really hostile and incompetent staff, how the only thing it provides them is a plastic chair to sleep in, how it treats people like animals, driving the sane to insanity, how it is keeping the insane because it can collect more money from the government.
"I will try to bring them down. What they are doing is not right." Chris, a big, well-spoken Black man, said.
They were seriously angry, but they also expressed their anger through jokes. The stories about the crazy homeless folks and their own “first nights” were just too funny and too sad. One anecdote that all of them cherished was about this man who left the shelter two weeks ago. He was the joker of the bunch. One night all of them received gifts from the shelter, mostly clothes, and the "joker" tried on his black, T-shirt-looking top in front of everyone—-except it wasn’t a T-shirt, it was a form-fitting, woman’s halter top. “What is this?” He looked down puzzled at his chest, which was so tight that a cleavage was clearly visible.
The rest cracked up all night long.
"So what are you doing right now?"
"I'm trying to get my GED."
"Woah, that's really nice. Do you know what you're going do with it?"
"Oh yes, of course. I'm going to be a judge. I know it."
“If they were walking on the streets would you ever think that they’re homeless?” Yuan Yuan, a friend who came with me, asked when we were on our way back.
“No. Never.”
“Me neither.”
The truth is that some of them certainly would make me suspect that their standards of living are not too good, but I would never even imagine that they are homeless—-this word is so distant from my own life that my mind does not even treat it as a possibility for the less fortunate others. But today in the subway, a big Black woman, dressed in an even bigger, oversized red jacket, walked out of door carrying a small luggage and a plastic bag sitting on top of it. Her expression was the same as the men in the shelter when they were not talking.
"I will try to bring them down. What they are doing is not right." Chris, a big, well-spoken Black man, said.
They were seriously angry, but they also expressed their anger through jokes. The stories about the crazy homeless folks and their own “first nights” were just too funny and too sad. One anecdote that all of them cherished was about this man who left the shelter two weeks ago. He was the joker of the bunch. One night all of them received gifts from the shelter, mostly clothes, and the "joker" tried on his black, T-shirt-looking top in front of everyone—-except it wasn’t a T-shirt, it was a form-fitting, woman’s halter top. “What is this?” He looked down puzzled at his chest, which was so tight that a cleavage was clearly visible.
The rest cracked up all night long.
"So what are you doing right now?"
"I'm trying to get my GED."
"Woah, that's really nice. Do you know what you're going do with it?"
"Oh yes, of course. I'm going to be a judge. I know it."
“If they were walking on the streets would you ever think that they’re homeless?” Yuan Yuan, a friend who came with me, asked when we were on our way back.
“No. Never.”
“Me neither.”
The truth is that some of them certainly would make me suspect that their standards of living are not too good, but I would never even imagine that they are homeless—-this word is so distant from my own life that my mind does not even treat it as a possibility for the less fortunate others. But today in the subway, a big Black woman, dressed in an even bigger, oversized red jacket, walked out of door carrying a small luggage and a plastic bag sitting on top of it. Her expression was the same as the men in the shelter when they were not talking.
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