Nonsense: Serpent and Beauty

Serpent is cursed.

      The greatest sin it's ever sinned is that it walks like a penis. And the second felon it's committed is the temptation of an innocent girl already married to a man. The girl is also cursed, along with her husband, because they made love under an apple tree grown by God the Lord in a garden where open sex is strictly verboten. However, as we always stereotype, a coin has but two sides. The shiny side of this sex affair is the first enlightenment in Christianity. After the intercourse of soul and flesh ever first recorded in the history, we began to look advanced, elevated, civilized and salvationed. Henceforth we are distinctive, superior, and can tell good from evil. Billions of thanks to Eva's virgin sacrifice as well as that evil devil's crimes.

      In China a serpent is not a symbol of sin. Nor does it have much to do with sex. A serpent is usually a beauty, with a charm that allures and powerful witchcraft to handle men. Once you read the story of A Man, A Monk and Two Serpents, you will immediately come to know how Chinese favor a reptile like serpent, or snake, which has gifted us plenty of imagination and creative motives. By nominating one of the twelve zodiac years Serpent, we honor the reptile with respectful attitudes. Serpent also has a nickname, given by us Chinese, Little Long or Little Dragon. Since you have noticed how important a role Long plays in our culture, you probably will take a new look at how we ponder the serpent issues.

      And things do not stop right here. Let me continue with something you perhaps have no idea of before. One of our ancestors, in our mysterious legends and mythical traditions, is a man by the name of Fuxi, with the tail of a serpent instead of the two legs as we have. I've coined a name for this man with a snake tail, Serpentaur, in the honor of the bull-headed monster in Greek mythology. Mr. Serpentaur invented the Eight Trigrams, something that Confucius had elaborated a book of annotations about, and that has exhausted the brains and minds of generations of Chinese who wanted to figure out what the Trigrams means on earth. Nowadays there are still many who write books to try to interpret what the Trigrams may tell us, but no one seems to have succeeded ever.

      If a Chinese woman has a water snake's waist, she then deserves your another look. I know many people have a stronger inclination to the appreciation of women's buttocks. You may add, What a nice ass she has! But this is not a Chinese way of compliments. Our attention is more fixed upon women's waists. One of the Kings in ancient China adored women with water snake like waists. Hence many of his wives starved to death in order to have their waists water-snaked to win the King's personal visit at night. Another evidence of the deadly aesthetics in Chinese history.

      Actually a water snake's waist is good. There in the world is an increasing population more obese than before, which not only poses a danger to the textile industry, but causes a more crowded heaven as well. For heaven's sake, men, and women, keep fit!

Nonsense: Monkey Prevails

Au commencement, Dieu créa les cieux, la terre, et le pierre.

La terre étais informe et vide: il y avais des ténèbres à la surface de l'abîme, et l'esprit de Dieu se mouvait au-dessus des eaux, et voyait le pierre que Dieu regardait avec attention.

Dieu dit, Que le singe soit! Et le singe fut!

Genesis I, Chanson de Singes

Of all the monkeys, the Monkey King is perhaps the most known all over China. He has a greater reputation than does King Kong, and has yet to spread an epidemic to cause a horror among crowds. People say Monkey King is another personification of Shiva, a major Hindu god, a destroyer and a transformer of the world. However, The Monkey King in China is a Buddhist. He wears a fur skirt made from the skin of a tiger he killed to protect his master, and a cap with microchips implanted to prevent him from agonies of wild joy, and he wields a magic wand that weighs exactly 6,750 kilograms and is said to be forged by the first emperor of China, Yu the Great, to hush away a flood long before Jesus Christ.

