maineland 尋岸 documentary

february 2021. prc and usa are still in a de facto proxy (trade) war with my hometown still pretty much in the eye of the storm. a timely yet interesting documentary from three years ago helps shed some light on a tiny morceau of the multifaceted relationship between the two peoples.

maineland saw the camera followed two young, wealthy chinese students stella and harry spending their last two years of high school at fryeburg academy in maine. the tuition fees stand at usd 50k in 2021. why is such an exclusive school so depended on international students from china? half of the international students in 2017 were from china. and why a socialist economy can export so many  “wealthy second generations” 富二代 in their foreign endeavors?

two years ago was the only rare occasion when i didn’t argue with my vietnamese friends that china wasn’t and doesn’t look anything “social” to me with not many nor not so few privileged citizens. and you have to ask why the most powerful country in the world keeps on exploiting the hard earn money of its arch rival.

if there is anything positive to report on, it is that stella and harry weren’t spoiled brats at all. i am not so sure about some of the other characters around them!

a must watch if you dig sino-american politics.

三民主義 le triple démisme

孫中山粤語演講令到我想起廣東話的兩,三件小事.

佢嘅廣東話口音同香港人係二十一世紀講嘅係唔同的.其發音令人聯想到語言本質的變化,以及喺使用上政治角力嘅起落。有趣的是,聽到呢個粵語版本的時候,我亦發現1924年翻譯成法文嘅三民主義(見下圖)。九十四年前的軍閥肆虐嘅中國,同而家一權獨攬、張牙舞抓黨國不分嘅國度,到底係進步還是倒退呢?

dans l’epoque où des seigneurs de la guerre ont effectivement partitionné la chine dans les années 1920, cet enregistrement sonore de sun yat sen, promouvant le triple démisme et le texte traduit en français en 1924 documentent une chine au chaos. prèsque un siècle a passé, la vie des gens ordinaire a-t-elle été améliorée? je pense que chacun tient son avis au coeur.

suen wen

vi iv wikileaks cable

June 4 is around the corner. After years of controversies with Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange still in sort of house arrest, at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, it  came to my attention recently that some cables actually are related to the events surrounding the student uprising and culminating into the massacre on 4th June 1989.

 

The number of students killed might be different according to different accounts. Nevertheless, i felt chilled to the bone rereading some tense moments in the city through a “laowai”, whose mobility was probably more than the average citizen and was sure that minimal casualties through his eyewitness account were  at least in the hundreds in this sad saga of Chinese politics and reforms.

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html

 

Snowden and Sinicisation of the States

If you are USA citizens (many nationalities are Americans, you don’t need me to lecture you in this particular post, do you?), you shouldn’t be so proud that gay marriage seems to be making grounds, nor that you have re-elected your first Black president for a second term. Nothing worth going jubilatory about.

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary of George W. Bush, had tweeted as around the time when Snowden’s leak surfaced:

“Drone strikes. Wiretaps. Gitmo. [Obama] is carrying out Bush’s 4th term. Yet he attacked Bush for violating Constitution,”

Well a few short notes for those of you, that might mean MOST of you who haven’t noticed.

Chinese dissidents flock to foreign media such as BBC, Radio Free Asia, RFI, VoA and the like when they have something to say.

And this time the news broke with The Guardian, a British newspaper, a foreign media for the people of ths USA. The journalist, who is American, seems to be based in Brazil these days. I bet North American soil is too safe and free for him these days.

While China has its Great Fire Wall to block out bad influence websites for her citizens, the USA seem to be catching up by blocking the entire Guardian website for troops stationed abroad.

Hmmm Did I say Sinicization?

And the rhetoric of US officials on Snowden while is not identical, but definitely rhymes with that diffused by the Chinese government when Liu Xiao Bo was honoured with the 2010 Nobel peace prize.

Perhaps Evo Morales was “meddling on the internal affairs” of the USA that the Western European countries citing technical or diplomatic difficulties and did not allow the president of Bolivia to pass through their airspace. Boy I thought “meddling on the internal affairs” is patented by the Chinese government. Apparently not, or Beijing failed to follow up with the ptent office.

hmmmm did I say Chinalization? LOL

I dunno whether Dick Cheney was correct on Snowden as a “Chinese” spy, but I am curious as to how much backbone the Nobel committee will have should Snowden receives a nomination for the Peace Prize in the coming years. Afterall, Obama had his during his first year in office.

So be faithful to your country, dear US of A citizens, for the government is doing everything to promote you and your liberty!

hmmmm Did I say Sinification?
Wait a minute, I might be wrong afterall. Google, whose offices in Beijing got a sea of flowers when Chinese netizens sent in their condolences. Google took the moral high ground to leave China because the Chinese government likes to breathe down the necks of her citizens. Now, by the same token, Google, MSN, Facebook and the like must find refuge somewhere OUTSIDE of the USA if NSA/Prism are acting like overprotective parents. But where could these companies go tomorrow?

See you in DC! Oops I really meant Peking LOL.

誰是阿爺?who’s grandpa?

Wilson Shieh 石家豪 (www.wilsonshieh.com) a parodié plusieurs personnages chinois parmi des sphères de politique, de showbiz, etc. Cette fois, un organigramme des dirigeants chinois sur un tableau!

“Qui est grand-père?”, lit le grand titre. Un euphémisme pour ceux qui tiennt de vrai pouvoir! Même si la prochaine direction complète entre en fonction 100% bientôt en 2013, en remplaçant le courrant prémier ministre, par exemple, l’humeur caracaturé va durer long temps.

誰是阿爺? www.wilsonshieh.com  石家豪

誰是阿爺?
http://www.wilsonshieh.com 石家豪

如果你不認識石家豪,多看他的畫作會令你感到他對時事觀察的幽默!幽默對於現實裡緩慢的政治改革就如黑暗裡的一絲曙光

consommation mondialisée + langues

en français?
en anglais?
en chinois?
en japonais?

用普通話?
用日語?
用英語?
用法語?

In English? French? Chinese? Japanese?
講咩野話?國語?日文?英文?法文?

壽司是地道日本風味
法語評述
加一個Yu Mi,說起來多像中文的名字
我想在這英語區Westmount的餐廳說一聲:
去他的全球化

Sushi est évidemment japonais
La description est en français
The name Yu Mi sounded bopomofo-ly Chinese
and this restaurant/caterer is located in Anglophone Westmount, on the island of Montréal.

Globalisation or localised-global-consumption-of-cultures gobbles you up then spit you out alive.

ahummmm, not the idéal gastronomic imagery if you gonna eat sushi or anything for that matter!

Français, English, 中文, 日本語???

Français, English, 中文, 日本語???

Now that I confused you with my rant on globalisation, may I say Bon appétit to make it up?

En passant de la mondialisation, je DOIS inclure deux vidéos de l’apprentissage des langues relié au français et au cantonnais. Si l’on vit dans un monde mondialisé, être polyglotte va vous préparer bien pour certains défis.

法語還是廣東話? 哈哈哈 一個Hyperpolyglot的妙語連珠,雖然他的法語有錯誤,但其水平比很多在蒙特利爾法語環境學法語的移民高出很多!

un japonais qui a un accent assez impeccable,這日本人非但法語不錯,其普通話也很標準。