jie.xu's Blog

New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam 是著名摇滚乐队Travis的一首非常好听的歌曲。光看名字，几乎也可以引起我无限的美好想象。因为人们总是很容易由此联想到荷兰的黄金时代。

事实上，这首歌的歌词的确是充满了诗意:

"New Amsterdam"

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francois Truffaut,
Robert Zimmerman and de Niro
Paris, Texas - end of the world

New York, New York,
Good bye girl

And they meet
On Blaker Street
Or the Park that is Central
Oh no
I watched the sun go down
Down down beneath the ground
And it's a new day,
It's a new dawn,
In New Amsterdam.

The stranger in the moonlight,
Looks stranger in the moonlight

And they meet
On Blaker Street
Or the Park that is Central
Oh no
I watched the sun go down
Down down beneath the ground
And it's a new day,
It's a new dawn,
In New Amsterdam.

And we meet
On Blaker Street
Or the Park that is Central
Oh no
I watched the sun go down
Down down beneath the ground
And it's a new day,
It's a new dawn,
In New Amsterdam.

在歌词的开头提到了很多名字，都与新阿姆斯特丹——如今的纽约很有关系：Jean-Michel Basquiat是纽约著名的涂鸦画家，Francois Truffaut是著名的法国导演，写过一篇抨击法国电影的文章被纽约的出版商Simon Schuster发表， Robert Zimmerman换成另一个名字Bob Dylan，即是名闻天下的摇滚艺术家，而de Niro则是出生曼哈顿的美国最伟大的演员之一。

除此之外，Paris Texas是一部电影名，其主人公Travis则是Travis乐队名字的来源。

曲子各段之间意向比较独立，但都充满了意境。在Fran的磁力声线下，堪称完美。

恩施行记

之前曾在Wordpress上开过多次博客，最后都因为无法坚持而终究荒废。这里翻出11年于恩施开会期间写的一篇英文游记，转载于此。

Earlier this month, I joined an academic conference held in Enshi, an autonomous prefecture located in the southwest of Hubei province in China. The population of Enshi is comprised of several minorities, among which Tujia is the most famous and has the largest population.

The above picture was taken on top of the Phoenix Hill that lies behind our hotel. So the rainbow-like bridge is called Phoenix Bridge. But the river below seems to be more famous. Its name is Qingjiang and it has always be the mother river of the Tujia people.

In the evening of 13rd, August, we attended a local dinner in Bamanzi which is a Tujia restaurant not far away from our hotel. Bamanzi is in memory of an ancient Tujia general Manzi who chopped off his head to redeem his cities. People in Bamanzi have their meals in a very special way to commemorate this great ancestor. They call this “Broken Bowl”: drink a bowl of alcoholic and then smash the bowl. You’d better have it broken at one time or it will bring you infelicity. Of course you can only smash the pottery dishes coz it’s cheap and are made dedicated for this activity.

During the dinner, there was a local performance show too. All the actors and actresses wore brightly painted clothes, singing and dancing. The Tujias are very good at folk songs. Almost all the actors/actresses can sing. There was even an 80 yrs old man who might be the oldest actor in this city. He must be very healthy or he could not be so passionate on the stage. The host is a very beautiful Tujia girl. She has a loud and clear voice. OK, this is of Tujia characteristics.

The next day, we went to the Tusi City, which is a famous scenery spot in Enshi. Since it’s a local tour arranged by the conference, we had only 3 hours in the wall-protected city. Tusi is a system in recent history of China that appoints the hereditary headmen of national minority, or local emperors. So here is the place where the headmen worked and lived. Most of the houses are made of wood which is the primary material of Tujia architecture. But these are pseudo-classic architecture built around 2003. The Tusi did not live here but actually several hundreds away.

This picture was taken inside the woden palace. Its Chinese name is “九进堂” but I cannot find a proper english name for it. Maybe I can call it “Nine Advance Hall”. In ancient Chinese, nine means the most. So this represents the noble identity of the Tusi headman. The toft is built from low to high and has nine stages, thus comes the name “nine advance”.

The above picture is a bird’s-eye view of Nine Advance Hall. As you can see, the up-flying eaves are pretty special.

There was also a local show and it was really impressive. They performed the famous folk song “Tea 6″. The rhythm was very simple but absolutely unforgettable. I learned it as soon as I heard it. Didn’t waste coming here, huh?

When the show is over, the actors gave a hand-swinging dance show on the square. Hand-swing dance is a representative cultural activity that only originated from the Tujia area. It’s kind of ethnic fold sacrifice dance. But it also seems facinating to us visitors.

Here comes the end of my post. You can see more pictures on my online gallaries. Please refer to: http://24plus.yupoo.com

Network Tatoos

TED is really an great way to get new ideas. Yesterday I watched a video which talked about network tatoos. The man argued that network tatoos, like your posts and photos in facebook, twitter, linkedin and so on, would live much longer than your physical body. This gives kind of immortality. Andy Warhol has a famous saying:

In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.

That’s totally possible. This is a flat world and information is circulating unprecendentedly fast, even censorship cannot help. Just look at the great network events in China.

Another story told in the video is Atalanta. Atalanta is a greatest runner and she challenged the anybody: if you won, she would marry you, but if you lose, you would die. How did Hippomenes beat her? Well, he had wonderfull little golden apples. Every time Atalanta ran ahead, he would roll a little golden apple. She kept distracted and he eventually won the race.

This is true. The golden apples may be the red points that indicates updates in your QZone, Wechat, Weibo, whatever. You take out your cellphone and plan to do something. Suddenly you see the red points and want to check what’s new. When you switch back you even forget what you plan to do preciously.

The golden apple applies not only to your social posts, but also the digital products. You always want to have the state-of-art iPhones, Cameras. You always ran after the digital producers and picked up what they rolled to you.

Missing your focus is quite easy in the networked society. They dismember your life goals and make your life out of control.

I really love the analogy of golden apples.