      He is a transformer, too, and more powerful than the American mechanical ones which needs lubricants to do the transforming. He needs not to read a spell before he transforms, but a slight brainwave within his head will trigger the magic. Surprising is that he has seventy-two options for what he transforms into, which is a trick a frightening wolfman or a thirsty vampire cannot ever possess. What's more, he takes great advantage of his hair, a thread of which, in an emergency, will be pulled out to make a holographic copy of him to fight off his enemies or do something funny. That is the evidence that Chinese made the first cloning of primates on this planet before the modern medical science came into being. Behold, he did it in Tang Dynasty, about six hundred years after Jesus Christ, when Europe shrank in the dark of the darkness of ignorance and stagnation.

      If you call a person a ridiculous monkey, you are insulting him/her in a western way. In China, a monkey is not ridiculous at all, nor is a chimp or a gorilla. Monkey stands for dexterity and agility. He is smarter than a fox and stronger than a bear if necessary. Roughly one out of twelve Chinese were born in the lunar year of the Monkey, and China has issued a zodiac stamp in 1980 to mark the monkey year, whose price has skyrocketed to make an owner of the stamp a good fortune. And cartoons and TV series were made to honor the Monkey King, over decades these cartoons and TV series have remained the most welcome. Even Mickey and Minni cannot beat him, not to mention Tom and Jerry, or Donald the duck.

      Monkey King's best mate, his brother-in-gang, Swine the Marshal, begins to emerge as one of his competent rivals for our appreciation because the former is too perfect. Throughout the story Monkey King never dated a girl and he obviously drinks too much. Some say it is because he is a stone boy who knows not to fuck. However, I'd rather think it is just because he drinks too much. You see, that is a common problem for men, and one of the lessons I've learned from the book, Pilgrimage to the West.

Nonsense: Dog Lovers

We love dogs in two meanings. First, we love them by raising them like family members. The other side, we love them by eating them. As the monk confessed in the movie of Shaolin Temple, Meat and wine through my guts, yet Buddha stays with me. It is a proof of how Chinese to philosophically maintain a balance between good and evil, meanwhile an evidence that we know well a tree is no forest. Making a delicious dish with dog meat does little harm to our perception that dogs are people's best mates.

      To ponder this phenomenon, one needs to know a little bit knowledge about Chinese style of thinking. There around China has long been a saying, Eating comes first. It does not matter what you eat, what matters is that you eat to live. To live, over the history of China, had been a tough job. According to the history, Chinese favored Clay of Bohdisattva, a white kind of clay, as food substitutes in the times of crop failures. Under such circumstance and environment, winners were those that survive. So if dogs could help us survive, their souls would grab their salvation in the heaven of Chinese.

      You must have witnessed that nowadays many Chinese consider eating dogs as a crime that could not be forgiven. Dogs are their children and a Chinese firmly believe even fierce cats like tigers won't eat their babies, not to mention human beings, civilized and full of emotions. Yet many of us eat dogs, which is based on the said idea. Dog eaters leave everything behind while eating. They exchange eating experiences and talk about good recipes. They are gourmets or amateur gourmets, in whose eyes, there probably is nothing tabooed in what to eat.

      I don't eat dogs I raise. I eat dogs in the manner of a mild hypocrisy, i.e. I only eat them without seeing the killing procedures. Actually for my life I can count the times I ate dogs. As a heavy consumer of pork, I pray to God the Lord, peace upon all the hogs I've eaten through my life. Amen.

