3/21/2009 NTUEE64 重聚 台大校園

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「別夢依稀咒逝川，故人三十二年前。」 這次相聚，是我與洪俊雄1966年分別之後四十二年第一次見面。他第一句就說，「你在 Florida，我要去找你。」 非常歡迎。 有朋自遠方來。不亦樂乎。我們多少年才能相聚一次？下次再見又是何時？

我們八個班友加上五位夫人，中午在「傅鐘」集合。 是洪敏弘在校園的一個新餐廳為我們安排了午餐。洪董是我們八位中唯一與台大常有接觸的人。他送給每個人一本叫「挑戰創新－台大創業家」的書。 洪敏弘是書中創業家當中唯一從電機系大學部畢業的的學生。 是我們６４級的光榮。他也給大家一片「台灣生態探索」的DVD。 我從頭看到尾。 非常美麗感人。使我知道台灣每年仍然提升几個mm。每天都有地震，而且五年一大震。吃飯的時候我坐在陳正一夫婦旁邊，與他們交談最久。陳總從台灣衛星第一把手退休後，並沒有閒下來。夫人吳紀珠在中國，越南和台灣全島部有業務。陳說他是她提箱子的祕書。行影不離 席上幾乎都是以台語交談。我的台語本來就不太靈光。這次回台任教，在很多場合裡，我都是「聽無」。 但在這個餐桌上不同。 我完全可以聽懂。原因可能是班友們仍然講的是古典台語。與我在童年時聽到的相同。現下年輕教授的台語已有相當的改變。我聽起來非常吃力。

相聚的目的之一是確定下次 REUNION 的時間地點。 陳哲俊一直都為這些事情費心。基本上，我們決定在明年農曆新年左右見面。這是台灣方面同學的最佳時段。

午餐之後，我們跟隨洪敏弘在校園散步，想看看見新建的几棟電機大樓。他仍然是電機工程系的教授，有大門的鑰匙。現在電機系（包括資訊系）有100多位教授。我們的老師白光弘以九十的高齡，仍然在這裡作研究。還記得在我們新生訓練的時候，有師長以「台大之大」為題教訓我們？我現在更能體會它。以前台大的後院已建設得與我們在時的前院差不多大小，有新式的大樓，有林蔭的大道，也有佈滿野薑花的池塘。當年嶄新的化學館已顯得非常渺小。特別是我們每天上課的工程館。現在是全屬土木系。看起來是那樣的破爛老舊。土木工程系真該加油。

從椰林道路出來，已是四點多鐘。有人建議我們去新生南路吃紅豆冰。他們說我們當年這家店已經存在，但是我無法記起。當我們坐在店裡品嚐紅豆冰時，有一個年輕人很有禮貌的對我們「笑問客從何處來？」 我們據實以告。我們是台大電機64校友，回母校參觀。想不到這個年輕人也是台大電機的畢業生。他比我們晚了20屆，現在是交通大學教授。當我為他介紹我們的同班同學時。有台灣電信局的大老陳呈祿，有台灣衛星太斗陳正一，台灣遙測先驅陳哲俊。他不得不對我們這一群另眼相看。後來，他說他研究的領域是光電。我告訴他我們正好有這行的專家吳振和。就坐在他面前。他不但有創新理論，而且建立一家世界級的 LED 公司。當我們離開時，他對我們一一握手道別。其實，我發現台大電機系的都非常和曖可親。幾周前，我與小慈逛台大校園，請一位面善的同學為我們拍照片。一問，他竟然也是電機系的學生。

回程，阿博(孫芳德)同我一起搭乘台北捷運。我要去火車站搭高鐵回台中，他要回他母親的家，在天母。他說他在士林下車之後，再乘公共汽車到天母。我非常驚奇。以阿博之富，竟然還等公共汽車。更令我驚奇的是，他建議我如果乘高鐵到台南，不如學他，乾脆坐到高雄，然後回頭搭區間車到台南，因為高鐵台南站離台南市區太遠，要300新台幣的計程車費。如此勤儉起家，一輩子改不過來。「一憚食，一瓢飲。人不堪其憂，回也不改樂其，賢哉回也。」

