A Long Ride Toward A New China

Repost from New York Times.

Every summer, the 59-year-old Chinese blogger Zhang Shihe rides his bicycle thousands of miles to the plateaus, deserts and hinterlands of North Central China. In this Op-Doc video, we meet Mr. Zhang, known to his many followers online as “Tiger Temple,” as he goes to great lengths to document the stories of struggling rural villagers whose voices are seldom heard in China’s state-monitored media.

In a country with one of the most sophisticated media and Internet censorship systems, Mr. Zhang and other bloggers must exercise great caution when writing about politically sensitive content — often skirting the label “citizen reporter.” But as Mr. Zhang told me during filming: “If they want to get you, they can find a way. Not even a wise man can be wise all the time.”

In 2010, he was taken by the police and put under house arrest for 10 days, during the country’s annual parliamentary meetings. News spread quickly. That day he received more than 2,000 text messages — good wishes poured in from concerned friends and readers who supported his efforts to help flooded villagers, defrauded farmers and the Beijing homeless. On this day, he said, he “felt the true power of the Internet.”

Read the complete article from New York Times.

10 Inspiring Chinese Proverbs about Life

1. [与其]临渊羡鱼，不如退而结网。《汉书·董仲书传》

[yǔ qí] lín yuān xiàn yú，bù rú tuì ér jié wǎng。《hàn shū · dǒng zhòng shū zhuàn 》

Rather than approaching the edge [of the waters] admiring the fish, it’s better to take a step back, and prepare to cast a net over the waters [and catch the fish].

This proverb was used as a parable from 董仲舒, a politician and a philosopher, who warned the emperor of his time that if he wanted to manage the country well, it was important to do so in a principled and institutional way.

An interpretation of this warning comes to us in two parts: the objective and the means. Important as it is to have a clear objective in mind, it is equally important to have the means to go about achieving that objective, lest it become a mere delusion. It reminds us to sometimes take a step back from fixating too much on our goals, and revise our approaches to reach our most immediate objective.

2. 君子之心不胜其小，而气量涵盖一世。《格言联璧》

jūn zǐ zhī xīn bú shèng qí xiǎo，ér qì liàng hán gài yī shì。《gé yán lián bì》

The heart of a 君子 cares not about his own (selfish) desires, but of all that it encompasses from his breadth of heart.

This proverb talks about two very important ideals that Chinese people deem significant: “君子” and “气量”. If you look up the dictionary, you will see that the translation is “gentleman” and “tolerance” respectively, though I argue these are only loose approximations of their Chinese counterparts.

君子 is someone who is more than a gentleman. By the norm, we often consider a person to be a gentleman if he (and I don’t discriminate between genders here, “he” is just a convenient placeholder for a person, and an appropriate one, I think, in the male-dominant ancient China) demeans himself gracefully and treats women courteously.

君子, however, represents neither of these things. While these traits might be included in a person who is considered a “君子”, having these traits don’t necessarily make one a “君子”.

In essence, someone who can be called a 君子 (and it’s as big a deal in the past as I’m making it here!) is someone who is highly virtuous and of noble character, and he represents the ideal personality a man should have in Confucius’ teachings.

The term “气量” has the translation “tolerance”. While tolerance represents the mechanism for someone to have 气量, it’s a bit broad, because it can be an umbrella for different types of tolerances, such as a tolerance to pain, which isn’t 气量。

A Chinese synonym is the term “胸襟”, and I mention it because it can be better translated as “breadth of heart”.

In my opinion, a person’s “胸襟” is the ability for a person to is one’s ability to tolerate others’ small misdeeds, to not exact revenge over someone’s wrongdoings to you, to be generous and accepting of others’ flaws and shortcomings, and to forgive others even when they are undeserving of such forgiveness.

A person who has a large breadth of heart (胸襟广阔的人) is undoubtedly a 君子, in contrast, a person who has a narrow breadth of heart (胸襟狭窄的人) is undoubtedly a 小人。

With this in mind, let’s go back to the original proverb and see what it means:

君子之心不胜其小，而气量涵盖一世。《格言联璧》

The heart of a 君子 cares not about his own (selfish) desires, but of all that it encompasses from his breadth of heart.

It reminds us that we should aim to serve the greater good, and not act for our own selfish desires, as befitting of a 君子.