All In Vain

Siddhartha Gautama, may he rest in peace, was shocked when he learned that man dies. He felt, as the young, handsome, respectable prince of the Shakyas in Kapilavastu, that the heaven fell over his head and the earth was split to let out the flames from the hell. He no longer drank the ruby wine nor watched the sexy dance, but sat in meditation.
　　
　　When Gautama's fear once struck my jug head on a quiet, breezy night, I felt dizzy in bed, pondering all the way what was going to happen during my postlife time, which was in vain. Life is made up of just two phases, one of which is living, thereof the other is death.
　　
　　That perhaps is a bothering experience almost everyone here has ever encountered. Each time a night rain gently falls, you lie in bed alone ruminating the past day, that annoying, answerless question may come and will not cease to emerge until Hypnos, the god of sleep, stealthily smooths your unrest and takes away your consciousness temporarily for this very night. But that is not an end. Once there you live, you are destined to be confronted by such disconcerting tollings.
　　
　　Looking back, I can clearly remember on how many nights I have been disturbed by that terrifying idea. To deprive himself of this fear, Gautama resorted to an ascetic life, which he failed. He then, with his companions, went to settle down beside a river where Gautama began to meditate in austerity, and on a diet of a single grain of rice a day. That nearly killed him. On the brink of starving, after some struggles, he was helped by a girl who offered him some food and drink. With all the strength he could gather, and the courage to overcome death, after 49 days of meditating under a peepul tree, he attained Bohdi, or Enlightenment.
　　
　　Where am I to attain my Bohdi? Do I need to meditate under a tree, too? Or should I go on a strict diet to keep off fleshly distractions? Over the time, I begin to firmly believe that imitations won't help. The era of Gautama has been left behind and to obtain my Bohdi I'd do it from scratch and anew, leaving the past as the past.
　　
　　This is a book about death. Not a death seen often on this planet, yet one among those that happened and will keep happening out there. And this is also a book about living. Not a dull living lived billions of times on this planet, but one among those that sparkled and will keep sparkling all through the history.
　　
　　And in the void something murmurs, Life has two sides; one is living, and the other death.

Nonsense: Birds Matter

Each time I see Le Coq Sportif printed on the back of one's T-shirt, I smile from the deep of my heart. Yes, Le Coq reminds of something dirty in my language. Chevrolet Nova cars didn't sell well in Spanish speaking countries because no va in Spanish means it doesn't go. You probably will go into such jokes everyday if you get more alert to words.

In many places of China, a cock is referred to a man's genital organ and a chick a prostitute. Not much different from their English counterparts, huh? Recently a computer geek has posted a video clip on Youtube displaying that a (real!) cock's head is the most stable system ever on this planet, in which a cock, in its owner's swaying arms, successfully kept its head steady enough to surprise all those complaining that their operating systems are somehow unstable. That video clip has hit the core essence that we relate cock to a man's genital organ. It has figuratively revealed the Tao of how genital organs should work.

Li Kui, an angry young man in the 11th century of our era, a jail officer in old China, dislikes a person by addressing him bird man. Nearly every Chinese knows this famous addressing. Thus you must be careful with this phrase because a bird man in China flies not, but sucks in fact. As language itself evolves, now we are saying, He does not bird you. If a person does not bird you, he doesn't give a shit about your being.

However, as people always recite, a coin has two sides. If a man is very birdy, he has some reputation. He may be a guy who is able to drink a lot or whose bed pleasures can last overnight. I'd believe this is a metaphor as, in some areas of China, a man's genital organ is called bird. If one is as firm and strong as a penis erected, he has something to boast about.

Birds matter in Chinese culture. The wife of Long, the Chinese dragon, is Feng, a phoenix like bird that only ranks the second with Long as the first in the hierachy of royal symbolism. Nonetheless, in the long history of China, there have been only two instances that Feng overtook Long's missionary position in the hierachy, which shows we are diehards to observe traditional ideas and customs.

Nonsense: Swine Totem

One of the daily curses my fellow countrymen often use is, literally, "swine fucked". It means "Your birth was an accident of your mother fucked by a swine." Or it really means what it pronounces, "You are fucked by a swine."

      A swine, for a long time in the eyes of my fellow countrymen, is not a good partner for sex since we, in that area of my country, adore dishes made from swine meat. Sauteed, steamed, stir fried, deep fried, boiled, seasoned or smoked in the kitchen for later cooking. We seldom relate its meat, including everything all of its body, to dirty curses. But we still curse with "swine fucked" everyday. A less offending version, "You are a swine/pig", is often used between intimate friends for something silly one has done.

