Phoebe in Wonderland

.

 

When was your first time experiencing a child? My first time happened when I was 12 years old and felt like being a little bit older than children. At that time, a girl who lived just several meters away often visited my home. I had to say that whenever she came, I wanted to go out. She was loud and always asked for candy. It was one time that I refused to open the candy box for her, she jumped at me and scratched me. I cannot fight back, since I was afraid that I might end up hurting her. She was 5 years younger than me. Her finger nails were small and my arms ended up bleeding.

 

This may sound pathetic, but when was your first time experiencing being a child? My first time was when I was 5 years old. My brother and sister wanted to watch a movie and they didn't want to bring me. According to them, I can never sit still during a movie and I always jumped around. I truly wanted to go with them, so when they went out, I tried to follow. But they walked so fast and eventually they disappeared. I had to return home. I was heartbroken and felt like being trapped in a little body that didn't belong to me.

 

Due to my negative experiences, the notion childhood remained a mystery to me. Do children all feel like a prisoner in that little body and are we all afraid to set them free? If you ever had such a question, you should watch "Phoebe in Wonderland".

 

There are many reasons that this movie would stay very long in my memory. First, the acting in this movie is transcendent. All the actor and actress were so devoted to their roles and they would bring tears to your eyes. Second, the story is philosophical and all the characters are sophisticated. You can experience their depth of thinking and passion. Third, there are many things debatable in this movie and it would keep you wondering for a while, which was a good thing for me.

 

Don't want to make this review a spoiler. But I still hope to give you a basic idea about this movie. It is a story about a little girl at age 11. She first appeared as a normal child, who was spontaneous and intelligent. As we all hate school, you may find that her frustrating experiences in school are quite normal. Later, she was fascinated by her new drama teacher, and tried VERY HARD to get a role in a play. The rest of the story was about how hard she tried to stay in that play.

 

Because she tried too hard, they found a neurological explanation for her devotion. I always had a mixed feeling about neurological explanations for behavioral problems. I liked them, since it gave me a peaceful mind. They made behavioral problems understandable, and you know people who had those problems just "CANNOT HELP IT". On the other hands, I feared those answers. If a problem of a person is caused by neurological disorders, does this mean that this person can never correct his problems, and he doesn't have to deal with it? Instead, as a society, we have to deal with it? If we have to deal with it, will we make this type of person collectively suffer by never treating them like a normal being? By the way, what exactly is a normal being? Didn't we all secretly wish to be a little bit abnormal or special?

 

The movie could be considered as being ended too soon, if you wanted to know more about the implications of being a person with neurological disorders. To me, it ended at a perfect time, when story healed my nearly broken heart. If it lasted longer, my heart would break again. But it is such a wonderful movie, I would watch it again even I knew my tears would run out and my heart would break….

Critical analysis of Mengzi (2)

(2)

孟子见梁惠王，王立于沼上，顾鸿鴈麋鹿，曰：“贤者亦乐此乎？”孟子对曰：“贤者而后乐此，不贤者虽有此，不乐也。

Basic translation of this: Mengzi met King Lianghui. King stood on a wetland and was enjoying looking at water bird and deer. He asked:"Does a wise and kind man also enjoy nature?" Mengzi said:"Only when a man became kind and wise can enjoy these. A man without wisdom cannot enjoy such a beautiful thing."

I had an very interesting conversation with memebers in my book club last month. One of the memebers mentioned that the reason why Japanese cartoon was so popular was because the cartoon figures resembled children very much. Their disproportionally big eyes and big heads....Those are the elements making them visually appealing. I then raised a question: why do children looklovely and why do we always smile at kittens? We certainly were not educated to love the look of children or kitten.

But certainly there are things that we liked without a reason and nobody ever told us to like them. Some of the things that we love have no clear connections with our chance to survive and it certainly was not our ability to reason which had taught us to love those things....

Are we genetically programmed to like certain things? Blue sky? Purple flowers? A white bird gliding in the sky?

I like water bird and deer...and I am not wise and kind..and certainly I am not a man...

*Just a quick note here...I have been cynical towards Mengzi's theories and being cynical is required for most of the critical studies...However, being cynical rarely makes one being creative..It is always easier to destroy then to construct...So..just a small reflection and a confession of guilt...

Critical analysis of Mengzi (1)

.

I love Mengzi. He is one of the ancient philosophers who have influenced me. But ever since college, I never touched his writing again. I have been wondering if my experiences in the past few years would lead me to different ideas about this work. I decided to analyze Mengzi's writing using socrates's approach. To me, socrates's approach is to systematically analyze the proposition of a statement. I always think that the proposition of a statement is more valuable than the statement itself. Proposition is what has been accepted at that point of time and location. A statement is a reinforcement of ideas, and not all the statement would be accepted.