3. 君子之行，静以修身，俭以养德，非澹泊无以明志，非宁静无以致远。《诫子书》

jūn zǐ zhī xíng，jìng yǐ xiū shēn，jiǎn yǐ yǎng dé，fēi dàn bó wú yǐ míng zhì，fēi níng jìng wú yǐ zhì yuǎn。《jiè zi shū》

The demeanour of a 君子 who is both noble of character and proficient in [his] trade relies on one’s centre of calm to train one’s mind and body, and one’s ability to be frugal to train one’s character. It is not possible to clearly establish one’s goals without letting go of such notions of fame and glory; nor is it possible to achieve grand aspirations without firstly possessing a calm mind and body.

This reminds us of the importance to need to focus, albeit in an indirect way.

In order for us to achieve our goals, 诸葛亮, the author of this book from which this proverb is quoted, writes of the importance of being calm in order to make well thought out decisions to steadily inch towards our long term goals.

And in order for us to establish a clear direction, it is important to be able to focus by clearing our minds of the unnecessary distractions in our lives, notably the notions of fame and glory, vanity measures which are nothing but fancy trinkets to be had on our journeys.

4. 三军可夺帅也，匹夫不可夺志也。《论语》

sān jūn kě duó shuài yě，pǐ fū bù kě duó zhì yě。《lùn yǔ》

An army can conquer a general, but no man can rob one of his ambition.

Confucius writes this as a firm reminder of the importance of having ambition in one’s life. The word “志” means “志气” in the above sentence, and the Chinese term is roughly equivalent to a combination of “ambition”, “spirit” and “morale” in English.

I think that another way to interpret this is the importance of having free spirit. It’s similar to saying that “You can rob me of all my earthly possessions, but you will never own my last sanctuary – my spirit.”

As a person, it is important to have independent thought, which comes across as strange in this day and age, but in the empirical set up of ancient China, it wasn’t uncommon for people to have a subservient mindset, hence the importance of this proverb.

5. 疾风知劲草，板荡识诚臣。《赐萧蠫》

jí fēng zhī jìn cǎo，bǎn dàng shí chéng chén。《cì xiāo lí》

The strength of a blade of grass is seen only in tempests; the loyalty of an official is seen only in times of turbulence.

This reminds me of a lengthy discussion I had with one of my friends – she thinks that friends should be in frequent contact, and one should have many friends; I think that it’s not as important to talk a lot to friends, nor is it as important to have a great number of friends.

My perspective is that it’s only when facing difficulty can you truly distinguish who is a true friend, and who isn’t. This and the proverb’s meaning are probably 异曲同工, an idiom which means different ways of expressing the same thing, a sentiment that’s better expressed in Chinese.

6.子曰：“吾十有五而志于学，三十而立，四十而不惑，五十而知天命，六十而耳顺，七十而从心所欲，不逾矩。”《论语》

zǐ yuē：“wú shí yǒu wǔ ér zhì yú xué，sān shí ér lì，sì shí ér bú huò，wǔ shí ér zhī tiān mìng，liù shí ér ěr shùn，qī shí ér cóng xīn suǒ yù，bù yú jǔ。”《lùn yǔ》

Confucius says, “When I was fifteen, I was focused on my studies; when I was thirty, my understanding of life [as it stands] was set firmly; when I was forty, I no longer hesitated about making my life decisions; when I was fifty, I understood the origins of all; when I was sixty, I could hear all – the positive and the negative – and not be upset; when I was seventy, I had the freedom to do whatever my heart desires, within the rules of this world [that I have observed throughout all of my life].”

In a short statement, Confucius summarised his entire life and the enlightened state he reached at each stage in his life. Nowadays, it serves as a guiding principle for us to know what we should be doing at different stages in life, and what to expect henceforth.

7. 老吾老，以及人之老；幼吾幼，以及人之幼。《孟子》

lǎo wú lǎo，yǐ jí rén zhī lǎo；yòu wú yòu，yǐ jí rén zhī yòu。《mèng zǐ》

In supporting and showing deference to our elderly’s, it is important not to neglect the elderly’s not within our family; in nurturing and educating our children, it is important not to neglect children with whom we are not related to by blood.

This quote reminds me of one of Jesus’ parables when he taught his disciples to “love thy neighbour as thyself”. Even if we are not related, even by the mere fact that we are neighbours, friends, or just people who happen to pass by each other, is it not equally as important to respect the elderly’s and look after children equally as we do our own?

8. 祸兮福之所倚，福兮祸之所伏。《老子》

huò xī fú zhī suǒ yǐ，fú xī huò zhī suǒ fú。《lǎo zǐ》

In our last proverb, it states: “Calamity has its roots in prosperity, prosperity has its roots in calamity.”

老子 observes the co-existence of these two opposing beings – that calamity and prosperity cannot exist without another, and that they share almost an interdependent relationship with each other.

