六四 June 4

Learning the months is one of the few things in Chinese that's easy.  It's simply month 1, month 2, month 3, etc.  Saying dates can get abbreviated to simply the number of the month and the date.

Today is 6-4, Liù Sì  (approximately Leo Si - like sir but without the r sound at the end, and they're both falling tone, the falling tone you'd use when you just remembered you forgot something you need and you say "shit!")

I arrived in Hong Kong in July 1989 for a year sabbatical, so this is all very fresh in my mind, even 25 years later.  When we planned a trip with students to Beijing the following spring, we scheduled it so we were back in Hong Kong a couple of weeks before the first anniversary.   Here's a picture of Tiananmen Square in May 1990.

Tiananmen Square May 1990

Someone who did not want to be displayed here was standing right in front.  So I used the rubberstamp function in Photoshop to erase history.  It seemed appropriate because the Chinese government is trying to erase the memory of June 4, 1989.  Note there's a shadow across the bottom of the photo.  I decided that while I took the person out, I'd leave the shadow. 


Louisa Lim has just written a book called The People's Republic of Amnesia.  You can hear her talk about the erasure of this historic day on NPR here.


It just seems necessary to remember today, because in China this day officially does not exist.

Just War and Christianity and Eastern Thought

Matthew Strebe

The basic premise of Matthew Strebe's paper, "Reformulating Warfare:  Just War Theory and Kantian Ethics," was that the theory of just war was created for a very different kind of war than what exists today.


OK, I'm copping out by not giving more details, but I know I wouldn't do it justice.  I should be taking better notes.  I'll check and see if any or all of these papers are online somewhere.



Strebe argues that Kantian ethics better suited to this than utilitarian ethics used in Just War Theory.

Tara Harrington's paper was "Thoughts from a Christian:  Can the World Afford to Practice Wu-Wei When it comes to Our Environment?"


She challenged Lynn White's assertion that  that biblical language about humans dominion over the earth is anti-environmental.







Right now Jacob Land is presenting "Drawing from the Same-Well:  Eastern Thought in Christian Ethics." He's highlighting quotes from Eastern thinkers and the bible.

When I saw Jacob just before this panel, I realized he was the man who was not allowed to carry his backpack on board the plane from LA yesterday.  I thought at the time - when Jacob showed him the backpack fit into the frame they have to test the size of carryons - that the Alaska Airlines rep was being pretty rigid. 

Changing Ed Philosophy in China and Comparison of Aristotle and Xunzu

The first presentation raised lots of issues I've worked on - particularly the conflicts between the rule of law approach to ethics that we pursue that ignores all the other emotional obligations that humans have.

Vivian-Lee Nyitray

I connected to the second for other reasons.




Vivian-Lee Nyitray is the Dean at two Chinese colleges -

Prospect in Chongqin and Taigu in Shanxi - and spoke about introducing more interactive teaching practices in those colleges and her own conflicting moral obligations to her students, her colleagues, and to her mission.  







Having taught in China, I understood her issues of changing the rows of seats into circles so that students were more involved and better able to interact with each other.   

But I only really had to focus on what happened in my class and not try to get other faculty to adopt more participatory teaching methods. 




Though there were some issues that went beyond the classroom - such as how my teaching methods impacted some of the Chinese faculty.  Fortunately, I had support from high in the college and a Chinese teacher who'd studied in the US also worked with me.

Nyitray looked toward Confucian philosophy as a way to work out some of the dilemmas she faced.

Shi Shan

The next speaker,  Shi Shan, was of interest because she's from the university I taught at in Beijing. 










Her presentation made comparisons of Aristotle and Xunzi's definitions of good. 




Unfortunately, trying to blog and listen at the same time is impacting my ability to concentrate sufficiently on some of the papers.



Here's the room we're in.  I know it as the Pub when it first opened here at UAA.  But there was strong local opposition to serving alcohol on campus and so it never has served as a pub.  Now it's called 'the den.' 

 Shi Shan presenting at UAA

Would Confucius Have Cut The Education Budget?

As Alaska's legislature is busy cutting the state education budget and trying to use what public money is left to give to private schools through vouchers, it might be a good time to get a bigger perspective on this.  The University of Alaska Anchorage Philosophy Department with an assist from the campus Confucius Institute is putting on a conference titled "Living Ethically in the Global World." 

The conference is pretty wide ranging and open to the public.  On the first night, there will be a community panel at East High School.   This was planned before the Governor, in his Orwellian way, declared this the "Year of Education."  I'm not sure the question in the title will be answered, but the recipient of the 2013 Confucian Prize will be on the East High panel.  So you can ask him if he doesn't address the issue in the panel.

“The Priorities and Ethics of Educating” Thursday, March 27, 2014 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm Community Panel at East High School Auditorium Panel: Andy Josephson, UAA Graduate and Alaska State Representative (It appears that Rep. Josephson's legislative duties will keep him in Juneau.) Roger Ames, 2013 Confucian Prize Recipient; Maria Williams, Director of Alaska Native Studies at UAA; Ed McLain, UAA College of Education Respondent: Francisco Miranda, UAA Department of Languages

This is actually both the Ninth Annual UAA Undergraduate Philosophy Conference and the UAA Ethics Center's Inaugural Convocation.

