Woeser's blog on Tibet

Although I am not a political blogger, I thought I will bring to attention of some of my readers this blog I have been following.... Woeser's blog which I think is interesting. For those of you who do not know Woeser, here is a brief introduction....
虽然很少写关于政治的博，倒很希望与大家分享我们跟踪的一些博客。其中之一是唯色的博客，关于作者的简介可以在这里读到。

From Wikipedia: Woeser, a quarter-Han Chinese and three quarter-Tibetan, was born in Lhasa. Her grandfather was a Chinese Army officer in the Nationalist Army and her father was a high rank Army officer in the People's Liberation Army. when she was a small child, her family relocated to the Kham area of western Sichuan province. In 1988, she graduated from Southwest University for Nationalities in Chengdu with a degree in Chinese literature. She worked as a reporter in Kardzé and later in Lhasa and has lived in Beijing since 2003 as a result of political problems. Woeser is married to Wang Lixiong, a famous Chinese author who frequently writes about Tibet. According to Reporters sans frontières, "Woeser is one of the few Tibetan authors and poets to write in Chinese."

The issue of Tibet is very controversial with multiple points of view. There are hypernationalist Han Chinese that hold a view that is completely contradictory to the ones held by many Tibetans. The Western media and academic have tended to side with the Tibetan version. Its hard to know which side is right. What is interesting about Woeser is that her family background makes her sympathetic to both sides of the conflict. Her views on the conflict therefore hold a special significance for those who are curious to have a complete picture of the issues surrounding Tibet. Her blog can be found here:
http://woeser.middle-way.net/

关于西藏的问题有许多不同的看法。中国汉族人的观点与藏人截然相反，而西方的媒体与学术界的观点又通常站在藏人一边，作为读者有时很难分辨谁对谁错。"看不见的西藏"与众不同是因为作者的身世决定了她既同情汉族人，也同情藏族人。所以她的博客提供了相对客观的观点。如果有兴趣，建议你也把下面的链接存到你的Reader。

Indians and Chinese - Questions or not?

I am reading the book "The discovery of India" by Jawaharlal Nehru, written during his imprisonment in 1942-1946.

... The Greeks, as a race, may have lived more in the present and found joy and harmony in the beauty they saw around them or which they themselves created. The Indians found this joy and harmony also in the present, but, at the same time, their eyes were turned towards deeper knowledge and their minds trafficked with strange questions. The Chinese, fully aware of these questions and their mystery, in their wisdom avoided entanglement with them. (P152)

Since we have been long time discussing about the differences between Chinese and Indians, this statement struck me. It has taken us a while to figure this out: Chinese are generally lacking the ability to ask questions and think critically, while Indians are obsessed with argumentation. Chinese are doers, while Indians are thinkers.

Of course, you do not have to agree with our version of generalization about Chinese and Indians. We do find many evidences.

The famous poet Zheng Banqiao has written the following, kind of one Chinese philosophy:
聪明难，糊涂难，由聪明转糊涂更难；放一着，退一步，当下心安；非图后来福报也。

Similar meaning was depicted in the image in this post. If it's translated word by word, it says "hard to be muddled". I don't know how you're going to interpret it, its actually meaning is not saying that a person with a clear mind. It somehow praises the way of keeping things fuzzy in some circumstances. Smart people may find ways to get everything clear but wise people not to bother to make everything crystal clear. Leaving some in dark may help things in some ways, you never know! Sometimes, the more truth you know, the more painful you will be.

On the other side of the Himalaya, the Indian Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen has written the book called "The Argumentative Indian" which discusses Indian history and identity, focusing on the traditions of public debate and intellectual pluralism. It demonstrates the importance of public debate in Indian traditions generally.

In schools in China, kids tend to follow and believe in what they are told and less to question. This shows up even in this master program in the Netherlands we are involved in. In a same classroom, Chinese students usually do not have any questions to ask. Moreover, they also wonder why the rest of the class have so many questions.

The fable of double headed birds - two versions

In my last visit to Indonesia, I visited the great Buddhist temple Borobudu. In the hotel in JogyaKarta, one channel in the TV repeatedly broadcasts a documentary about the Borobudu temple. It was actually until after visiting the temple I found out this documentary. I left it repeated several times, and got to know quite a lot that I did not know while visiting the temple.

What was interesting to me the most in this documentary is the fables depicted according to thousands of narrative panels carved on the stone. Some are well known, like the mice gave the cat a bell to hung on his neck so that the cat was heard whenever he was close by. There was one fable was especially interesting to me: the double headed bird. Maybe it is because it was totally new to me.

