Micah Sittig - China, Shanghai, Books

January 11, 2003

My Borders nametag is a badge of moral impunity; I wouldn't be caught dead carrying "The Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex" back from the computer section where some horny teenage guy left it, without my Borders nametag clearly visible.

I realized that, while I may be disconnected from the China front, this weblog is still about books and California. Thus, I will mention a book that I'm reading, and a couple that I just finished.

I'm learning a lot from Simple Chic's Men's Wardrobe. I've never considered myself very fashionable. The point of reading this book is to internalize a few basic fashion principles so that I won't have to worry about them in the future.

I just finshed Simon Winchester's The River at the Center of the World, a narrative of his journey up what the West knows as the Yangtze, the Long River, from its mouth north of Shanghai to one of its purported birthplaces in the heart of Tibet. This bit of reading is research for a possible collaboration with my uncle on a China-related project. In its pages, it talks about the history of the Three Gorges (san xia) Dam project, and in passing mentions China's Cape Canaveral at Xichang.

Another book that went down much faster was River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler, a Peace Corp volunteer in Fuling during the late 90's. It was much more anecdotal, and I connected with and enjoyed it on that level. It deals with the Three Gorges project on a more personal level because the author lives with and talks to people who will be displaced by the flodding. I recommend it for anybody likes to read about daily life in China.

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January 14, 2003

Two bumper stickers seen on cars in the Borders La Habra parking lot:

OUR GRIEF IS NOT A CRY FOR HELP

WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER

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January 15, 2003

Chinese-American Literature: Progress and Dilemma doesn't have anything substantive to say about Chinese-American literature, but the last paragraph is worth reading for its description of the conflicting expectations that Chinese-American parents have of their US-raised children. It's the most concise description I've seen so far.

Parents want their children to grow up as an American well adapted to the mainstream cultural environment but at the same time with typical Chinese virtues such as respecting their parents and being modest... As a matter of fact, the "Chinese characteristics" praised by many Chinese parents represent traditional morality and Confucian teachings, which go against the American lifestyle and individualism. How should a child grow up with the education from two totally different cultures?

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January 16, 2003

Frequency Counts of Chinese Names is a cool little project. And it's GPLed.

Chinese names are interesting in that there are virtually infinite given names and a relatively small set of family names. Since the family names can more or less be though as finite, you can find lists of Chinese family names in many places. However, relatively speaking, we know much less about the distribution of Chinese given names. Are there also common given names, like "Mary", "James", or "John" in English?

Funny, I don't see mai-ka in there.

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