Stories Between the Lines

A small piece of book review about The Three Kingdoms, one of the most brilliant works in Chinese literary history, attracted my attention recently. The Three Kingdoms is a long novel written in Ming Dynasty about stories during the Three Kingdoms Period (A.D.198 - 280), when three kingdoms co-existed and tried to annex each other. Relentless wars between them lasted for a century, with thousands of heroes rise and fell. I was obsessed with novel since very young, and I couldn't even recall how many times I've read the stories in them. But this small piece still surprised me by re-interpretating the relation between the ruler and ministers in Wu, the kingdom both Luo Guanzhong and I paid least attention to.

Wu was founded by the Suns. The father Sun Jian was a foresighted general who occupied the rich area south of Yangtze River at the fall of Han Dynasty. However he died in a brutal battle when he tried to expand his kingdom, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Sun Ce. Ce was famous for his bravery and he avenged his father soon after his succession. But not for long, Ce was assassinated when he was 26, leaving a big kingdom to his younger brother Sun Quan, who was neither a courageous pioneer like his father nor a valiant warrior like his brother, but proved to be an outstanding king in defending his kingdom against the attack from the other two kingdoms, Wei and Shu. One of the legacies that Ce left to Quan was Zhou Yu, one of the most famous generals in the Three Kingdoms Period. He was Ce's sworn brother, and also brother-in-laws. After Ce's death, he served as the Command in Chief during Quan's reign for ten years until he died from a wound caused by a poisoned arrow. The heyday in Zhou's career was the Battle of Red Cliffs, when he defeated Wei's main force of 700,000 people with less than 100,000 and made his name in Chinese military history. In The Three Kingdoms, Zhou Yu was described as a tasteful general who won full trust from both Sun Ce and Sun Quan, as well as his colleagues and soldiers.

His life sounds perfect, isn't it? The review mentioned a sentence in Zhou Yu's last note to Quan when he was dying of the wound that makes the entire legend look less reliable. In his letter, he talked about his military plan and concerns, and raised several recommendations regarding to future personnel appointments and military deployment. In his last sentence, Yu said "People speak kindly in the presence of death; if you can adopt any of the above suggestions, I die with no regrets." This sentence sounds weird because none of the sentences in his note seems peculiarly kind. And if Yu considered his note as "kind", it was hard to imagine how he talked to Quan ordinarily. Therefore the review assumed that the relation between Yu and Quan might not be as good as it looked like. Yu, as an experienced and distinguished general, monopolized military power in Wu for decades, which could be even longer if he hadn't died at 36. Quan had little military experience and was much younger than Yu, therefore his prestige in Wu was not as well built as Yu. In the novel, it is mentioned several times that when officials couldn't reach an agreement, people "always" tended to Yu for final decision, not Quan. Thus it shouldn't be surprising if Quan was suspicious of Yu's loyalty and imposed some limitations on his power.

I went through a few chapters in The Three Kingdoms after reading the review, and I found the review did make a good point here. Another evidence I found in the book was a quotation from Yu right before the Battle of Red Cliffs, when Wei sent Jiang Gan, Yu's classmate, to induce him to capitulate. Yu replied :"Here I met a king who is also my bosom friend. We are a king and a master, but we are also in-laws. I follow his order, and he follows my suggestions. We share our fortunes and we meet challenges together. Even Su Qin and Zhang Yi (both of which are famous for their eloquence) revived, I would still turn them down. Do you think you can change my mind?" (丈夫处世，遇知己之主，外托君臣之义，内结骨肉之恩，言行计从，祸福共之，假使苏张更生，郦叟复出，犹抚其背而折其辞，岂足下幼生所能移乎？) Then Jiang Gan knew he couldn't change Yu's mind, and left afterwards. What's interesting is, the Wu King at that time was Quan, but the Wu King who met Yu and took Yu as a bosom friend was Quan's brother, Ce. Also, since Quan only took government for one year when the Battle of Red Cliffs started, it was more likely that the connection between Yu and the "King" mentioned here was the cooperation between Yu and Ce. In other words, Yu pledged his loyalty to Quan after Ce's death, but the reason he used to refuse Jiang Gan's persuasion was not his connection with Quan, but his gratitude to Ce. I take this as an evidence that Yu's loyal to Wu because of Ce, but not Quan. In this sense, the relationship between Yu and Quan could be more complicated than what the novel says.

I remember when I read the novel as a child, I was amazed by the solid relationship between Quan and all his four outstanding Command-in-chiefs, Yu and his three successors. Maybe the true story between the lines is a balance of game between a young king and his powerful generals.

Black Friday

I don't know how many people still go to outlets/groceries on Black Friday given the rapid development of online shopping and regular promotions across the year. After reading all the terrifying stories about queuing, trampling and parking wars on Thursday night, fatigue driving and traffic congestion on Friday, I decide to avoid the war and go on Saturday, which also turned out to be a terrible idea. The newly opened outlet in Livermore was packed with happy shoppers, and it took at least 15 min for us to find a parking space, and another 15 min to get a fitting room in Banana Republic. Impressed with the long line outside ladies' room and the crowd in the food court, we went home with a few new clothes, whose prices were found to be lower through online shopping later.