(1)

孟子见梁惠王。王曰：“叟不远千里而来，亦将有以利吾国乎？”孟子对曰：“王何必曰利？亦有仁义而已矣。王曰‘何以利吾国’？大夫曰‘何以利吾家’？士庶人曰‘何以利吾身’？上下交征利而国危矣。万乘之国弒其君者，必千乘之家；千乘之国弒其君者，必百乘之家。万取千焉，千取百焉，不为不多矣。苟为后义而先利，不夺不餍。

The basic translation of this paragraph is the following:

Mengzi met King Lianghui. King asked: Since you travelled thousands of kilometers to see me, you must have some ideas that can gain profit to our country. Mengzi said: I have nothing that is profitable, but kindness.

King always wants to gain profit for his country, governers want to gain profit for their family and ordinary people would want gain profit for themselves. This actually endangers a country. For a country with a ten thousands of horses, a rebel has to own at least thousands of horses. If everybody seeks for profitable things, rebels will emerge. They would never satisfy until they deprive others from their profitable things. On the other hand, people with kindness would never abondon their relatives and their king. So, as a king, you only have to ask for the kindness.

Mengzi sounded wise and the King sounded needy. But Mengzi had some propositions that would be wrong.

1. A well respected king would have a strong country. Well, it really depends. King Lianghui was the king of Wei, one of the seven countries in the Zhangguo dynasty (476BC). Wei was a strong country until 340BC when Qing defeated it. During Zhangguo dynasty, the seven countries had a lot of wars. If I were King Lianghui, my priority would also be the integrity of Wei and dependableness of military forces. Qing is far from a well respected king. But he finally defeated all other countries.

2. What king wants is what all people want. That could be true. But was kings always considered role models in the history? Through out human history, crown symblizes those who are greedy and tawdry. I truly doubt that if there is any King who doesn't want profitable ideas for his country. But people are more diverse. Some want love and some want show their kindness.

Now, Mengzi sounded only partially right. If there is only one country and if the nation considers the king as a role model, he could be right.

* A trivial observation: King Lianghui said if you travelled this far, you must have good ideas. He assumed that the efforts equal to the outcomes. But what is the connection between travel and idea? I travelled a lot of places, but I rarely had any good ideas.....

.

smuggling and Robin hood

.

Yesterday, I listened to a radio show. It was about a book depicting the smuggling in NYC Chinatown, Authored by Patrick R. Keete. Patrick was interviewed and shared with us about his understanding of the smuggling of Chinese people to the US. He first made it clear that his story is not about smugglings of people against their well and life in China has been improving. This has left me with a good impression about this. Apparently, he is not a bigot. He pointed out that the snakehead was simply providing a service that was needed by some Chinese people. He even compared the smuggler with Robin hood. Then he had an in-depth discussion of where, who, how and why of this smuggling. He mentioned that most of the smuggling happened in Fujiang province. Ten years ago, most of capable people were smuggled and now, those who are less competitive were smuggled. Part of the interview was focused on how it happened. Contrary to the common perception of a smuggling where dereliction is prevalent, the snake head was taking care of those who she has helped to come to the US. The snake head helped them to land a job and helped them to mail money back to their home.

Later part of the show was focused on the why question. I always thought I knew why. I once had a roommate who was from Fujiang. Her boyfriend had found a job in Lanzhou. She was very happy with the idea to settle with her boyfriend in Lanzhou. However, there were numerous times that I heard her argument with her dad on the phone. He pushed her very hard to apply a university in the US. At that time, my dad was doing exactly the opposite. I couldn’t figure out why her father would push her daughter to go to a remote place. She told me that in her home town, most of the people envy those who went to the US. Based on her, those who had settled in the US were extremely tawdry when they returned to their hometown. Her father seemed to be petulant and his daughter was his only hope to excel his neighbors.

Before I finally decided to the US, I met another girl who cajoled her boyfriend to apply to schools in the US. She complimented her boyfriends frequently. I never liked compliments, and I always have a good eye for those manipulators. I think she was one of them. She just had too much compliments and none of them was from her heart. One day, she got drunk and she told me that the only reason that she is dating her boyfriend was because she wanted to use him to go to the US and the first thing that she would do when she arrive the US is to dump her boyfriend. She told me about a life with big house and big car….She told me that people in the US are benevolent.

From these two girls, I learned that the reason why people want to go to a different place was because that they think their life there will be better. They got those urges to get away from their current situation. One small such urge will last for years.

But in this show, the author revealed another reason: The economic reformation in China has generated an increasingly enlarged gap between rich and poor. Such gap has pushed people to seek opportunities that can make them one of those rich people. Going to the US seemed to be a risky or venomous but rewarding path.

I have to disagree. I have noticed the tendency of the scholars to tight social phenomenon with economic activities. Economy of course has undeniable influences on social activities. But I think that different economic constructs can still lead to the same social tendency. To explain population traffic, which is a geographic phenomenon, we still need to look at this problem from a geographic perspective. If there is a geographic difference in the income, there will be people who wanted to go to a high income place. This reason seemed to be simple. But it is the true reason. This reason may have different versions depending on individual differences. But I disagree about the author’s explanation to the motivation of smuggling, which is just one version of this reason. It was also an misleading explanation. It made you think that the economic deformation is bad..Think about it. In the US, the gaps between rich and poor are huge. Why there were few American smuggled to China?

.