〈頭髮的風波〉深邃的一段

「中國人的反抗，何嘗因為亡國，只是因為拖辮子。頑民殺盡了，遺老都壽終了，辮子早留定了，洪樣又鬧起來了。全留著頭髮的被官兵殺，還是辮子的便被長毛殺！有多少中國人只因為這不痛不癢的頭髮而吃了苦，受難，滅亡。」

－魯迅

一九二零年十月

Human Frailty/ 人類的脆弱

So today the teacher said something that stuck with me. We were reading the preface to Lu Xun's collection of short stories, which is titled 啊Q正傳. And the author said that the characters in Lu Xun's stories all have a defeatist attitude, resign themselves to fate, oppress the good and timid but fear the wicked, are hypocritical, and are cynical. The Chinese is much more eloquent than my slipshod English paraphrase at 2:30 AM, so I'll provide the quote here: 「道盡了世間眾生的真是面貌－宿命意識，失敗主義，欺善怕惡，假仁假義，犬儒性格。。。等。」

Anyways, so then she went off on a tangent somewhat and talked about the phenomenon of buffets cropping up around Taipei. She said that the 吃到飽現象 started around the late '90s and reflected this need by humans to stuff themselves with food in order to fill a void. They need to fill their stomachs up in order to feel a sense of contentment, of fullness（ 滿足口福）。She spoke of this as human frailty. That we as human beings constantly chase after this ephemeral feeling of contentment, which can come from as simple and base a source as eating till one bursts. 人類很脆弱，必須己撐著滿滿地才能滿足。

I apologize for my English readers for all the Chinese in this entry (I doubt I have any regular readers anyways), but I think I'm going to start moving in that direction as I have been in Taiwan for a year and I feel I've only recently started to take my studies seriously. I think it's reality setting in that I'm going to leave this fantasy isle in a few short months and I don't have much time left to study. The prospect of being another cog in the machine is not exactly motivational, so I'm trying to savor what little time I have left.

Well, this is day X of my insomnia month(s) and I find it's when I write the most-whether that be on Facebook walls, messages, MSN, or e-mails. I want to stop but like I said I have insomnia...well it's not even really insomnia because I eventually fall asleep just not at the time I want to as I have class in the morning.

無論如何，我都是最想睡時就往往失敗。我發現半夜是我最常反省的時光，也是我最犬儒性格和失敗主義的時段。白天心靈裡埋下去的思想與感情都冒出來了，顯然是胡思亂想。好了，我得避免上網沈溺自己的廢話了。晚安。

讀書人的酸味; Voluntary population control based on utilitarian ideology

So I've been reading 魯迅 (Lu Xun) in my Advanced Chinese Reader course and when we were reading a literary criticism of his short story, “孔乙己," the author mentioned 讀書人的酸味, which prompted our teacher to talk about 與人寡合, which means that these educated scholars living in their ivory towers cannot communicate with the average Joe. Our teacher essentially said that she was like this and that it is so tiring have to deal with the crass, base Taiwanese people when she leaves the school. Then she went on a tirade about living in Taiwan amongst these philistines and then chided herself for expressing the aforementioned 酸味 (literally sour taste). And it's funny because I'm also finding myself frustrated with people taking rudimentary Chinese courses at Shida even though they've been here for the same time or longer than me. I know it sounds pompous but reading short stories or novels by 魯迅 and the like just opens up a whole new perspective that was closed off to me when I was studying intermediate Chinese ( learning about sentence patterns, grammatical structures and order, and memorizing vocabulary).

Before taking this course I had started to get weary of studying Mandarin, the rote memorization of vocab lists and phrases and reading random poorly written dialogues or essays, but now that we are reading a critical writer that challenges the very society he was born in, coupled with a teacher that demands independent thinking and open debate, well it has reignited my interest in learning Chinese as well as studying Chinese literature. She was discussing how short the history of modern, colloquial Chinese (白話） is and how 魯迅 essentially bridges the gap between the two as he and Hu Shi promoted the development of colloquial Chinese (白話）and it's evident as the words used in his works are very rarely seen nowadays. And even the words that are still used today are pronounced and used differently in his literary works.

When I started this entry I had some idea of what I wanted to write but somewhere along the middle of it I lost my train of thought and ended rambling about my interest in modern Chinese literature...oh well.

Oh tomorrow we will continue reading "藥" ("Medicine"), which is about a mother, who in efforts to save her son afflicted with tuberculosis, takes a 饅頭 (white flour bun) and uses it to soak up the spurting blood effusing out of a freshly decapitated criminal and feeds it to her dying son...

_________

I just remembered what I originally wanted to write about. Our teacher was telling us that even though she teaches for a living she has raised two idiots as sons, but she didn't do a huge disservice to society because she only had two children. She also said she was against the idea of her son attending university but her husband insisted; she said that her husband still has a traditional outlook on life. She also said she is against the whole idea of graduate school as well. She thinks only people who cannot work end up in grad school. She said Roosevelt Road and Heping Road are filled with people with doctorates walking around. And she continued to say that they have not helped society but instead have only increased the unemployment rate. Oh and she attributes the low birth rate in Taiwan to people being self-aware of their lack of self-worth and contribution to society. She said since they know their children will be nothing but a burden on society, thus everyone chooses to just not have children. Haha I like her cynicism.