昨天我與阿牟通電話，他要看照片。一看，他說「你看起來比真人年輕，是因為你臉上的皺紋在照片上顯示不出來。」好個阿牟，實事求是，一針見血。附上兩張在校園拍的照片。

Character Writing

Culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group. In elementary school, we learned that 文化是血統,語言,宗教,和生活習慣的綜合体. Here language plays an important part. Why are there so many dialects in China? Because there are many mountains & rivers that tend to isolate people from contacting each other. When time goes by, each region develops its own language. Language also shapes the way you think, you behave & forges a set of values in daily life. Minority people in China usually live in a remote or isolate area. When time goes by, it develops its own language. Say it in a reverse way, if you want to separate people, let them speak different kind of languages & soon they will drift apart. Babel towers in ancient Babylon is an excellent example.

Whenever I visit Taiwan, I hang around book stores & end up buying a lot of books. When I visit mainland China, I also go to bookstores. The BookCity in Shanghai (福州路), seven-story building, filled with thousands of books. I spent a lot of time inside but I didn't buy anything. I try to explain my behavior. I found that I didn't have any incentive or interest to buy them. The main reason is that the printed words look so alien to me & sometime they look even worse than Japanese. Either 白字連連 or 錯字連篇. The culprit is the simplified characters. If I have to read the translated "Pride & Prejudice" in simplified characters, I rather read it in English directly. 文章帶感情, 文字亦然. There are two camps when it comes to writing, Traditional & Simplified. The former is called 简体字, the latter has several names: 正体字, 原体字, 傳統字, 繁体字 etc. I have no idea why some people go along with 繁体字. It is derogatory, misleading & bad. How could it be so complicate for several hundred years & people don’t feel it. I think the English translation says it better, Traditional or 傳統字. Our ancestors used traditional writing for so long & also used brush pen (毛筆). They didn't have any complains. They simply grew with it. Nowadays we don't use brush pens & we write without any problems in schools. As a matter of fact, with the help of computer technology, the input of Chinese characters is via keyboard (most kids do) & bypass the handwriting. The side effect of this is that we are having a new generation of people that can only read but can not write. In other words, people can't write without a computer. It is scary if you can't count or calculate without a calculator.

In fact, 傳統字 already has a set of characters simplified & should be adopted & included in 簡体字. The current 簡体字 is way over the reasonable limit. It is a bad idea to get rid of 同音字. We already have a lot of confusion in speech. We should use the writing to reduce it instead of aggravating it. For example, most people seem to agree in keeping 後 & 遊.

If Chinese people have the wisdom, they should sit down & really think hard for the issue of the character writing. This is important & it will have enormous influence to the future generations. Both camps should recognize the pros & cons of 簡体字 & 傳統字. Just sit down & iron out a compromise version of writing, called it 進化字. Without it, we will see Chinese people drift apart when time goes by. In fact, it already causes a lot of confusion outside China as to which is the right way to teach our kids Mandarin.

Faith in Spring

The spring is coming, a time for renewal and awakening. Poets throughout history have penned many a wonderful expression of man's sentiments relating to the seasons, to nature and the world in which we inhabit however briefly. German Lied or art song has many fine examples of such expression. With the current market so depressed, we need some faith in our future and our society. I do find one lied that expresses the faith in spring, the upcoming spring. It is Fruhlingsglaube (Spring Faith) by Franz Schubert, a very lovely song, the more you listen to it, the more you will like it. The text was written by Johann Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862):

Die linden Lüfte sind erwacht,
Sie säuseln und wehen Tag und Nacht,
Sie schaffen an allen Enden.
O frischer Duft, o neuer Klang!
Nun, armes Herze, sei nicht bang!
Nun muß sich alles, alles wenden.

Die Welt wird schöner mit jedem Tag,
Man weiß nicht, was noch werden mag,
Das Blühen will nicht enden;
Es blüht das fernste, tiefste Tal:
Nun, armes Herz, vergiß der Qual!
Nun muß sich alles, alles wenden.

