I am single handedly democratizing China. Not really, just kidding. I don't know what kind of notions you have about China, but Beijing is alright. The first thing that got to me was the sky--even on a sunny day, it's not deep blue, but kind of a pale blue. We did get to see a real deep blue sky last Saturday, but that was the only time so far. A lot of the time it's been raining, which apparently is created by the government as a way to battle air pollution. [Edit: During my 8-week stay, I saw what I consider to be a true blue sky a total of three times, including the last day I was there--the news media made a huge deal of the first blue day of the Olympics.]
Food is cheap. I can get too much to eat for about US$1.50. I can get a pretty fancy meal for $5. Bottled drinks are generally around 50¢. I've actually gotten used to it now, so any meal over 10元 (~$1.50) is more than I want to spend.
I hadn't found any real internet restrictions until yesterday. What happened at times was that while surfing the 'net my connection to certain websites would suddenly be reset (even if I had just been on that site) but it would always come back shortly. Yesterday I found out that Chinese Wikipedia is completely blocked. I just get a "connection was reset" error if I try. English Wikipedia, however, is completely fine, and I can read all about historical Chinese oppression with no obstacles. [Edit: As the Olympics approached, Chinese Wikipedia was unblocked, perhaps a result of international journalistic pressure. Wordpress and Livejournal, however, were blocked during my entire stay. Blogger, curiously, was not; I get the feeling they struck some sort of deal with the Chinese government--the navbar was automatically Chinese when I looked at Blogspot pages (like this one).]
The whole city is a huge construction site. There is a mind boggling amount of construction going on, everywhere. Things get done FAST here; work goes on 24 hours a day, and I watched a whole strip of road get rebuilt in like 2 days, the kind of thing that takes like a month in the US. The workers here have pretty sad stories; they're migrant workers with homes in the countryside, who take on work in substandard conditions as it pays better than farming. I've seen their living quarters, temporary little shacks or tents adjacent to the construction sites.
At the same time there is a middle class in Beijing that appears to be trying pretty hard to mimic American excess. I've been to a few bars/clubs with people I've met; they're packed with strobe lights and flashing lasers and ridiculous thundering sound systems and drinks and fog machines and visualizations on the walls and bouncing floors and scores of young people and some creepy older people all coming together to form a cacophonous mass of excess.
Actually that's only truly applicable for the last place I went to. It was ridiculous.
I find linguistics fascinating now, but I'm sure if I studied it I would hate it. This post has nothing to do with linguistics.
So I just read an article (中国今后的文字问题 The Problem of Present-Day China's Writing System) written in 1918 by a Chinese intellectual (钱玄同 Qian Xuantong), where he promotes the wholesale and complete replacement of the Chinese language with Esperanto.
It's hard to understand today the extent of Chinese self-loathing at the beginning of the 20th century. The author explains how "99.9%" of historical Chinese literature is composed of "confusing, dreamy" nonsense (that incorrigibly messes up children for their entire lives), and in order for China to progress and modernize as a nation it is absolutely imperative for China to abandon both its language, spoken and written, and its culture, namely Confucianist ideals of loyalty and piety which push a morality of "slavery". Similarly, prominent contemporary writer Lu Xun (鲁迅) claimed “If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die.” (漢字不滅，中國必亡。)
For Qian Xuantong, complete romanization of the Chinese language was not enough. He died in 1939, ten years before the Communist takeover of China, and this article, written some 38 years prior to the official introduction of Simplified Characters, reveals that the simplification policy was pretty moderate on the spectrum of Chinese linguistic reform.
It's hard to understand today the extent of Chinese self-loathing at the beginning of the 20th century. The author explains how "99.9%" of historical Chinese literature is composed of "confusing, dreamy" nonsense (that incorrigibly messes up children for their entire lives), and in order for China to progress and modernize as a nation it is absolutely imperative for China to abandon both its language, spoken and written, and its culture, namely Confucianist ideals of loyalty and piety which push a morality of "slavery". Similarly, prominent contemporary writer Lu Xun (鲁迅) claimed “If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die.” (漢字不滅，中國必亡。)
For Qian Xuantong, complete romanization of the Chinese language was not enough. He died in 1939, ten years before the Communist takeover of China, and this article, written some 38 years prior to the official introduction of Simplified Characters, reveals that the simplification policy was pretty moderate on the spectrum of Chinese linguistic reform.
Introspectacle
I've been trying to come up with new names for the blog, and on a bus the other day I thought up the name "Introspectacle", which I found appropriate, in a "tearing out your innards for the world to see" fashion (not literally—ick). Of course, I first had to run a search to see if my new word was actually new, and indeed I discovered "introspectacle" was not unsullied as I had hoped. The first result on Google is a blog written by an overtly Christian fellow.
There is a reason that I often say, "it's probably already been done"; it probably already has. Maybe I'm overanalyzing this, but as students who have grown up in the United States we have been exposed broadly to the same kind of education and culture. We share similar creative processes with other people. That is not to say that we are all the same, but rather that our minds often fit into categories (which paradoxically is encouraged by the same American culture that praises individualism--think about how engineers, art students, scientists etc are expected to think, or just look at politics).
A pessimist might draw the conclusion then that anything we do is already done by someone else, and shockingly we're not as special as they told us in elementary school. Especially considering a standardized and increasingly regimented education and entertainment that can be traced back to but a few sources, it is easy to assume that each person will fit neatly into a pocket of established culture, a classification, a stereotype--ultimately, it's all been done before.
That standpoint, however, neglects a crucial fact--the same fact that drives the evolution of species--that from the combination of old ingredients we can indeed create something new. It is our specific mixture of experiences and talents that define who we are as individuals; it is that which drives change and innovation in all fields.
Regardless, it is still generally discernible, given a set of circumstances, what constitutes an obvious result and what is truly creative.
There is a reason that I often say, "it's probably already been done"; it probably already has. Maybe I'm overanalyzing this, but as students who have grown up in the United States we have been exposed broadly to the same kind of education and culture. We share similar creative processes with other people. That is not to say that we are all the same, but rather that our minds often fit into categories (which paradoxically is encouraged by the same American culture that praises individualism--think about how engineers, art students, scientists etc are expected to think, or just look at politics).
A pessimist might draw the conclusion then that anything we do is already done by someone else, and shockingly we're not as special as they told us in elementary school. Especially considering a standardized and increasingly regimented education and entertainment that can be traced back to but a few sources, it is easy to assume that each person will fit neatly into a pocket of established culture, a classification, a stereotype--ultimately, it's all been done before.
That standpoint, however, neglects a crucial fact--the same fact that drives the evolution of species--that from the combination of old ingredients we can indeed create something new. It is our specific mixture of experiences and talents that define who we are as individuals; it is that which drives change and innovation in all fields.
Regardless, it is still generally discernible, given a set of circumstances, what constitutes an obvious result and what is truly creative.
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