Remember Qian Xuesen

(December 11, 1911 – October 31, 2009)






Jiaotong University (1934)
Caltech (1939)
First director of JPL (1949)
Founder of China's rocket program.

My conversation with Kate Schapira

I had very stimulating and productive email exchanges with the wonderful poet Kate Schapira between Nov. 2008 and Jan. 2009, and it just came out in Mantis #8 (from Stanford University), which I just received this afternoon, while strugglling for the final touch of a new piece. Thank you, Kate.

Zhang Jike's first World Team Cup title in Linz

Photo By: Georg Diener

With superb attacking and control and confidence he methodically destroyed Oh Sang Eun in three straight games to set the tone for China's three straight match victory over Korea last Sunday. This will be the starting point for many more titles to come. I root for him in 2012.

"Class of 1978" in Flushing

It's sunny again yesterday and I walked to Flushing Town Hall on Northern Boulevard for the first time to hear Ensemble ACJW performing works by the composers from the Class of 1978, the first class of composers in China's music conservatories after the Cultural Revolution. I had encountered their lives and stories in Liu Sola's novella "You Have No Choice" and been quite shaken and delighted while I was still in Xi'an, and I have read and/or heard more about them and some of their works sporadically in the past few years, but this was the first time I met the constellation of works in a live performance. The performed works included

CHEN QIGANG: Instants d'un Opéra de Pékin for Solo Piano (2000)
CHEN YI: Qi for Flute, Cello, Percussion, and Piano (1996-97)
BRIGHT SHENG: String Quartet No. 3 (1993)
GUO WENJING: Parade for Six Peking Opera Gongs, Op. 40 (2003)
ZHOU LONG: Taigu Rhyme for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Percussion (2003)

The extraordinary inventiveness and energy exhibited in the works were quite refreshing. I was particularly fascinated by Zhou Long and Chen Yi's pieces. I wonder how differently the composers think and compose now and tomorrow from when they were in the conservatories in China or US or Europe or six or ten years ago.

Zhang Jike won the decisive match (vs. Ma Lin) in the team final in the 11th Chinese National Games

Most impressive display of the devastating backhand banana loop in returning services from the forehand side! This has to be his most important win so far. I wish him more successes in the Men's Singles event.

Walkout at UC Berkeley

What is to be done to truly effect positive social change?

Today 33 years ago

I was 11 and into my second semester in high school. The "Criticize Deng and Counterattack the Right-Deviationst Reversal-of-Verdicts Trend” campaign was running into high gear. We were put on constant alert for possible afterquakes following the devastating earthquake in Tangshan. In the afternoon I heard the news either from the radio broadcast or other classmates. I tried very hard but tears just couldn't fall. On my way from classroom back to home, I saw the young soldiers who belonged to an artillery unit stationed in the school playground to help produce artificial rainfall in the area plagued by draught. I saw them wailing seated on the ground in a perfect circle. I had longed to be a soldier since my first memory. But I didn't. I didn't cry. For a moment I had infinite doubt about my true feeling towards the great Chairman. I recalled his frail frame and shaky gestures greeting foreign visitors in the newsreel I saw the day before. I actually had a vague feeling of the inevitable right there in the movie theater.

The first English sentence we leared in high school is "Long Live Chairman Mao." And the first song we learned to sing in English is "I Love Peking's Tiananmen."

The poem I liked most in high school is his "Shangsha."

长沙

独立寒秋，
湘江北去，
橘子洲头。
看万山红遍，
层林尽染；
漫江碧透，
百舸争流。
鹰击长空，
鱼翔浅底，
万类霜天竞自由。
怅寥廓，
问苍茫大地，
谁主沉浮。

携来百侣曾游，
忆往昔峥嵘岁月稠。
恰同学少年，
风华正茂；
书生意气，
挥斥方遒。
指点江山，
激扬文字，
粪土当年万户侯。
曾记否，
到中流击水，
浪遏飞舟。

CHANGSHA

Mao Zedong

(1925)


Alone I stand in the autumn cold
On the tip of Orange Island,
The Xiang River flowing north.
I see ten thousand hills crimsoned,
And the woods in deep-dye;
The mighty stream, saturated with bluish green,
A hundred barges racing by.
Eagles cleave the air high up,
Fish glide in the shallow bottom;
Under the frosty sky all creatures are fighting for freedom.
Brooding over this immensity,
I ask, who decides the destiny
Of this boundless land?

Once I was here with a hundred companions,
Vivid yet thick those rugged times.
Young we were, schoolmates,
At life's full bloom;
Filled with students' enthusiasm,
Boldly we cast all restraints aside.
Pointing to the land,
Setting the people afire with our words,
We counted the marquises in those years no more than muck.
Remember still
How, venturing midstream, we struck the waters
And waves stayed the speeding boats?

(my translation compiled and edited from various sources)

His words will stay...