The English Translation:

The mild breezes are awakened,
They whisper and move day and night,
And are at work everywhere.
O fresh scent, o new sound!
Now, poor heart, don't be afraid.
Now all, all must change.

The world is more beautiful with every day,
One knows not what yet may be,
The flowering will not end.
Even the deepest, most distant valley blooms.
Now, poor heart, forget your torment.
Now all, all must change.

You can listen to the lied sung by Christa Ludwig (born in 1928) in the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0sRELvcdmM

Christa Ludwig is a German retired mezzo-soprano, famous for her performances of opera & Lieder.

PS: 春天 has many names: Spring in English, Fruhling in German, Printemps in French, Primavera in Italian & Spanish.

Red Clay Field

I came across this from Yahoo Taiwan. Please take a look.

http://www.wretch.cc/blog/crystal54321/22390093

It's amazing, and I can't detect any digital manipulation. Yet it seems someone has designed this scene for show much like those grandiose Chinese movie scenes. Can an ordinary routine farming turn out such spectacles unintentionally by the farmers? If it was orchestrated, then what was the the purpose other than the obvious?

冬天的故事

Shakespeare’s play “The Winter’s Tale” is a well-known tragedy & comedy.  But it really has nothing to do with the winter except that it is "A sad Tale best for Winter to tell about”.

Chinese new-year always falls between late January & early February in a cold winter season.  However, we call it Spring Festival (春節).  To most people, it is a festive winter event. Back to our good old winter days in Taipei, we school kids had to suffer in a classroom without heating systems.  I remember we shuddered in the corner of 木造楼 between the classes. Nobody dared getting out to play.  The best moment was to buy 熱騰騰的燒餅 inside the building between classes. Some street vendors got very creative to give us the service, 真是一大德政 .  I sort of envied the kids in southern Taiwan as the weather there was much milder. I found that in winter we kids spent more time inside & had more time for study, read & write. It seems it should also be true for most adults.  But to my surprise, I had a hard time to recall good literary work, music or art related to winter.  Meanwhile most people can name a lot of them related to spring, summer & autumn. Perhaps people play mahjong or poker more often in winter instead of something more productive. Anyway, here are some I can remember.

四時田家苦樂歌, 鄭燮
This can be called “Four Seasons, Chinese Style”
冬天
老樹搓枒, 撼四壁, 寒声正怒. ... 茅舍日斜雲釀雪, 長堤路断風和雨. …田家苦.
砍松枝帶雪, … 秫酒釀成欢里舍, … 官租完了離城郭. 笑山妻塗粉过新年, 田家樂.
This shows the Chinese New Year really falls in the winter season. There seems no music composition exists for this fine literary work.

岳陽楼記, 范仲淹
若夫霪雨霏霏, 連月不開, 陰風怒號, 濁浪排空, 日星隱耀, 山岳潛形, 商旅不行, 檣傾楫椎, 薄暮冥冥, 虎嘯猿啼.. 登斯楼也, 則有去國怀鄉, 憂讒畏譏, 滿目簫然, 感極而悲者矣.
So winter is not the season to get excited about. You feel depressed, sad & dejected. It is hardly a positive season. Even Napoleon & Hitler got wiped out just because they couldn’t finish the campaigns before the winter came.

Unknown Author
大雪紛纷何所似? … 灑塩空中差可比, …未若柳絮因風起.
I have been in Milwaukee this winter. This is my version:
大雪紛纷何所似? … 白蝴小蝶滿天飛

飲馬長城窟行, 漢樂府
枯桑知天風, 海水知天寒, 入門各自媚, 誰肯相為言.
This really shows the importance of the family.

天淨沙, 馬致遠
枯藤老樹昏鴉,, 小橋流水平沙, 古道,西風瘦馬,. 夕陽西下, 断腸人在天涯.
This one is actually 秋思. But 枯藤老樹昏鴉, sounds so destitute, it really belongs to winter. If you have ever visited New England in October, you know what Autumn looks like---紅楓银杏滿山谷. I just have to assume 馬致遠 drank too much XO on the day he wrote this 元曲.