That's when I started to doubt how important the Black Friday is in nowadays when retailers have thousands of ways to promote sales. I can see in old days, when people learned about sales from local ads and had to prepare Christmas gifts, Black Friday became a good shopping opportunity for the family. But now, as the population booms, the non-monetary cost of shopping on Black Friday has increased, while other choices, i.e. online stores, with good discount and no crowd seem to be a better choice; and following promotions, such as Cyber Monday, also attract a few customers.

But people still flock into stores on the very day, blocking the highways exits and swarming malls. Habit is a second nature. Black Friday, created by shrewd businessmen, has become a tradition over years and taken as an important family activity. Probably people do not come only for shopping, but to enjoy some family time together. Once shopping becomes a tradition, other than a pure economic behavior, it's difficult to abstain from doing it, especially when surrounded by family members and friends. When I think about why we decided to go shopping during the holiday, it was partly because we wanted to show how Thanksgiving looks like in the US to some visiting students from China; and partly because we wanted to enjoy sometime with each other without harassment from work and computers.

Chinese businessmen learned from their American counterparts and turned Nov 11 into Chinese Black Friday. Nov 11 was named as "Single's Day" by college students since a few years ago as "1" is the loneliest number in the world. In the latest Single's Day, Chinese biggest online shopping website, Taobao started a one-day sale, which created a historical sales record of CNY19.1 billion. It looks like Chinese business people learned from the lessons in the US Black Fridays, and carefully avoided stampedes given Chinese big population by offering online sales instead of in-store ones. Nevertheless, the panic online purchase still slowed down internet and created some chaos, though luckily no one was physically hurt. In light of the big success of Single's Day Sale, it may evolve into a new shopping tradition, just as Christmas and Valentine's Day Sale in China.

I used to shop a lot in college, but become much less motivated in recent years. Maybe in the future, when my kids and parents want to experience some craziness in the US, I will still bring them to a mall, and celebrate a Black Friday together.

Jokes

A news release from Chinese Microblog made my day: the People's Daily Online, one of the most authoritative CCP mouthpiece, published an article saying "the US media has elected Kim Jong-un the sexiest man in the world" in an official tone, which was a fake news cooked by the Onion News a few days ago. Soon the article on People's Daily was quoted again in a US newspaper as an example of the lack of humor in China.

It is probably true that Chinese people are less fond of jokes in everyday life, and humor is always connected with frivolousness and sweet talkers. In Confucius culture, taciturnity is valued as a virtue of "gentlemen", and fun makers are always considered as lowbrow. Therefore, you don't want to make jokes at work, at least not when your supervisors are around; and neither should you use too many funny words when talking to elders, who may feel disrespected. Sometimes jokes are still appreciated in occasions such as a blind date, when a joke can help two people rid the awkwardness and get acquainted. But in brief, most people won't want to build their images as "funny" guys, they prefer to be respectable men of few words.

Another explanation could be the culturally different understanding of humor in China and the US. In China, comic dialogues (Xiangsheng), a traditional two-man talk shows, are very popular. The stories in Xiangsheng usually derive from everyday life but are beautifully exaggerated with the joking point released at the end of the show; while baseless jokes are always less appreciated. For example, people may have a good laugh at "Democratic" People's Republic of Korea, a perfect irony of the reality and the name; but they may get lost in the "sexiest men" joke, which has no clue in Kim's previous speech or behavior. That could also explain why the Onion News stories may look less like real jokes to Chinese audiences.

But the best explanation, I think, is how newspapers view their roles in these two countries. In contrast to Chinese newspapers, most of which serve as mouthpieces of the government, the US counterparts have much more freedom in paying a less-supportive role, making fun of policies and degrading politicians. But in China, it's particularly hard to imagine publishing jokes like above in a publicly issued newspaper, which can result in charging editors and reporters with defamation and endangering public safety. Therefore, the People's Daily Online probably didn't even doubt the authenticity of the news, no matter how hard they found to believe it themselves.

All that said, the stupidity of the People's Daily Online editors shouldn't be defended. But thanks for their mistakes, I've read the best joke of my day.

Which Story is True

When I started to write this blog, I intended to make it like a diary with daily updates. Unfortunately I seemed to have overestimated my resolution in keeping writing - the last update was about 10 days ago. I did get very lazy during the holiday season. Our Thanksgiving holiday started with a five-course dinner with Leslie, who came to the bay area to spend the holiday with her sister on Wednesday. We joined a friend and her family  in having a great seafood hotpot instead of turkey at her place Thursday night,  when I cooked HongShaoRou (红烧肉), their most-missed dish from me. The next day was a sunny day, so Gang and I hiked in Point Reyes, and ate apples by the sea (as what we did in Hawaii). Saturday was the "shopping day", when we spent the entire afternoon in the newly opened outlet in Livermore, and finally bought a pair of matching sweaters, one for Gang and the other for me. The long weekend ended with another hotpot last night, when a friend brought all the raw materials and pots over to my place and played SanGuoSha, a popular board game in China for hours.