Here are some of the paper titles I pulled out of the program:

“Drawing from the Same Well:  Eastern Thought in Christian Ethics” “Yup’ik Culture is also Confucian” “Role Ethics in the Yijing” “Human Rights and Daoism: An Alternative Chinese Perspective” "Confucian Role Ethics for Women: A Response to Roger T. Ames’ Vocabulary” “The Impossible Junzi and Global Ethics” “Eastern Tones:  What Can Contemporary Acoustics Learn from Yin-Yang?” “Taking Responsibility: Toward a Sixth Confucian Relationship (with Notes from my Life as a Dean in China)” “Confucian Revivalism and Its Role in Chinese Society and Education”

You can find the exact times and locations for each of these in the program embedded below.

And here are the Universities that will be represented (in addition to UAA):

Prospect College and Taigu College (Chongqin and Shanxi Province, PRC) Renmin University (Beijing, PRC) Northeast Normal University Belmont University (Nashville, Tennessee) University of California Santa Cruz Loyola Marymount University University of San Diego (California) Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Yongin, Korea) University of Wales (Great Britain) University of Hawai’i at Mānoa Central Washington University University of San Diego (California) Adrian College

I'd note that the UAA  Department of Public Administration has had a long going relationship with the public administration program at Renmin (People's) University in Beijing and I taught there in 2004. 

I checked and all the panels are open to the public at no charge. Fortunately, we'll be back in Anchorage.   Here's the full program:

Living Ethically in the Global World

And I'd urge people to get off the internet merry-go-round and take a few moments to think about the title of this conference: Acting Ethically in a Global World. What are some of the topics you would explore under that heading? Talk about it over dinner with your parents.

Visiting My Chinese Grandson And His Grandmother

D was a student of mine in Hong Kong 20 some years ago and helped me with research in Beijing.  My family attended his wedding in Beijing and he's been to visit us a number of times in Alaska and now he's a college professor himself, doing very well. He's like a third child for us. 



So in addition to visiting our other son here in the San Francisco area, we're here to visit our new 6 week old grandson, J.  A special bonus is that J's biological grandmother is here from Beijing, where we last saw her ten years ago.

D stopped at a Chinese grocery on the way home.  Lots of interesting food available.

The fish department announced itself to my nose as soon as we got inside.  Lots of fish, live and not.  Turtles and fat frogs too.

And disappointingly, for an Alaskan, is this package of farmed Canadian salmon. 

Lots of great fruits and vegetables and fungi.  The jackfruit on the left is an old reminder of Thailand where it is common and strangely grows from the trunk of the tree. 

For dinner, J's grandmother made Jiao Zi (dumplings) from scratch.  First the dough, then she cut the little round dough pieces and flattened them for wrappers, the filling, and then she boiled them.  Delicious.





Mind your stereotypes here.  While it's easy to see a quaint older woman, with limited English, visiting from China to help with her new grandson, this is actually a retired physics professor who is also an accomplished artist.   


As we walked around the block with J and tried to retrieve our meager Chinese vocabulary, we traded English and Chinese words for the flowers we saw - azaleas, wisteria, rosemary, iris, and on and on.  I couldn't help thinking about the magnificent day she and her daughter (the new mother) took us to see the peonies in the park in central Beijing.  Acres and acres of magnificent blooms.  She waited until the ideal day when they were all blooming.  That's the day I started to understand peonies.  Growing up in  Southern California, I just never appreciated peonies.  They're really a more northern flower.

Welcome the New Year of the Horse

We've been in places where there are celebrations of the Chinese New Years often - last year in Seattle.  Today, we're in Anchorage and we have a Chinese teacher living in our house.

From Hanban.com, on this year's astrological symbol:

Chako's 2002 Year of the Horse card

The Year 2014 is considered as the Year of the Horse as per the Chinese Zodiac Calendar which begins on January 31, 2014, and ends on February 18, 2015. 2014 according to Chinese Astrology Calendar. it is the Year of Wood Horse.  Wood is related to tree or green, so it is also called Year of Green Horse. 2014 is the jiăwŭ (甲午) year.The Chinese zodiac calendar comprises 12 animal signs and horse is the seventh among all of them. In Chinese culture, the Horse is a symbol of nobility, class, speed and perseverance.  People born in the Year of the Horse are smart, fabulous speakers who have a gift for getting through to other people. People bearing the horse sign strive towards seeking freedom and happiness. In general, 2014 would be a better year for those people who were born under The Year of the Horse.

The Common Personality of People Born in Horse Year
People born in the year of the horse are extremely animated, active and energetic. Horses love to be in a crowd and like entertainment, they have a deft sense of humor, they love to take center stage and delight audiences everywhere. They are trustworthy, friendly and like to be surrounded by their relatives and friends. They usually have a large circle of acquaintances, but they never rely on their friends too much. Sometimes, the horse is a little self-centered, but it doesn't mean that he will not be interested in any problems except his own. However, a horse person is really more cunning than intelligent, that is probably due to the fact that most horse people lack confidence. Sometimes, they are very independent and rarely listen to advice

I couldn't find any good pictures of horses in my own files.  Moose, yes.  Horse, no.  Tempted as I am to give this year an Alaska flavor, I just can't do it.

I did find a 2002 card that our friend Chako made.  I've played with it modestly in photoshop.

1972 - The Book

Here's a transcript of Nixon talking to Haldeman that came in an emailed promo on 1972  [the real title I think is The Nixon Tapes] from the Richard Nixon tape archives.

December 14, 1972

President Nixon and Bob Haldeman, Oval Office 1:05 p.m.

Audio: http://bit.ly/1hJikFG

Haldeman: There are a lot of good stories from the first term.

Nixon: A book should be written, called “1972.”

Haldeman: Yeah.

Nixon: That would be a hell of a good book. And somebody should have thought of it. It should, you know, that should be on its way. And it should either be a monograph or a book. You get in China, you get in Russia, you get in May 8^th, and you get in the election. And it’s a hell of a damn year. That’s what I would write as a book. “1972,” period.

