C M W

Colour Blindness, Critical Reasoning and the Hard Problems of Consciousness

2009-06-19T17:39:00.002+10:00

You might have noticed from the previous email that I went and got my eyes tested.
The good news: I don’t need glasses yet.
The bad news: I got told to sit further away from the computer monitor or else. I think ‘or else’ is going to occur, because I have this urge to lean in whenever I’m playing computer games and watching films on my computer; I think it’s the effect of immersion, or maybe one required condition for immersion is me leaning in close to the screen. Either way, I’m not giving up computer games and films just so I don’t have to wear glasses some day.
So yeah, that was the 20/20 part of the test. Not really funny, exactly, but mildly interesting.
But the other part of the test was fascinating. The colour blindness test. I already knew I was colour blind, and there is in fact a great story behind that, which I’ll tell first.
I started in 2007 when I got the medical test needed for my Chinese visa (I was still in Brisbane at the time). The nurse giving me the colour blindness test laughed her head off while I kept on failing to see the numbers I should have been able to see. Everything was going according to the standard type of colour blindness until the last two pictures. I couldn’t see anything, but apparently normal colour blind people can see those last two. Me and the nurse just shrugged it off as a little weird.

Later, another significant event occured while I was studying in Beijing. In between classes me and my friends would meet in the corridor and joke around. My friend Haakon from Norway turned up wearing an interesting shirt. It was just a plain black t-shirt with some cool patterning in the shapes of circles of various green colours and some red circles too. I’m writing this from my perspective at the time, naturally.
I strongly believe that my friends were telling me the truth about what follows. They have never lied to me before. What happened was they started giggling as though I’d made an odd comment. They stared at me quizzically. And then Haakon asked me the question which gave birth to my growing suspicion of empiricism.
“You can read it, right?”
“Read what?”
There was a moment’s pause, and then my friends all broke into uproarious laughter.
“What?”
They were laughing at what was written on the t-shirt. I couldn’t read it so I didn’t realize what was funny. It was this t-shirt:

Now, my recent test:
The optometrist was cool and collected for the majority of my negative answers. But when we got to the last two, she sounded irritated. What she was about to say blew my mind and made me burst into laughter. I’m sure she didn’t like that. But I couldn’t help it; what she said ranks quite highly on my mental list of contradictory quotes which I’ve had the pleasure of hearing within my lifetime.
“Look closer. If you are really colour blind, you should be able to see something there.”
But let’s put the surface absurdity of the statement aside for a moment… Should? Based on what? There are two possibilities here.
A. I can see the answer
B. I can’t see the answer
If it is A, then I’m lying when I say B. Surely there is nothing to be gained from lying to her. There is no draft that might send me to an overseas military conflict. There are no financial aids given out to the colour blind. All factors are equal, and given that she doesn’t know what the likelihood of me telling a lie is (i.e she has no record of the truth/falsity values of every statement I’ve ever made which could suggest a tendency to lie), how can she assume that I “should be able to see something there”? There is some probability for B according to the small amount of reading I’ve done on the subject; there is a type of colour blindness with a much lower presence in the population than other varieties.
Now, here’s my question (and please do answer in the comments if you have an opinion, or especially if I have gotten something wrong factually):
Is it something to be concerned about that a philosophy student can (apparently) have a better grasp of critical reasoning than someone who told me a contemptuous tone that she was “more scientific [than people who are enrolled in non-science courses]”?

There's something else really interesting at work here though. We seem to be running into an epistemic barrier in a situation like this. My optometrist can't actually see the world the way I see it, no matter how hard she wants to. And I can't see the world the way she does. This is starting to scratch the surface of what the Australian philosopher David Chalmers talks of when he uses the phrase "hard problems". Although I think some of his arguments are quite weak, I think he's right to speak of the hard problems. I’m really curious as to what condition I actually have, so I have requested to go back for another appointment. We’ll see what happens.

Multi-Lingualism in Australia

2009-06-17T11:10:00.003+10:00

My friend sent me a link to an article in the Australian. This one. Have a read, it is interesting for all the wrong reasons.

I sent the following reply:

Ah, the classic ivory tower attitude to languages! Blame the students for not taking the subject seriously enough! I'm surprised he's not a Latin professor! But then again I guess French is the closest thing these days.

And you know, in typical 'French scholar' fashion, he completely misses the point. Notice how actual language competence wasn't mentioned once throughout the article? And how he blames people not taking foreign languages seriously enough? In fact it didn't actually mention the current rate of bilingualism in Australia, and whether it's higher or lower than in the past.

My answer to him would be, if you had a program which worked, and was fun, then people would do it. Maybe the real reason for drops in enrollment is that people are finding out that there are better ways to study languages, and that it's a massive waste of university credit (and, by extension, money) to take uni language classes. I would point out to him how I will never take another university language class again, and indeed failed at Russian, yet my Chinese is pretty good. Not perfect but good enough to take university subjects for native-speakers of the language, write essays, and generally understand everything a native speaker would (films, the news, etc). And I'm in the process of acquiring Cantonese. Yet people double-majoring in Chinese, with high distinctions, still can't order a coke in a restaurant without repeating themselves five times and gesticulating like an orangutan.

Or maybe mention the possibility that since it IS a fact that the Anglo-Saxon population of Australia is declining, people don't feel the need to take courses in a second language because they already speak one. Or more than one!
I mean, for example, sure Indonesian enrollments may be lower. But maybe that's because Indonesian native-speakers form a larger part of the student population, whilst the English-only percentage drops. Seriously, when I walk around UQ campus, the last thought on my mind is "these people need to learn a language other than English". On the contray, it's unusual if I do hear a conversation in English! I would in fact put my money on genuine 'polyglottery' being on the increase in Australia- which is a fantastic thing. But it certainly wouldn't be reflected by higher enrollment rates in langauge courses in universities.