But the highlight of the holiday, at least in my opinion, is the movie we watched yesterday, Life of Pi, directed by Ang Lee. It's the best movie I've watched this year. It's similar to Li's previous movies such as Lust  Caution and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in terms of the heated discussion it has already triggered; though it's different in the sense of its new topic. I couldn't help wondering which story is true - the one counting for more than 80% of the entire movie about how Pi co-existed with the tiger during the adventure, or the one explaining how four people in the lifeboat killed and even ate their partners to survive. If the movie had finished ten minutes earlier, I'd happily buy the idea of this drifting adventure with animals, supported by beautiful scenes of the sea and fish stocks. But the second story, if true, turns the entire adventure into a disgusting struggling for survival.

Let's examine the assumptions one by one. If the first story is true, what looks discordant in the movie includes:
- The long introduction of his name, which in my understanding has two implications - 1) it's hard to tell the real story on the face of it; 2) it's hard to understand/explain a human being, just as you can't exhaust writing Pi no matter how hard you've tried;
- The rude French chief and the Buddhist sailor on the ship, who barely appeared later. If the entire story is about Pi and animals, why bother to mention these two in the movie?
- The locked cage and escaping animals. It's clearly shown in the movie that animals are locked in cages, and it's hard to imagine when the ship sunk and most people were unable to escape, these animals could get rid of locks and jumped out.
- On the floating island, when Richard Parker was eating a meerkat, other meerkats didn't get panic or escape. Also, the flower with human tooth and the acid water didn't make much sense in the real world. (There is an article on internet saying meerkats can never appear in that part of the world.)
- Most importantly, if the first one is true, why the movie spends so much time showing how Pi told the second story to the two Japanese investigators with so many details included? Since Pi was only asked to tell a story about the sunk of the ship, he didn't have to provide such a detailed story.

If the second one is true, all the above the irrational plots can be explained. But the only question I have is why? What's the point of telling an inhuman story in such a beautiful way? I'm an atheist, and I simply don't understand how people can still believe in God after surviving this.

Whatever the true answer is, Ang Lee is successful, and his movie makes audience think about the movie, and wonder what's the tiger in their heart. Great movie, recommend without reservation, though it does bother me for a long time.

Unfriend

I was amused by Jimmy Kimmel's show on "National Unfriend Day", which was started three  years ago by the show to have people "unfriend" their "friends" on Facebook. Some enthusiastic audience did take videos explaining why they decided to unfriend some Facebook friends, and the reasons are so funny. Some Facebook posts are simply too boring to read. An example could be a lady who did a trip to Pittsburgh recently. Since she had that plan, her Facebook was updated every few hours with status such as "ready for Pittsburgh", "can't wait to go to Pittsburgh", and "packing for Pittsburgh", etc. Another example could be a guy who's keen of posting pictures of food and his feet - in different places and different times. Some Facebook posts may not be boring by themselves, but are too hard to understand. A girl decided to unfriend her classmate from Hungary because her Facebook posts were written in Hungarian. Anyway, Jimmy is likely to continue talking about unfriending until this Saturday.

Social media has largely changed our life styles. And the definition of "friend" has been evolved as well. "Friends" used to refer to people who we have personal connections and know each other well. For examples, we have friends from school who take the same courses or do the same workshop with us; or friends from some associations or clubs who share similar interests and hobbies. Now we even identify people as "friends" without even talking to them. This kind of people, which I tend to label as "virtual friends", exist extensively on Facebook and Twitter. We add them as friends usually because they're connected to someone we know, or belong to same network, but it has nothing to do with whether we're truly close to each other. Later we always find a big gap between us and these virtual friends, and never have the chance to talk to each other, but also to embarrassed to unfriend them since they haven't done anything wrong.

It's probably nice to know more people in the world, however it's not fun when you are overwhelmed by useless information. For example, what can you learn about a friend from her timely but meaningless updates about a Pittsburgh trip except that she's so boring/or so addicted to Facebook? What's worse, you have to spend time to filter information like this, which I think is all the campaign of "unfriend" is trying to address: forget about the bubble on social media, be realistic about social network, spend more time with friends in reality, and get involved in more meaningful relations.

Talk about reality, I don't think I will unfriend any people on Facebook this Saturday. Just like most Facebook users, I'd rather waste my time going through dumb posts than telling people your posts are terrible.

Study Chinese Politics

I made fun of The Economist for its gossiping methodology in Chinese studies in one of my previous blogs (The Gossips in the Economist). And it's absolutely not alone. Since the new politburo standing committee members met the press conference last night, all sorts of guesses, predictions and gossips about Chinese leadership in the next decade can be found on major newspapers, bold in headlines. Leaving all the bureaucratic jargon aside in newspapers such as People's Daily, the "studies" on Chinese politics have a wide variety of tools, ranging from committee members' resume to their tie colors. Here I will do what The Economist and its peers do: list a few citations/briefs from internet.