The story is about a double headed bird: one head reach up, eating all the fine fruits, while the other one reach downwards, can only eat those falling bad ones. The upward one told the downward one, this is fine, anything I eat will go to the same stomach. You can just eat those falling ones. Thus the downward head kept eating those bad fruits fell on the ground. One day he ate a poison one and the double headed bird dies.

Today's Jakarta earthquake somehow reminded me of Indonesia, and also about this fable. I tried to look for a more complete story online, and it turns out that there is some interesting twist. The most common version of this story is like this paragraph found in William Shakespeare's The Tragedie of Coriolanus :
Once on a time on Mount Himavat there was a bird named Jivanjiva. It had one body and two heads, one of which used to eat fine fruits to give strength and vigor to the body. The other became jealous and thought, why should that head always eat fine fruits, of which I never taste one? Accordingly it ate a poisonous fruit and the two heads perished at the same time.

In this more common version of the story, the jealousy and revenge are the main theme. With the intention of revenge, you would more likely to destroy yourself. However, the twist in the documentary film is also inspiring. I remember the story teller gave a sudden twist after telling how the downward head happened to eat a poison fruit and the bird died:
Our society is like this double headed bird: the rich and the poor. It will totally collapse if it allows some to eat the good fruits and others only eat the bad ones.

What a metaphor for social equity statement! It is interesting... ...

Why do Indonesians drive on the left?

It sounds like a stupid question to ask if you live in Europe every day. Having lived in China, US, driving on the right side of the road is the normal thing to do for me. Until one day Mr. Aawaraa mentioned that when he first came to US, he would easily bumped into other person since he was used to walking on the left. Mrs. Aawaraa thus realized that there were quite some countries driving on the left. This became real experience when later visiting India, it was really very easy to walk on the wrong side of the road. Another visit to UK was also similar, cars running on the left side of the street is the first thing to remind you that you are in a different country. For me, another connection was also established: India is British colony, and that is why they both drive on the left.

This connection however troubled me a lot in my recent visit to Indonesia: Why do Indonesians drive on the left side of the road? I couldn't understand, because, because Dutch drives on the right! Indonesia was Dutch colony, but how come they do not follow the Dutch rule?

What makes this even more troubling is, nobody knows the answer. I kept asking everyone around, including some university professors, master students, nobody has any idea... I just can't understand, why do Indians follow their colonizer, while the Indonesians do not. That doesn't make sense to me, not at all.

Then I have to rely on my own research abilities, I have to do the research myself. A brief search connect me to this map, however, it doesn't answer my questions. It only give the history after 1858, and the Netherlands drove on the right, and Indonesia drive on the left since then.

My further findings are really interesting. In this website, it writes:
When the Dutch arrived in Indonesia in 1596, they brought along their habit of driving on the left. It wasn't until Napoleon conquered the Netherlands that the Dutch started driving on the right. Most of their colonies, however, remained on the left as did Indonesia and Suriname.

So, this is consistent with my previous connection: Indonesia did drive the same as their colonizer Dutch. What has changed is the Dutch rule. However, I couldn't find very reliable sources on the history of the change. It generally talking about it here,
The Netherlands drove on the left until Napoleon's time, but Dutch colonies (mostly) remained on the left as did Indonesia.

Reading more you will find, it is hard for a country to maintain left driving if your neighboring countries all drive on the right. The Netherlands being a small country in the middle of Germany and Belgium, even if it didn't change during Napoleon time, it would have to change later when most of the Europe drive on the right. Indonesia was able to stay on the left, is mostly because it is a country on islands. There are not much confusion of changing the side if you drive into a different country.

This may hold true also to India and UK. India has bordering countries, including Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, all drive on the left till today. The Himalayas on the north minimizes the traffic almost to zero. UK sustains because of its being an island country. However, I heard that were complains about cars across the British tunnel can not be easily used in France. There might be one day this globalized world will move towards driving on one common side of the road.

The picture was taken in Dublin, Ireland in 2008. It was to remind pedestrians to look to the right for upcoming cars, definitely a sign for those people who come from the right side driving countries.

Biking along the canals - a weekend Dutch activity

Summer is leaving and it has been a long time not writing anything again here. Life in the Netherlands seem to have reached to a stage of balance and peace. I more and more value the weekend, after stressful working days. It is the time you really want to totally relax, not thinking of anything relating to the work.

We are here on this orange journey for two years. Another family who came together with us left back to US last week. In these past two years, we regularly get together and gossip on things we like or dislike about this country, mostly using US as the reference point. Now they are gone, sold their bikes here and plan to buy a car back there, a life style quite different, but will have to adapt to soon. It is a little sad feeling for us, kind of leaving alone . We do not seem to have somewhere that we really belong to, that is not so good feeling while you feel you are getting older.

