Well, I’m currently back in the states on vacation. The blog posting here stopped because wordpress became blocked once again and I still haven’t gone ahead and done the VPN thing.
I started writing at a posterous blog here, also called 破釜Sink the Boats沉舟. I’m digging posterous set-up and if it doesn’t get blocked, that’s where I’ll be doing my blogging for now.
Come say hi.
Yesterday I posted about 韩寒‘s new magazine here. With the initial announcement of his magazine he encouraged anyone and everyone to send in their work for publication and applications for jobs. Given that he has thousands upon thousands of readers and also that he is offering especially high compensation and salaries, he of course recieved craploads of emails.
In his new post he comments on all the emails and also gives some advice for anyone planning on sending something in the future in hopes of publication. It’s pretty funny to imagine just how many…’not so useful’ submissions he recieved.
About the pictures: we’ve received some pictures that are really worthy of appreciation and we’re still thinking about how to match them up with the style of the magazine. However, please no more sloppy camera phone pictures, landscapes, travel shots or artistic nude photos. Also, first please send a smaller version, photo album or a link to your blog. I once spent 3 hours opening a gigantic document only to realize it was a travel photo of the author at West Lake. I enlarged the background thinking maybe there was some sort of message from a UFO. I also enlarged the water thinking there might be traces of a sea monster there. Regrettably, it really was just a picture of the author sitting in front of some West Lake scenery. Therefore, I’m asking that everyone please appreciate said beauty on their own in advance. Also, I’m not saying phones can’t take pictures. A lot of phones take really great pictures, but I think your head in that video has got to be over 300,000 pixels.
I first heard about Han Han during the T!bet riots in back in ’08. I stumbled across a QQ message that was being forwarded around of an interview he did. The interview was pretty much his response to the rising sense of nationalism and anti-foreign sentiment at the time. I found it interesting and went ahead and translated it, then blogged about it here. Ever since then, I’ve been following his blog somewhat and have learned a bit more about him.
He’s an interesting guy and commendable for the fact that he’s willing to go against the grain, even when doing so is highly unpopular. For that reason, I was stoked to read CHINAYOUREN‘s blog post, here, about Han Han’s recent announcement that he’d be publishing a magazine.
Head on over and check it out. I am definitely excited to see issue #1.
WordPress seems to have been blocked for a little while there and I couldn’t access the site easily. Ai yo!
Anyway, it’s been great lately. Fantastic weather, days off of work, etc etc.
Here’s a poem I found by googling 春天 and 诗. I picked it pretty randomly and just went ahead and translated it. I like it though. It’s got a nice vibe. (note: I’ve never translated a poem before…ever. I’m sure I screwed some things up, but hey, who cares right.)
Mountain Springs
The mountain spring water is sweet and so are the singing the birds.
In days past, there was an orchard here.
Building a cottage, the old couple retires to live out their days.
A hundred flowers bloom and a hundred fruits are fragrant.
Birds and bees dance in the air, hurriedly gathering honey.
Sipping tea under a tree, enjoying the flowers of a garden,
and a grandson bumbles around cooing.
A small dog barks furiously, another visitor arrives
and the glasses are quickly retrieved from the house.
Flip through a magazine, watch a little television and for a short time, be concerned with matters of country.
And here’s the original:
山泉
山泉水甜，小鸟歌甜，昔日荒山尽果园。
退休事闲，建房山前，夫妻山居养天年。
百花齐放，百果争香，蜂蝶飞舞采蜜忙。
树下品茶，园中赏花，外孙绕膝语牙牙。
小犬狂吠，又来宾贵，忙引宅中酒杯对。
翻翻杂志，看看电视，时刻关心国家事
Too bad it’s going to be unbearably hot in about 2 weeks!
During my move back to Shanghai I spent a lot of time running around town between friends places, dinners, apartment hunting and my new school. For a few weeks there it seemed like I was getting in a cab by myself everyday. As it goes, I was having a lot of short conversations with cab drivers and after only a few I starting noticing something interesting. It seemed like not just a few, but a disproportionately large number of them were from 崇明岛 (chóng míng dǎo); that long island/suburb across river, north of the city proper. Well, after about the 5th or 6th time, I started inquiring as to if there were any special reason as to why I had talked to so many people from the same suburb.
The only answer I got was about ‘hukou’s or the Chinese system of household registration which controls where people can and can’t work. Basically, if you aren’t registered somewhere you can’t work there and getting registered means being born there or having lived and worked there for a long time. (or maybe just a little 关系?…) For that reason it’s quite common, if not completely normal, to have a driver from a suburb a bit outside of any Chinese city driving your taxi. They have the registration and can make more money doing work in the city.
Still…it seemed strange. They were all from the same suburb and not even a very close one. In fact I was told that although they are building a bridge now, the island is only accessible by boat. And hey, it is an island. It seemed like there had to be something going on.