Most comments focused on Xi's speech, which followed his appearance as the top leader of the CCP. Weibo posts praised him as the first CCP leader who speaks mandarin. Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping are both famous for their strong accents when speaking Mandarin, which also creates a lot of difficulties for their actors in TV and movies. Jiang and Hu did a better job, but their tones still sound weird. In Comparison, Xi Jinping speaks much better Mandarin. People joked about the last Chinese leader who spoke such good Mandarin was back to Xuantong, the last Qing Emperor. Eulogy for Xi's good mandarin also has another implication: compared to his predecessors who filled their accession speeches (as well as most other speeches) with political jargon and empty talks, Xi seems to be better at talking in a language that ordinary people can understand. We don't know yet whether Xi can make government documents easier to read or the policy better to understand (probably not), but hopefully his speech will be less hypnotic.

The media also paid close attention to Xi's accession as the president of the central military committee. In China the CCP controls the army, and therefore the default is that the CCP president should also be the CMC president. However, ten years ago, Jiang refused to abdicate from the CMC president even though he was supposed to do so after resigning from the standing committee, and it took Hu another two years to get full control of the military power. This time, Hu seems to be less addictive to power than his predecessor, and turned over all his positions to Xi.

Not many people are surprised at the shrinking size of the standing committee as the previous nine-member one was abnormal itself. After Bo's removal from the Party, people no longer doubt that extreme leftists are removed from leading body as well. Pivotal members in the gamble is Wang Yang and Li Yuanchao, both of whom are viewed as relatively liberal and young CCP leaders. They gave their way to some mid-60s, but are expected to join the standing committee in the next term, when five out of the current seven members are to retire.

Other "studies", such as why Wang Qishan's tie color differed from other committee members; how summer birth months affect people's political future (it turned out four members were born in June/July); and what their wives and children are doing, etc, are trying to find some clues in the new Chinese leading group. This is how people study China, even so-called experts are not likely to have better ideas about understanding real political scenes. Let's continue having fun with Xi's standard Mandarin and Wang's blue tie. Maybe mysticism will be the best way to study Chinese politics.

Patriotism

A recent news in the US is widely reported in China as an evidence of a gloomy prospect for capitalism: citizens from 37 states petitioned to secede from the Union. Similarly, Scottish people will decide whether they will won independence from the Great Britain by 2014. Many Chinese readers took this as a result of the failure of patriotism education in both countries, as well as the public's depressing faith in the future. To most Chinese audience, it's shocking to see people want independence from the country, which is considered both as a felony and immorality in China. I don't know how many US people are disappointed at the presidential result or how much the Scottish dislike their fellow countrymen in the south, but here I want to focus on the discussion of patriotism education.

In China, patriotic courses make up an important section in primary education. Children were brought up to "love the Communist Party, love the socialism, love the people and love the country." As Chinese citizens, we are told to serve the people and fight against enemies. Textbooks have a broad definition for "enemy", which include those who want to challenge the dominant position of the CCP (e.g. democrats), change the political regime (from dictatorship to democracy)or intend to split the country (e.g. Dalai Lama), etc. It explains why issues like the independence of Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan are considered out of question, because they're "questions of principle". People have been educated to defend sovereignty and territorial integrity since they were not even able to fully understand the meaning of these concepts, and as a result, they rarely challenge it when they grow up, just like the Americans won't doubt freedom and democracy as basic values.

Patriotism becomes tricky when it's very difficult to separate the government from the country, such as in a dictatorship. In the US, you can keep your love for the country while hating the government, and all you need to do is to wait for four years to change it. But in China, the public can't do anything to change the government no matter how poor the performance is, therefore the government and the country (and the party) are bound closely together. So what can you do if you love the country but not the government? Some government dissidents are suppressed by the government and spend the rest of their lives in prison, and some choose to migrate to other countries to escape from the suppression. These people are fighting for better futures for the country and its people in their own ways. But in the public propaganda, they don't love their countries because they don't love the governments.

Government aside, patriotism itself is doubtful. Though it sounds bad to say I don't love my country, I still believe patriotism should be left for each individual to decide, rather than an issue of" principle". Love derives from connection and feelings, not birth place or parents' nationalities. Here is an example. I was born in Jiangxi, a central province in China, and moved to Zhejiang eight years later, which is an eastern province. But I spent most of my time in Beijing, going to college and graduate school, and building my connection there. So which place should I love most? According to patriotism textbooks, I should love Jiangxi the most, as it "gave my life and brought me up". It's true that I might have died without doctors in Jiangxi because of my malposition in my mom's uterus, but I need better reasons to choose my favorite place. And unfortunately I don't feel the same way as textbooks suggest - I love the place that best fits my value. I never thought of going back to Jiangxi, but decided to settle down in Beijing after graduation. Well people may say this example is only about provinces, while here we're talking about countries. But about 2,000 years ago, these provinces did belong to different countries, and even today they're still very different in culture, tradition and even language. Now in the age of globalization, people know more about the world than their neighbors, and they should have the rights to choose the place they love.

A truly strong country don't need to teach its citizen to love the country, it simply attracts them by its value and lifestyle. But if you can't establish legitimacy for your governance, you do need to educate people to love you. It's just like international trade - when you have production advantages, you claim free trade; but when you're disadvantaged in the supply chain, you want tariff protectionism.

http://goo.gl/1P0br

Digital Era

Probably no one has expected an investigation of Ms.Kelly's email account would result in the resignation of the C.I.A director. This is another typical lesson about how private information can be leaked in an information era. Internet seems to be good at preserving information for a long time, even if you mean to discard it. When people search information they may come across some surprises, just as what the F.B.I found out this time.

Actually email is far from the biggest trouble, at least normal people won't have access to your email account and your correspondence should be relatively safe, unless the Big Brother keeps an eye on you and the email service provider spinelessly concede; or like in this case, they get your permission to check emails. Private information can be collected in a much easier way. Social media and smartphones make it much easier for people to share their thoughts, status and locations in the public as long as there is wifi or 3G/4G. People always like to talk about themselves, therefore it's not surprising to see how much information can be collected from one's facebook and twitter account. And to gather this information, you don't need any search warrant or permission, Googling is enough. I have some Facebook friends that I've never met, but I do feel like knowing them for a long time - I know their families, friends, hobbies, education background, work, and even weekend plans even though I never intentionally do the research, all the information just appears automatically on my Facebook timeline. When we meet in reality, we talk like old friends.

It's nice to start a conversation with a real life stranger who happens to be a Facebook friend by avoiding unpleasant topics based on what you learned from his/her Facebook, but problems are created in the same place. We're happy to share information within certain groups, but may not want to be heard by outsiders. There was a kidnapping in China months ago when the criminal collected information about the kid from his mother's Weibo account, an figured out the best timing and place to take him away. Another case reported by a Weibo user also showed that traditional phone fraud also improved its performance by providing more detailed information of children when swindling their parents: he planned a trip to Japan with his girlfriend, and was very excited to share his plan on his Weibo. During his trip in Japan, of course he turned his Chinese cellphone off, and his parents and friends in China were not able to reach him. That was when frauds called his parents, saying he got in trouble and needed money to come back. Luckily his parents didn't buy the story and freed themselves from monetary loss, but they still suffered a lot from anxiety. Private information can induce great damage if it's obtained in the wrong hands.

There is a grey area between private lives and public ones, where the private information can be shared with the public but does not have to. In a digital era, there are tons of tools to fill up the grey area. You may not want to mention pillow talks on Facebook, but you probably will upload a weekend hiking photo there, and you never know how those browsing your Facebook will find out about you as fragmented information like this build up. We can't blame the tools for being too convenient to leak private information, as it's us who decide the line for disclosure. At Princeton, we were warned to take off all the "improper" photos and comments on Facebook by the career adviser who strongly believe interviewers will check candidates' profiles before talking to them. I guess that's Ann was trying to tell us: no one is perfect, so don't be so eager to show people everything.

http://goo.gl/VVqTv

Gossips in The Economist

The Economist has become one of my major information sources in the US. I was excited when it started a special column on China this summer. Though the new section on China is only a page long, but it covers a wide range of topics, introducing social, economic and business issues in China. Some reports, like the one on Inner Mongolia, even surprised native Chinese like me. A few months have passed, and I've noticed an interesting trend when The Economist digs hotspots in China, which is to quote posts on Sina Weibo, the most popular social media in China as both Facebook and Twitter are blocked in the continent.

I agree that surfing online is a good way to observe what some Chinese people are concerned about. And Weibo, thanks to its huge usergroup, does include many interesting stories in China. However it's problematic to rely so heavily on Weibo as an information source. For example, in the latest Economist, there is a small piece called "Congress Watching" with a subtitle "Heard in the Hutong". As the title indicates, it's a gossiping piece, most of overhearings are posted by Weibo users. Among them is a taxi passenger who complains about the removal of all taxi window handles in Beijing according to a government directive in the name of security. The passenger wrote on his Weibo that the he was suffering from the driver's fart during the ride because of the closed window. It was a funny post on Weibo and went viral soon. I had a big laugh when reading it on my Weibo, however I found it weird that The Economist chose to re-post it in its newspaper. Given a more than $100 subscription fee per year, I guess I'm probably expecting more than gossips from The Economist.

In The Economist, pieces on China and other developing countries are very different from those on OECDs. When it talks about the US and EU, it does a good job in integrating small stories into big ideas with analytical statements. But when it talks about China, articles are most detail-oriented, filled with micro-observations rather than analysis. If I think about how Chinese media report foreign news, I think The Economist does a great job in reporting China; but if we raise the standard a little bit, let's say there is still room for improvement.

First comes the question of research methodology. When you want to introduce a country where the information is opaque, the data is always wrong and interviewees don't tell the truth, what should be a possible approach? Even in academia, most scholars working on China have problems in applying the same methodologies used by their OECD-focused counterparts due to the lack of public information, and have to rely more heavily on informal channels, such as personal connection with insiders and social media like Weibo. The difficulties of conveying timely information are foreseeable for journalists in China. However the piece on Wen's hidden wealth in NYTimes shows that in spite of the above difficulties, valuable discoveries can be found in publicly available information sources. David Barboza, the reporter, claimed to the gather all the data in his piece from public sources, but it took him more than a year to process all the information and finally find out the truth. When the information is half disclosed and mixes truths and lies, it's not easy to ferret out the facts. But isn't that journalists' job?

Then comes the concern about accuracy. When you can't get a full picture of facts, but fragmented pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, it's vital for the journalist to infer like a detective. And that's when mistakes can happen. It's crucial to have the news correct, therefore it is a natural choice for journalists to play conservative and report "unbiased" fragments only. However it always makes sense to add some analysis, no matter how accurate it can be, the reasoning will help the audience think and understand better. I once worked with an archaeologist, and most of his work is trying to put pieces together in a puzzle to depict history, which includes a lot of assumptions and deductions. He can make mistakes, but that never undermines his reputation as a great archaeologist. Journalists who make up news to attract eyes are despicable, but a few reasoning that help audience build up the full picture should be awarded.

I still like The Economist, just don't feel that happy paying for Weibo Briefs every week.

http://goo.gl/5n4W9

Delegates

The ongoing 18th CCP Congress gathered more than 2,000 CCP delegates across China, who will vote for the leading group in China for the next decade. The CCP members count for 5% of the Chinese population, but the 2,000 CCP delegates are to decide the future of 1.4 billion people. These delegates go to Beijing every five years, dawdling for a week at the cost of tax payers' money, doing anything but their job. In the end, a few old people make final choices, and these delegates act as rubber stamps and hooray their decisions.

In theory, these delegates represent all the 80 million CCP members and are entitled with the power to determine the next leading group of China. But we all know they're hand picked. In general, the CCP delegates are considered as "elites", including CEO of state-owned companies, presidents of academic institutions or high-level government officials. They go to Beijing, fully informed of how little they can affect the conference outcome, but always enjoy this great networking opportunity which can build up their "guanxi" with the central committee. Not surprisingly, some recent released stories show that these delegates care little about policy, but are more keen to show their loyalty to the Party. Instead of making comments on Hu's 100-min speech or the Party's Constitution Amendment, delegates from Ningxia Province talked about how frequently they were thrilled into crying during the congress when they found the Party is "so clean and pure"; and another old delegate proudly told the journalist that she supported the CCP's policy by never voting against it - as most other delegates did in the past half a century.


To many people's surprise, even these rubber stamps are carefully selected. I worked for a small non-communist party before, and never had the opportunity of getting involved into CCP's issues. But I once worked with some colleagues to interview National People's Congress (NPC) delegates, who by law are the counterparts to the US Congressmen, but are powerless in China. Just like their peers in CCP, the NPC delegates meet every five years to elect the national leaders, which of course are determined by the same group of old guys. But to guarantee the NPC delegates will "behave well" and pass every personnel decision, bill or amendment, it's vital for the central government to screen all the NPC candidates and make sure invitation only goes to those they like. To demonstrate the participation of non-communist parties in state affairs, non-CCP members are always invited to help select NPC delegates. I once worked as the representative of my party in the selection committee, and interviewed 20 candidates. I followed the selection criteria, talking not only to the candidate, but also his colleagues and supervisors - a typical way of collecting comprehensive information about a candidate in the CCP. After quite intense interview, my group reported our final recommendations, which were presented to NPC central committee for their final decisions. Usually 92% of the recommended candidates will get a one-week vacation and a free trip to Beijing.

My friends at Princeton can be very excited at meeting or working with a Congressmen/Senator, while I find it ridiculous that I actually did interview some "Congressmen" in my country, which unfortunately shows how powerless the NPC is in China. No one can confidently say what policy will be like in China in the next decade, and all we know so far is that Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang will announce themselves the next CCP President and vice-president in four days, Bo Xilai and his allies won't have any chance in the game, and tax payers will continue paying the bill.

Painting

The rainy season has arrived in the bay area, making indoor activities much more attractive than before. Carol and I planned to hang out in the afternoon in her place, doing some painting and crafting. We did this several times at Princeton when trying to escape from pressure in the real world. Playing arts while gossiping seemed very effective in relieving stress. Although most people prefer painting with pigments, but I always feel more comfortable with lines. Once I copied a sketch from Uffizi Gallery, showing a girl serenely looking down with a little smile, lost in her own thoughts. We spent about two hours painting and chatting on that Friday night. Carol made a painting of the Twin Peaks with oil pastels, Leslie made a painting of a waterfall and a tourist with charcoals, and I did this one with a pencil. Sketching is easy and flexible: it's easy because I can present all my imagination with just a pencil; and it's flexible because I don't need to worry if I accidentally make mistakes during the painting, a few more lines can fix the problem. Therefore it's always my first choice when painting. As many other painters, I start with portrait, and feel more comfortable with faces than bodies. (I know nothing about anatomy.)