As the last gathering to see them off, we planned to go to a bike ride together. They have a long to-do list before they leave and a short time left to do all of them. So we will together do one item on the list, a bike ride from Gouda to the west. The weather forecast showed that the weekend would have rain, however the Saturday rain lasted only during the early morning. So we decided to make the decision on Sunday morning, after checking the radar forecast. It turned out there were only sporadic rain clouds around, and there won't be rain longer than 10 minutes. So we decided to go. True, it rained several times during our bike ride, and each time no longer than 10 minutes.

The bike ride was along the canal, and we finally reached the town called Schoonhoven. When you are here for longer, you feel many places are similar. They look like each other, with similar buildings, but you can not describe each building well, they are together to form the image in your mind. Maybe that is the beauty of European towns and cities. I later found out this is a city famous for its silversmith.

Last weekend, we two again had a bike ride along the polders between Delft and Schiedam. My Dutch colleague heard this and commented: you two are real Dutch now. We both enjoy this kind of outdoor activity. It is also amazing to see, biking for leisure is not common among other social groups here. We were the only non-White, when we were sitting in a busy cafe along the canal in a quite Sunday afternoon.

The image is a painting of Gouda from here.

Social responsibility of Dutch elderlies

A good citizen should be a responsible citizen, with responsibility to act. Being foreigners not yet able to master the Dutch language, two small stories happened recently did annoy us from the beginning. While thinking back now, we have to appreciate the proactive roles these Dutch people practice in their daily life. Since both cases happened with Dutch elders, I am careful in making even bigger generalizations here.

Story 1:
Mr. Awaraa is very careful with his stuff. He like to carefully watch his belongings, finding any trace of abnormalities and fix them in time. His stuff can be as big as a car, and as small as his cellphone.

Living here, we have several bikes. One weekend we decided to walk to the town center market around the lunch time. On the way out, I was going to throw a bag of trash, so he was waiting for me outside on the street side. My bike brake those days made some strange sounds, so he started checking out my bike which was parked not far away from the door. He was carefully looking at the front and back brakes.

Within two minutes I returned from throwing the trash and saw he was talking with someone who sit on his bike in front of our parked bike, on the street. He should be at least 60+ years old. He spoke in Dutch. I saw Mr. Aawaraa went forward saying, sorry we do not speak Dutch. He didn't speak English either. He pointed to our parked bike, again said something. Neither of us understood. We got the word "fiet", which means bike in Dutch. Then he put his hand in his ear, posing like calling, and we caught up a word again, "Polite". It means "police"!

My goodness, he is going to call police! What? THIS IS MY BIKE! I later thought that actually I could have said that also in Dutch: Dit is mijn fiet! Anyway, i guess the MY in English is so close to MIJN in Dutch. Ht just got on his bike and left. I guess he must have understood what we meant. He left both of there, for the rest of the day self-criticizing ourselves: do we really look like bike thefts?

Story 2:
One day I didn't park my bike in the station so I was walking back home from the train station. Mr. Aawaraa was a little behind for he had to get his bike. I walked on the pedestrian path on one of the one way street, and noticed he was coming, and biked also onto the pedestrian path.

This part was what I later heard from him: An old man with a bike was opening his door and ready to push his bike inside. He saw Mr. Awaraa coming biking, so he decided to back up his bike and blocked his way. Mr. Awaraa was forced to get out his bike. And then, lessons: (at the beginning in Dutch, and then turned to English when Awaraa said he didn't understand Dutch) Do you know kids are playing on this street? if you hit them, you will have to pay a lot.

Well, he is right. Mr. Awaraa tried to explain, making excuses of his wife. But later we both felt, that old man was right.

PS: The picture is an award winning cartoon from International Cartoon Exhibition - "21st Century- Humanity in Nature", and the link is here.

Homeless in the Netherlands

Living in this country for more than a year, I have been wondering about whether there are homeless people. Maybe because of the small town I live in, I rarely meet anybody asking for money, or sitting lonely in a street corner. This is a big contrast comparing to my first day experience in a midwest city in the United State, in which I only later realized that she was asking for money. I was not sure about whether I totally understood what that lady was talking about. She just stopped me and started talking, and then looking at her arms, kept talking, and then said something about 'changes'. It was in the campus, and I only have big money in my pocket which I didn't want to give out. She might not be homeless, but she was poor. In those cold Colorado winter mornings when I had chances to go to Downtown Denver, I really saw homeless people occupying each heating manholes, sleeping through the freezing nights.

I haven't had any experience of being asked for money after coming to the Netherlands. We somehow credit this to the strong welfare systems here. In the city of Rotterdam, it seems that poor people are more visible. It is just a feeling that they are not dressed clean, and they look like hanging around in the streets. Are there really homeless people in the Netherlands? This has been a question for us for quite a while. A news today from RNW kind of solved my problem. This is the video: