我十八歲來華學中文。那時的臺灣與現在迥然不同。家父按月匯一百元美金到一家銀行，由他們轉到臺灣的第一銀行；美金受管制，不能碰，但照當時匯率，我每月得四千元新臺幣，夠用。我與幾個美國朋友在新生南路一段157巷租了一間三十坪的公寓，月租三千元，我們平分。在龍泉街吃自助餐，我胃口大，常常一餐要花十塊錢。若有餘錢，我都拿去買書。沒有餘錢，我也買書。

學國語八個月開始讀文言，一觸即癮。十九歲就讀師大國文系，讀論語、韓非子，迷上了先秦，也迷上了中華書局的古籍因為校對謹慎印刷好字型大而且最好的是沒有標點因為我一發現古書原無標點就發現標點是多餘的沒有標點就需要用心看是另一番感覺讀沒有標點的書最好看

大一買了一套中華書局的史記，八冊，大一暑假就花了三四週看完；最讓我遺憾的是，只有八冊。意猶未盡。

大二開學，我二十歲，上說文解字。我學中文，本來就是因為愛上了國字，上說文，如魚得水。

但生活出了問題：銀行說家父的錢沒送到，沒錢入帳。那時別想打越洋電話，我們班上三十七個同學，只有五、六個家裏有電話。打電報很貴，只好寫信告急，希望航空快點。少吃一點，盼望錢早點進戶頭。三兩天跑到中山北路的銀行去問(沒有電話，只好自己跑)。戶頭快見底了，還沒消息，只好跟朋友借五十塊、一百塊。能省的就是少吃一點，所以一天只吃一碗陽春麵。

偏偏在國際學舍的體育館開了書展，可能是臺灣第一個書展。肚子餓，到書展逛逛，轉移肚子的注意力。偏偏中華書局參展。有一套資治通鑑，二十冊，還打折！只有那一套，但我真的沒錢。只好常去看看有福氣的人有沒有買回家。所幸，還擺在那裏。真漂亮。書展只剩幾天就要結束，還沒人買，但我也沒錢。

大概是吃了兩個多星期快三個星期的陽春麵獨餐，一天晚上餓醒，房子旋轉，想吐。但真的太餓，我沒力氣站起來，所以只好慢慢爬進廁所，坐地上抱著馬桶吐，可是肚子空空如也，吐好久，吐不出東西來，喉嚨痛、嘴裏怪味道而已，只好慢慢爬回房間躺下，等屋子不轉。睡了。

早上，室友們看我沒動靜，很體貼敲門問，你昨晚把我們吵醒了，你死了嗎？看我躺著不動但沒死，幫我熬一碗青菜湯。我還站不起來，只好早上翹課。中午比較有體力，上學去了。同學看我早上沒上課，太意外，很體貼說，看你沒上課，以為你死了。差不多。一位好心的同學特地幫我買了一條明星的黑麵包；當年臺灣的麵包都不能吃，只有軟軟的白麵包，唯獨武昌街的明星，老闆是俄國人，懂得做麵包。我坐在英文系外的魚池邊吃了麵包，晚上同學請我吃晚餐，感覺體力好很多。

第二天，郵差送來掛號信，我媽在一封信裏藏了六張十元美鈔；這嚴重犯法，但我不管，拿到錢往衡陽路衝。衡陽路的銀樓有後室，可以偷偷換美金。我立即換了兩千多元，錢拿到手，衝出去上公車直殺信義路國際學舍體育館，緊張萬分去看：資治通鑑還擺在那兒，還沒賣掉！太好！在書展結束之前兩個小時把銀樓給我的鈔票幾乎全部塞給書局的職員，心滿意足抱著我的資治通鑑二十冊回家。書放好，我才想到，我很餓！到龍泉街自助餐花了十元飽吃一頓。

過了幾天，父親送來的錢終于入帳了。又過一段時間才知道，美國幾十年來唯一倒店的銀行就是負責匯款給我的那一家，但是美國政府很快處理，所以後來家父的錢入帳沒有問題。 

 當然迫不及待讀通鑑，讀到漢朝，課業重，沒時間看。十幾年前又從頭讀，但到了魏晉南北朝，實在太亂，搞不清楚，暫時放一邊。現在大陸史學興盛，這幾年讀「華歷血時代」、「五胡錄」等書終于開始理出頭緒。現在南北朝有了概念，我又在讀通鑑。為了方便攜帶，阿超幫我封了一個書套，不怕把書磨壞。
這套書對我多方面意義重大。買資治通鑑的那天是民國六十二年十月三十日，剛好四十年。以此紀念。

I came to Free China when I was 18 to study Chinese. Taiwan was vastly different then. Every month my father sent US$100 to a bank to transfer to my NT account here. Green was strictly controlled, but at the exchange rate then, every month I got NT$4,000, enough to live on. With some American friends, I rented a 3 bedroom apartment on Canal Street (Hsin Sheng South Road) for NT$3,000; we split the rent. I have always had a hearty appetite, so in the cafeterias on Lungchuan Street, I might pay as much as NT$10 a meal. When I had money left over, I bought books. When I didn’t have money left over, I bought books.