1972 was a big year for me.  I celebrated my first wedding anniversary, we spent the summer in our VW camper wandering through Mexico, British Honduras, and Guatemala.  I was in my second semester as a graduate student in at USC.  I remember the summer before in our first big summer camping adventure driving through Idaho in the evening alongside a river as President Nixon announced on the radio that he was going to China.  I had to stop the car to be sure of what I heard.  It was such an unexpected and incredible announcement.   And a day before [a couple of days after (never totally trust your memory)] my son was born, in 1974, Nixon resigned.  And that's the day they're releasing the book.

Out of SE Asia Now Protest- around 1972 - LA

I'm not sure how I got on the mailing list - maybe I looked through the Nixon tapes archive online for this blog once - and I don't normally pass on these kinds of things.  But this one promises to fill in some gaps in what I knew at the time.   Nixon is one of those great Shakespearian figures - so flawed yet also doing great things,  like going to China.  And flawed as he was, divided as the country was over the war, Republicans and Democrats in Congress socialized, worked together, and got things done.



The clutter war is going well enough that I was able to find, without much trouble, this photo I took around 1972 of an anti-war demonstration in Los Angeles.

Here's what else they say about this book:

Our book will not rehash old stories. It will be the first to put a substantial quantity of the Nixon tapes within easy reach of the public, focusing on the major foreign policy achievements of 1972: 1) the opening to China, 2) reducing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union, and 3) ending the Vietnam War and bringing our POWs home.

Here's a bit about author Luke Nichter from his website.

Luke’s current book project is The Nixon Tapes, co-authored with Douglas Brinkley, to be published in 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to coincide with the 40^th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation (August 9, 2014). He is also currently revising a book manuscript tentatively titled Richard Nixon and Europe, based on multilingual research in 16 archives in six countries. Luke is finishing work on a series of book-length presidential biographies for Nova's First Men, America's Presidents series, including volumes on George W. Bush (2012), Lyndon B. Johnson (2013), and Richard M. Nixon (2014). 

Luke is a former founding Executive Producer of C-SPAN's American History TV, which debuted in 2010 and is seen in approximately 41 million homes on C-SPAN3. There, he created programs such as "American Artifacts," a weekly series that takes viewers behind the scenes to museums, archives, and historic sites to see items they would not normally be able to see.

Anyone asking "What happened on May 8, 1972?"  From Day In History:

Vietnam War – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announces his order to place mines in major North Vietnamese ports in order to stem the flow of weapons and other goods to that nation. 

I guess he still thought he was going to win the war.

Hong Kong Film Legend Run Run Shaw Dead at 106 or 107

My son sent this link to me.  When we lived in Hong Kong, Run Run Shaw's presence was everywhere.  Particularly close to home for us was the Run Run Shaw auditorium on the Chinese University of Hong Kong campus where we lived and I worked.  My son agreed to go see a traditional Chinese orchestra performance there if I would see the first Die Hard movie there with him. 

Run Run Shaw, Father Of The Kung Fu Movie, Dead At 107

AP Photo / Kin Cheung

KELVIN K. CHAN – January 7, 2014, 9:26 AM EST728

HONG KONG (AP) — Run Run Shaw built a Hong Kong movie and TV empire that nurtured rising talents like actor Chow Yun-fat and director John Woo, inspired Hollywood filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and produced the 1982 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner."

Shaw's prolific studio helped bring kung fu films to the world but he also passed on the chance to sign one of the biggest names in that genre: the young Bruce Lee.
The missed opportunity was a rare misstep for Shaw, who died Tuesday, according to a statement from Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), which he helped found in 1967. No cause of death was given.
His studio gave his age as 107, but his age according to the Western counting method may have been 106 because Chinese traditionally consider a child to be 1 at birth. TVB said he was born in 1907, but would not provide his birth date.
His Shaw Brothers Studios, once among the world's largest, churned out nearly 1,000 movies and gave young directors like Woo their start. He produced a handful of U.S. films that also included the 1979 disaster thriller "Meteor."

 The rest is at TPM.

AIFF 2013: Tuesday, From Mozambigue to Taiwan And Some Alaska Winter Surfing

We took a friend to see Hank and Asha because it's so good.  We were going to see two docs and then get her home and then to the Bear Tooth.  We had to make some adjustments.  We saw the first film, The Guide which was a feel good film about a young man whose ambition is to be a tour guide at the Gorongosa National Park.  He's clearly very bright and a favorite of the foreigners working to develop the park.  We get to see him guide E.O. Wilson, the great biologist and ant expert.  The exchange between the 82 year old scientist and the young man is wonderful to watch. 

Our friend had gone in with us and the film ended just in time for Hank and Asha and we skipped out and watched Hank and Anna for the second time.  I was surprise to see James and Julia, the film makers there since they'd told me they were flying out before this showing.  (I put up video of the film makers in an earlier post.)  It turned out their flight was delayed due to weather in Chicago, so they got to answer questions after the film.  It's really a feel good film.  You can put it on your Netflix list, it's due out in April. 

Then to the Bear Tooth for the Taiwan and Gay-la movie Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?  A fine movie about a guy who's been married nine years but it turns out he was actively gay before he got married and thought he could leave it behind.  But someone comes into his life.  It was very nicely done.  Unfortunately, it doesn't play again. 

And then back for the 9:45 by-popular-demand Alaska Sessions:  Surfing The Last Frontier.  This is an unexpected little jewel as they go by boat from Sitka to Homer for a month in the winter finding places to surf.  It breaks all the ice-box stereotypes of Alaska and the old body surfer in me could sit and watch them ride the waves all night.  A little less hyping Alaska would have made it a better film.  There's no need to tell people that Alaska is actually livable. 

Note:  The iPhone app apparently gave some people the wrong time for Hank and Asha and there's a chance - since the little theater was totally full - that another showing will be arranged, maybe Saturday.  Stay posted.  This is definitely worth seeing. 

Excuse the typos please.  These late night showings are killing me. 

AIFF 2013: Take A Trip Via Film Part 1 - From Afganistan to Germany

Use the festival to take some short trips to other countries.  

I've gone through the Festival Genius and sorted by country.  It means it was made by someone from that country, it does not necessarily take place in that country, but probably does.

I've linked to the Festival Genius description which also has the times and dates the film will be shown.  Shorts are shown in programs with other shorts.

Have a good trip, or two, or three.

Here's the group:  A-Ma    The rest of the alphabet will be up shortly.


Afghanistan/USA
Fatigued  (short doc)

Antarctica
Antarctica:  A Year on Ice

Australia

The Rose of Turaida (animated super short)

Alaska Sessions:  Surfing The Last Frontier (Doc) 

Suspended (short narrative fiction)

Mine Games (feature)


Canada

Yellow Sticky Notes  Canadian Anijam (animated short)

Tales of the Organ Trade  (doc - I reviewed it here)

“Gaspé Copper” d’Alexis Fortier Gauthier (bandeannonce) (short narrative fiction)

Magnetic Reconnection  (short doc)

Stalled (short narrative fiction) also New Zealand and Switzerland

The Animal Project (feature)

Mourning Has Broken (feature)

Pottery Wars (short doc)

Hasard (short narrative fiction) (also Germany)

Santa's Claw (short narrative fiction)

The Trap (super short narrative fiction)



China
The No Name Painting Association (short doc)
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?    (feature)

Denmark
Life (short narrative fiction √)
Fucking Tøs (Damn Girl) (short narrative fiction √)
(Both are in the same program - Reel/Real Life Shorts)


France
Mr. Hublot  (animated short √) (also Luxembourg)
Himalayan Gold Rush (doc √)

Germany
The Fusion (short narrative fiction)
Great (short narrative fiction)
Hasard (short narrative fiction) (also Germany)

chinaSmack - What Do You Call A Phony TV Expert?

One of the best ways to learn about other cultures is, of course, to be there and have friends who can explain things that don't show up in the books about the culture.  The internet offers glimpses like these.  Yesterday I stumbled onto one that gives lots of insight into what's happening online in China.

It's a glossary of Chinese online slang, but by using characters and English they seem to have developed a particularly rich code.  For instance, this is the Chinese character for convex - 凸.  You'll see below how it's been given new meaning.  Some are terms we can all relate to even if we don't have an equivalent in English. 

As I poked around the website, I realized there's a lot more to it than a glossary. It's a good way to get a sense of what's happening in China's cyberspace.

"chinaSMACK provides non-Chinese language readers a glimpse into modern China and Chinese society by translating into English popular and trending Chinese internet content and netizen discussions from China’s largest and most influential websites, discussion forums, and social networks."

 It says it started this way:

"Started in July 2008, chinaSMACK began as a personal project for Fauna (coyly pictured above), a young Shanghainese girl committed to improving her English language skills by translating the Chinese internet stories, pictures, and videos that were popular online. Despite English being taught to nearly every schoolchild in China, she knew her English would never be functional without daily practice.

She hopes you’ll never go back and judge her earliest translations."

Of course, this is just one little window and doesn't represent everything but it's part of a much bigger picture.  I did check with a Chinese friend who said what he saw rang true. 


I'll just offer some tidbits from the glossary.  Here's one we could start using:

砖家

[zhuānjiā / zhuan1 jia1]
noun.
A pun on 专家, expert, created by Chinese netizens to refer to false experts often used on television or in the news to advance certain agendas rather than the truth.

I can think of a couple of situations where some people would have used this in the US:

被自杀

[bèi zìshā / bei4 zi4 sha1]
verb/expression.
Literally “to be suicided”, referring to a death that has been ruled a suicide to cover up a murder.

We've all been in this situation.

手贱

[shǒu jiàn / shou3 jian4]
expression.
Online, usually refers to someone tempting fate by clicking on a link to view something they then regret viewing.

Remember convex (above)?

凸

[tū / tu1]
emoticon
Often used online to represent giving someone the middle finger.

Calling out online shills:

五毛党

[wǔ máo dǎng / wu3 mao2 dang3]
noun.
People who are allegedly and secretly paid five mao (50 cents RMB) per post/comment that praises, supports, or defends from criticism/attack the country, government, or Communist Party. Netizens who are very nationalistic are often accused of being part of the “50 cent party” spreading propaganda or “guiding” public opinion.

And again:

水军

[shuǐ jūn / shui3 jun1]
noun.
Literally “water army”, referring to individuals, groups, or even companies that can be paid to post comments on the internet to help shape public opinion on any subject, often hired by companies to promote themselves or slander competitors

 chinaSMACK looks like an interesting site overall to see what is happening on Chinese internet.

Snakes Take Their Failures Hard - Happy Chinese New Year

Today begins the year of the snake.  We saw a little early celebration last week in the Seattle Chinatown.  Enjoy.









From Hanban:

2013 is the year of the black Snake begins on February 10th shortly after the New moon in Aquarius, the humanitarian of the zodiac. This 2013 year of Snake is meant for steady progress and attention to detail. Focus and discipline will be necessary for you to achieve what you set out to create. The Snake is the sixth sign of the Chinese Zodiac, which consists of 12 Animal Signs. It is the enigmatic, intuitive, introspective, refined and collected of the Animals Signs. Ancient Chinese wisdom says a Snake in the house is a good omen because it means that your family will not starve.

