2012 Review (2)

My life at Princeton came to an end in June, after a carnival of Alumni Weekend, a hooding ceremony and commencement. Everyone around was crazily busy - packing, visiting friends, hugging each other with tears and leaving the campus. My story is a little different because of my mum and Joop's visit.

They arrived at the weekend of Alumni Reunion, when the campus was covered by all sorts of camps and suffused with the whiff of beer/wine. We went to Philly the second day after their arrival, spending the entire afternoon exploring the Independence Hall and Liberty Bell, sighing at something that we haven't acquired yet. Later that day, we wandered around the Reading Terminal Market, where Joop tried Philly cheesesteak while mum and Gang had some American-style Chinese food. And that's just the beginning of our week-long trip on the east coast. After my graduation on June 5th, we rented a car and drove all the way up to Niagara Fall, followed by Pittsburgh and DC. I made a 16-page trip plan in advance with two appendix, including detailed information about highlights and must-dos. Unfortunately most of my team members lacked the patience of reading it. Anyway, we had an amazing time in Niagara though we all got wet very quickly; enjoyed some craziness in the Musical Festival at Pittsburgh and knocked ourselves out by walking into one museum after another in DC. After that, mum and Joop continued to Boston and New York, Gang left for London and I came back to California.

I don't know how to describe my thrill after arriving in the bay area again. Days were beautiful with lovely sunshine and cool breezes. Though I very much enjoyed the laziness, I started to reach my connections around to look for job opportunities. The job hunting turned out to be a lengthy process given the few policy openings in the bay area. It was during my idle times that I decided to start this blog as a way to keep myself busy as well as practicing English writing skills when I was not obliged to submit papers anymore.

One quick decision Gang and I made regarding to our new life in the bay area was to get a new car. Our old car, a Nissan Altima 1996 had worked for us for 4 years, accompanying us in most of our roadtrips. It was still in good situation when we sold it. The new one we got was a Honda Accord in crystal black with ivory seats. Soon two visiting students from Peking University moved in the apartment across ours, who joined us a lot in potluck, board games and hiking.

The best time in the second half of this year should be our trip to Hawaii. Details about this trip can be found at Impressionist Hawaii in my previous blogs. After that, I decided to learn some skills in addition to the job search. Therefore I started to teach myself SQL through online courses and textbooks, which kept me busy most of the day. No matter how clear it sounds in the textbook, when I tried to work on it with my laptop, things still went wrong from time to time. Luckily I finally finished the course and acquired some skills of processing data with SQL. It was also during this process that I was reconfirmed of my interests with data analysis, which finally led my applications to a few jobs in this field.

My Family at Niagara Fall

2012 Review (1)

Ten years ago, when I was a sophomore at Peking University working on two bachelor degrees, I wondered how I would look like in ten years. I thought by then I would have received my bachelor degrees, probably with an Master as well, and should have built my career as a civil servant for a few years, therefore I might be expecting a promotion by the end of 2012. Now when I looked back what I did this year, I have to admit it's not quite the same what I had imagined before, it's much more challenging, uncertain and adventurous.

Since I left the Chinese Democratic League (CDL), I knew I probably would never return to the same career track even if I still work on policy issues in the future. I was right - now I focus on the technical skills of tackling policy issues such as impact evaluation and project design, instead of the political part such as decision-making processes. In January 2012, instead of a busy month writing working reports at CDL before the Spring Festival, I was working on two course papers, a group report and a final exam for my third semester at Princeton. I stayed in California for the entire winter vacation except a three-day trip back to Princeton for the International Trade Policy final exam. Before I headed for the East Coast again in February, I had already spent one and a half months with Gang - the longest time I had spent with Gang since my acceptance to Princeton.

The last semester was quick and tough. I had a difficult time in choosing courses, most of which were so tempting. After a busy shopping week, I settled down with Impact Evaluation, Development Econ, Economics of Welfare Society and Risk Assessment. I remembered when I handed my "coursework sheet" with adviser's signature to the Graduate Program Office, Gene said "this is your last coursework sheet", which did make my a little emotional at the moment. The semester was challenging as all the previous ones, but I still had a lot of fun by hanging out with friends at Maggie: dinner parties, crafting nights, board game nights, etc. Since late April, I had to focus more on Qulify Exam2, which lasted 9 hours and included five econ courses. After a day-long torture, I met Gang at Princeton Junction Station. He passed his PhD qualify exam in April, and was happy to take a month vacation with me in May.

That was probably my happiest time in the last two years - I finally finished all the coursework at Princeton, and got the confidence of embracing my beautiful future after graduation. We traveled a little bit in NY and PA, visiting Amish farms, watching Broadway shows and driving along Gettysburg battlefields. In sunny afternoons, we walked around the Princeton campus, sitting on the grass and looking at birds hovering the river by my apartment. At night, some friends came over to play games or hang out. Lifs was idle and slow. Some friends had received job offers and were packing for relocation; some were still looking for opportunities around. But everyone was enjoying the last moment of Princeton.

Keqin, Gettysburg, 2012

When You Don't Belong to Yourself

Mo Yan, the recent Nobel Prize Literature Winner from China, was blamed for defending Chinese media censorship during the Q&A session after his speech at Stockholm University. I didn't watch the live, but read the news from internet. Most critics focused on his response to a question about Chinese government putting some writers behind bars. To me, his answer barely defended Chinese government, but was try to avoid answering this question: he mentioned that writers can commit crimes such as theft and burglary, and therefore it shouldn't be surprising to have writers in prison, which obviously wandered off what the question was about. Mo Yan was not further challenged on the same subject at Stockholm University, but described not only as a coward who was afraid to confront the notorious media censorship, but a sycophant to Beijing.

If you've ever read Mo Yan's books, he is not a communist sycophant for sure, otherwise his books would never be rewarded from Nobel Committee. Mo Yan has kept a good balance between criticizing communist history and complimenting the government, which offers him the opportunity of publishing his satires as well as enjoying a decent life in China. He probably would lead this peaceful life until he dies hadn't he accepted the Nobel Prize this fall. As the first Chinese Nobel Prize Winner who also receives official congratulations from Chinese government, Mo Yan is no longer allowed - by either the government or the public - to keep his attitudes towards Chinese government and the CCP ambiguous. The government, who was furious at the Nobel Committee's decision to award dissidents such as Dalai Lama and Liu Xiaobo, wouldn't allow Mo Yan to act as an anti-government activist and speak against the government. The public (I'm talking about Weibo users here), with strong sympathy for dissidents and inspired by Mo Yan's books, would love to see Mo Yan expressing his dissatisfaction (in books) in the real world. In other words, Mo Yan has to make a choice to please either his bosses or his readers.

Mo Yan is a very thoughtful guy. But no matter how thoughtful he is, when he no longer belongs to himself, he can't express his thoughts freely. That's why we heard the ridiculous answer during his visit to Stockholm University. Some people, at least the one who asked him that question, were hoping that Mo Yan could be another Liu Xiaobo who can use his prestige and influence as a Nobel Prize Winner to fight against the censorship in China. Sure Mo Yan could choose to cater these audiences and condemned Chinese government on its inhumanity, which would cost his career, family and probably freedom. But Mo Yan made it very clear in his answer that he is not a dissident, and he has no intention to confront Chinese government. He's just a writer, and his job is to tell stories.

We live in societies. In social networks, people have different expectations for us, which may not always be consistent with our own plans. Especially when you become a public figure, for most of your life, you don't belong to yourself, but to the public, who has developed certain expectations for you. Then it will be very courageous for you to deviate from their expectations and lead your own life. As a writer, Mo Yan has achieved great success in his career. But as a person, he loses the freedom and privacy. If he asks for the freedom to choose his life, we shouldn't deny it; at least we shouldn't take it for granted that he will sacrifice his life for us.

Numbers

In my teenager, some of my friends chose social science rather than science to avoid maths courses in college. The stereotype is that social science, such as history, literature, sociology and political science does not require quantitative skills, but qualitative ones, like writing reports and communicating with people.  However this looks no longer true. Economics, together with its loyal partner - statistics, has dominated social science methodologies. The first time I read a political science paper inundated with regressions, I thought I found the wrong paper, but now I'm so used to mathy papers of this kind. Obviously numbers are widely applied in social science research, like developing index to evaluate the quality of democracy/dictatorship evaluating policy impacts, and using numbers to show the demographic changes in history, etc. Recently I even found a "poem-making" software which analyzes Chinese poems from Tang Dynasty, identifies the most popular words and phrases and reorganizes them into new poems. Some people acclaimed that this sort of software will put an end to social science, which sounds like a paranoid sleep talk by those with little idea of arts and literature.

It's true that in an information era, traditional way of studying social science may not be sufficient enough. Case studies, which used to be widely applied, are now considered to be biased samples; and causalities between two events are less convincing without excluding other factors rigorously. Interviewees can lie, interviewers can be biased, and it looks like in research the only reliable source is data. The development of data-processing software also makes it easier to do research with large data set. Therefore social science scholars and students, no matter how difficult it is to quantify their research objects, are trying to establish a database and use statistical models to reach certain conclusions. I won't say it's wrong - I've spent the last few years learning these skills, but there are several things that should be kept in mind in data work, especially for policy students.

One concern is that data can "lie" too. If you've worked with STATA, you may have noticed that conclusions can be very different when you use different regression function forms, different control variables or whether to cluster/stratify or not. From time to time, we need to use our common sense and logic to choose the one most likely to be true. However if we come across something that we're not familiar with, then how can we decide if we've handled data in the right way? It's quite common that people have different stances on the same issue even if they happen to use the same data base. Moreover, data analysis always requires a few assumptions, based on which our conclusions can be developed. However, because so many variables (either measurable or not) exist in the real world, that sometimes it's very hard to exam whether your assumptions hold or not. Tons of arguments arise in this field, and researchers are still fighting against each other when new variable/evidence emerges.

Another concern is that when numbers are large, we can easily be misled. If you think about 0.001% of the population, you may think of only a few people; but when you are referring to 13,900 people in China, that's not a small group. Number itself is not enough to display the full picture. On contrary, numbers can be cunningly used to hide the facts.

In addition, obsession with numbers is almost as bad as ignoring numbers. Though it's important to see policy impact on large groups, and therefore exam its effectiveness by looking into the joint benefits received by the population; single cases are vital too. If you think about how policy changes such as the abortion of racial segregation in the US, or how big event happens such as the start of WW1, a single case makes all the differences. There are a lot of psychological studies on cases vs. numbers, and case studies tend to impress audiences more. This is not surprising: after reading an article/report, which can you remember, numbers or stories?

People talk a lot about big data these days, and sometimes I can't help wondering how I look like in those companies' eyes - maybe a few dummy variables to identify my race, gender and consumption preferences, etc, and a few logit regressions to find out what coupons can induce a new purchase record from me - simple and straightforward.

Smell of Weed

As a person who's never tried weed before, I don't really understand why the legalization of mariguana in Colorado can be such an excitement to some of my friends. Not only that, the pleasance of enjoying mariguana in the public produces some negative externalities - the smell of weed on Berkeley streets are driving me crazy. I took a walk this afternoon in downtown for fresh air. Beautiful sunshine lightened up the world, when I suddenly came across strong stink at the corner. I trotted a few steps, but the smell made me sick for quite a while. This is not the first time I've smelled weed in Berkeley, the smell is almost everywhere - in downtown, in parks, by stations. What I don't understand is, in a country where public smoking is strictly forbidden, drugs are not treated in the same way.

Freedom has been widely discussed in modern society: the freedom to speak, the freedom to talk back, and the freedom to escalate the quarrel. Sometimes to protect other people's freedom, the government has to put certain limitations on our freedom. For example, to protect people's freedom of accessing public roads, there are traffic rules to guarantee rational use of infrastructure, the broken of which are subject to punishment. This is straightforward, but more controversial cases arise when freedoms are in conflict. Now to protect people's freedom of "getting high", I have to sacrifice my freedom of enjoying clean air. So the question is where is the line?

In a culture where the respect for individual freedom goes too far, any conflict over freedom can evolve into an endless battle of pushing the line back and forth between different groups. For example, one group (let's say some minorities in the community) wants the freedom of celebrating their traditional festivals by taking days off, and another group (let's say their employers) wants to keep them working as their white peers do. Then whose freedom should we respect? If there is no clear rule of defining the line, the entire issue is subject to power balance.

In China, individual freedom is always subject to collective objectives in the name that collective actions will bring "bigger individual freedom". A notorious example is the propaganda for One Child Policy. The logic provided by the central government is that booming population will undermine the survival of current and future generations. Therefore if we enjoy the freedom of delivering more than one child in a family, the result is exhaustion of resources, poverty and scarcity in the future. To save China from "complete annihilation", actions such as forced abortion and whopping fine for the second child are taken to protect "freedom of majority." In this case, the line is mistakenly drawn.

So back to the question, I think the fundamental rule could be "Pareto Optimal": don't harm other people when you enjoy your freedom. Do not enjoy the weed when creating stink for pedestrians; and do not delay your work when you want to celebrate your own holidays. Another rule should be "mind your own business first": don't tell other people how many kids they should have, and don't assign new graduates to positions "as the country needs". Then may we live in a happy and friendly world!

The Perfect Plan

How amazing it would be to develop a perfect plan, follow which we could have a perfect result. Of course the assumption is that everything is controllable: you've included all the "variables" in the plan, find the right way to handle them, and no worries about uncertainties during the implementation. Experiments like this may be carried out in labs (although even the most strictly controlled experiment faces challenges such as contamination/spill-over), but too many omitted variables exist in the real world which makes a perfect plan in the real world almost impossible. As a result, the perfect plan evolves into an imperfect, sometimes even disappointing plan. You may want to describe it as a good experience/adventure years later, but at the moment when things go wrong, it's still not easy to handle.

A possible solution is to go for options that have lower probabilities of going wrong. For example, shop in branded stores with good return policy, go to a tourist attraction mentioned in "Lonely Planet"; or pick a major that can guarantee a job after graduation, and follow seniors' suggestions to avoid mistakes. But things can still go wrong no matter how high the probability of "being successful" is, and it does require extra efforts to get back to the right track, or to even develop a new track. In Tang Dynasty, a talented young man went to the capital Chang'an for an imperial exam, a qualify exam for government officials. He had prepared it for a long time and had never thought he would fail, which unfortunately happened. Frustratingly he went out drinking, where he met a dancing girl who he used to know. The girl recognized him soon and joked: "You're not a government official yet?" The young man wrote a poet as a response:

I left Zhongling ten years ago in drunkenness,
Now I met Yunying (the dancer's name) and her beautiful dance.
I haven't made my name, and you haven't got married,
It's probably we're not so good as others.

Well, he was wrong. He became a famous poet later. (That's how I got to know the poem above.) After the difficult time of seeing his failure in the original plan, he found a new plan of his life.

One can never find a counterpart in one's life to see whether his decision is right or not, or to figure out where the plan goes wrong, even twins rarely serve as a good case for comparative studies. However, it's quite normal to assume "if I had blahblah..." when facing troubles. When I'm frustrated by the job search in the bay area, I do doubt if I made the right decision to leave my comfort zone - quitting my "iron-bowl" job in China, and going back to school in a new country. But when I think of my vagrant experiences across the US in the past few years, everything looks so deserving, even the painful memory of staying up all night to finish reading hundreds of pages of papers or to write policy memos is rewarding. I could have followed my "perfect plan": slowly moved up in the bureaucratic hierarchy and retired with good pensions, however at that moment, my rational choice was to go for an alternative. I guess it's a trade-off: I lost a stable job, but enriched my life in unexpected places.

Maybe there is never a perfect plan. What I can do now is to enjoy the bitterness of changing, take advantage of my depression and produce some poems.

夜染繁花处，灯挑旧草庐。

青柏二三树，闲竹五六株。

已知春风早，恨将桃李误。

遥看苔阶冷，郁郁待日出。

Young Heroes

The blog yesterday triggered my memories about The Three Kingdoms. After bragging my knowledge about the history to Gang, we watched two episodes (from '95 TV) together, both were about the battle of red cliffs. It's amazing to imagine what happened two thousand years ago, when a group of young people, mostly of my age, led thousands of hundreds of people crusading across the country, cleverly using all sorts of plots and schemes, and finally founding their own states.

Heroes in The Three Kingdoms are amazingly young. Sun Ce occupied 6 counties (80 states in all) when he was 24 and founded Kingdom Wu; his younger brother Quan succeeded at 18 at Ce's death; Zhuge Liang decided to assisted Liu Bei as his chief minister when he was 27; one year later, he facilitated Zhou Yu in defeating Cao Cao and his troops of 800,000. Most generals and advisers made their names during their teenagers, and became well known by 30. This is hard to imagine nowadays - most people barely make any achievement until they graduate from college at around 22, and it will take another few years for them to build up their reputations and move forward in their career path. Luckily one can make breakthrough in his field, and get awarded with a world-class prize by retirement. But most young people, receive little compliment except "youth is beautiful." Especially in China, when aged people are much respected, it's hard for young people to gain acclaim.

One reason that contributes to the emergence of these young heroes is the short life expectancy in ancient China. Confucius called people who are 70 and above to be "rare". During warring times like the Three Kingdoms Period, it was even rare to die in mid-50s, which is considered as "natural death" in The Three Kingdoms. Much more people died earlier, like mid-30s or 40s, usually of wounds or diseases. Given such short lifespans, people had to work hard during their early ages to accomplish as much as they can.

Another reason, I'd assume, was the short educational system in ancient China. Confucianism was made the state mainstream ideology since Han, therefore I'd imagine that children were required to study Confucius books. Other than this, they were not obliged to take extra courses - no foreign language, maths, physics, chemistry, etc. Smart kids could probably finish his coursework in a few years and started to explore the real world as knowledgeable persons. Some generals in the Three Kingdom Period were not even educated, which didn't demean their reputation as most people at that time were illiterate.

The last reason, probably was the lack of child labor protection. It's impossible nowadays to recruit teenagers in armies or hire kids in stores. But in The Three Kingdoms, there were stories about people leading a troop, killing enemies at the age of fourteen; and an eight-year old boy attending policy discussion. Maybe people at that time had a stronger belief in "learning by doing".

I'm 27 now. In The Three Kingdoms, I should either lead an army or at least governed a state for years. Now I'm still looking for jobs. What a progress we've made over the last two thousand years.