When I had studied Mandarin for eight months, I started learning Classical, and was immediately addicted to its beauty and economy. When I was 19, I began studying in the Chinese Lit department at NTNU. I had courses in the Analects and Han Fei Tz, and fell in love with the pre-Chin period. I also fell in love with books published by Chung Hwa publishers, because they were carefully printed with large clear characters and no punctuation Chinese books traditionally were not punctuated once you get used to it reading unpunctuated books is a lot more fun than reading texts all cluttered up with a bunch of periods and commas which are once you think of it really quite unnecessary just think more carefully as you read

In my freshman year, I bought an eight volume set of Records of the Historian, published by Chung Hwa. During the summer vacation, I finished it in three or four weeks. My only regret was that there were only eight volumes. 

When I went back to school, as a sophomore, at the age 20, I had Etymology. I took up the study of Chinese because Chinese characters fascinate me, so Etymology was just what I wanted to study.

But problems came up in my life. The bank said that no money had come from my father. In those days, international phone calls practically belonged to the realm of fantasy, and anyway, of the 37 people in my class, only five or six had phones at home. Sending a telegram was expensive, so I had to content myself with writing an airmail letter for help, and hoping the post office delivery was quick. I cut down on food, and looked forward to money coming into the account, the sooner the better. Every couple of days I would trot up to the bank, on Chungshan N Rd; there weren’t many phones in those days, so you had to go yourself. I was almost out of money, and there was no news, so I had to start borrowing from friends, fifty NT here, a hundred NT there. The only thing I had left to scrimp on was food, so I ate only one bowl of plain noodles a day.

As luck would have it, there was a Book Fair, one of Taiwan’s first, at the International House gym. I was hungry, and looking at the books could keep my mind off food. As luck would have it, Chung Hwa had a stall, and they had a set of Tzu-chih T’ung-chien, twenty volumes, on sale! Just the one set, but I really didn’t have money. All I could do was stop by every day or so to see if some lucky person had taken it home. Fortunately, it was still there. What a beautiful book! There were only a few days left before the Fair ended, and nobody had bought it, but I still had no money.

(Compiled during the Sung dynasty [in the eleventh century], the Tzu-chih T’ung-chien [Comprehensive Mirror to Promote Governing, Zizhi Tongjian] runs to over three million characters, and covers over a thousand years of Chinese history, from 403BC to 959AD.)

After two, almost three weeks on a diet of one bowl of noodles a day, one night I was so hungry I woke up. The room was spinning, and I wanted to throw up, but I was so hungry I couldn’t stand up. I slowly crawled into the bathroom. I sat by the toilet to heave, but my stomach was so empty that nothing would come up. I barfed for a long time, but nothing came up. All I got was a sore throat and an awful taste in my mouth, so I slowly crawled back to my room and lay down on the tatami, waiting for the room to stop spinning. I finally fell asleep.

In the morning, my apartment mates noticed that I wasn’t up and around, so they very thoughtfully knocked on my door and said, “You woke us up last night with your retching, are you dead?” I was out flat but still alive, so they made me some vegetable broth. But I was still too weak to stand, so I cut class that morning. By noon I had regained some strength, so I went to class. My friends said that they were surprised I hadn’t come to class that morning, and very thoughtfully said, “When you didn’t come to class, we thought you must be dead.” Pretty close. One very considerate friend brought me a loaf of black bread from the Astoria. Bread in Taiwan in those days was atrocious: fluffy, white stuff that was inedible. A Russian ran the Astoria on Wuchang Street, so he knew how to make bread. I sat by the English Department’s fish pond and ate my bread. A friend bought me dinner, and I felt much stronger.