It tells us that because of this relationship, good and bad things can be exchanged, and under the right conditions, even prosperity can turn into calamity, and calamity into prosperity.

I personally think that what 老子 was referring to is the fact that one should not take things too seriously – the good and the bad.

Don’t overestimate the value of the good “fortune” you’re experiencing in life, because it’s just as easy to lose the fortune you’ve gained.

In a similar way, don’t overestimate the effects of the bad “luck” you’re experiencing, because it’s just as easy to go away as it came.

9. 博学之，审问之，慎思之，明辨之，笃行之。《礼记·中庸》

bó xué zhī，shěn wèn zhī，shèn sī zhī，míng biàn zhī，dǔ xíng zhī。《lǐ jì · zhōng yōng》

To learn [from a variety of places], To ask [until you satisfy your desire to learn], To reflect [meticulously], To distinguish [clearly between truth and lies], To manifest [that which you have learnt].

These five stages represent the various places in learning, not unlike that of Bloom’s taxonomy, who advocated an hierarchy of learning in this order: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Evaluation, Synthesis.

10. 但愿人长久，千里共蝉娟。《水调歌头》

dàn yuàn rén cháng jiǔ，qiān lǐ gòng chán juān。《shuǐ diào gē tóu》

That [the person I’m thinking of] be healthy and live a life of longevity; that no distance shall separate our thoughts of each other.

This is actually a portion of the entire poetic verse, which reads “人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺，此事古难全。但愿人长久，千里共婵娟。” the former phrase which means, “People will experience sadness and joy; as the moon will appear round and sometimes incomplete (referring to crescents of the moon) – things like these have been prone to imperfection since the days of the old.”

In my opinion, the author is simply expressing his world views through his observations of people and the moon as metaphors. The philosophical component aside, the phrases are beautifully worded in Chinese.

Well, these are the 10 proverbs I’ve come to like over the years – what do you think? Would you have a different interpretation of these Chinese proverbs?

Lupita’s Video Helps Mainstream Media Redefine What is Beautiful

Vogue recently released ‘Braids’ – a new mini-documentary featuring Lupita Nyong’o.

In June, Lupita, gathered six of her closest friends for the day so that she could braid their hair. Yes, you read that correctly. Lupita did not enjoy the experience of having her hair braided while she lived in the states and returned home that summer to have her aunt teach her how to braid the right way. Lupita returned to school ready to engage in a “side hustle” but in the end used braiding hair as an opportunity to connect with good friends, swap stories, laugh and spend time together. The joy and beauty of braiding is what she shares in this great mini-documentary.

I just can’t get enough of Lupita. She is just an actress – right. Her words, speeches, mini-documentaries would be widely embraced and loved without her conscientious acknowledgement and tribute to the Black experience. And yet this actress continues to breathe the politics and empowerment of Black Beauty in countless ways. She went above and beyond in her acceptance speech. Her speech at the 7th Annual Essence Black Women in Hollywood.

I’m touched by the recent Vogue documentary because I too braid hair. Like Lupita I did not learn to braid as a small child. I didn’t grow up with siblings and my mother refused to let me play in her hair. But when I had my beautiful babies I was inspired to share this “special” time with them – braiding their hair. It’s not my side hustle. I have never charged to braid. I’ve even twisted hair for a couple girlfriends. It is a bonding experience that is consistently undervalued. It’s a moment to sit with your daughter/friend – sometimes for hours – and engage, listen and learn while creating something together.

Lupita mentions in her mini-doc that she only braids hair for women where there is trust. Braiding hair is like fine dining. Similarly, as you would not pay top dollar for an inferior meal your child will not elect to sit with you for hours if she does not trust that she will look adorable/stunning when she hops off your stool.

My girls love having their hair braided. And while it is hard to find the time I love it too. It’s fun when we are out and see another little girl and I ask my daughters “Do you like that style” and one of them pipes in “Yes mommy. Can you braid my hair like that next time.” But to my daughters this is our world, our limited experience.

At our Mandarin Immersion school site my two daughters belong to a cohort of three little girls (in a large campus of more than 500 students) that wear box braids, barrettes and the occasional knocker. So it is breathtaking to see the experience of braiding hair and connecting through sisterhood shared in the mainstream media and produced by Vogue.

Thank you Lupita for continuing to force the mainstream media to redefine what is beautiful – my daughters deserve it!!

Here are pictures of her friends after receiving braiding at what affectionately was referred to as Lu’s Do’s!!