The Common Character of People Born in the Year of Snake
People born in the Year of the Snake are reputed to be thoughtful and wise and to approach problems rationally and logically, seldom instinctively. Such people are complex beings, they are clever and men of few words from their birth. Their business is always going well, but they are stingy very often. They are sometimes egoistic and conceited. However they can be very active in their friends’ life. They are often too active, not believing other people and relying only on themselves. Snakes are also very insightful and naturally intuitive. If anyone has a sixth sense, it's those born in the Snake year. This is partly what makes them so mysterious.Snakes come in all varieties of colors and patterns. And maybe that's why people born in the Snake year love to appreciate beauty. People with the Chinese zodiac snake sign are very stylish, fashionable and have exceptional taste.

People born in the Year of the Snake also have a sure touch in money matters but are also inclined to be greedy and somewhat egoistical. Determined and ambitious characters of Snakes take their failures hard. They are usually very attractive on the outside and inwardly, that, taking into consideration their frivolity, can lead to some family problems.

Studying Chinese in 2012 is a Lot Easier than It Was In 2003

Last night was our last session of the UAA Confucius Institute's community Chinese class until spring.  The teacher, Teng Fei, has been terrific, pushing us more than is comfortable, but not too much more.  Most important is that the two Confucius Institute teachers we've had used a great teaching method - lots of oral repetition, good grammar drills, and almost no English in class.

I'd say that this is pretty elementary stuff - a dialogue about people going to someone's birthday party.
A:  Wang Peng, what are you doing now?
B:  I'm reading.
A:  Today is Gao Xiao Yin's birthday.  This evening we're  going to have a dance party at her place.  Can you come?

But elementary in Chinese is relatively advanced in a lot of other languages.  You've got the tones to learn (what tones are) (hearing the tones)  and more than that, you've got to memorize each character.  Counting through the back of the book's glossary it looks like there's about 350 characters that we're supposed to know now.

How much could you say if you only knew 350 words of English?  [Here's a list of the 300 most common English words to give you an idea of both how much it is and how limited it is.]  Actually, speaking Chinese with just 350 words is probably easier than English because there is no conjugation of verbs for present, past, and future tense.  Some of that gets conveyed with words like today, next week, etc.  And there are some words you stick into the sentence that shows it's happened already or it's happening now.  (The character 呢 at the end of line one of the dialogue in the photo is supposed to show that she's asking about what he's doing right now.  Or you could just say "right now" instead.) So you don't have to fuss with I am, I was, I will be, etc.

But, there's always the characters.  And while there are some basic repeated parts of the characters - radicals - there's no real phonetic way to know how to pronounce each character.  You have to memorize each one.  But, knowing the radicals and their meaning can help in that task.

There is so much more online help today than there was in the past.  Chinese dictionaries are ingenious, but also painfully slow to use.  If you were looking up a character you had two options:


Option 1.  Stroke count.
a.  count the strokes in the character;
b.  then in the front of the dictionary there is a list of characters starting with one stroke, two stroke, three stroke, etc.  If the character you want to look up has five strokes, you go to the five stroke characters.  They're listed in stroke order (there's a set of rules for which stroke comes first, second, etc.)  Or you can just go down the list until you find the one you are looking for. 
c.  find the character you are looking for
d1.  in some dictionaries it then has a page number to go to
d2.  in other dictionaries it has the pinyin (phonetic alphabet) and then you can look it up alphabetically in that dictionary.



On the right is a page from a Chinese dictionary.  First you have one stroke characters.  One is a horizontal line 一 and two is two horizontal
lines 二。You can see there are only two one stroke characters listed and you can find them on pages 1037 and 1049.  Then there are more two stroke characters.  The first stroke in a character is the horizontal line stroke (if there is one).  There are four such two stroke characters listed.  Then the characters that start with the second stroke - the vertical line.  Just one listed, on page 60.  Then a diagonal stroke to the left.  These are just the two stroke characters.  Imagine trying to see the 10 stroke characters.  I often needed a magnifying glass.

As you can imagine, this took a while.  New students don't always count the strokes right.  Then you you have to go through long lists of characters to find the one you are looking for. (There are a lot more three, four, five and more stroke characters than one and two stroke characters.)



Option 2.  Radical
This is similar, but instead of starting with the number of strokes, you start with the main radical in the character, then go down the list of all the characters with that radical.  This assumes you can figure out the radical.

I spent more time thumbing through the dictionary to find the characters in the past attempts to study Chinese than learning the characters.

But now you can look up characters online.  Yellowbridge.com let's you find the character
a.  by writing the English
b.  writing the word in pinyin (the phonetic alphabet)
c.  writing the Chinese character - yes the have a little box (you would click the brush on the real page) where you can make the strokes with your cursor.  But you have to be close enough that the computer can figure out some characters it thinks you made, then you have to pick out your character from the list it gives you.  But that's true of each of these. 

Screenshot from Yellowbridge.comhttp://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-dictionary.php

And once you get the character you can listen to the pronunciation, see the etymology, see examples of other words that use the character.  Yellowbridge even has an online flashcard system that uses the vocabulary lists from the most used Chinese textbooks identified by each lesson.  So I could pick my book and chapter and do the flashcards online.  Here you can see the flashcards for the chapter we worked on today in class - this is just the vocabulary for the second dialogue of the chapter.