The next day, the mailman delivered a registered letter. My mother had stapled six ten dollar US bills inside a letter. This was highly illegal, but I didn’t care, I took the money and ran to Hengyang Street. A jewelry store on Hengyang Street had a backroom in which you could illicitly exchange green. I got two thousand and some. Money in hand, I raced to the bus stop and headed directly for the International House gym. In a tizzy, I raced to the Chung Hwa stand, and the T’ung-chien was still there! It hadn’t been sold! Wonderful! Two hours before the Book Fair ended, I stuffed most of the money the jewelry store gave me into the hands of a Chung Hwa clerk, and triumphantly carried my twenty volume set of T’ung-chien home. Once I got home and put the books on the shelf, I realized, hey, I’m hungry! I went to Lungchuan Street and spent ten NT on a big meal in a cafeteria.

A couple days later, money from my father entered my account. I soon learned that for decades, the one and only US bank to go belly up was the one transferring my father’s money to me. The US government cleaned up the mess quickly, and there were no more problems after that.

I started reading the T’ung-chien, and got to the Han dynasty, when schoolwork intervened and I had to stop. I started again from the beginning about 16 years ago, but the Wei Chin Southern and Northern dynasties were so chaotic that I was stopped because I couldn’t figure out what was going on. In recent years, scholars in mainland China are doing superb work on history, and with recent publications, I have finally gotten a handle on the Southern and Northern dynasties, so I am reading T’ung-chien again, and this time I will finish. I carry the volumes around, so Sabiy has made a case to protect the books. They are already pretty old, after all.

The book is important to me in many respects. The day I bought T’ung-chien was October 30, 1973, forty years ago. This is a good day to commemorate that. 

光復節，已被淡忘，而現在很多人熱中鬼節Halloween，卻誤以為是萬聖節。

了解我們現代社會，這句有沒有甚麼啟發？

按：萬聖節=All Saints’ Day，美國幾乎沒有人聽過。Halloween = Hallowed E’en (evening)萬盛節前夕，鬼節。

I can’t be reading this right. It looks like it says the cop who pepper-sprayed those students last year got US$38,000 in compensation. Is that right?

If it is, I’m going to go out to buy some pepper spray and spray my students. It’s a lot easier to make money that way than by teaching them.

LINK

…. and more fun, too.

教徒今天該慶祝，因為有人依據聖經推算，上帝創造天地是西元前四00四年十月二十三日早上九點半。遇到這種腦筋，我真不知道要怎麼說…

Celebrate, believers, today is the birthday of heaven and earth: October 23, 4004 BC at 9:30 AM. To tell you the truth, I really don’t know what to say about anyone who believes in that sort of thing.

What some fail to understand is that first, “truth” is the realm of religion or scientism, not science. Good science only tells us that to date, we know that this has not yet been disproved. Second, the sciences interlock: physics cannot contradict chemistry cannot contradict astronomy cannot contradict biology cannot contradict medicine. The chemicals in your cough medicine would not work if the same rules did not hold for chemistry and physics. Medicine is based on biology, and as Theodosius Dobzhansky said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” If evolution were not valid, your doctor would have no way to stitch up a gash or perform a CAT scan. They may be several steps removed, but a jet flying through the air, a piston firing in a lawn mower engine, and ¹⁴C all work on the same interlocking principles. In other words, you nitwits, if your computer can go online, that means that, albeit several steps removed, evolution must be considered proven; not a religious truth, but as reliable as gravity or the electric lights overhead. In other words, will you please stop wasting people’s time with creationism? Evolution is for real. Get over it. 

Hello Kitty已經夠糟，現扗全臺灣扗瘋三歲小朋友洗澡玩的黃色小鴨子。大家好，我們可不可以長大？

為甚麼有人情願一直停留扗幼稚、懵懂的狀態？原因當然很多：商家鼓吹「心動不如行動」以便撈取更多錢；政客激起憤怒，以便操控民眾；「愛臺灣」的背後往往是「害怕世界」；等等。但教育也要負很大的責任。其中一環是，以前的教育比較硬：不管小毛頭懂不懂，不管小毛頭有沒有興趣，你現扗念，以後你就懂，你長大以後這些東西夠你用一輩子。所以小小的小孩也念大學、論語、三字經。現扗的教育軟到沒骨沒神：要把課程降低到小毛頭的程度，適應現扗的興趣、了解；很好玩，很容易懂，但保證這些東西對你以後沒有用。所以小朋友長大，無法懂大人如何思維。

Three Boy Scout leaders in Utah intentionally knocked over an ancient rock formation and posted a video online. Now that they are facing charges for destroying a natural masterpiece, they are claiming to be selfless saints whose only concern was the public safety, because these rocks, which have stood firm for 170,000,000 years, might topple over and hurt somebody.