The women pictured are Jennifer Odera, a graduate student and childhood friend who, like Nyong’o, started having her hair braided when she was “itsy bitsy” in Kenya (where there were hairdressers “on every street corner”) in order to adhere to their primary school uniform dress code; Tashal Brown, an educator and Nyong’o’s roommate from Hampshire College; Yale classmates Miriam Hyman and Hallie Cooper-Novack, as well as Stacey Sargeant, an actress whom she met while at the university; and Nontsikelelo Mutiti, a professor and artist who is currently hosting an art show revolving around the culture of braiding at New York City’s…

Lupita Nyong’o Delivers Moving ‘Black Women in Hollywood’ Acceptance Speech

Newcomer Lupita Nyong’o was honored with the Best Breakthrough Performance Award at the 7th annual Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon for her work in critically acclaimed film, 12 Years a Slave, presented by fellow actress, Alfre Woodard. The following is her acceptance speech in full (and below that is the video of the majority of the speech):

I wrote down this speech that I had no time to practice so this will be the practicing session. Thank you Alfre, for such an amazing, amazing introduction and celebration of my work. And thank you very much for inviting me to be a part of such an extraordinary community. I am surrounded by people who have inspired me, women in particular whose presence on screen made me feel a little more seen and heard and understood. That it is ESSENCE that holds this event celebrating our professional gains of the year is significant, a beauty magazine that recognizes the beauty that we not just possess but also produce.

I want to take this opportunity to talk about beauty. Black beauty. Dark beauty. I received a letter from a girl and I’d like to share just a small part of it with you: “Dear Lupita,” it reads, “I think you’re really lucky to be this Black but yet this successful in Hollywood overnight. I was just about to buy Dencia’s Whitenicious cream to lighten my skin when you appeared on the world map and saved me.”

My heart bled a little when I read those words. I could never have guessed that my first job out of school would be so powerful in and of itself and that it would propel me to be such an image of hope in the same way that the women of The Color Purple were to me.

I remember a time when I too felt unbeautiful. I put on the TV and only saw pale skin. I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin. And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned. The morning would come and I would be so excited about seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of a mirror because I wanted to see my fair face first. And every day I experienced the same disappointment of being just as dark as I had been the day before. I tried to negotiate with God: I told him I would stop stealing sugar cubes at night if he gave me what I wanted; I would listen to my mother’s every word and never lose my school sweater again if he just made me a little lighter. But I guess God was unimpressed with my bargaining chips because He never listened.

And when I was a teenager my self-hate grew worse, as you can imagine happens with adolescence. My mother reminded me often that she thought that I was beautiful but that was no consolation: She’s my mother, of course she’s supposed to think I am beautiful. And then Alek Wek came on the international scene. A celebrated model, she was dark as night, she was on all of the runways and in every magazine and everyone was talking about how beautiful she was. Even Oprah called her beautiful and that made it a fact. I couldn’t believe that people were embracing a woman who looked so much like me as beautiful. My complexion had always been an obstacle to overcome and all of a sudden, Oprah was telling me it wasn’t. It was perplexing and I wanted to reject it because I had begun to enjoy the seduction of inadequacy. But a flower couldn’t help but bloom inside of me. When I saw Alek I inadvertently saw a reflection of myself that I could not deny. Now, I had a spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the far away gatekeepers of beauty, but around me the preference for light skin prevailed. To the beholders that I thought mattered, I was still unbeautiful. And my mother again would say to me, “You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed you.” And these words plagued and bothered me; I didn’t really understand them until finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be.

And what my mother meant when she said you can’t eat beauty was that you can’t rely on how you look to sustain you. What does sustain us… what is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul. It is what got Patsey in so much trouble with her master, but it is also what has kept her story alive to this day. We remember the beauty of her spirit even after the beauty of her body has faded away.

And so I hope that my presence on your screens and in the magazines may lead you, young girl, on a similar journey. That you will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade in that beauty.

Oscars 2014: Watch Lupita Nyong’o’s Emotional Acceptance Speech

Reposted from Times
A year ago, most of the world hadn’t heard of Lupita Nyong’o — but in her acceptance speech for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar she just took home for her work in 12 Years a Slave, she reminded viewers that there’s a long history behind how she got to that stage.

“It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is due to so much pain in someone else’s,” she said in reference to Patsey, the slave she portrayed in the acclaimed film, which was based on a real-life memoir.

In addition to thanking the usual Academy Awards suspects — castmates, her drama school, the Academy — she drew attention to the real people whose stories she helped bring to the big screen: Speaking to director Steve McQueen, she noted that the dead are watching, and that she believes “they are grateful” that he brought their history back to life.

But her speech didn’t just stick to the past. In a tear-jerking conclusion, she expressed her wish that her unknown-to-Oscars trajectory would inspire someone watching at home to go for it — because, as she explained: “No matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid.”