He also, being a French scholar and all, should have mentioned Canada's 'French Immersion' system. I read about it with great interest. Except of course he wouldn't mention it, because that program- in spite of it's huge net of enrolment- fails to produce even 1% of graduates who have a proper command of French!

ARRGGHHHHHH IT MAKES ME SO MAAAAD

On a more positive note, I've got an appointment at Clarity optometrists this afternoon, so I may be joining the hallowed ranks of the bespectacled.

Warmly,
Cooper

May All Your Wishes Come True

2009-06-15T15:20:00.006+10:00

I have this history exam tomorrow, which I thought was going to be the day after tomorrow. If I had known it was going to be so last minute I might not have gone in to uni today to hang out, but I'm kind of glad I went anyway. It's cold and rainy at the moment, which I actually quite like. This is probably because it is good weather for books, video games and films. And beef noodle soups from the Half-Time cafe in Sunnybank.

But I digress. It was raining when I was planning on walking back home from uni, so I took the ferry instead. They have some banal television program on for people who don't want to look at the awesome view of the river, and as my eyes were passing contemptuously over the screen I saw "Words of Wisdom" in large comic-book letters next to a broadly drawn tree. And then the following faded in to the center of the screen:

"May all your wishes come true." (Ancient Chinese Curse)

This sounds off to me. The only way I know of saying something like this in Chinese is 万事如意 wanshiruyi, and I'm pretty sure it's never used as a curse.

I mean, seriously. I could be totally wrong, but...what kind of Fu Manchu bullshit are they trying to pull here? Even if this was an ancient Chinese curse, it would still be stupid. Can you imagine the bearded villain wriggling his fingers whilst uttering some incantation, to harness the forces of darkness so that the hero... loses some weight, meets a nice girl, gets the kid through college, becomes an astronaught and dies peacefully surrounded by family and friends?

It's moronic, is what it is. "You might not know the entire consequences that would follow from a particular set of conditions" or "If you could see the entire chain of events, you would not wish for it" seems to be the point they're trying to make. Which is actually quite different from getting everything that you wish for.

Let's assume that there really is a curse you can make, which will bring about the actualisation of all of someone's wishes. Firstly, you can't wish for something that you have no conception of. That's not what wishing is. Now, say that drinking a beer would entail stumbling across the street which would entail getting hit by a bus. Unless I harbour a deathwish, it's unlikely that getting hit by a bus is one of my wishes. In fact, I probably would wish for the non-occurence of that event.

Now assume that I didn't know about the causal necessity which would bring about my flattening, and we've established that you can't wish for something unknown. So suppose I wish to have a beer, and I wish that I don't get hit by a bus. If some asshole has put a curse on me so that all of my wishes come true, he clearly hasn't thought it through very well. I will drink the beer. And I will not get hit by a bus; non-contradiction ensures this.

At which point, I like to think that the prick who cursed me has a Cronenberg moment, looking something like this:

In fact, if that curse existed, I would want someone to try it on me. Because one of my wishes is that those dropkicks who try and justify ridiculous ideas by claiming that the idea is ancient and Chinese will have their heads explode. Not to mention all the other awesome states which would be brought about.

Not such an ingenius curse now, is it? My points here are that a) most 'ancient Chinese' stuff is not that ancient, not that Chinese, or just plain fabrication, and b) rationality doesn't discriminate.

Exotic Tattoos

2009-06-06T08:54:00.002+10:00

Once I was sitting in a Cairns cafe with my then-girlfriend, who was literate in Chinese. She burst out laughing in the midst of our breakfast and I turned around to see what was up. I saw a tough looking bloke in a singlet, who had a Chinese character tattooed on his shoulder. Here's what must have happened:

***

This bloke goes into the tattoo parlor and asks the artist, "Give me the Chinese character for 'man'"
The artist looks up his folder for the correct character. There it is, man. And so the shoulder goes under the knife, ink goes in, and all is as it should be.

Or is it?

See, the thing was that it was not the character that means man, but the character that was pronounced man. With the fourth tone. Written: 慢

And that word means slow.

A Most Brilliant Apparatus

2009-05-06T09:50:00.004+10:00

My flatmate recently lent me a spare reading stand. It's strange how such a seemingly small thing can be so marvelous in its operation. For the first time ever I can sit down with a drink in one hand, relaxed, head leaning on my other hand, whilst still being able to read a book held upright. Particularly if you're reading a physically heavy book- like the textbook in the photo- it makes life much more pleasant.

It might be implicit in this posting, or the gap between this and the last post: nothing too exciting has been happening for the past month or so, though I have been reading more than I think I ever have before at any time in my life. I'll probably write a bit about that soon, but I'd like to make sure I have something to say before I do.

One thing that has been on my mind, that I'm quite sure of, is the way in which philosophy these days is often treated as not much more than an extension of fashion, and taken not much more seriously (maybe less seriously) than any other type of fashion. There is a view that there is no 'correct' philosophy, that each viewpoint is just as valid as the other. Now, this might be true of clothes, but I don't think we should be so casual when dealing with how we live our lives.

If I can figure out a way of writing about this in a non-academic, straightforward manner, I might start doing more posts on the subject. Because I feel that it is certain philosophical trends that are quite prevalent within academia who are responsible for philosophy's nosedive into unbearable pretentiousness and irrelevance.