ArchChinese, which I found looking for the stroke order rules above, also looks like a lot of help.  It says it's been put together by Chinese teachers for K-12 and university student in the US.

So, things are much easier now.  And there are lots of different websites that offer great help.  And there are lots of YouTube videos so you can listen to the sounds.  But none of that substitutes for memorizing the characters and learning the dialogues and the grammar patterns, in writing and orally, which use very different parts of the brain.  It just makes it a little easier.

So, since last night was the last class until the spring, I thought I would recover that part of my life spent preparing each week for Chinese class.  But no.  We got homework to keep us busy until we start again, which, fortunately is not until late February.  (This is a community class, not a credit class.)  But much of what we need to do is review all the vocabulary, dialogues, and grammar that we've covered so far.  But we're also supposed to look ahead to the next six chapters (to the end of this book.)

But, I have to say, while my Chinese is very rudimentary, I am finding myself thinking in the patterns we've been learning and the vocabulary seems to be sticking a little better than in the past.  I think I've laid down enough tracks in my brain that this time it's working. 

Is The Pen/Brush Mightier Than The Keyboard?

Weekend Edition Sunday had an interview with author Philip Hensher and his love of the pen.  He wrote out his book, The Last Art of Handwriting, in longhand and talked about the intimacy people have with their writing instruments.

As I listened to the interview I was reminded of last week's lecture/class with Chinese calligraphist Harrison Xinshi Tu  at UAA presented by the Confucius Institute.     He too talked about the importance, in China, of four items:

the brush
the paper
the ink
the chop

You can see them all in the video below.  As he draws an artistic character and signs it and applies the chop. 

He pointed out they'd been used for 6000 years and still today calligraphy is done with the same materials as then. 






After going through the four elements needed, he then showed us the evolution of Chinese characters by drawing half a dozen or so and showing them changing over the years millennia.

The first three you should be able to figure out.  Basic parts of nature.  So is the fourth.  Stop and think about it a bit.  Actually, you shouldn't think, just relax and let it come to you.

OK, did you get the sun?  And if you didn't get the moon, it's probably hopeless.  Then mountains.  Then river.  Then man.  That's hard, but he's looking to the left with an arm hanging down  The last one is tree.  As Mr. Tu explained, the bottom half is the roots and the top half, the branches.  This row was what characters looked like 5,000-6,000 years ago.  About when the world started according to some of our science challenged fellow citizens.   Next is the chart after he completed it.  You can see how the characters got modified.  The second-to-the-last row are modern, simplified characters - the kind they use in China today.  Below that are the artistic versions of the characters. 

So going across, we have the sun, the moon, mountain, river (actually the modern character is the one for water), man, tree, sheep and fish.    On the far right top are two trees - a forest.  In the box on the right are two hands, which together mean friend.  the character in the lower right is 'you' (pronounced 'yo') or friend.

After he made the chart, he took it down and showed us how to make the six main strokes in Chinese characters.  Then we got a paper with the strokes and how to make them and some paper, a brush, and ink.

And then we made the basic strokes.

Here's one of my classmates from the Confucius Institute (at UAA) Chinese class, practicing the basic strokes.


So, between the two events - the NPR interview with Philip Hensher and the Calligraphy demonstration, I've been thinking about how the keyboard has taken me away from the pen.  There is something more satisfying about holding a pen and not just writing, but consciously creating the letters, beautifully, on the page.  The pen as an extension of my finger, flowing out words.  Words that spill my thoughts onto the paper.

But some of that happens at the keyboard, but my physical connection to the shape and size and heaviness or lightness of the line is gone.  The clues about who I am that Kensher says the handwriting leaves, that personal touch, is missing.  Every letter is so ruthlessly perfect.

Of course, like with most things, the answer, if there is an answer, is to find some balance, and nowadays, for many of us, we are far too heavily tilted to the keyboard.  Maybe I should hand write out some posts, take pictures, and post them.  But images are not readable online to those who can't see well and have to use software that converts the writing to voice. 

There's a part of me that never takes anything for granted.  Perhaps it's the legacy of my parents' world in Germany collapsing and having to flee to the US.  Everything but what  they were able to take with them was gone.  In any case, there's always this part of me that assumes all I have could disappear.  If a Sandy happened to me, it wouldn't be totally unexpected.  And so part of me has never totally trusted all the miracles of the electronic age.  When the electricity goes off, it's the tools of our ancestors that will get us through.  I have no confidence that my grandchildren will ever see this blog unless I make hard copies of it.  And then the video and links will be gone, but something will be left.

And there are others that are concerned about the lost skill of writing.  The SAT's have    added a handwritten essay.  From a 2005 Seattle Times article, 

An estimated 300,000 high-school students across the nation took the new SAT yesterday for the first time. The College Board revised the exam after being faced with the threat of major institutions dropping it as a requirement. The most sweeping change is a new writing section — 35 minutes of multiple-choice questions and the 25-minute essay.

The reverberations were felt yesterday on the third floor of the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, as well. More than 50 Puget Sound-area grade-school teachers were learning how to teach their students handwriting, a skill that some may have thought the computer keyboard rendered obsolete. Some elementary schools no longer teach cursive.

"They stopped training teachers how to teach handwriting in most colleges and universities about 25 years ago," said Jan Olsen, an occupational therapist who developed a handwriting curriculum a decade ago. "But instead of putting something reasonable in place, they just dropped it," she said.

A 2010 NY Times article says, though that only 15% of students choose the handwritten essay.  One professor is quoted:

Richard S. Christen, a professor of education at the University of Portland in Oregon, said, practically, cursive can easily be replaced with printed handwriting or word processing. But he worries that students will lose an artistic skill.