Watch her speech above.

Documentary profiles a Chinese activist in the Black Civil Rights Movement

America is about to meet Grace Lee Boggs, a 98-year old Detroit activist and author who’s the subject of a 90-minute documentary airing Monday night on PBS.

GRACE LEE BOGGS: An Activist’s Life
Grace with her father and some of her siblings, George, Bob, Eddie and Kay.
“There were seven children in our family…As first-generation Chinese Americans we had to create our own identities. We had no role models.” .

“American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs,” part of the “P.O.V.” (point of view) series, profiles a woman who is “rooted in 75 years of the labor, civil rights and black power movements [and] continually challenges a new generation to throw off old assumptions, think creatively and redefine revolution for our times,” as the network puts it.. (See trailer below.).

The PBS summary adds:

In some ways, the radicalization of Grace Lee Boggs typifies an experience many people shared during America’s turbulent 20th century. Yet she cut an extraordinary path through decades of struggle. As Angela Davis, an icon of the 1960s black power movement, puts it, “Grace has made more contributions to the black struggle than most black people have.”

Actor Danny Glover and numerous Detroit comrades, plus archival footage featuring Bill Moyers, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and Boggs’ late husband and fellow radical, James Boggs, all testify to Boggs’ highly unusual position.

James Boggs died in 1993 at age 74. The James and Grace Lee Boggs School, a Detroit charter academy on East Kirby Street, is named for them.

Featured_jimmy_grace300_13196

Grace Lee Boggs of Detroit poses with James Boggs, her husband of 40 years. He died in 1993 at age 74.

The documentary, showing at 10 p.m. Monday, is by director Grace Lee — a Korean-American living in Los Angeles who isn’t related to her subject.

GRACE LEE BOGGS: An Activist’s Life
Grace Lee Boggs “cut an extraordinary path through decades of struggle.” says a PBS summary of the film.

The filmmaker discusses her project at PBS’ site. Excerpts are here and in a video below:

Unique city: “Going to Detroit was really transformative because Detroit is unlike any other city I’d ever been in in my life.”

Personal connection: “From the moment I met Grace Lee Boggs in 2000, I knew I would have to make a longer film just about her. Over the years, I would return to Detroit, hang out and watch her hold everyone from journalists to renowned activists to high school students in her thrall. I recognized myself in all of them — eager to connect with someone who seemed to embody history itself. . . . What I’ve learned from having these conversations with Grace Lee Boggs is you never know where a conversation is going to take you.”

She “chastises me” on race: “I was kind of taken by the fact that she was this Chinese American woman in essentially a black community, a black movement. And I kept asking her questions about that. What was it like to be a Chinese woman in a black movement? And she kind of chastises me . . . where she says, ‘You keep asking me this question. You’re stuck in this idea of all these categories. I didn’t think of myself as Chinese because the Chinese American movement hadn’t emerged, and I didn’t think of myself as a woman because the women’s movement hadn’t emerged.’ . . . Here’s somebody who was born in 1915, before women in America had the right to vote, two years before the Bolshevik revolution.”

Activists in love: “One of the things she said to me [after a screening] was she really saw how her and James’s relationship was really an American love story. Part of that was that they both loved America enough to want to change it, which was so nice to hear that, and just a nice reminder of what a love story can be.”

Film’s theme: “On a really basic level it’s an ongoing conversation with Grace Lee Boggs about the evolving nature of revolution, or her evolving idea of what revolution can be — whether that’s in regard to social movements happening within her lifetime or whether it’s evolution that she sees in the city of Detroit or within herself. . . . . It is a conversation about many different things.”

“Might change the world:” “This is not an issue film, nor is it about a celebrity or an urgent injustice that rallies you to take action. It’s about an elderly woman who spends most of her days sitting in her living room thinking and hatching ideas about the next American revolution. But if you catch wind of some of those ideas, they just might change the world.”

Lessons for young viewers: “That knowledge that she has and her ability to evolve through the contradictions of these movements is something that’s really useful. Somebody who embodies history like Grace in a very real way, it’s such a gift to be able to talk to them. Maybe a younger generation could learn that there are probably scores of Grace Lee Boggses that they’re not even aware of. This one happened to write books and be active and have a documentary made about her. But I think that everybody has a story and everybody has something to contribute.”

Boggs’ reaction to film: “When she watched the finished film with an audience, I think she was incredibly moved and appreciative of how people engaged with the film. And I think she was very pleased with how much James Boggs was in the story.”

— Alan Stamm (reposted from Deadline Detroit)

Culture

A Long Ride Toward A New China