Poverty is a big trouble in China. We have a population of more than 1300 millions (1,321,851,888 on July 2007 est). but most of the people are from rural areas or small cities. Though the economy of our country is improving at a very high-speed, the gap between rich and poor is still rather big. And this causes many problems. The more I love my motherland, the more I have to admit this.

In early years, I lived in a big city named Wuhan in Hubei province. Chinese families were not likely to move around frequently, so the voices from the poverty could hardly be heard, especially the real living situation of those people. I still remember the first time to visit my grand father's village in 1994, I was so shocked! There's no TV and telephone. Many of them even didn't know what those things were. They could only "receive" information via radio and could never tell the outsiders how's their daily life like.

Fortunately, internet and blog do change our life! Not only for those who can blog about their real life, but also for us who can share our knowledge and information about this.

Blogging is not only a "talkshow" but also gave the details on how to help the poverty and refugee in the terrible 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. In that case, You did a very great job and that post was hit for thousands of times. I am proudly sure there must be someone donating their money via our information.

Thanks again for the great idea of Blog Action Day, we are not blogging lonely and our ideas could spread all over the world!

Yes, the "Mid Autumn Festival"(Beijing time, Sep 13 – Sep 15) is coming! Best wishes to you all!

Mid Autumn’s day, aka "中秋节"(Mid-Autumn Festival) is a very famous Chinese festival. Here are some more information about "Mid Autumn's Day" via Wikipedia in English:

The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year), and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:

• Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
• Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
• Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns
• Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e
• Planting Mid-Autumn trees
• Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
• Fire Dragon Dances

I also found a very great translation for the famous poem "水调歌头·明月几时有" from Youtube.

明月几时有
How often is there a bright Moon?
把酒问青天
I raise my cup of wine and ask the blue sky.
不知天上宫阙
I don't know about the palace in Heaven,
今夕是何年
What year this really is.
我欲乘风归去
I would like to ride the wind,
又恐琼楼玉宇
But fear wherever the magnificent jade structures are,
高处不胜寒
There is an unbearable chill in high places.
起舞弄清影
Dances clear the image,
何似在人间
As if on Earth.
转朱阁
Meandering through luxurious chambers,
低绮户
And the silk patterned households,
照无眠
All seem to be losing sleep.
不应有恨
Should not harbor misgivings
何事长向别时圆
And long for a full Moon another time.
人有悲欢离合
People can have sorrow, joy, separation and togetherness.
月有阴晴圆缺
The Moon can be dim, bright, full and eclipsed.
此事古难全
This matter has always been true since the beginning of time.
但愿人长久
Wishing we last forever,
千里共婵娟
To appreciate the beauty of the Moon even while thousand miles apart.

Here is another translation from Baidu:

When will the moon be clear and bright?
With a cup of wine in my hand, I ask the blue sky.
I don't know what season it would be in the heavens on this night.
I'd like to ride the wind to fly home.
Yet I fear the crystal and jade mansions are much too high and cold for me.
Dancing with my moon-lit shadow
It does not seem like the human world
The moon rounds the red mansion Stoops to silk-pad doors
Shines upon the sleepless Bearing no grudge
Why does the moon tend to be full when people are apart?
People may have sorrow or joy, be near or far apart
The moon may be dim or bright, wax or wane
This has been going on since the beginning of time
May we all be blessed with longevity Though far apart, we are still able to share the beauty of the moon together.

FYI: After China shifted from a closed state to a more opened one, there are more and more great arts from the Chinese people. If you are in Beijing and want to know more about this, I can be your guide :)

There is no doubt the opening ceremony dazzled the world by blending the Chinese unique elements with the modern high-tech performing patterns, including expressing one of the Games’ themes “harmony” by using the Chinese character “和”.

Visitors were keen on Chinese, according to the Beijing Evening News, just in the first week of the Games, over 500 foreign athletes and coaches have come to the popular Chinese Learning Center in the Olympic Athletes’ Village to learn Chinese and get their Chinese names. The most frequently used words were: 谢谢(thanks), 你好(hello), 再见(goodbye).

Teachers also assisted with Olympic-related vocabulary and conversation, like “祝贺你获得金牌(congratulations on your gold medal)”.

Hope more people will like Chinese and learn it! 

(Picture via Baidu.com, Miaoke Lin and Peiyi Yang)

It's the best time, it's the worst time. When I was told that Miaoke Lin(aka 林妙可) did NOT really sing the song in the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, I was shocked. I was strongly shocked. It was sang by another 7 year old girl, Peiyi Yang(aka 杨沛宜) I want to say something. Though I really love Olympic Games and I am watching almost every match of China, I have to write this post.

The first time I heard about "hypocrisy" was in 2000, when I was a high school student. In that year, Lun came back to China and stayed in my place in Wuhan.

One day, we were talking in my room. He told me that many westerners thought quite a few Chinese are hypocrisy. Though growing up in Austraila, Lun really speaks good Mandarin and knows many Chinese phrases. However, that day he's just wondering what was "hypocrisy" in Chinese (language). So I looked it in my dictionary and found it. There is, of course, a word(伪善,Wei Shan) in Chinese for "hypocrisy".

I was not so sure about that, but as soon as I started my college life, I'm afraid "hypocrisy" could possibly be around me.

The situation in a university is totally different from that in high school. The people and relationships are like wheels within wheels. Some people don't like to tell the truth, especially about themselves.

