User Comments - zhenlijiang
zhenlijiang
Posted on: Eating Dead Flesh 猪吃死人肉
February 17, 2009 at 9:15 PMpete, did any orwellian images come to mind as you read this poem and thought about the swine-man relation?
Posted on: Eating Dead Flesh 猪吃死人肉
February 17, 2009 at 2:25 AMhi pete
wow, this feels like i'm out dancing and the dj just put on an obscure (or at least, one i'd never heard) song with a tricky beat that i really want to try keeping up with. i'm not sure if this poem is better studied in the evening or just before lunch. btw this is all meant as a compliment. enjoyed it very much, i'm a pretty ambitious dancer in terms of music. great reading!
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hangzhou
February 16, 2009 at 3:17 AMhi changye
we sat at a 功夫茶 (also 工夫茶) like that, in Shanghai's 新天地 area. our 茶芸師 (this is the Japanese term, don't remember the term in Chinese) was a bit older and really elegant.
as you know, another really enjoyable place to watch tea being prepared is the tea markets. at a market in Shanghai we walked all over until we found a nice-looking vendor from 福建 we liked, then sat the whole afternoon watching her do all those things with the paraphernalia, tasting a dozen different teas including 3-4 kinds of longjing, then haggling with her in our beginner's Chinese, sort of like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGDRw10iV1k
the Japanese 茶の湯 (cha-no-yu) has always been esoteric and intimidating to the outsider but there's been an effort to make it more accessible and it's enjoying a quiet boom in recent years; i think it's a by-effect of the 中国茶 boom. i have yet to sit in 茶の湯 myself, but understand it is the quintessential package of Japanese design--nature experienced within the architecture and interiors, symmetry, flow of time, expression of season, relationship among the participants even.
Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Hangzhou
February 15, 2009 at 10:52 PMit sounds so totally cliché, but my friend the coffee-dependent fell in love with longjing (and all 中国茶) on a day trip to Hangzhou, at a teahouse by the 西湖. since that eye-opening pot of tea she started studying to become some kind of 中国茶-sommelier or concierge or whatever they call it, so i persuaded her to start taking Chinese classes. actually this is kind of a common way for Japanese women to find themselves taking up Chinese. longjing is very popular in Japan. we love green teas anyway, and the longjing seems to suit our palate (and the water here?) particularly well.
Posted on: 中国崛起
February 13, 2009 at 9:08 PMchangye 你早，
sorry, didn't mean to call names. i'm not some hollywood publicist or agent; i don't care about political correctness. i was feebly trying to beg out of a game i thought i hadn't yet trained sufficiently for. hopefully not too far in the future i'll be able to play decently, in three languages. also it's a way of saying i don't know many (any?) Japanese like you.
we are no longer blissfully ignorant in Japan--can't be, any more! to be honest external factors forced us into starting to question and think (do you not see this so much? maybe not from where you are? i see it esp among my generation, i think we're a bit pissed at our parents' 代 for neglecting to teach us a lot of things). late but better than never. or do i just think this because i watch 朝までテレビ?
do you mind telling us, what sort of topic would be too difficult for you to follow?
Posted on: 中国崛起
February 12, 2009 at 11:44 PMchangye, i'm guessing you wanted to start a different game (sea shepherds--god. definitely want to stay away from that one) than this, but your "serve" was too much of a 魔球 for a player of my level to return in court!
Posted on: 中国崛起
February 12, 2009 at 11:33 PMmiantiao, 你早 我的中文水平还差，这次不敢用中文回答。
first, obviously at all times i speak only for myself and not for changye (i haven't even had enough conversations with him to know what his politics are except that he's not too shy to be politically incorrect!).
thanks for sharing your grandfather's story.
i guess at least some of you assumed that shame for our conduct in WWII has everything to do with Japan's "low self-evaluation" as brought up in the survey.
it's much more complex than just that, which is why i think it would made an interesting subject to study but don't really want to discuss it here.
like i've said we have a lot of sorting out to do on our understanding of who we are and what we've been. this kind of questioning and discusion has really only opened up in recent years. our time to be interested only in our personal selves is truly up (hello, the 80s were over almost two decades ago) and it's forcing us to think and be able to speak for ourselves. it's good, we've finally begun feeling shame for our apathy and unawareness.
i appreciate that were showing support despite your grandfather's experience. i think at the same time you agree that none of us need others to allow us to love our country (btw the marginalized right wing here have appropriated terms like 爱国心 a long time ago for their own purposes so they're practically unavailable to us). and the thing is, we Japanese don't normally feel the need to express patriotism, at least compared to many other people we're lukewarm--it's only when we're insulted repeatedly that we ever even start to think about it. and if we do express love for our country it's not likely to be of the in-your-face form, as we find that so off-putting.
Posted on: Drinking Alone Under the Moon 月下独酌
February 12, 2009 at 1:23 AMbababardwan, oh 原来不是酒，是醋！ that's really great--thanks for sharing.
Posted on: Drinking Alone Under the Moon 月下独酌
February 12, 2009 at 12:49 AMhi bababardwan
so what's the story behind the three guys in your avatar gathered 'round the huge 酒瓮 against the enormous moon?
Posted on: Eating Dead Flesh 猪吃死人肉
February 18, 2009 at 2:22 AMi was reminded of Animal Farm i think due to chiefmadapple's comment. the 1954 movie was playing here recently (didn't see) and the image from the promotions that stuck for me was the feasting pigs --an image that serves to show us not that pigs eating is hard to look at, but that the way we humans eat is repulsive and difficult to look at. you know, i don't find our similarity to swine creepy myself. there are many other species i'd rather not be equated with. pigs are intelligent and clean (it's humans that keep them in 'dirty' conditions) and i would bet, much more elegant than us in many ways.