      Some experts say, based on some unclear historical finds and research on ancient paintings and drawings, Swine is the prototype of Long, the Chinese dragon. Thus the Long Totem probably originated from Swine Totem. Some argued back that the Long was obviously an image of a serpent with some modifications. Personally I won't worship a serpent however fierce and dangerous it may seem. A serpent is not a jaguar. It has no beautiful furs, no handsome body outline, no frightening roars, no cutting eyes that penetrate. While a swine, except for its eyes, has all those features.

      Undoubtedly my opinion will be less appreciated. But it won't stop me from cursing with the name of this mammal in my daily speak and meanwhile cooking delicious food with its meat. So is the world going. One has to learn that a coin has two sides.

Slumdog Millionaire: Blood Is Blood

　My brother fucked my woman, and took her away by violence. Shall I forgive him or kill him?
　　
　　Take your side.
　　
　　I'd forgive him. Because blood is blood. And a woman is just a woman. For Jamal Malik, a slum lad for the first time of his life bathing in the river of love, he probably would not stand with me. But he did. I've spent couple of years to reach that understanding and he did it without a second thought. That's what singles him out.
　　
　　However, there was truly a blood tie between Latika and Jamal, onward from the time she first slept under the same roof with Jamal and Salim on the soaking night, and that tie was again strengthened at the moment the little brothers had missed her hand on the roaring train. Miserable emotions have deeper roots. And a young mind would probably go all the way to tackle the problems however tough they seem.
　　
　　If someone dies for you, you are perhaps the most honored. This moral standard holds true all through cultures. In fact, Salim died first of all just for Jamal, and then he died for Latika. His death's meaning more than doubled because he at last died for us, revealing a mind of responsibility and a heart of blood and love.
　　
　　It's a world separate from mine, down at the south tip of the continent I live in. But I see similar things happening out there, more vigorous, full of hope, and with persistence. If I'd be asked again what India is like, I'd take a second thought and say, I don't know.

RocknRolla: Let's Talk Movie

Once my views go beyond movies, my mind is bewildered, my eyes dazzled, my limbs misplaced and my mouth shut. So let's just talk movie.
　　
　　RocknRolla is a good make that will give you brainwaves at least at my very first glance. Drugs, music, sex, violence, bribery, plus the famous cockney speak that swallows each initial H sound. I won't take to hide my love for this movie in order to single my self out. Or I must say, I am not that type who have exceptional tastes for fine, interesting moving pictures.

　　

    One of the core magics of the modern movies is a chain of accelerated changes of scenes like another dish is served before you finish the previous one in a restaurant, or fast forwards or rewinds of the film as if you were manipulating a real time machine. However, it is important that each scene change would come together and make a meaningful whole, and that the time machine would land you at the designated point. And fortunately RocknRolla is among the ones that succeeded in those.

 

　　A modern movie won't do without sex. A movie without sex won't be nominated for the Academy Awards. And a movie without sex is like a dinner without wine, or martini. You got to dip your head into the alcohol in order to get a clearer view of what the world is like in your mind. And sex means the same. It touches our more real egos. Had Bobski not had sex with the lawyer, Lenny would've survived. Had Stella not had sex with One Two, she would've survived, and Uri's lucky painting would not have gone all a long way back to Johnny boy.
　　
　　And a gangsta in modern movies smokes. He would flip the cigarette pack open and light one of the slim, white, little devils in a go that catches your eyes. Johnny boy didn't do that, but made verses with piano accompaniment in favor of his beloved king-size. One of the trends of our movie making aesthetics is a blend of classical art forms with common things in our daily lives. Obviously inventions are more difficult while recombination would somehow spark our inspiration.
　　
　　As for music, since it's a rock and roll movie, it does not have room for pop music. In my geeky opinion, long time exposures to pop music kill your brain cells. People with advanced flavors love rock and roll, jazz, blues etc. And exceptional elites listen to Mozart, Bach, Chopin , Rakhmaninov etc. For the wild bunch in the movie, and Johnny boy, the world is a masterpiece, classical, with up and downs, beginnings and endings, plenty of key notes that rock, and finally a highlighted conclusion.
　　
　　So, what is a real rocknrolla? I don't know, because I don't want a fucking lot. What I want is just talk movie, as was said in my first paragraph. Don't expect more from a movie, it is just a movie.

The Day The Earth Stood Still: 烂片一个

这部电影是 1951 年出品的同名电影的重新演绎。糟糕的是重新演绎也没有超过前辈。当然，你可以惊叹现在科技如此发达，让电影可以有如此多的特技，细致的画面，更帅更漂亮的主角。奇妙的幻想，片中那个无名金属制造的机器人也比 1951 年那个更加强大而恐怖。可惜，克拉图的使命很无趣。克拉图的理由很没有说服力，到底是什么让克拉图改变了想法？是否摧毁人类是克拉图可以自由决定？难道还有比外星人说中文和克拉图解数学题更可笑的情节？
　　
　　另一个“日”，也就是《独立日》，则要有趣且有意义得多。起码我们能从中看到希望。到底是爱的力量更大，还是斗争的力量更大？让人类的感情感动外星人从而拯救地球，或者是勇士的反抗打败外星人从而拯救了地球，哪个看起来更靠谱？你也许要争辩说外星人进化了，我们的抵抗都是无用没有结果的，只有用人类的感情来作武器......好吧，我承认感情是最深沉的力量之一，可惜古往今来感情很少改变了历史，倒是勇士的争斗决定了历史的结局。
　　
　　嗯，我是不是有点象片中那个可笑的美国国防部长？作为人类的一员，我必须世俗一点，如果你打败了我，我认栽；如果你杀死了我，我会沉默的死去。当然，如果你是我的猎物，我是不会留情的，呵呵。

The Interpretation of Dreams: Practical Application?

Once a girl told me that her dreams were haunted by such scenes where she kept climbing some stair steps which seemed endless. I concluded at first thought that she was deeply harassed by sex problems. Maybe I was wrong or Freud should be responsible for my wrong.
　　
　　This is not a bad book. The English translation is rather better than the Chinese one from the perspective of a language learner. And do not expect that this book be a fortune teller for we are always trying to tell our tomorrows by interpreting our dreams. Basically this book does not provide any guidelines on how to do the dream interpretation. It is more of an archive of the intriguing cases by Freud as psychiatrist, plus his comprehensive annotations.
　　
　　Dream interpretation is a tough and interesting job. It dives into one's deeper mental realm, scratches out the hidden secrets and carefully examine them from inside out. Meanwhile it is to some degree dangerous in that a biased or wrong interpretation of some dream would lead to probable negative consequences because we truly are very much influenced by our subconsciousness in an unconscious way, where our reasoning retreats but our instincts step out.
　　
　　To end my nonsense, I'd like to go on with that girl harassed by stair steps climbing dreams. She might not have sex problems at all or she apparently was undergoing a critical time of her sex experience, who knows. However, I suggest you be an idiot and avoid conversations on psychic phenomenon while hanging out with women.

Micro Trends: Chinese already said so

There is already a Chinese saying that reads 'tell big from small', or in plain English, (a wise man) can tell big changes from small trends. Actually the author is a wise man that we Chinese have been speaking of for long. However, the way that the author differs from a typical wise man we like is that he backs his thoughts and ideas with numerical figures that are statistically rich and persuasive.
　　
　　 And from his book I can sense a wider gap between a real America and an America that exists only in the imaginations of the plurality of Chinese in China. The small book not only introduces the micro trends that drive America forward but as well displays a finer picture of how the Americans live their lives. No need to panic, I am definitely sure that China will evolve onto a higher and more civilized tier of the civilizations in the universe.
　　
　　 For English language learners this is also a good choice for vocabulary building, extensive reading and/or subway time killing. There in China are too many stereotyping English books at high prices which only tell nothing but pieces of fragments excerpted from their older ancestors, which is one of the worst forms of plagiarism.