Well it turns out that there is. A friend of mine, @bramerb, via twitter sent me a link to an article here about a planned ‘eco-city’ on an island near Shanghai. Turns out that the government is starting to, and still may attempt to, turn 崇明岛 into some sort of city project of the future called Dongtan Eco-City.
It all makes sense! Well, not really, but it’s a big piece of the puzzle. I’m still curious as to why so many became cab drivers and I’m not even sure if people have been directly displaced by the project, offered some sort of incentive package, or something else, but there’s definitely a connection there. On paper the project is awesome. The thing is, in China and other mega-populated countries, the human cost is so very high. Of course environmental sustainability is important, but how ‘socially-sustainable’ is relocating thousands upon thousands of people for every project? A hard balance to strike indeed…
I guess its time to learn how to say ‘Eco-City’ (绿城？) and continue the conversation.
Interesting.
I decided today that I’m going to travel to either Sichuan or Yunnan province this summer before I make a trip back home to the states. I’ve done a lot of traveling in China, but never to either of these two massive provinces and I couldn’t be more stoked about it. The lure of Western China calls out to me and I’ve only scratched that itch but once with a trip into Xinjiang province. Yunnan and Sichuan remain mystified, but the former will likley be next on the hit list. Also, unless it’s just financially stupid, I’ll take the train. Of course it’s substantially longer than a flight, but I enjoy long-distance train rides in China. For me, they’re filled with long conversations, baijiu and a real sense of movement that you don’t get on an airplane. I’m looking forward to it.
I love Shanghai, but one needs to escape it’s packed streets, pace and pollution at least a few times a year.
Well, at least I do anyway.
The weather is quite phenomonal today, however, and for that reason it’s time to get away from this damn computer screen!
Beer me.
I’m just going to go ahead and ramble a bit. Cathartic.
Shanghai is going well. I like being in this city and it’s good changing up my environment.
The job? It’s okay. It’s definitely not the professional teaching experience I was hoping for, but it pays the bills nicely. I am, however, already thinking about my lack of job satisfaction and that’s no good after not even 2 months!
I’m going to start looking around for something that utilizes my Chinese. Start looking around and considering options.
If nothing comes up, I may start looking for another teaching gig. This time with Chinese students. I need more Chinese in my life. It’s funny, I already get quite a bit, but I’m at the point where I have a strong desire to use my Chinese in a productive way. Hmmm…
I should be starting up with a tutor next month though and that should satisfy my itch for the time being.
Well, wordpress has now been unblocked in China for about month. I switched over to blogspot and renamed the blog, but now that wordpress is unblocked, I’ll keep blogging here. I like wordpress dashboard system considerably more than blogspot’s. I have recenly starting using twitter though which I think has made me blog a lot less. 140 characters and all that…
I’ve also decided to just go ahead and use the name I made for the other blog here. ‘Over and Out’ never had any real meaning anyway, it just seemed bloggy. To be honest though, 破釜沉舟 doesn’t really have any special meaning for me either. I just like the sound of it. In case you’re wondering, it’s a 成语 or chéng yǔ, a four character Chinese idiom that derives its meaning from a historoical or literary story. In this case, the literal meaning is ‘break the pots and sink the boats’ and is a reference to going into battle without looking back or planning on necessarily coming out alive. It’s used kind of like ‘burning bridges’.
Anyway, I’ve changed themes out of boredom. Maybe someday I’ll get around to making a real damn website. But yeah…probably not.
I’ll continue ranting about studying Chinese and talking about my pipe dreams in the near future.
Well, the title of the blog finally has some real meaning!
This will probably be my last post here. I’ve started a blog at blogspot and I’ll be doing my writing there. It’s not that I don’t like wordpress. In fact, I think wordpress is superior in a lot of ways (particularly the dashboard and the commenting systems) but alas, wordpress is blocked in China. You can use a proxy to get around it, but then that means I have to use Firefox and I’ve been using a lot of Chrome lately.
This blog will stay up and if wordpress ever gets unblocked (it does happen) maybe I’ll move on back over.
So, update your RSS feed and your bookmarks (the few of you that actually read this blog) and get your ass over there!
Random thoughts…
Living directly downtown for a month before the move. Really enjoying it.
The move should be quite insane. I’ve got friends to bunk up with while I find a place and get sorted, but regardless, it should be a bit hectic.
Fortunately a good friend Matt (缪) offered to drive me and all my stuff down to SH rather than take the train and therefore also have to send some boxes via post. Very grateful. I’m also looking forward to the trip. First ‘road trip’ like experience in China.
I’ve been playing way too much guitar hero these days. I see bars and dots.
I need to live near line 2 in SH and on the West side of town. I’m thinking Either Jiangsu Rd., Zhongshan park, or Loushanguan Rd, stations. Curious as to prices tho…
Study habits have taken a hit with all the moving around.
I’ve packed my life into 2 boxes, 2 suitcases and a duffel bag. This makes me very happ
Coffee…I’m going to go get a cup of coffee.