The music that carries the title of Seasons:
Tchaikovsky's “Four Seasons” is a piano work. Three pieces related to the winter are 聖誕節, 爐边 & 狂欢節.

Haydn's “Seasons” is an oratorio (清唱劇) composition.

Glazunov's “Four Seasons” is ballet music.  It starts unconventionally with winter first then spring, summer and autumn.  The winter contains frost, ice, hail and snow.

Vivaldi's “Four Seasons” is a set of four concertos.  The winter contains three movements: Cold, Rain and Wind.  The second movement has a mellow and slow tempo, can be viewed as Snow or Rain. I listened to this one while I was in Milwaukee.  I was in the living room right next to a fireplace, a glass of red wine in my hand.  It was in the early evening, snowflakes flying around in front of the yard. I felt so cozy and comfortable and the scene outside was so beautiful and white.  It was truly a White Winter. The following YouTube link is a good one to view:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc_yKk0k5XE

Schubert “Winterreise” is a song cycle. Winterreise is Winter Journey (冬之旅) in English.  It portrays a wanderer sings about his beloved, loses his beloved, feels lonliness, solitude & tries to gather his strength to carry on.  There are 24 poems written by Wilhelm Muller. Schubert read it & put his emotion on music.  The most famous one is the #5, Lindenbaum (linden tree or 菩提樹). We all learned the tune when we were in high school. Here are the translated lyrics:

By the fountain, near the gate,
There stands a linden tree;
I have dreamt in its shadows
So many sweet dreams.

I carved on its bark
So many loving words;
I was always drawn to it,
Whether in joy or in sorrow.

Today, too, I had to pass it
In the dead of night.
And even in the darkness
I had to close my eyes.

And its branches rustled
As if calling to me:
"Come here, to me, friend,
Here you will find your peace!"

The frigid wind blew
Straight in my face,
My hat flew from my head,
I did not turn back.

Now I am many hours
Away from that spot,
And still I hear the rustling:
There you would have found peace!

You can listen to the song in the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC7gEVSgf9k

The Chinese lyrics we learned are a slightly modified version:
我家有菩提老樹, 枝幹密綠葉蔭繁. 回憶我別離家園, 曾工作綠茵边, 我对樹發下誓願, 並刻字在樹間. 倘若希望不能遂, 我誓永遠不歸返, 我誓永遠不歸返..

The original lyrics are sad & despairing.  The Chinese lyrics change the mood to desiring and promising. So the way to sing the song should be quite different. This also shows the power of music as a universal & versatile language in influencing people.  Lindenbaum reminds me of a good old movie of 1956. In Taiwan, the title of the movie is 菩提樹.  I bet most of us watched this German movie. The movie is not released in the US.  However, I found a Youtube link related to the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vkg3HEXLx8

This is the last scene of the movie.  The Trapp family was in the detention center of Ellis Island.  Their stay in the US depended on the financial sponsors.  They were in the brink of losing them. Desperately they sang the Lindenbaum.  Suddenly everybody is silent & listen.  The combination of the video & music is so touching & powerful that changes the whole thing.  If you have visited New York & Ellis Island, you will easily understand the whole meaning here. In the video clip, watch carefully, you will see the Statue of Liberty looms in the background outside the window, a sign of hope & freedom.  This final scene was well done & the music was the main theme to make the whole thing incredulously heartwarming.

PS: The Trapp family & the story are portrayed in another famous movie “The Sound of Music”, 1965. This is an American musical written by Roger & Hammerstein. Julie Andrews became a very popular actress after this movie. The movie was a blockbuster for several years.

Secret Recipe

Everytime I vsited Taiwan, I was always amazed to see "secret recipe" all over the places. Ancient secret recipe, palacial secret recipe, or family secret recipe, and so forth. Not that other countries don't have secret recipes, but they seem so ubiquitous in Taiwan (I assume China is the same though I have never been to China). The most famous secret recipe is probably the recipe of Coca Cola which is even insured.