Looking Back On It

2009-04-05T23:14:00.010+10:00

Blindness is an excellent film, I went to see it on Tuesday. It was only showing at the Portside cinema, which meant an hour on the ferry. I got on at five in the afternoon, which must be the perfect time for riding ferries, with no glare, a slight breeze, and sky of shifting colours. I looked back out onto the river and had time to think about the workshop in Suzhou.

***

The middle of an undergraduate semester doesn't seem like an obvious time to be travelling to China, but the majority of my trips there are in fact mid-semester. I've always been nervous when going on sponsored trips, worrying about whether I'm qualified or whether I'll know anyone there. The last two trips- Grandad Wen's delegation, and Hanyu Qiao- ended up being far cooler than I had imagined would be possible, and a good number of my friends are people I met through those trips. So, though harboring self-doubt as always, this time I also had some feeling that it would be worth the worrying.

And it really was.

***

I had an early start, waking up before four am for the Brisbane to Sydney, then Sydney to Shanghai flight. I was on the same flight as Australian author Julia Leigh, who was going to have her novel The Hunter translated into Chinese. Julia was the first person I met involved with the workshop, and she was totally cool and very friendly. Our flight was delayed for an hour or so because of some torrential rain, during which time I asked lots of questions about the process of creative writing. On the plane I watched In Bruges which I really liked, and two other films which clearly didn't have much of an effect on me since I can't remember them. Oh, one was a Chinese film called Mi Guo, apparently called Lost, Indulgence in English which sounds a bit too similar to Lust, Caution in my view, Lost and Caution going together and Lust, Indulgence also quite similar.

***

As we walked out to the arrival hall in Shanghai there was a driver with a Penguin sign waiting for us, which was damn cool. To get off the plane and have a people-mover reader with driver and tea and water inside, that's the best way to arrive in Shanghai. I think it was about two hours drive to the hotel in Suzhou, the first time I've done that drive at night. There were nice rural houses along the way with candles burning in the yards. We arrived exhausted at about eleven, which is one in the morning on Australian time, which meant I think twenty one hours after I had woken up. You'd think I'd have gone straight to sleep but after I had put my bags down I felt a surge of excitement at being back in China, and the airline food hadn't sat that well, so I hit the street nearby to get a late-night meal. After a bit of walking I found a Sichuan restaurant where I sat by the window with a novel, ate Kung-Pao Chicken and Tomato-Egg Soup and rice, and the waiter came over and chatted to me about why I was in Suzhou and so on. It was nice to be there for a reason. Some North-Eastern guys were head-rollingly drunk at the table nearby, and given the naming arrangements of "Second Brother" and so on I got the feeling they might be hoodlums. I hoped so anyway. There was much swearing. I went back at one am China time and slept well.

***

I had been told that I had to register downstairs between 10 and 4, and I woke up at seven with a lot of energy. I had a good breakfast of congee and warm soymilk, and went out to see what the city was like. There was a wonderful street just nearby, a Historical Street in fact.

It was really lively when I walked down it mid-morning, in search of a phone-card. I walked the length of the historic street without finding any of the newspaper-phone-beverage-internet-sage carts so common outside the fourth ring road in Beijing. After I crossed a busy road I spoke to an approachable looking guy who had kittens in with the eggs he was selling.

He pointed me in the right direction where I spoke to a woman who had one phone-card left. I wanted another one for Julia so I went off walking in the opposite direction and found an official China Mobile store. It's actually less convenient buying the legitimate phone-cards, and I sat there as people argued about whether my drivers license was acceptable to use as identification.
I had some dumplings for an early lunch, and the place was packed. When I got back to the hotel, registration had opened. As I signed my name I saw two familiar names- Brendan and Jim, from Beijing. Then on the elevator up I met Nicky, who contributes to Paper Republic, and whose posts I've always enjoyed. The world suddenly felt much smaller and friendlier.

I spent the remaining hours before the opening ceremonies reading my excerpt of Wang Gang's The Curse of Forbes (which I would actually say as "The Forbes Curse" but that's just me). After some confusion I found the room where I had to be, meeting Duncan along the way, a very funny and friendly guy with a BBC voice. The talks kicked off with simultaneous interpreting, followed by dinner, followed by readings from the authors. All very cool, and the Chinese authors in particular were very entertaining not just in their readings but in what they said preceding. By this stage I'd met fellow Australian Paul, as well as Alice and Skye. I knew by now that it was going to be an awesome week.

***

We tried different paces in the translation sessions. For the first day we didn't get past the first two sentences. Eric had told me that there'd be a lot of discussion- argument, even- over how to express a sentence, but I didn't realise it would be to that extent. Such talks were invaluable though, to revealing the limitless ways a sentence could be understood and expressed. We later split up into groups, which was faster, though we still had to explain our choices, which is something you don't often do when you're translating by yourself. There was a great session on film subtitling- I ended up having breakfast with the director of the documentary the next morning- and my group managed to slip some Northern English phrases into the clip. Oh aye.
In the evenings we'd head down the historic street to the Bookworm cafe, which had a pretty good selection of beers. I think we drank them out of Boddingtons and Leffe.

***

And so the week- days translating fiction, interspersed with buffet lunches and dinners, and drinks in the evening by the canal- went, and I look back at it, and it has an odd temporal distortion. It doesn't quite feel like a week, but more like a montage in a film. It's rare when a period of time is composed solely of curiosity, friends, learning, relaxation, but that's what the week was.

Off Again

2009-03-12T21:00:00.002+10:00

I'm lucky enough to be traveling to China again on Saturday. I'll be attending the Penguin Publishing Chinese-English Literary Translation workshop for a week in Suzhou.