Almost everyone was saying, he's poor, he's just earning his living. Or someone would tell you that it's too difficult for him to learn Calculus. Or even lots of people would pretend to be paying a lot of attention to someone needing help. But on the contrary, The guy who said he's poor was driving a car to the dorm. The guy who said he's doing bad in Calculus got great score in the final exams. Those who "paid" a lot of attention to someone just forgot what they were talking about in the next day.

I was really confused that why everyone's pretending to be so weak, so poor. Though I was not a rich guy, I never said I was poor. Though I just did normally in the exams, I never said it's that hard to learn something.

As for those talking in that way, I didn't think that's a lack of confidence.

Maybe the word "hypocrisy" can somehow explain it. Maybe that's just a formed culture around us, which makes everyone think it is not so hypocrisy. That's a little weird, but that's really the truth.

I hope we can be actually better inside, not just as being looked outside.

The first one is China Culture Information Net.

http://english.ccnt.com.cn/

Most of the Chinese traditional festivals and folk arts are assorted.

Another website called Chinese Literature Classics.

http://www.chinapage.com/classic1.html

I bet not every Chinese native has gone through these mater pieces.

Try talk about Yijing or SunZi's Art of War with your friends, they gonna be jealousy for your range of knowledge.

:-)

PS: I just cann't write long, but I am trying.

Update: Wikipedia seems to go back "inside" while Facebook seems to return to us. It's really very strange that maybe it's due to some "upgrades" of GFW system?

Anyway, let's keep in track.

Thanks to Kingler and Xianguo ( A famous RSS Reader/ New aggregator and UGC Media in China ), i've collected some nice topics in English and Chinese.

in English:

What does the world think of the U.S. and China? - CNReviews.com

Being a Chinese, something I want to say - ifgogo.com

the sense of value is the key to the Torch thing - ifgogo.com

Grace Wang - danwei.org

Chinese Student in U.S. Is Caught in Confrontation - NYTimes.com

CNN apology not accepted - danwei.org

Chinese articles are listed here.

If you have some nice topics, feel free to leave a message here :)

the goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.

But it seems that people are so often to be out of control (Yes, something really hurts, I know). Here are something I wanna say when I received tons of comments at my personal blog:

1. Most people, Chinese, American, French, whatever.. the ordinary ones, are not interested in political details. They just want to lead a normal and happy life. So it's really a bad idea to say that "all the French people are evil" etc.
2. Due to some complicated reasons, we've met kinds of trouble. The Attacks to the Olympic Torch Relay in Paris really disobeyed the common goal of the majority. It's not a good idea to mix sports and politics. If you are not a politician then you need to figure out enough truth before attacking the others or spamming everywhere on Internet. I have to admit that there are some Chinese people doing so in this post from my personal blog. I really feel sorry to see that all.
3. To boycott the western media / western companies is NOT a shortcut(in Chinese) for the Chinese people to be richer, NOR a shortcut for the China being stronger. As I will say later, to make our motherland be stronger and our people more richer, we've got a lot of things to do.
4. For good or bad, whatever... Tibet belongs to China. If you've never been there, never been talked to the people who lived there, how do you know what the people are thinking about? If possible, upload a video to Youtube. The more videos are uploaded, the clearer the truth is.
5. To love our motherland is a good character, but it's not just an action of updating our MSN signatures. It's about loving your job, loving your family, loving the environment, and being working hard everyday, being helpful to others. That's easier said than done. The environment issues are getting more and more serious, the global warming, the overpopulation, the extinct species...if we are not going to live together, we'll then all die alone.
   

PS: I met a friend from German on MSN, just by accident. We chatted a lot and he asked me about my height. I told him that I am 179cm, then he said "that's really tall, even taller than me(178)". He told me that when he came to Shanghai, China, he found most Chinese people are shorter than guys from his country. So, what can I say? As a Chinese, what will you do? To tell(cheat) him that people in Shanghai is the shortest from China? To blame his discrimination and "f*ck" his family? Or to boycott this contact forever and even stopped talking to any German guys? Well, just stop looking for shortcuts to be taller/stronger, just stop deceiving yourself. All we need to do is to educate our next generation to be working hard, doing regular exercise, protecting the environment and paying enough attention to the health issues.

PS2: Some job must be done by the government and politicians. The government is responsible for things like handling issues with other countries, education, protecting the people, etc. Those jobs are really important, but being a normal people, you can not play a government official. If you wanna help, just join them first.

Please read this post carefully before posting a comment, thanks.

Oddly, while this name-changing phenomenon is quite common among Chinese but doesn't seem to be as common among other ethnic groups (as a means of comparison, the Japanese in particular come to mind).

I've always gone with my given name of Lun Zhang (or Zhang Lun, if you want to be pedantic...) and have never seen any logical reason why I should change it. My parents chose my name when I was born. It is a part of my identity and crucially for me, a connection to my Chinese heritage.

Yes, the pronounciation of my name does occassionally get mangled by people from a non-Chinese speaking background (i.e. the majority of my friends). Yes, it isn't common and quickly sets me apart (which I would view as a positive thing). But the fact of the matter is, I've never ever encountered a time where my Chinese name has proven to be a hindrance. Or conversely, I've never been in a situation where I've felt it necessary to have an 'English' name.

My question is this: why do you feel it necessary to change your name and not just use the pinyin equivalent of your actual Chinese name?