A secret recipe must have started with a good product (a unique food, drink, medicine, etc.) which the proprietor claimed to have been made with secret recipe. As the product gained recognition or commercial success, competitors began to copy; and before long the marketplace would be flooded with similar products with their own secret recipes - real or not. Here is an example. In late 2000 I was in Puli to see my family and the damage caused by the earthquake the year before. I found so many little store fronts selling salty crispy chicken (yien-su-tzi) and each claimed to have prepared the chicken with old family secret recipe. I didn't think there was such food even 30 years ago, so any such recipe couldn't have been old. It turned out, a lot of people had lost their jobs after the earthquake. To make a little extra income, many people whose home had a street front would set up a small stand with a big wok for frying the chicken. And to compete, the minimum culinary credit would be the secret family recipe. Just in downtown Puli, there were no less than 30 of them. There is little doubt that none of the stores actually has its own secret family recipe. It just shows the marketing magic of "old" and "secret" in our society.

Anything with secrecy attracts attention, for curiosity is a human nature. Sometimes, secrecy even commands superiority. It is not unusual in China for a teacher to keep one or two key knowledge from his pupils. This is understandable if someday the teacher and his pupils would become competitors - another case of survival tactics. But withholding knowledge is a costly drawback to the advancement of civilization.

We have heard often about "ancient Chinese secrets" which Chinese people are generally quite proud of, and are often envied by people around the world. Here the problem is "ancient". It implies that since the ancient time, we Chinese have been incapable of doing better; all we have been doing is following the recipes from long time ago. For generations we have been just a bunch of pharmacists grabbing herbs according to an Rx written hundreds of years ago by some doctor; as in Chinese "Tsao Fuang Zwa Yau". It is hard to believe that through generations, no one has raised the questions such as why the recipe works so well, or what happens if one of the ingrients becomes unavailable. But I have never seen any claim like "modern improved Chinese secret" anywhere. It is also quite embarrassing to keep being proud of our "ancient stuff", to which we contributed nothing, without having anything of our own generation to speak of. Are we really so inferior to our ancestors? And for so long?

Some may say that by attaching "ancient" and "secret", you imply it has been proven for a long time and is not publicly available, thus jacking up its scarcity and value. But since it is not publicly known, how can we know it will do us no harm? Or how can we know it will do us wonder?

Since we are at it, I will throw another one in here. We often hear people say, "my father used to say ....", or "my grandfather used to say..." or "my mother used to say...". As if any saying by elders automatically commands credibility. Well, how do we know his/her elders actually said it? And it gets quite entertaining when a middle aged man says, "when I was a kid, my mother used to say so and so." Now, when he was a kid, his mother probably was younger than he is now. This means that after accumulating more years of life experiences than his mother had then, he is still not confident enough to assert his own so and so.

Cheers.

Cosmos & Beethoven's Symphony #7

Beethoven composed nine symphonies, the great four (3,5,6,9), the classical four (1,2,4,8) & a mutated 7. Back in 1957, I used to hang around 中華路 in Taipei. I found Beethoven’s symphonies on LP one by one starting great four, then the classical four. But I had to wait for another year to get #7. This one was rarely played on radio. The first time I listened to it, I felt that it was not really like Beethoven. It sounded some music from the outer space. It gave me a 突兀之感. After a few years, I gradually got used to it and started to appreciate its uniqueness---mutation.

During the decade of 1970 & 1980, we were busy in building our family and career. That was the age of toil, struggle and accomplishment. Of course, we also found time to watch TV for news & entertainment. Most programs were routines. Occasionally, we encountered some good, special programs. Among these high quality programs, COSMOS is especially a piece of classic. This series has 13 episodes with Carl Sagan as a narrator. At that time, we were so busy that we rarely had time to watch it complete. But I was impressed at that time and could never forget it. The Cosmos is a Greek word for 'The Order of the Universe, opposite of Chaos. So the correct translation of Cosmos is '和諧的宇宙' in Mandarin.