I've only ever been in Suzhou for a day-trip before, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like. More than anything, though, I'm looking forward to meeting and learning from some fantastic, experienced translators.

Lust and Caution

2009-02-27T10:22:00.003+10:00

When I was taking formal classes of Chinese as a second language, the approach to a new text of any sort was usually one of caution. It seems to me that it's because the use of 'strategies' in the classroom. It invariably involved a person by person recitation of the text, and since it's often hard (especially as a beginner) to get the reading right of a new Sinograph, there was a tense atmosphere during the process. Who was going to be the unlucky person who got dealt a new character that they didn't have the time to find out how to pronounce? Conversely, you felt lucky when you could recite a paragraph which consisted of no unknown words, or at least unknown pronounciations.

There's two big problems that result out of this pedagogy. Firstly, unfamiliar Sinographs become associated with tension and embarrasment. Some might argue that this will encourage people to 'know their shit' in order to avoid getting caught out, just like doing your homework well might have saved you from the cane. I disagree. In my own experience, when I had that mindset it meant that I'd avoid doing extra reading where possible, because the more I read the more foolish I felt. This of course meant that my reading didn't get much better, and so I felt even worse about it. (-This is a period from when I started learning Chinese in mid 2004 to some time towards the end of 2007 when I changed the way I thought about literacy-)

The second problem is that since the focus is purely on pronouncing properly, it is likely that people will pay less attention to what the actual meaning is of the text, and become more concerned with having the proper pinyin annotation. This arises in a false sense of what understanding really is, thinking that so long as all the characters are individually pronouncable then the flowers of imagery that grow out of comprehension will shoot-up with no further nurturing. What is more likely is that people will fail to see where the various words and phrases are seperate, and what they are really describing, since the concentration is consumed with not screwing up, rather than appreciating whatever is being read.

As a slight digression, I think this is why foreign learners of English often overestimate their reading level- they can pronounce all the words, and conflate ability to pronounce a word with understanding its meaning (apologies in advance to my Dad, who hates the word conflate). This was made clear to me recently reading Anthony Burgess' autobiography: I had no trouble mouthing any of the words, but often I found myself at a loss to specific meaning, and so had to consult a dictionary about once per page (Burgess writes with an archaic, though mellifluous, vocabulary).

My thinking changed, as is often the case, outside the classroom, when I was thinking more about film than about Chinese. In particular, I was reading the few English interviews with a personal hero of mine, Christopher Doyle. Out of curiosity I entered his Chinese name 杜可風 into Google (I believe this was the first Chinese web search that I ever did). Up came many, many more interviews and articles than existed in English. I clicked on the first. My reading ability was really bad at that stage, but using an online dictionary I persisted through the whole interview. In fact, persist isn't quite the right word. The dictionary was more like a spoon I was using to get honey out of a jar. You don't persist your way through a jar of honey. I wanted to know everything that was being said. If there was a phrase that I didn't know, and Christopher Doyle was saying it in Chinese, then I wasn't intimidated. I had to know it. Just like how I will finish off every last molecule of a creme-brule, I was interested in absorbing every single word or turn of phrase in that interview.

It's no surprise that the first topic I was ever able to speak articulately about in Chinese was the lustful cinematography of Wong Kar-Wai's films. If we are, to use David Hawkes' felicitous expression, interested in more than just 'speaking to people on trains', then literacy is vital. And the best way to get there is through lust, not caution.

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

2009-02-21T03:34:00.007+10:00

Phil and I took the jieyun to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Station. I asked Phil’s aunt about what the difference between the ditie and the jieyun was, which I understood as mass transit system and subway, respectively, and which I can’t really distinguish in English. The ditie is the ditie, and the jieyun is the jieyun, she said. It’s a station which has interest for various people, since it also leads to the national library, and maybe that’s why there was often a busker of considerable talent in the hallways of the station.

It would have been about 7pm when we arrived, and it had just been raining lightly. It was an odd journey into Liberty Square, because we didn’t arrive head on, the way you would in a tourist commercial or the establishing-shot of a film. Rather, we came in from the side of one of the large imitation Qing structures, which didn’t reveal anything except groups of young people practicing synchronized hip-hop dancing with the backing of a boombox. I don’t remember seeing anything like that at the Forbidden City, though I could be wrong. Apart from these groups there were very few people around. Then we came before the glittering ocean of cement with the enormous marble-white gate off to the far left, and the gigantic steps leading up to a ghostly statue on the right. It was not particularly well-lit, but the neon coming from the surrounding skyscrapers illuminated the low-hanging remnants of rainclouds, such that it felt like an abandoned stadium. We walked slowly in the middle and Phil remarked that you’d think more people would come here, since it’s so quiet and the massive space lets you vent all that’s pent up. I agreed with him; I really felt much more relaxed and tranquil than I had at any time during the past couple of days. The way to the statue was flanked by the occasional lamp-post which at first I mistook for crucifixes. When we got up the long set of stairs the view was very good, though we didn’t get to see the statue up close. Just as we’d gotten to the top step- joking and taking our sweet time- the massive doors to the statue room began to swing closed, just like a scene from Indiana Jones. So we stood there looking around us, and took a photo for a Korean tourist.