“These kids are losing time where they create beauty every day,” Professor Christen said. “But it’s hard for me to make a practical argument for it. I’m not one who’s mourning it because of that; I’m mourning the beauty, the aesthetics.”

 And when you look at the calligraphy video, you'll see Mr. Tu quickly drawing an artistic character.




 All the electronic devices are fine, IF we don't lose our connection to nature and the natural tools that humans have always used and the skills to use them.  Have you hand written a letter lately?   

Odds and Ends

I've got a backlog of things I want to post.  Here's a preview of what I'm hoping to get up:

Election night I was an observer when they brought the voting machines and materials to election headquarters.  I've got pictures and some video plus comments on how things went.  Generally it seems well organized, but there are lots of places where unscrupulous people could mess with the system if they wanted to.

The Citizens Climate Lobby had its monthly meeting Saturday and heard from Dr Wendy Hill on the health consequences of global climate change.  Then on Thursday I went with CCL Anchorage coordinator Jim Thrall to meet with the news manager and meteorologists at Channel 11 to discuss how they cover climate change issues on the air.  We also had an Alaska climate expert from Fairbanks there by phone.

Chinese class continues to consume lots of time.  I do want to write about some of this.  Particularly how much easier it is to study Chinese in 2012 than it was in just 2003.  Take a look at Yellowbridge.com to see part of the reason. 

I've gotten a new page up on top here for the 2012 Anchorage International Film Festival.  It's a guide to the festival including links to some old posts - FAQ's for the festival and Film Festival for Skeptics.

And Sitemeter is down again.  Not a good sign.  Something is going wrong there and the comments on my recent post about Sitemeter do show that people aren't very tolerant of problems.  It would help if Sitemeter would reach out and let people know what's happening.  They have their users' email addresses.  I'm starting to check with Google Analytics, but I really don't like their layout compared to Sitemeter.  Someone recommended StatCounter in the comments and that looks good.

Oh yeah, I was at UAA earlier this week and was reminded of all the things going on there - particularly speakers who are available to the public.  Here are some posters - two are already over and two are still coming.










Sorry, this one is over already, but I thought I'd put it up anyway.  Same with the next one.

Sorry, this one is a little small (it's just an 8X11 sheet) but it hints at why it's good to have universities around and people researching different options that can help create new energy options and jobs.

Click any of them to enlarge them a little.

This one is coming a week from Monday.  This is through the Confucius Institute at UAA and our Chinese teacher said he's a really great calligrapher.  

And this one is this coming Monday.  Fallows is one of our (the USA) best journalists.  (The link goes to his Atlantic Monthly blog which is very entertaining and this latest post raises similar thoughts to the ones I raised about the Fiscal Cliff.)  He spent a lot of time in Japan and wrote very insightful articles for the Atlantic.  He's also spent time more recently in China.  I have a book club meeting Monday so I'm going to miss this, but it should be outstanding and it's free to the public (free parking too.) 

Deborah Fallows is here too and they will both be at   the UAA bookstore on Monday at noon.




There was one more that I forgot:

Other things I probably won't post about:

Met with some of my new UAA faculty group over lunch and we'll meet again next week with two faculty union reps.

The Alaskan Apple User Group met Wednesday night.

Reviewing a paper for an academic journal.

Trying to help a few people connect with the right people to get out of their jams.

And there are always the clutter wars here at home, though I've generally neglected them lately.  I did clear this morning's snow from the driveway and sidewalk.  And I'm a little sore from taking a spill on the bike this afternoon.  I guess mountain tires aren't enough.  I need to get studs.



UPDATE:  Thanks to reader DH for the editing help.  Sometimes I do get tired and lazy.

Dealing with Spam Comments

I get a fair number of comments that are simply spam, people getting links back to their sites.  SEO companies flooding the internet with links to their clients.  I'm not sure how much good it even does since Google and others take this into account.  And most of these get caught by bloggers spam filter, so they never get posted.  Some slip through. 

I think the last time I posted about this it was the dentist office spam where I actually contacted his office.  Since then, every now and then I copy and paste some spam to think about how I decide what is acceptable and what isn't.


Blatant spam.  Comments have nothing to do with the post.    Just getting their links up on my blog.  Examples (I've gotten rid of their links and left the ones to the posts they commented on):

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Although they all try to flatter the blogger, they are completely generic and make no comment that couldn't be applied to any blog.  The English is better than earlier ones, though some interesting English still slips in now and then.


Do mention something related in your post.

Matching word:  Some go to posts that have words or topics relevant to their client, like this one:

Excel Glass and Granite, Inc. is providing the best service and quality commercial and retail glass related products to their customers.they are focused on their customer’s satisfaction. on Do You See The Employment Glass 92.2% Full Or 7.8% Empty?

Got it?  Glass was in the title of my post.  The next one takes the title and incorporates it into the comment:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Anchorage Crime Map":

I usually do not write a bunch of comments, however i did a few searching and wound up here "Anchorage Crime Map". And I do have a couple of questions for you if you tend not to mind. Could it be simply me or does it look as if like some of the responses look like they are left by brain dead visitors?
:-P And, if you are writing on additional social sites, I would like to follow anything new you have to post.
Could you make a list of all of your community pages like your twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?
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Engages, barely, the topic:

Finland is in very north on the world overseas do not consider to study there instead UK. High School Diploma on Finnish Education - Focused on High Quality Education For All

I left the Finland comment up.  But not the next one.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 10:50:00 PM AKDT As noted by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the ultrasound technician salary in Alaska is one of the highest in the country. Ultrasound Technician Salary in AK 

This was a recent comment on an old post on Alaska Bloggers. The comment has nothing to do with the post.  The only connection is "Alaska." But it does purport to tell the salary of Ultrasound technicians in Anchorage. I could leave it.  But the delete decision was sealed when it abbreviated Alaska as AL. Sorry, we aren't Alabama.


