overheard on the Taipei subway
The words of the prophet are heard on the subway car
二十幾歲女：經理這樣對我很不公平!
中年男：這麼久妳還在煩惱這個事情！妳要放下，妳跟他們的緣是這樣，妳還在煩惱。妳一直抓著煩惱不放就變成垃圾，妳垃圾帶在身上幹麼？垃圾久了會發臭。
20-something whining lady: The manager was really unfair to me.
Middle aged man: You’re still fretting about that after all this time! You should let go of it, but you’re still worrying. If you keep holding on to worries they turn into garbage. Why are you carrying garbage around with you? Garbage reeks after a while.
晉靈公造九層之臺，費用千金，謂左右曰：「敢有諫者斬。」孫息聞之，上書求見。靈公張弩持矢見之。曰：「臣不敢諫也。臣能累十二博棊，加九雞子其上。」公曰：「子為寡人作之」。孫息正顏色，定志意，以棊子置下，加九雞子其上。左右懼慴息。公曰：「危哉，危哉！」孫息曰：「此殆不危也，複有危於此者。」公曰：「原見之。」孫息曰：「九層之臺三年不成，男不耕，女不織，國用空虛，鄰國謀議將興，社稷亡滅，君欲何望？」靈公曰：「寡人之過也乃至於此！」即壞九層台也。
出西漢劉向說苑，史記亦有記，而茲文依後漢書卷六十九注。孫，說苑作荀。From Shuo Yuan, A Garden of Stories, by Liu Hsiang, 1st century BC:
Duke Ling of Chin (620-607BC) was building a nine story pavilion, with costs running into thousands of pieces of gold. The Duke told his followers, “Anybody who dares to dissuade me will have his head chopped off.” When Sun Hsi heard about this, he submitted a petition for an audience. Duke Ling held a drawn crossbow and arrows to see Sun Hsi. Hsi said, “I do not dare to dissuade your excellency. I am able to stack up twelve ch’i stones* and put on top of that nine chicken eggs.” The Duke said, “You do that for me.” Sun Hsi put on a solemn face and settled his mind; he stacked the ch’i stones below and stacked nine eggs on top of that. All in the court held their breaths. The Duke said, “Oh, it’s tottering, it’s tottering!” Sun Hsi said, “This is not really tottering, there is something even more precarious than this.” The Duke said, “I would like to see that!” Sun Hsi said, “The nine story pavilion has been under construction for three years and it still isn’t finished. The men don’t have time to plow the fields, the women don’t have time to weave cloth. The treasury is emptied, neighboring countries are planning to rise, and our society faces destruction. What more would you like to see?” Duke Ling said, “This is my mistake!” and ordered the nine story pavilion be razed.
is played with rounded stones.
Three years? Thousands of pieces of gold? The war in
家前一石上落一片葉；葉上有蟲屍，蟲裏有蜘蛛編網。網中捕一蝨；蝨前右足上另有一片天地；蝨足竟有山有海，一城坐落海上，「街衢洞達閭閻，人不得顧，車不得旋；填城溢郭」，集「五都貨殖，既遷既引，商旅聯槅，隱隱展展，冠帶交錯，方轅接軫」，熱鬧非凡。城外遠郊有山，山中千巒萬壑，其中一壑深峽有道人居，結幽曲之延澗，「飛觀榭乎雲中，開高軒以臨山，列綺牕而瞰江」，庭廨廊院莫不具，園池徑圃無弗備，「反宇業業，飛檐巘巘，長廊廣廡，途閣雲蔓」，「雕楹玉磶，繡栭雲楣」，「庭扣鐘磬，堂撫琴瑟」。道人坐于一亭下，案上拱南華經。道人啟閱：
北冥有魚，其名為鯤。鯤之大，不知其幾千里也。化而為鳥，其名為鵬。鵬之背，不知其幾千里也；怒而飛，其翼若垂天之雲。是鳥也，海運則將徙於南冥。南冥者，天池也。
道人仰頭大笑，曰，「豈有此理！鳥之大者，不過展我雙臂而已，詎信鳥之大如彼言者歟？莊子果誕詭者矣！」棄卷搖頭，終身不復讀。
街衢句出班固西都賦
雕楹句、反宇句、貨殖句出張衡西都賦
飛觀句、庭扣句出左思蜀都賦
颱風天之娛樂
One of our teachers told us that some businessman noticed that a little village in
For a while there was good business in
現在臺灣很多人說大陸貨多差多爛，且不當忘記，四十年前，Made in Japan是爛貨的標誌、三十年前Made in Taiwan也是爛貨的標誌。
Photo: we visited Byajing at the hospital. Denise is walking her, while Byajing is leaning as hard as she can into my leg.