What came next is something I don’t think I could have ever foreseen. We were walking back between the superstructures of the square, with the only other humans in sight being two or three couples walking down the darker sections, arms interlocked. We were, as I think I’ve established by now, really enjoying the feeling of the enormous open-space, and perhaps a little bit dizzy with the flood of relaxation. I say that because I really don’t know where the two junior-high kids came from who suddenly asked me if I had a minute to help them with some homework. I was immediately interested and was not suspicious like I normally might be. Instead of pretending to be interested in where I was from or asking to be my friend within seconds of meeting me, they were just open about what they were after. Sure, I said, I had a minute. Phil was born in Taiwan so I guess they didn’t think he’d be able to help them with an English assignment, although Phil probably speaks English better than I do. Lucky Phil. I got handed a print-out of English, which I thought was either poetry or lyrics, I couldn’t tell as I was unfamiliar with it. Then I got to the third page and saw the title “Last Christmas”. What an evil English teacher these young lads must have: they were tasked with cornering some foreigner and videoing a trio-performance of an a cappella rendition of Last Christmas. I don’t really like singing, though I have had some formal training and have sung in front of audiences before. I just can’t take it very seriously and treat it more like a comedy performance than anything else. So it was with this particular performance; it was too ridiculous to get embarrassed about, so after I had read over the lyrics and hummed out something resembling the song in my memory, Phil took up the lads’ camera and we sang the whole song in a tunnel lined with Japanese vending machines.

My Infected Throat

2009-02-11T15:16:00.007+10:00

My throat started causing me massive pain on Sunday afternoon, and it’s been getting worse since. I thought some gargle would have done the trick, but I also started getting feverish and aching all over, and sweating profusely. Walking up a hill required all the energy I had. So this afternoon I made a trip to the doctors and found out I have a throat infection. 10 days on a course of antibiotics will solve the problem, said the doctor. Not too bad I thought, but it was even better when I found out that symptoms should clear up after 2 days.

As I lurched out of the chemist I felt a burning need for fruit, since I was really thirsty and a little hungry but had no way of stomaching a cooked meal (it’s like something pinches my throat real bad each time I need to swallow something, it really hurts). I stocked up on pears, strawberries, bananas, oranges and grapes at the Fruit n Veg, then decided I needed something like Gatorade to accompany the fruit (as you can see I am a bon-vivant).

There’s a store down the end of my street which I’d never been into, so on my way back I stopped by there. As I was browsing the various flavors of Gatorade- Blue Bolt, Fierce Grape, all very manly names- I heard the mellifluous tones of Northern accented Chinese emanating from the corner of the store (or rather, the corner of the corner-store, to be specific). It turned out to be the store owner and his wife. I waited until all the customers in the store had been served and then approached him, and had a really good chat in Chinese. His family emigrated from Tianjin, which is a city I’m really fond of, partly because there’s a lot of Xiangsheng performers from there, and I really love the accent. I told him this, and in return he remarked that I didn’t speak Standard Chinese, I spoke Beijing dialect. Flattery, to be sure, but it’s much better to hear than what people used to tell me: that I spoke like I was from Taiwan.

So, anyway, that’s all kind of why I haven’t finished the next post in my series on Taiwan yet (it will be about the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall).

Breakfast at Lao Ma’s

2009-02-06T19:42:00.003+10:00

My friend and I would always eat out for breakfast, around 9.30-10am. Taibei doesn’t really seem to wake up much before that so it’s quite good for sleeping in, and in any case you’ll probably need the sleeping-in with all the late-night adventures that’ll take place. The attendance of my friend was particularly impressive, since he is still deceiving all of his relatives into thinking he is a vegetarian, so would first eat breakfast at his place, then meet me for a second breakfast less than half an hour later.

I guess the craving for meat is just that strong. And besides, I don’t blame him, because the breakfasts were truly delicious. Bacon pancakes, cheese pancakes, ham pancakes, all served with a sort of BBQ-sauce, and doujiang to wash it down with. In fact I’m getting hungry just thinking about it (though, it has been about 7 hours since I last ate).

Other times, if we missed the breakfasts (there was some serious sleeping-in taking place) we’d usually go for xiaolongtangbao soup dumplings, and possibly some noodles to go with (I like zhajiangmian, a Beijing dish which I theorize to be the basis for spaghetti bolognaise).

After breakfast we’d often stroll down a few stalls to the comic-store (more accurately a private comic-library) and read us some manga for an hour or two, before deciding what to do for the day…

Homeless in Taiwan

2009-02-03T21:49:00.002+10:00

One of the peculiarly charming things I first noticed in Taibei was the dogs roaming the streets, casually swaggering alongside bipedal pedestrians. These are not known as wild dogs; my friend told me the term is homeless dogs. They sleep on the stoops of storefronts, and wander around the alley. It seemed to me that some hospitable food-stalls fed some of the dogs, which is a nice thought.

There was, however, I cat whining in the backstreet outside my hotel window. Now that was annoying, and I would have appreciated my canine friends doing something to shut that cat up.

Possibly Controversial

2009-02-01T06:39:00.002+10:00

I got back from Taiwan on Friday having slept about 5 hours out of the previous 48, so I’ve been catching up on sleep since. I plan to write about it in some depth in a series of posts, but I’d like to generalise first.

Taiwan, or rather Taipei, is the China that you know from strolling around China-town, when you try to imagine a whole city with narrow streets filled to the brim with people, lined by neon-signs and food-stalls. It is, at the same time, a trying impersonation of Japan in cuisine (Japanese food often seems to outnumber Chinese food), in cuteness (you will want to brick the fake-baby-voiced young women and soap-opera inflected young men) and in high-technology (home of the leading motherboard and video-card companies, which is awesome…in fact this is not so much an impersonation of Japan, come to think of it).

What I’m trying to say is, it’s a shua-shua hotpot of Orientalist cliché. But as I hope to explain, I don’t find that to be an entirely bad thing.

