Zhang

毛泽东曾说过，“   … 是纸老虎。”

ersatz = 纸老虎

Knock Knock!

Who’s there?

Lehman. (“Lee, man“)

“Lee, man” who?

Luck exits here, man.

===—

Knock Knock!

Who’s there?

AIG. (“A.I. gee“)

“A.I. gee” who?

Assets in government.

Today was the day when my thesis director agreed to sign on to supervise my thesis. Now I am finally on the track of graduation. My research advisor, Don Ostrowski, was great to help me with my initial process, and passed my initial proposal and narrowed down my potential thesis directors. My thesis director, Richard Cooper, was generously agreeed to help and supervise my thesis. Now the time is back to me again.

Through this thesis writing process, for example, I have learned that I will never expect too much from others, but never settle little for myself. I have talked to many people on my research topic, but some, who I thought would help, were just not interested. Some, who I did not expect, ended up giving me a lot of help. It is true that my standard is high, as I often joked with my friends that I wanted to a Nobel Prize winner, or likely, to direct my thesis. Unless I got a Ph. D in Economics, there is no way to find a Nobel Laureate to supervise my thesis.

Overall, I am honored to have Professor Cooper to supervise my thesis, as well as many friends helping me with comments and editing. Today was one of those happiest days in my life.

It is interesting to think of happiness. There are many versions of definitions, from psychological interpretation to economic definition, from mental notion to constitutional stipulation. Happiness perhaps is just a feeling. I remembered that the most popular course at Harvard based upon the number of students enrollment was happiness, or something related to happiness and psychology course in 2007, according an article on the New York Times.  Many psychologists, economists, and doctors are looking for happiness in academic settings. Many scholars tried to explain anything with psychology due to the emerging trend today. Many economists tried to explained economic phenomenon by borrowing psychological experiment. Many lawyers tried to explain the legal reality by exerting to psychological theories. Many doctors are trying to figure out how actually the brain works . . . There are many theories and there are emerging articles on such topic.

What I learn from many published experiments, and my personal experience is that my feeling of happiness is that I never expect too much from others, and never settle too little for myself. It has been enforced in many interesting experiments, such as . . .

To be continued . . .

海龟(海归)：归国留学人员。
海带(海待)：归国留学人员回国后暂时待业者。
海藻(海找)：归国留学人员中不断找工作仍找不到合适工作的人。
海草：海外归来的因学术学历背景不高、难以找到好工作的归国留学人员。
海鸥：目前频繁往来于国内和海外，从事商务贸易活动的留学人员。
海根：一批较早出国的留学人员，在国外已经拼搏多年后，愿意“落叶归根”者。
海派：由海外跨国公司或海外机构派遣回国，担任驻华机构代表或中高层管理人员。
海泡：已经学成或接近毕业，虽然非常想回国发展，但又对国内发展态势不是很了解，左右为难地“泡”在留学地者。
海狮：“海归”大师级人物(指学术界权威)。
海鲜：归国留学人员受到重用者。
海参：“海归”学生，特指没有工作经验者。

While “Sea-turtle” is returning,
“Sea-kelp” is waiting,
Just like “Sea-weed” is hopping,
when “Sea-grass” is waning.

“Sea-gle” is active,
And “Sea-root” is homesick,
Albeit “Sea-pie” is up running,
“Sea-bubble” is reluctant.

“To be or not to be,”
It is a question;
“Sea-lion” is good “Sea-food,”
For “Sea-cucumber” to look.

* “To be or not to be, that is the question” from William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

A sand is small, but no one can across Sahara desert without aid;

A water drop is weak, but the sea is the womb of lives;

An atom is invisible, but the power of nuclear-bomb out of it can be disastrous;

A small second is less, but it might change the course of success and failure.

Time is precious, but at the transitional point of 2008 and 2009, everyone gets one extra second.

Second be second, the chances of being successful will increase.

Two phrases emphasize details, even though there is subtle difference. One means detail, whereas the other means essence.