Drawing cartoons can be even easier - no worry about light and shade, and all I need is to delineate the outline and then fill up details. When I'm facing a tight time budget, like one hourish, cartoon is always the best choice. The portrait of Shaka, a character in Saint Seiya on the left took me less than 30 minutes. I was chatting with Gang when drawing. Sometimes I believe that drawing is a processed in a separate part in our brains from thinking as I can think over during the conversation while drawing something totally irrelevant.


Later I bought some crayons at Walmart at around $4, and tried to color some of my paintings. I did a portrait of Okitasougo, a character in Gintama. He has light brown hairs and black eyes, and always wears a dark purple uniform. This picture is about him getting angry, which turns his eyes into scarlet. Crayons help to create a more colorful world, but lack the freshness and softness in oil painting or gouache, which make the color look less authentic. If not applied well, crayons can cover the original lines and make the final product even worse than the sketch. But I slowly get a sense of coloring through these crayons.

After I have a better idea of colors, I try to use them more. This time when I did painting with Carol, I tested oil pastels in traditional Chinese painting. In general oil pastels have brighter and stronger colors than crayons: actually they are so strong that sometimes it's hard to tell whether a painting is performed with oil pastels or brushes. I enjoyed the experiment very much, and for the first time in my life I realized that traditional Chinese paintings can be copied without brushes. Later I looked at more similar paintings, and found that traditional Chinese paintings rarely have strong colors, but prefer to create room for imagination through light colors and clear lines. It came to my mind that I should use crayons instead of oil pastels. That was why I decided to paint "Mountain Streams and Pines" (松涛山涧) as below. Crayons are unable to show details (they're just too thick), but can do a good job in light coloring, which is exactly what many Chinese landscape paintings are about - or in their words, the art of space.

Happy Birthday, Milo

27 years have passed since 1985 when Shueisha started to serialize Saint Seiya (SS) by Kurumada Masami, one of the most influential comic artists in his days. Five years later SS was animated and won hundreds of thousands of young audiences in China after the CCTV bought the its copyrights. In days when Chinese cartoons were far less developed, SS attracted many Chinese children with its glaring pictures and extraordinary characters. Almost every student in my class watched it, and knew fictional things like "burn my cosmos" or could do a few fighting moves. I was one of the kids, and inevitably I got obsessed with SS for years. But my dad didn't allow me to watch SS too much for fear that the glaring pictures would hurt my eyesight.

20 years later, Chinese cartoons were still as poor as two decades ago, but Japanese cartoons were much more developed, and many of them were introduced to the Chinese market. The new cartoons made the SS look like a rough and childish one to its old audiences, who were young adults now. But the SS as part of our memories of childhood, is always missed. That was why they made Saint Seiya Hades, a new series of SS with better computer-made stunts and more gorgeous pictures. (Actually it was the most expensive TV- animation at that time.) In comparison to the old SS which was mainly about Bronze Saints, the new episodes were more about Golden Saints who are also stronger and prettier. This time I was a college student. I watched SS Hades with other SS fans, not worrying about its glaring pictures. The new SS Hades created a strong reminiscent mood among SS fans. New online forums, clubs, cosplays, fan comics and novels could be found everywhere. Even I ordered a SS T-shirt from the fan club in Peking University.

After the SS Hades, Golden Saints beat their Bronze peers and lead the popularity rankings, and one of the most popular Golden Saints is Milo, the Scorpius Saint. He is the youngest one in all the twelve (and later thirteen) Golden Saints, and is also viewed as one of the most emotional and caring saint in the SS. His fans always celebrate his birthday on Nov 8, based on officially released bios. In 2004, I drew a short comic about his birthday, the only comic I've ever made. One year later, I put all my fan novels of Milo into a book, and then decided it's time for me to grow up.

The moment of SS has largely gone. Its following episodes never became popular as the SS Hades. Now most SS online forums are closed, few people are still drawing or writing about SS. Days when we got together to celebrate Milo's birthday will never be back. But Japanese cartoon fans are still growing, with more new animations showing every season and old ones never coming to an end. As long as this industry grows and the Chinese cartoons continue sucking, there will be more Chinese children and teenagers becoming Japanese comic fans, and crazy about the characters in them. You can call this a cultural invasion, but I need to say cultural products like this are truly powerful.

Scorpio Milo

Election Day, None of My Business

Yesterday morning I went to a polling place in Berkeley to watch people voting. As someone who has no say in leadership change in my own country, I'm a jealous observer of what's happening in the US. The polling place was located in a small church on University Ave, with a billboard saying "Vote Here" in English, Spanish, Chinese, etc. People stayed in the short line, quietly waiting to vote. They're lucky to live in California, a deep blue state, therefore they didn't suffer much from ubiquitous campaign ads like in Ohio. People are voting, but are not crazily mobilized to vote. They came here as a stop to work or a lunch break, and checked the box after Obama and Biden.