Setting Off

2009-01-01T22:11:00.003+10:00

I don't about you, but I tend to get more excited the night before a journey than pretty much any other time. Christmas eve is cool, but it's not really a prelude to adventure in the same way that travel is. Maybe it helps when you're going somewhere you haven't been before.

I tend to get so overcome with nervous energy that I find it hard to enjoy things like reading a book, and get easily distracted by things like that massive howling wind outside (Brisbane seems to be getting more storms lately than it's had in quite a few years, and they're really violent).

I've tried to think about what I'm hoping to do on this trip, but the things I come up with are quite a scattered bunch. Here's the rough draft which is bouncing around in my head, first for Taiwan:

-Learn something of the Southern Fujian dialect spoken by my friend's family.

-Visit shrines and temples to see how more commonplace religion is in Taiwan, and hopefully find out something more of Buddhist texts. I've read the Dao De Jing but nothing of Buddhism.

-Grab some political propaganda for the Nationalist Party.

-Buy some novels written by Taiwanese authors.

-Buy some works on Matteo Ricci, Adam Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest (hopefully some works written by Ricci as well)

And then in Beijing...

-Visit the Summer Palace in snow

-Make my way to Qianmen

-Visit the old Observatory

-Walk around Zhongnanhai

-Check out the zoo

And that's what I have so far. The last one was probably inspired by Wang Xiaofeng's New Year's Resolutions. Anyway, see how the Beijing ideas are quite clear whereas the Taipei ideas are quite vague, or otherwise just retail-oriented? That's because I don't know what the actual city is like, at all. Which leads me nicely to the final point I'd like to make.

I'm always interested at how, when you first arrive in a foreign city, each little corner and landmark seems ephemeral, and doesn't settle down in the mind. So you feel lost at first. But once you're familiar with a place- a process that you can't seem to affect, but willl nevertheless occur- it's really hard to imagine not being familiar with it. Like how when you learn a foreign language and it's odd and exotic at first, and then later you can't not understand it. Or how it's impossible to recreate the feeling that you get the first time you listen to an album.

I'm looking forward to that feeling.

Awesome

2008-12-27T01:53:00.003+10:00

I went to use Adsotrans recently and was surprised to find something entirely new, something entirely awesome.

Popup Chinese.

That post I wrote about Adsotrans is still valid- the website has that sweet web 2.0 dictionary. But they're also now producing podcasts. These podcasts have a real personality to them and they're totally Beijing-centric. They have a brilliant, eclectic range of content up so far, ranging from KTV to literature. I don't really listen to language-podcasts for Chinese much anymore, I've been sticking to the Chinese news podcasts from the ABC and BBC recently. But this is definitely the most impressive podcast I've ever heard. It's often really hard to strike a balance between practical and fun. These guys have found it.

Peaceful Night

2008-12-25T01:30:00.004+10:00

Well then, Merry Christmas!

I'm off to Taiwan next week which should be exciting. I'm not really sure what to expect; Mum bought me the Lonely Planet, but I don't really have any faith in those, and this one is pretty underwhelming. I mean it sounds good in the guide, but the guide doesn't really paint a vivid picture. But I'm going with a good friend of mine who was born in Taiwan, and I'm also planning on taking a week to visit my friends in Beijing. I'm really, really looking forward to it.

Christmas last year, in Beijing, was the best I've had. Funny thing that, because it's not really much of a big deal there. But that's just the thing: instead of hysteria, impossible-bookings and last-minute-rush, I just got together with my friends and ate turkey in Guomao. It was brilliant.

This year it's a hot one. Of course, my parent's house in Cairns is totally air-conditioned, so if you're watching a Christmas film or listening to the music, it's easy to imagine that it's chilly outside. But it really, really isn't.

Cairns is weird at Christmas time. Our neighbour got egged this evening.
"With an egg?" is what my Mum asked. I don't think we've been egged.

Anyway I hope everyone has a lovely couple of days. I've been lucky in that I've already been on holidays for about 7 weeks now, but for those of you who work long hard hour jobs, enjoy the break. And thanks for not egging us.

Trav'lin'

2008-11-03T19:46:00.003+10:00

The end of the semester has almost arrived, and I've only got one essay left (maybe more regular blogging will resume?)

I'll have just over 3 months off, and I don't plan on spending it all in Cairns, or Brisbane. I'm thinking of taking a holiday but I'm not exactly sure where to go. The Australian dollar is pretty awful at the moment so I'll be taking that into consideration. I don't really feel the need to go back to mainland China for the time being, but I'm considering Taiwan as an option. Also Vietnam, Thailand or Malaysia all sound nice. And I had a friend recently go to Argentina who raved about the place.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate some feedback.

In the meantime, I've finally got time (which I've probably had all along, but...) to get back to the East Asian section of the library so I might be able to do some write-ups on some Chinese novels I've been having a go at.

Eyebrow Reviews

2008-10-13T00:30:00.003+10:00

My best friend Steven has a blog he only just told me about, and it's hilarious.

He reviews, um, eyebrows from various films. And he's a brilliant writer. I loved this sentence:

"Yes, you can probably do wonders with your eyebrows if you’ve had enough acid that you spend your afternoons chasing purple elephants with Commerce degrees and a summer homes in Malibu."

This thing will be huge soon, I feel, so get in before it gets too crowded.

This is his blog.

有话好好说 - Keep Cool - Film Review

2008-09-20T16:30:00.006+10:00

I've got a blurry view of Zhang Yimou. I can't quite figure out what his style is, and I'm not sure whether he's a good director who occasionally makes crap films, or a crap director who occasionally makes good films. The truth is probably just too complex for a simple view like either of those to hold.