孟子曰：”舜發於畎畝之中，傳說舉於版築之間，膠鬲舉於魚鹽之中，管夷吾舉於士，孫叔敖舉於海，百里奚舉於市。”

“故天將降大任於是人也，必先苦其心志，勞其筋骨，餓其禮膚，空乏其身，行拂亂其所為，所以動心忍性，曾益其所不能.”

“人恆過，然後能改；困於心，衡於慮，而後作；微於色，發於聲，而後喻.”

“入則無法家拂士，出則無敵國外患者，國恆亡。然後知生於憂患，而死於安樂也。”

The second line can be translated by quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” however, it can’t cover some connotation in which only Chinese version can illustrate.

Thus, my version will cover most, but not all what Mencius says. It goes like this:

One who is destined to lead
has to endure one’s heart out and to work one’s butt off
regardless of starvation, destitution, or even jumble,
so that one can be nurtured from mind to heart
to become resilient and persistent
to the extent in which one otherwise cannot.

Evan, Richard, Deng Xiaoping and The Making of Modern China, New York: Penguin Group, 1993.

P11
“Because the political condition of the country was so bad, and also because jobs were hard to come by for the first generation of modern middle-school graduates, a large number of young Chinese were attracted by Li’s Programme. Between March 1919 and December 1920, almost 1600 worker-students . . . . A few, like Deng Xiaoping, were under twenty. . . . Some were university graduates, but the great majority had not gone beyond a secondary education. They came from the middle of society, and the sons and daughters of poorer landowners, merchants or scholars. Most of their families could ill afford the price of a steamship ticket to France, even at the concessionary rate of a hundred silver dollars which was on offer.”

P12
“Deng’s departure from Bayeux ended his only period of modest comfort and security during the whole of his five years in France. For the rest of the time, he lived in factory dormitories or cheap hotels and did work that was often temporary and never skilled.”

P 13
“It was against this background of indigence and insecurity that Deng was drawn into politics.”

P19
“The office of the youth league was Zhou Enlai’s bedroom in cheap residential hotel…. Only three people at that time could squeeze into the room, even for conversation, so that meetings of the league’s executive committee, four or five strong, and larger gatherings, had to be held in local restaurants. In these, Zhou and the rest could normally afford no more than a single vegetable dish and a few bread rolls, and sometimes only rolls and hot water.”

P23-24
“How did Deng’s years in France affect him otherwise? They certainly inoculated him against the sinocentrism which was so marked a feature in the outlook of Mao Zedong – and of all the other Chinese communist leaders, like Lin Biao, who never lived abroad. Throughout his political career, and especially during his years as China’s national leader, he took a great deal of interest in foreigners and in their perceptions of China. He showed, too, grasp of two truths: that China could not ignore the world, if only because the world would not ignore China; and that China could not hope to develop quickly without being willing to learn from the world. . . . France as such may have influenced him less strongly than the experience of living abroad. . . . there is no evidence that he took an interest in French art or literature, or even as a practical man, in French engineering and architecture. Nor is there anything in the record – the archives of French government departments, factories and schools, and the memoirs of other worker-students – to indicate that he had French friends.”
P24
“Deng’s character would have developed wherever he had been between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. But it is hard to believe that he would have become quite so tough or self-reliant, at any rate so young, unless he had gone through the hard school of living by his wits in a world where there was little sympathy, and even less support, for a young Chinese who was down on his luck.”

P29
“Deng Xiaoping spent eleven months in Moscow. To begin with, he was a student at the Communist University for the toilers of the East. . . . During the 1920s, hundreds of Chinese communists – including two, Liu Shaoqi and Ren Bishi, who were to rise very high in the party – were among its students.”

P31
“Luo Fu was five or six years older than Wang and Bo and knew rather more about the world. The son of a scholar who had become a successful businessman, he was something of a scholar himself. He had spent two years in California, attending at least some university classes and working on a magazine for the Chinese community in San Francisco, and he spoke good English.”

P32
“Deng had two classmates of this kind: Chiang Kaisheck’s son Chiang Chingkuo (only seventeen in 1925) and Feng Funeng, a daughter of the warlord Feng Yuxiang…In Deng’s time, the academic load was heavy. Seven subjects were taught: foreign languages, history, philosophy, political economy, economic geography, Leninism and military science.”