Assuming we believe that, we learn that they are teaching that it is not necessary to report conditions to authorities or people who know more about these things than you do, take it into your own hands. If you see a traffic light that doesn’t work, just climb right up and change the bulb. If someone falls over on the street, don’t call an ambulance, just cut him open and treat him yourself. In other words, Zimmerman was right. If you see someone you suspect might commit a crime, you just get out your gun and shoot him. 

All vandals should be responsible for their acts. I don’t care if they are sanctimonious white men, I say throw the book at them. 

LINK 1

LINK 2

Okay, so two convicted murderers, sentenced to life, walked out of a Florida prison on forged papers. LINK Then they very compliantly registered with local authorities as convicts, and nobody paid any attention except the families of their victims. Now everybody is wondering how such a thing could happen.

Well, it did. Now tell me, how much do you trust the voting machines in this state?

當年我字彙班上，很驚訝發現全班一群大學、研究所高材生中，最強的居然是一位中山女中的小妹妹，就是Thais。我後來請她留下當助教。

出國念大學，不到一年發現有喉癌。好不容易征服了病魔，她還是那樣蹦蹦跳，笑容滿面。過了幾年，癌魔又回來纏她，但被她的笑聲打敗了。從來沒看過她愁眉苦臉。這麼痛苦，一定有的，但她給世界看的永遠就是精神抖擻、健談愛笑。

一段日子沒有她的消息，本不以為意。赫然得知她住臺大醫院十個月，換肺。雖然很虛，但從不抱怨，有鬥志，有勇氣，不怕。

但到最後，還是逃不過，就不再活在痛苦中，不再受苦。Thais解脫了。

好吧，這個軀殼不好用，回去換一個再來，下次留久一點，好嗎？

阿彌陀佛，Thais，妳保重。

今天才知道，原來「參差不齊」的「參差」指的是排蕭(排笛)。

處辭、九歌、湘君：望夫君兮未來，吹參差兮誰思。

一九七八年發掘曾侯乙墓得其實物。原來排蕭是國產的，歷史悠悠，而不是泊來品。

You learn something every day. It turns out that China had pipes of pan back in the fourth century BC. I hadn’t realized that. 

現在雙十節很淡。民國六十年代，很多人吃完晚飯到總統府介壽路、東門拍照；若相機有三腳架、定時快門(上發條)就很拉風。但國慶日早上，好像多數人睡大覺，電視轉播遊行才起床看。七十年代那種愛國愛鄉愛臺灣的氣氛很明顯。東門附近來逛逛的民眾都抬頭挺胸：這是我們大家的成就！所以民國八十年本要閱兵，民進黨出來大力示威，民眾不敢去~~何況總統府附近被圍起來，不得靠近。八十年代，我們住總統府附近的居民都怕民進黨來鬧，很掃興。從那時到現在，二十年來政客的爭權奪利很成功地削除了七十年代的那股團結、自尊、自信。

通常颱風老遠扗關島成形，慢慢靠近臺灣。今年奇怪，很多突然扗附近迸出來。而且，都是週末、假期來的。Typhoons usually form way off near Guam and Yap and build as they come closer. This year they’re just popping up nearby. Weird. And they come on weekends and holidays.

Meanwhile, South Dakota got four feet of snow. 

How the Republicans serve the United States with their shutdown: while President Obama has to cancel his Asia tour, Xi Jinping of China is taking his place. link<<

I’m sure the People’s Republic of China would like to extend their hearty thanks to the Tea Party for providing this great boost for their prestige and international prominence.

If you’re going to fool around in politics, you should have some political sense. Seems reasonable?

The Soviet Union was a world power, but after the breakup, Russia was greatly diminished. They have had hard times, but are getting back on their feet, and eager to show that they still can swing their fists.

They are reasserting their presence in the Arctic, which makes sense strategically. Recently they sent practically their whole Navy up there to reestablish a base that had been closed when the USSR fall apart. The Russian public has apparently followed this with enthusiasm and support.

So Greenpeace picks this time to send a boatload of protestors into this sensitive region, and what a surprise, the Russians were not happy. LINK They arrested the protestors, who are probably feeling very self righteous. LINK
I am deeply committed to environmentalism, but I have never felt the need to protect the environment by making myself unwelcome or by traveling in gas guzzling boats. Perhaps I should be ashamed, but I am not.

I don't know a lot about the issues, but to me, the idea of anybody "shutting down" the government sounds treasonous.
The Constitution defines treason as citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the US, so I know this is legally not treason, but I still think the people responsible should go to the wall for this.