I haven't seen his films in any chronological order, and that doesn't help. I first saw Hero and 'Surrounded' (aka House of Flying Daggers); fun, anodyne f ilms lacking much substance. Then I saw Happy Times, which I really liked. It had a soul and a sense of humour. Then I saw Raise the Red Lantern, which was burningly haunting.

And then I saw 'City of Golden Armour', aka 'Curse of the Golden Flower', aka 'Curse of the Golden Breasts'.

Keep Cool is probably closest to Happy Times, which is to say, it's one of Zhang's films which I really liked. The pace and feel of the film is almost reminscent of early Wong Kar-Wai films like Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. This is probably because of the on-location shooting, and the largely handheld, constantly dancing cinematography.

And in the same way that Chungking Express seems, to me at least, to capture something of Hong Kong, Keep Cool is quite an accurate depiction of Beijing. The dialogue is chock-full of Beijing dialect (or rather, they speak in Beijing dialect throughout the whole film), our main character played by Jiang Wen (from Green Tea) is somewhat of a hooligan, and it relies on the distinctly Beijing sense of humour, or at least North Eastern brand of humour. The scene with Zhao Benshan (who was also in Happy Times) reading poetry outside the apartment is particularly hilarious.

With any luck, Zhang's next film will be more along these lines, and not some epic, craptacular.

Little Hong Kong

2008-09-18T21:07:00.002+10:00

Last night my friend and I went to Sunnybank, as usual, and this time tried out a place called Little Hong Kong. I had the BBQ Pork Rice, 叉燒飯，which as a dish is probably one of my favourites of all time. It wasn't bad at Little Hong Kong, wasn't bad at all, and they also have an appropriate menu of drinks like Hong Kong style tea, 港式奶茶. I recommend that one.

There was no toilet humour this time, but something was a bit off. My friend and I ordered in Mandarin, which was understood. But when I tried to say thanks in Cantonese, (no idea how to input the characters but pronounced something like m'goi), I got a blank response. Then I explain in Mandarin that I'm saying thanks in Cantonese, and the waitress replies "I don't speak Cantonese".

In a restaurant called Little Hong Kong? Seriously?

Thankfully they are open until 1am so at least they got the opening times rather authentic.

Toilet Humour

2008-09-07T20:00:00.003+10:00

On Wednesday a friend and I went to Sunnybank for some Chinese food. Our conversation (we catch up each week) usually goes something like this:

P: "So, where do you wanna go?"
C: "I'm easy, what did you have in mind?"
P: "Um...how about Sunnybank?"
C: "Sounds good"

We often go to Little Taipei, 小台北, but this time we went to a place called "Malaysian Corner", if I remember its English name correctly. It could be slightly different, but what stood out was the fact that it bore no resemblance to the Chinese name, 旺角餐廳, i.e The Mongkok Diner. The menu was partly Malaysian, but only partly. I'm guessing it's modeled on Chinese restaurants within Malaysia, making the assumption here that there is a large Cantonese population which settled a while ago in Malaysia (I'm pretty sure this is true).

Anyway, I got a dish of Kungpao Chicken, 宮保雞丁or 宮爆雞丁depending on where you go, which was tasty but had nothing on what I used to get at the cafeteria of my apartment in Beijing.

Given that the food was nothing to blog about by itself, and that I'm in need of interesting things to blog about since returning from China, at least the toilet didn't disappoint. There was a sign which read:

請勿蹲在廁板上如廁
please do not squat on top of the toilet seat whilst using the toilet.

I found it particularly funny to find such a sign in Brisbane. I've never seen a sign like it in China before, and didn't see any in Hong Kong that I can remember. I have had annecdotal evidence from female friends which suggests that such a sign is certainly justified at certain McDonalds within China as people adjust to a seated toilet as opposed to a squatted toilet.

I guess that it's overseas Chinese (especially overseas Cantonese) condescension at their 'cousins from the country' which provokes them to put up such a sign in a Chinese restaurant in Brisbane.

Anyway, I'd only give The Mongkok Diner 2/5 for it's Kungpao Chicken, but the toilet adornments made the trip worthwhile.

Beijing, Hong Kong and Brisbane Days

2008-08-22T23:11:00.005+10:00

I did leave my camera in my hotel room in Hong Kong, but thanks to the awesome staff of The Cosmopolitan (now officially the best hotel ever, as far as I'm concerned), I'm now back in possession of my camera. Thanks guys!

Finally I can put up the quick photo journey I've been wanting to do for a while.

The first view is that from my Beijing apartment. This was the morning of my last day in Beijing. It wasn't raining.

This, by contrast, is the view out of the hotel window, on my first morning in Hong Kong.

And this is the view out of the flat I'm staying at in Brisbane. It rained this afternoon.

Such Hospitality

2008-08-13T21:08:00.006+10:00

I've just read a rather extreme example of 'hospitality' in the Three Kingdoms, and thought I'd give a quick, rough translation. There's actually an odd sort of moral ambiguity here (even, or especially, in the Chinese, I think), and I wonder about the significance of this little part of the story. The plight of women in the Han dynasty was certainly pretty horrid. As always any corrections are welcome.

一日，到一家投宿，其家一少年出拜，问其姓名，乃猎户刘安也。当下刘安闻豫州牧至，欲寻野味供食，一时不能得，乃杀其妻以食之。玄值曰：“此何肉也？”安曰：“乃狼肉也。”玄德不疑，乃饱食了一顿，天晚就宿。至晓将去，往后院取马，忽见一妇人杀于厨下，臂上肉已都割去。玄德惊问，方知昨夜食者，乃其妻之肉也。玄德不胜伤感，洒泪上马。刘安告玄德曰：“本欲相随使君，因老母在堂，未敢远行。”玄德称谢而别…

One day, Liu Bei went to stay overnight at a house and was met by the young man living there, a hunter named Liu An. Upon learning that Liu Bei was governor of Yu, Liu An wanted to provide a meaty meal for all; unable to find any meat, he killed his wife and cooked her.