The firemen say there are a lot of hornets this year. Every day three or four hornets blunder indoors and can’t find their way out again until we open windows and shoo them out.
Yesterday I found the dread 虎頭蜂 tiger head hornets building two nests, one on the back balcony and one on the front. Normally I get along well enough with these big hornets, but I just simply can’t have them building nests close to the house, much less on the house! A nest of tiger head hornets can have over twenty thousand of these large hornets; they are very territorial, and four stings will generally kill a person.
Reluctantly, I sprayed the nest on the back balcony with insecticide, ready at every moment to leap back into the safety of the screen door. But the nest on the front balcony was too high to reach, so, also reluctantly, I phoned the fire station for help. Again.
The fireman were busy taking down a hornet nest at one of the neighbor’s, but when that was finished, they came to examine the nest. They propped up a ladder, and after a short discussion about whose turn it was, and who was the tallest fireman, one of them suited up and removed the nest.
I assured the firemen that they are always welcome in our home, but I really hope I don't have to call them again for another hornets' nest. Twice within two weeks is more than enough.
"Kids in
Why do feminists have to be so doctrinaire and sentimental?
“A sister is a friend forever.”
Really? I know plenty of sisters who are at each others’ throats. Frankly, I would rather feminists develop some semblance of a sense of humor, rather than give us all this stultifying, self-righteous dogma.
I come from a long line of tough, independent women. My grandmother several greats back was on the frontier when the frontier was east of the
I admire my mother’s father’s father, he was a brave man, because with one look, from twenty paces, my mother’s father’s mother could frighten off a pack of hungry wolves. She was never a woman to be trifled with. In our family, we don’t let children under twelve see their wedding photograph, because the look on her face was so grim that it causes children to have nightmares.
Both of my grandmothers were tougher than nails. Militsa was Serbian, enough said. Ethel on the other side was independent enough to divorce my grandfather in the Dust Bowl, in days when divorce was beyond the pale. My mother served in the army during WWII, and drove around the war zones in
Yuck! I suggest we heed the advice of a Dead European Male named Samuel Johnson: “Clear your mind of cant.”
The Olympics are coming, so all eyes are on
Now for a few words on how to eat Chinese food. In the
Be brave, be adventurous, but if you don’t know what something on the menu is, ask. This is especially true in Cantonese restaurants, where they like to use literary allusions to name dishes. When I first came to
First rule of eating Chinese food authentically: never, ever put soy sauce on your rice! Would you put ketchup on a cake? Ok, I suppose some of you would, in which case, you can stop reading right here. Enjoy your soy sauce.
As a matter of fact, don’t put soy sauce on anything. I am wracking my brains, and believe that there is no dish that absolutely requires soy sauce. Try and find out what Chinese food really tastes like, not just what soy sauce tastes like.
All right, so now you’ve got your bowl of rice, and you have valiantly restrained yourself from drowning it in soy sauce. Now, hold your chopsticks with your right hand and your rice bowl with your left hand. Pick up a morsel from one of the plates on the table and transfer it to your bowl. Then, holding your bowl to your mouth, shovel the morsel and some rice into your mouth. Lift and shovel, that’s the proper way to eat Chinese food.
Chinese table manners are not very stringent, but leaving your rice bowl on the table is bad form. Eating from a rice bowl on the table is even worse. And never drum on the table with your chopsticks… but you knew that one anyway, I should hope.
When you have finished your rice, if you want more, hold the empty bowl up high and look meaningfully at the waiter or waitress, and they should bring you another bowl. If you want to save them some work, dump the new rice into your old bowl and set the new bowl aside.
If someone at your table is trying to pick some food off of a platter but, for example, it is too long, or catches on other items of food, rescue that person; use your chopsticks to twist off the unwanted portion or pull it down. However, confine your efforts to your own table. Let the people at other tables fend for themselves.
Another no-no: don’t pour sugar in your tea! This is not Indian burning-rubber-band tea, for crying out loud! It’s real tea! No milk, no lemons, no sugar, no rubbish, just drink the tea!
That said, I have to admit that outside
And finally, fortune cookies do not exist in
But I would like to revise something I just wrote. First rule of eating Chinese food authentically: never, ever eat at F P Chang’s.
In 1940, E B White wrote, “There was a scene in ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ showing the King of France taking his annual bath. One of his attendants urges him to take two baths a year instead of only one. And right there my attention wavered from the picture and I began brooding about the problem of personal cleanliness in the 15th century and realized that if the King, enjoying all the advantages of wealth and position, took only one bath, then the gypsy girl Esmeralda, who lived among beggars and with no facilities whatsoever, probably took none. … the picture was spoiled for me, and I reflected that there was hardly a heroine in fiction prior to the present century whom I would feel attracted to at close range, so spoiled is the modern male by the clean girls that are found everywhere today.”
On a trip along
Power production has long been severely politicized here, with the far right fighting nuclear power but advocating no practical substitutes: just keep burning coal, and forget about the environment. Much emotion, intrigue, and dueling have been devoted to the issue, but little imagination or practical thinking. If people insist on wasting more and more electricity, power has to come from somewhere.
Wind turbines! That is progress, at long last!
Tayal Aborigines, 
烏來的田已經廢耕多年。現在部落的一群泰雅在西螺岸準備作有機菜圃。從遠處看，很容易看出，原住民田裏工作模式異于漢人，而這是我第一次在烏來看到群夥事農。他們工作很辛苦、很累，可是看得出，每一位很開心，很有成就感。
It is not for nothing that I have spent so many years in the mountains: alert senses, keen perception, quick judgments, that’s me.
Yesterday afternoon while I was working outdoors, I walked around back to get some tools. Suddenly a flurry of hornets attacked me, stinging me a dozen times on my torso and arms. Immediately, I processed the data and came to the conclusion that there must be a hornet nest nearby and that I should remove myself from its vicinity. Impressive, isn’t it? You might be able to do the same, if you had spent most of your life with mountains.
As much as I love wildlife and the ecosystem, I do not particularly wish to get stung a dozen times every time I need tools. After all, half of those stings were through my shirt: nasty neighbors. With a long bamboo pole, I tried to dislodge the hive, which was about 30 centimeters long and growing, hanging about shoulder height from the ground on a 蛇木tree fern leaf. I failed, so this morning, I phoned the fire department for help.
They sent a fireman, who examined the hive and went for gear. He and another fireman came back ten minutes later with a thick, padded suit with velcro closures, a netted helmet, and heavy plastic gloves. The other fireman helped him close up the suit, and the brave man walked to the hive with a plastic trash bag, put the whole hive inside the bag, and pulled it off the fern. Problem solved.
The photos look a little fuzzy, because I was standing indoors shooting through the screen. I’m not a total idiot.
Many thanks to the fire department, and profuse apologies to the hornets. Build farther away next time, okay?
Somebody sent me this cartoon; unfortunately, I do not know who to give credit to. Sorry. I will be happy to give credit where due.
The gates have opened, and the first tourists from the PRC (AKA mainland
There is poetic justice to this. Twenty, thirty years ago, everything you tried to buy in the
On one trip after extensive searching I finally found a gift for someone: a very cleverly designed, nicely made ice cream scoop. I proudly brought it back and presented in to my friend Ho. He marveled, “Where did you get this?” Before I could tell him that I had bought it for him in
Freedom is precious, for man and beast alike. In the western US, there are about 33,000 wild horses, living a hard but enviably free existence.
Now the Bureau of Land Management plans to kill these glorious mustangs, because ranchers view them as competition for forage. Free horses are eating food on public lands that ranchers want for their cattle, so they can kill the cattle and put money in their own pockets. Kill the mustangs so ranchers can kill cows, that is supposed to balance out.
The ranchers say the mustangs have to be killed. Ron Cerri, of the Rebel Creek Ranch in Orovada and president-elect of the Nevada Cattlemen's Association, said, "I don't know of another solution."
Sure, that’s easy, I can think of a simple solution: dismantle all the cattle ranches, ban ranching, and find other jobs for the ranchers. That would be a natural development if everybody ate healthy, eco-friendly vegetarian food.
Producing meat to eat not only requires the killing of the innocent animals, but also entails such extensive environmental destruction that you can hardly call yourself environmentally conscious if you aren’t a vegetarian. Take
IMHO, free, independent mustangs are a better symbol for the West than doomed cattle being fattened for the kill.
Of course, western cattle are high quality meat animals. Your typical fast food joint hamburger comes from ranches in Central American rainforests, where the production of one kilogram of beef destroys 660 kilograms of plants and animals. But think of the profits the companies are making! And think of all the health problems the consumers are building up! Certainly destroying the global ecosystem is a small price to pay!
Do you eat beef? If you do, then you are contributing to either the devastation of
Lately I have posted several pieces about airlines and flying. Today I would like to bring up something I read, bittersweet.
The population of India is over one billion eighty million. Of those, about one billion have never flown in an airplane and most likely never will: only eighty million Indians have ever had this experience. In Delhi, one Badahur Chand Gupta bought an old, disabled Airbus, which now sits immobile on the earth. For about US$4.00, a customer boards the grounded airliner, takes a seat, fastens the seatbelt, gets served by ‘flight’ attendants, and listens to the ‘pilot’ make announcements, such as, “We are about to begin our descent into Delhi.” For the billion Indians who see planes fly overhead, hopelessly out of reach, this is a way to share the experience.
Who said flying isn’t glamorous? As for me, I’m sort of ashamed for griping about uncomfortable seats and endless flights.
Stray comment on carry-on luggage
In theory, air passengers are permitted carry on luggage because these are supposedly items you use aloft. In practice, almost nobody opens their carry-on luggage between take-off and landing.
You should be impressed that I spend so much time and energy pondering such engrossing concerns.
a weighty problem
After boarding my flight from
Flying out of LAX, we were confronted with vigorous luggage weight checks. Chao’s bag was two or three kilograms over the set limit, so we had to unpack and disperse the weight. Fortunately, the airline representative was very helpful. She provided us with a box for the extra things, and tape to seal it. But after we had finished our struggle with the luggage, another passenger waddled by who alone certainly weighed more than Chao and all of our luggage put together.
Does that make sense? Once you board the plane, it doesn’t matter if you are animate or inanimate, you are weight. Thin people should be allowed more luggage.
independence day
I read an article stating that the number of Japanese businesspeople working abroad had reached a million. Of these a large number are in mainland
The population of
The number of
There are clear reasons for this:
The problem is not simple.
Also, because the DPP of President Chen pursued reactionary, isolationist policies, Taiwan has closed itself to the world at large, and in particular to the incredible economic growth across the strait, setting restrictions on our own business community, and refusing to permit flights between Taiwan and the mainland. This effectively strands those one million business personnel, because to travel from Shanghai to Taipei entails traveling through Hong Kong or Seoul, making what should be a 2 hour flight an all day venture. Families were split, creating all sorts of marital problems that could be solved by the simple expedient of allowing direct flights across the
That outmoded policy dates back to when it made sense. Under Chairman Mao, the PRC endeavored to wash
But we can’t always live in the past, no matter how much the DPP tried. One of the first things President Ma did after wiping out the DPP in the March election was to arrange for direct flights across the Strait. These begin today, Independence Day. Great things are sure to follow.
Evidently the earth is screaming. Astronomers have discovered that our planet emits ear-piercing chirps and whistles from high above the land surface, where solar wind collides with Earth's magnetic field. The screams, called Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR), are 10,000 times more powerful than any radio waves we create, but the atmosphere blocks us from getting hit by them. But the rest of the universe can hear Mother Earth carrying on like a wounded banshee.
I’d scream too, if I were polluted and ravaged like our dear planet is.
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