Democrats' victory in White House looked almost certain before the ballots were counted. Despite the poor performance on economy, Obama seemed to have persuaded voters that Romney could only lead the country to a worse situation. Electoral forecasters on Intrade.com believed the odds for Obama's re-election vary between 60% to 90%. Sandy is the last straw that crushes Romney, as FEMA showed its strong disaster-relief capacity and the NJ governor praised Obama for his reaction to the hurricane and afterwards reconstruction. At least I never doubted that Obama could get re-elected when I heard Romney talking about opening windows on airplane and the 47%. But many of my American friends, those working on environment and energy issues in particular, were truly nervous before the result was released. I guess this is a true reaction when politics is closely related to your everyday life.

Tomorrow the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China will take place in Beijing. It's a party congress, not a national congress. However it will determine the Chinese leading group for the next ten years. We already know who the next CCP chairman, i.e. the next Chinese president will be, and we are also pretty sure who the next Chinese premier will be. But the rest seven vacancies in the central politburo standing committee remains opaque. 800 million CCP members are not able to vote, let alone the 1.3 billion non-communists. A small group of old men decide what China will be like in the next decade. Since I have no clue about what policy options have been debated within the decision-making body, or which policy/politician I should prefer, I'm not nervous at all. I will just wait and see, and probably guess what policy will be adopted in the future.

The beautiful part of checks and balance is to put restrictions over power, therefore incumbents have to carefully watch their behaviors and do less wrong. The relation between the government and the public is like a multiple gaming, with each side trying to gain more. Yes democracy makes mistakes, but the political party and politicians who made the mistakes never had a second chance. While in dictatorship, there is no restriction over the power, and dictators can do anything to maintain their rule, such as lying about history, suppressing dissents and blocking internet. As a result, the public lose the second chance to know the truth. If we try to model these two political regimes, in democracy, both the public and the government have utility functions out of which they try to maximize their utilities; while in dictatorship, only the government has a utility function while the public is a condition to subject to.

@ University Ave, Berkeley CA

Lost in BART, and Everywhere Else

This afternoon I took BART back to North Berkeley from Lafayette. I should first take the train to SF, transfer at MacArthur and then another train to Richmond; and I did plan to do so. However when I got off one platform and headed for another at MacArthur, I made a mistake - instead of catching the train to Richmond, I got on the one back to Pittsburg. (And I strongly believe putting two platforms so close is a design flaw.) It was very crowded on the train, I finally found a holder and stabilized myself. I didn't realize my mistake until I got to the next station. Frustrated but amused, I got off the train and went back to MacArthur again, where I finally figured out the right platform for BART to Richmond and got home in the end.

This was not the first time that I got lost in BART. About one month ago, I took BART from Powell Street to North Berkeley, and was messed up by a misleading timetable which led me to the wrong train. I was obsessed with reading on the train, and didn't realize what was going on until Gang called me, saying I was on the wrong train. Obviously he tracked my place with "find my iPhone", and found his wife going somewhere unknown. Warned by Gang, I got off the train and returned to MacArthur where I found the right train to ride on.

BART is probably one of the most convenient transportation in the bay area, and therefore I only lost twice on it. Buses are much more confusing. When I was living in the south bay, I once saw Gang off in the Caltrain station. Later I took a bus home. Though I had studied its path carefully before making the "trip", I still got off the wrong stop, and had to walk another ten minutes back. Coincidentally Xujing has witnessed my poor sense of direction during her visit to Stanford University as well. After showing her around the campus, we took a campus shuttle to the Caltrain station. Unfortunately though I got the name of the line right, I got the direction wrong. Instead of going two stops, we had a great shuttle tour of the campus and arrived at the Caltrain station more than half an hour later.

For people like me, map is nonsense. I noticed this when I went to college in Peking University. on the first day, all my roommates had no difficulties with walking to classrooms with a map except me. Later my roommate took me to classroom everyday until I was able to do it by myself about two months later. Years ago, I once showed Xinxin around Stanford with a map during her visit, which however didn't give me a clue about the locations of several places. Anyway I guided her for quite a while but had to admit I was lost in the end. So Xinxin took the map over and showed me the way back to bus stations.

What makes google map on smart phones so precious is that it shows your real-time location on map. Ever since I had that iPhone 4, I never got lost on Princeton campus, although it took me a few months to be able to walk to Robertson Hall from GC without referring to iPhone, and I did once have a difficult time to go back to Magie because even the roads on google maps were very confusing. Another invention that I'm very grateful of is GPS navigation systems in cars. I used GPS everytime I drive, even to a Safeway which is 1 mile from my apt. The logic is that if I can't tell directions when I'm walking, there is no way for me to tell directions when I'm focusing on driving.

I had some problems in finding ways abroad when 3G on my iPhone was blocked, but luckily I was always traveling with someone who could tell directions. So far I didn't make a single emergent call for help with road guidance. So at least there is something that I can be proud of.