“What kind of meat is this?” asked Liu Bei.

“It’s wolf,” replied Liu An. Thus satisfied, Liu Bei went on to eat until he was full, and then stayed the night. At dawn, Liu Bei went behind the house to get his horse, when suddenly he saw the corpse of a woman inside the kitchen, with the flesh on her arms scraped away. Liu Bei, shocked, asked Liu An, and only then found out that last night’s meat had been that of his wife. Liu Bei was so moved he couldn’t help crying as he mounted his horse.

“I’d love to come along, but while Mum’s alive I don’t dare venture out far,” said Liu An.

Liu Bei thanked him and left…

Junkie

2008-08-10T23:02:00.007+10:00

I must be building up a tolerance. 250 grams used to last days. Now I'm doing 500 grams in an evening yet still thirst for more.

My name's Cooper, and I'm a strawb addict. Perhaps it was not eating a single strawb for a whole year, or perhaps this winter has produced a particularly fine, juicy, succulent bunch of strawbs. Either way, I'm hooked. It's probably the best thing about being in Brisbane right now.

So the word for strawberry in Chinese, 草莓 caomei, is literally straw berry. This is a bit much to be sheer coincidence, so I figured that strawberries probably aren't native to China. Seeking a China-centric answer, I looked up Chinese Wikipedia. I found out in Cantonese it is 士多啤梨, which I found out is pronounced sih do be leih, a transliteration from the English without meaning, as such, but does finish with the character for pear.

It was a good way to learn a bunch of words I'd never learn otherwise (which I'll probably forget in a few hours, but if I look up enough entries on fruit after a while...I'll be fluent in er, fruity language...ba-doom-tish). Apparently the part we eat is not actually strawberry fruit, but a part of the outer floral envelope created after the pollen has disseminated. The real strawberries are the little yellow things covering the surface of the strawberry. Or something like that.

I need another hit, but my supply is running low...

BBC Chinese Unblocked - Translated Comments

2008-08-04T23:49:00.005+10:00

The BBC's Chinese website is, apparently, now unblocked in mainland China. I was browsing through the interactive section of the website and found a comments section with the title: BBC Chinese Unblocked - Your Experiences.

Anyway, I'm just taking a break from the reading I'm doing for university, and thought I'd give my shot at translating some of the comments- original post first, followed by translation. I might return and do some more later:

BBC 又在搞他那臭名昭著的小把戏了：花钱雇佣中国的小贱民（或称被雇佣的网上反华分子）来此污染中国人的大脑了！西方搞数十年的对国民的洗脑很成功啊，倒是中国共产党半途而废啦，不过我们是中国人，不会听你继续骗人和攻击中国，因为你BBC只有一个目的，就是让中国变得衰弱，你英国白人殖民者可心理平衡也可继续瓜分中国！做梦吧你。

F--KBBC F--KBBC BEIJING 中国

The BBC is up to it's notorious filthy tricks yet again: Hiring the underclass of China (or you might say 'the hired online Sinophobes') to come and pollute the brains of the Chinese! The West's decades long brainwashing of the citizens has really succeeded, whereas the Communist Party gave up half way through, but we're Chinese, we won't listen as you continue to deceive and attack China, because the BBC only has one goal, which is to weaken China, it doesn't bother you white British colonizers to keep carving up China! You're dreaming, you are.

F--KBBC F--KBBC BEIJING, CHINA

中国什么时候才能文明? 才能理性?
愚昧地抵制别人,到最后只能是自己被全世界孤立!!!

80后 北京

When will China finally be civilized? Finally be rational? The ignorant boycotting of others will only lead to being isolated by the world.

Post-80's Beijing

开放言论与思想是文明的基础。中国不仅需要经济发展，也需要政治进步。希望这种开禁是长期的，不是暂时的。

PLA China

Freedom of speech and thought are the foundations of civilization. China doesn't just need economic development, it also needs political progress. I hope this kind of unblocking is long term, not temporary.

PLA China

开通BBC，实在太高兴了，不过这肯定是中共的应景之举，奥运一过，就不会如此。中共独裁专制政党什么丧心病狂的事都能做得出来！不过“解封”一天也好啊！

求实　江苏

The BBC is opened up, I'm over the moon, but this tactic is definitely a temporary one from the CCP, after the Olympics, it won't be like this. No tactic is too depraved for that CCP dictatorship! But one day of 'unblockage' is still good!
Truth Seeker Jiangsu

能从中国国内浏览BBC网，网速很快!感觉很好。这种开放很有意义!看到你们让人马上想起你们的祖先来我国贩卖鸦片烟,火烧圆明园的事了!但愿你们不要象你们父辈那样在网上放毒,来毒害我们!

林则徐 北京

Browing the BBC from inside China, the connection is really fast! Feels good. This type of easing of control is really significant! Seeing you lot reminds me of the fact that your ancestors came to our country peddling opium, and burned down the old Summer Palace! But I hope you lot aren't so like your forefathers that you'd spread poisonous ideas on the internet to harm us!

Lin Ze Xu Beijing (note: Wenlin has a listing for Lin Ze Xu 1785-1850, 'a Canton viceroy who tried to halt the opium trade')

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PS: I couldn't figure out a good way of translating: 解封 unblock in the context as it was used here, thus we have 'unblockage'.