April 24, 2003
health communication
I don’t have too many senior friends, 20 years somthing older than me but have no barrier of chatting for 2 hours, that kind of friends. But there are very significan two and they mean a lot to me. One is my supervisor in hometown, a very tough, intelligent and capable woman and offered me countless opportunities in jobs and blessed me when I left for graduate school. The other is a Taiwaness scholar who opened the window of the outside world to me and helped me come to the U.S. I could not calculate how much I owe to them. They never met each other, and I don’t understand why their misfortunes are so similar: both of their teenage sons got leukaemia. I was so coward that I never dared to call my ex-supervisor since I heard about the news three months ago. Last night, I got a shocking call from the Taiwanese scholar and learnt that his son got the disease in US two months ago. Listening to his hoarse and desperate voice, I was so coward that I could not say anthing except “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say”. I felt any language is so weightless and meaningless, I don’t know how to respond to their tragedy, especially they are much more senior than me.
Our department is recruiting professor in health communication, which seems a very promising research field. I have not much idea on what their research about. But I definitely wish there will be some study or education on how to effectively communicate with friends (especially senior friends) whose beloved is at the brink of death.
lyrics
Two of my favorite songs in “phantom of Opera”. One is All I ask of you. The melody of the love duet is beautiful enough, the joining of Reprise is even better: starting from tearing croon to burst of rage, the voice of Phantom is heartbreaking, although it is really short. The two parts weave seamlessly the lovers’ sweetness and phantom’s bitterness..
The other song is rather short too, wishing you were somehow here again. Christine’s solo at graveyard, very Victoria fashion.
There’s another song I liked very much but I could never learn to sing, the very comic quartet “Prima Donna“, it reminds me the hilarious part of of Mozart and Rossini.
I love the operatic style of this musical. It is the first musical I watched live in Broadway, and it occured when my first visit to NYC . To me, it’s been a part of glamour of the city, and can’t be taken away, no matter what happened and will happen.
Real American
An article in Washington Post (via aldaily)gives me an alternative perspective to think about the current situation. Predominance of conservative views and the frustration of liberals are acceptable in every sense, but the real problem is the fading of real liberalism, the idea of fair play. In other word, embeded with spirit of libril -an open mind to existence of all different views, then everyone can label himself with whatever they like: liberal, conservative, anarch, anti-communist… And I guess that’s what this country is built upon. Without the idea of liberalism, the article argues, even liberals are not librils, but dictators instead.
April 16, 2003
My ethical philosophy
A quiz (via Alex) to reveal your philosophical tendency. Here’s my shot:
1. Ayn Rand (100%)
2. Kant (94%)
3. John Stuart Mill (83%)
4. Jean-Paul Sartre (79%)
5. Jeremy Bentham (71%)
6. Stoics (67%)
7. Prescriptivism (65%)
8. Spinoza (59%)
9. Epicureans (58%)
10. Nietzsche (57%)
11. David Hume (49%)
12. Cynics (48%)
13. Aquinas (45%)
14. Aristotle (45%)
15. St. Augustine (41%)
16. Thomas Hobbes (31%)
17. Ockham (26%)
18. Nel Noddings (26%)
19. Plato (19%)
Except I never heard of Ayn Rand , I think I’m good to work in school, or academia, to be bolder. It seems I’m rational and liberal. Ha…
Tribal hatred of modern days
Right after 9/11, I asked my UB101 students (first-year undergraduate), why those terrorists would do such horrible thing to US. A usually quiet girl raised her hand and said:” They envy us because we have democracy and freedom”. Other students nod at her. Well, maybe I could not agree with the object of envying of she suggested, and there are thousands of other more complicated reasons for the attack, but “envying” seems to be a incentive for violations, sometimes it is called “revenge” for a better justification. Amy Chua��s article on interplay of market, democracy and ethnic-hatred suggested that Market-dominance is an often neglected cause of tribal hatred in a global scenario. Wealth discrepancy is a fuse to violence in many societies: like hatred to rich Chinese people in Philippine or Indonesia, or Jews in a lot of countries, or Croats and Slovenes with Serbs. Once the hatred is manipulated by purposeful politicians, there are where the revolution goes. Amy Chua believed the economic gap is to large extent ethnic based, and it is a major cause of genocide. And in most of case, the economic power ethic is minority but the numerically powerful are impoverished majority. I am thinking about how Chairman Mao took over China by provoking peasants’ hatred to their landowners in the country and then to vulnerable bourgeois in city-there is even no ethnic conflict involved. Market-dominance minority is easy to be the object of hatred, and unfortunately, it is still true when extending to international scenario. When Americans become the world��s market-dominance minority, what can they do to keep down the anti-Americanism? Can democracy alleviate the hatred? Amy Chua believed that the association of market and democracy with privileged group only makes democracy more vulnerable target for backlash. So what’s the remedy? She writes:
“those who call for increases in U.S. aid to the world��s poor do seem to have wisdom on their side.United States now devotes only 0.1 percent of its gross domestic product to foreign aid, a smaller share than any other advanced country. Rightly or wrongly, for millions around the world the World Trade Center symbolized greed, exploitation, indifference, and cultural humiliation.”
It seems my 18-year-old student with innocent eyes was not totally wrong. However, on the other side of the coin, Amy Chua says:
“Retreating into isolationism or glorifying American chauvinism holds no long-term promise. It is difficult to see, in any event, how a little generosity and humility could possibly hurt.”
April 13, 2003
April 6, 2003
April 5, 2003
April 1, 2003
Farewell, my idol of my younger years
The death of Leslie Cheung is the headline story in all Chinese news sites. He killed himself by jumping down from 24th floor about seven hours ago. I was shocked as inexplicably sad, and wished it were just a joke for the Fool��s day. An idol of my generation, he is truly an artist from every sense. Ten years ago, I hid in the lady��s room in a cinema in Southern China during the movie interval, in order to sneak in for the second show of Farewell, my concubine. For five continuous hours, I was immersed in the tragic fate of an artist in the most turbulent years of China��s contemporary history. And that is the only movie that I watched twice in theater in my whole life, not to say watch it non-stop twice. In the movie he has a very feminine name ��Dress of butterfly�� and he was an actor dressed and sang as female in Beijing Opera. Confused of real world with the role he played, he thought he was a woman and he loved his male partner who was his lover in the play. His pure infatuation with art, love and beauty declares his desperate rebellion to the oppressing society, which make him the most unique and the most memorable character in the Chinese film history.
But I didn��t know that would be his real fate in the real world. Before we realized he is an actor, he was one of the most popular pop star and movie star. Though he sang a lot of stupid songs, and cast in a lot of stupid movies through his early career, you can not blame too much on him since he was made in Hong Kong basically. His magnetic and sweet voice accompanied me going through the long and lonely adolescent years, and his incredible good-looks set my aesthetic for princes charming. Undoubtedly, he got a lot of talents, singing well, dancing well and smiling well. And then we knew he is a true actor, not only as ��dress of butterfly” , but also in several Wang Kar-wei��s movies, which are among the best film works in the greater China society.
And like the candid artist he portrayed in ��Farewell my concubine��, he is the first Hong Kong actor bravely admit his bi-sexual orientation and was not afraid of showing up with his gay lover when he found his true love. Although the breaking of the news killed the dream lover of my youth, I celebrated the birth of an honest human being. Not pretending, not compromising, I could not find any better words to describe a veteran in that entertaining circle.
And maybe that��s the tragedy for a person of a sensitive heart, too truthful to himself and to the world. I imagine their grief and disappointments are more fatal than those of us ordinary people. I don��t know why he killed himself at this moment, but I believe our personality determine our fate.
Sometimes, the demise of a person declares a termination of an era, and that��s how I feel now about his death. I had never known him in person, but he used to be my virtual companion and the last idol coming from my teen years. Now he is gone at age of 46, there is no idol left in my life, and I��m approaching my 30. Maybe it is the beginning of a new phase of my life. I wish I could cry a little bit for the loss of a great artist, a beautiful human being, but maybe more possibly, just for the ending of my teens and twenties.