It takes time to watch 13 episodes. If you want to save time, just watch episode 1, 2 and 13.
Episode 1: The Shore of the Cosmic Ocean
Episode 2: One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
Episode 13: Who Speaks for Earth

Episode 1: The Shore of the Cosmic Ocean
This episode talks about the big bang, life and evolution (where we come from) etc. It condenses the life of Cosmos into a one-earth-year calendar in time scale. Here is the event of the last few hours of the last day of the year:

10:30 pm:    First human being appears
11:46 pm:    Fire is tamed
11:59:20 pm: Domestication of plants and animals, tool making
11:59:35 pm: Agricultural communities, first city
11:59:50 pm: Human history starts

So all historical events occurred in the last 10 seconds of the comic calendar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfCc7ZJjHiM&t=153s

Skip the very beginning and start from 2:04.
2:08-2:45--- Here the mysterious cosmic theme precedes each episode.
5:20-7:00---To study cosmos, it needs scientific methods and imagination. Here Sagen released a dandelion seed that will carry us to the world of dream and the world of facts.
12:10-28:50---The earth in the cosmos, our home.
28:51-30:32---The earth with Beethoven's Symphony #7 played in the background.
30:35-36:45---The way Eratosthenes found out the circumference of the earth.
38:10-50:07---The up and down of the great learning center, Alexandria, a lost civilization.
51:00-51:56---Dutch scientists in 17th century made advance to the knowledge of cosmos.
53:02-57:00--- Cosmic Calendar is presented from big bang to now.
57:01-58:00---With 15 billion years of cosmic evolution, we have a choice, enhancing our life or squandering our heritage.

Episode 2: One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
This episode talks about the relation between 日本平家 and 鬼面蟹. This artificial selection is actually a natural selection since human being is homo sapiens, a natural species. "The secret of evolution are time and death. Time for the slow accumulation of favorable mutations and Death to make room for new species". It condenses 6 billion years of cosmic history with a 40-second computer animation. It also illustrates what happened in the last 15 days of the cosmic calendar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSnhugfPMGY&t=1571s

12/15: Cambrian explosion
12/18: Trilobites appear
12/19: First fish and vertebrate appear
12/20: Plants begin to colonize the land
12/22: First winged insects & amphibians appear
12/23: First tree and first reptile appear
12/24: Dinosaurs rule the earth
12/26: First mammal appears
12/27: Birds appear, dinosaurs disappear & flowers appear
12/30: Human like mammals appear

Episode 13: Who Speaks for Earth
This episode summarizes the beginning of the cosmos and how it is heading in the future. "We, as a human species, speak for earth. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast from which we spring."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGds93obhpM&t=3217s

While I watched this last episode 13, I was deeply moved when I discovered Beethoven’s symphony #7 dancing around the scenes. The second movement’s main theme came out when Sagan talked about a civilization may destroy itself before it acquires way to escape the planet. The music is like a meditation, murmur and sad. The first movement popped up when the last astrologer and first astronomer Johannes Kepler showed up. He deciphered the mystery of the cosmos. Suddenly I felt the power of Beethoven’s #7, the 1st movement was so mysterious and yet so powerful that moved me immensely. This happens when video, audio and the narration played out in sequence. Then Sagan continued to talk about the struggles of science, hard work and how to be objective to find the truth. Here the 3rd movement ushered in, struggled, toiled, failed miserably, limped around but made progress. Finally, human being conquered the obstacles and achieved the success. At this moment, the 4th movement marched in, head high with its brilliant theme. The whole episode and series end with the final section of the Beethoven #7, powerful and triumphant. It moved me to tears.

Every episode of Cosmos starts with a cosmic call, a piece of mysterious tune and a flying dandelion---let the imagination fly and mind explore. The tune is peaceful, yet mysterious and haunting. It talks about big bang, evolution, history, religions, DNA, memory, where we are from and where we are heading.

If you think 朝聞道,夕死可也 (or 朝聞道,夕可安枕也), Sagan's COSMOS is for you.

If you are interested in listening to the complete Symphony #7 of Beethoven, please visit the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiG31BRHWkA&list=RDkiG31BRHWkA&start_radio=1&t=2534