Each comment gets emailed to me.  That way I know about comments on old posts like the last one.  They also show up on the Overview page for the blog.  There they are divided into published and spam.  Sometimes good posts get caught up in the spam filter.  Most of the spam does get caught.

They do take time to remove and I get two or more every day.  It's one of the reasons I leave the sign-in process for comments.  At least the spam has to be put up by a real person who has to sign in and get past the captcha.  But I've had comments from real readers who had trouble posting comments because of all that.  I did read in a forum that some bloggers have opened their comments  and that the Blogger spam filter catches most of their spam.  I've been thinking about experimenting to see what happens if I cut out the security for comments.  We'll see.  Now I have enough to keep me busy.

I'm at LAX now and if all goes well, we'll make it to our Chinese class in Anchorage at 6 tonight. In addition to the vocabulary and dialogues to know, I have to write an email in Chinese.  So I've got things to keep me busy on the flights. 

How To Live Your Life And Blog Too

I early on learned that if I blogged what I was doing, I could find time to do all the things I want to do and keep the blog alive.  Writing about things forced me to think about them more, do some research about them, and generally learn a lot more.  And all that helped me remember things.

But blogging seems to be taking a lot more time away these days.  Partly my standards for myself have gotten higher and I spend more time documenting and cleaning up.  Partly, though, I'm involved in more things, plus things show up to interrupt me - lots of things around the house that need attention, etc.

Some things I'm reluctant to burden you with, but we are taking a Chinese class through the UAA Confucius Institute and if I'm going to keep up, I'm going to have to do some sharing here.

I've studied Chinese on and off since about 1989 when I taught in Hong Kong for a year and we took a once a week Cantonese class so we could talk to the vendors in the markets  and things like that.  Then I got involved with a research project in Beijing and decided I needed to study Mandarin just to get a little more sense of what was going on around me.  (Having spent a year as an undergraduate in Germany, I was able to get my German good enough to keep up with my classes and to discover how liberating it was to be able to escape my native language.  Nothing wrong with English, but your language limits you in subtle and not so subtle ways.  [Go here for a post on color in different languages and a link to a post on whether language affects how you think.]

There were a couple of years of serious study.  Then I was distracted by other things for about ten years before getting serious again.  And that lapsed and I spent time in Thailand reviving my old Peace Corps Thai and seemingly painting over the brain cells that stored Chinese words.

I came to believe, through my experiences, that if you ever get to the point where you can speak a language pretty fluently, without thinking about translating from your own language at all, but actually thinking and even dreaming in the other language, then you basically have it for life.  You'll lose a lot of vocabulary if you stop, but most of the stuff you really knew is buried in there and will come back.  Often when you speak, words just pop out of your mouth, that you couldn't have retrieved if you'd have been asked, say,  "What's the Thai word for butterfly?"    That's been the case for German and for Thai for me.  They're there and I just need to get my brain to shift to them and those brain cells slowly start to warm up and get where I can communicate - not like a native - but effectively enough.

But I never got to that point in Chinese.  And so my return visits have been painful exercises of trying to revive weak braincells and creating new ones to replace the ones that have simply died.  Chinese is also harder than German or Thai.

I thought German was hard after junior high Spanish.  The grammar has all sorts of twists and turns to trip you up, but it does use a Latin based alphabet, and there is an enormous overlap between English and German words - swim and schwimmem, house and haus, speak and sprechen, etc.

Thai added a totally new alphabet, few shared words (ie Pepsi) and, even more daunting, tones.  We have tones in English - but they are related to whole sentences, such as questions ending higher pitched than statements.  In Thai, the tones go with the individual syllables and it's better to get the sounds of the consonants and vowels a little off than to mess up the tones if you want someone to understand you.

Chinese has tones like Thai, though slightly different ones, but the killer part of Chinese is that there's no alphabet.  With a phonetic alphabet, you can figure out words you've never seen before.  But not with characters.  Each character represents a word.  Yes, they have created a Western style alphabet - pinyin - but that's to help people struggling to learn the characters.  And yes, the characters aren't all completely unique.  They share different elements that are in other characters, but you do have to remember each character   individually.  And that's been my biggest problem - keeping the characters straight.  Writing them without checking is, for the most part, a futile exercise if you don't do it for several years. 

But it's coming back easier this time.  In part because I went further along in the past and we are going back to almost beginning.  I recognize more characters and after being like the deer in the headlights the first night, my Chinese brain cells are coming back to life.

And the teachers at the Confucius Institute are terrific.  That's partly because they use what I think is the right method for teaching a foreign language, very similar to how the Peace Corps taught us Thai and taught us how to teach English.  Lots of oral repetition and good progression in a class session from the sounds to the vocabulary to the sentences each building on the other.  Here's an example of some of the vocabulary I'm carrying around.  These are from lesson 6 - there were 31 characters in one list, 12 in a second one, and 22 supplementary words.

Character	English	pinyin
给	to; for	gěi
打电话	to make a phone call	dǎ diàn huà
话	speech; talk words	huà
喂	(on phone) Hello, Hey	wèi；wéi
哪	which	nǎ
上午	morning	shàngwǔ

HTML Tables

I've got to run.  I've got a book club meeting tonight and some errands to run and maybe I can get a little time at Powerline Pass before the book club which is meeting on the hillside.