FDR's Maternal Grandfather an Opium Trader (#139; Topic H)

My brother-in-law, Charles, sent me an album, received just today, labeled Lin Zexu and the Opium War. From reading one of the clippings (by Ester Wu, an editor of the Dallas Morning News, datelined Shekow, China), I learned that Charles is Lin's great-great-grandson. No wonder Charles's residence in Highland Park TX is full of artifacts related to opium-smoking, which he collected during his many trips to China as a Halliburton consultant after retirement from Texas Instruments. Another clipping in the album is even more interesting. Written on 6/28/1997, just three days before Hong Kong was returned to China after 156 years in British opium warlords' hands, Karl Meyer wrote in New York Times, as follows: "In 1823, a 24-year-old Yankee, Warren Delano, sailed to Canton, where he did so well that within seven years he was a senior partner in Russell & Company." Russell & Company was a Boston company whose clipper ships were ostensibly trading in Chinese tea and silk. However, in his letters home, "Delano said he could not pretend to justify the opium trade on moral grounds, but 'as a merchant I insist it has been ... fair, honorable and legitimate.'" (In 1839, Lin was named the Imperial Commissioner by the Emperor to end the trade, thereby putting the Britain's lucrative scheme at risk, igniting the Opium War.) Delano came back to USA a rich man in 1846, settling in New York state in 1851; he returned to Hong Kong in 1860 to resume his opium trade after financial reverses during the Panic of 1857. In 1880, his daughter Sara was married to James Roosevelt, Franklin's father. When doing The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, biographer Geoffrey Ward was asked by the Delano family to minimize Delano's involvement in the opium trade (which Ward did not oblige). Why keep mum a great success story that is "honorable and legitimate"?

Symbolism in Chinese Ideograms (#138; Topic L)

Each Wednesday, People's Daily Overseas Edition has a full-page feature on "Learning Chinese," with contributions from teachers as well as students. The 5/24/06 issue has a short letter from Germany, in Chinese, which may be translated to the following (by me):
I am called Eileen, I am 14 years of age, I am a German national. I have an elder sister, who is called Domenica; I like her very much. I like to learn Chinese, because Chinese is very interesting. For example  [one 人 (= person) on top, and two 人 人 at bottom, side by side as a pyramid] is by writing 人 three times, symbolizing a lot of people [populace].

This is indeed a keen observation -- bravo to a 14-year old. Quite a few Chinese words are formed by pyramiding three simpler words to symbolize a new concept. For example, three words, each meaning wood, 木, may be pyramided to form a new word meaning forest 森. Similarly, three hands, 手, may be pyramided together to form a word meaning a pickpocket 掱. Such is the beauty of Chinese ideograms and the inventiveness of our ancestors.

Three Principles of Translation (#137; Topic L)

In 1898, Yen Fu, upon completing his translation of Huxley's On the Origin of Species into Chinese, offered "three difficulties of translation" in his book's preface. I prefer to refer to them as principles, and, in my talk on translating Analects into English on May 28 (#134-5), render them 信、達、雅 as fidelity, fluency, and finesse ("the three F"). Fidelity, the first difficulty/principle, calls for finding words that reflect the original thought as closely as possible, both as to meaning and to tone. Fluency, the difficulty/principle next in importance, refers to phrasing the thought to facilitate smooth reading, including proper word sequencing and grammar. Finesee, which comes into play only after the first two difficulties/principles are properly taken care of, refers to using words that facilitate easy retention -- words that are synonyms-cum-homonyms, words that rhyme, words that begin with the same sound or same letter (such as "the three F" above), etc. New York Times's business section today reports findings of a research by the National Academy of Sciences that was published on-line yesterday. It seems that research subjects consider "easily processed information" -- purely incidental occurrences such as ticker-tape combinations that are pronounceable, meaningful features such as fluency and rhyme, etc. -- as more likely to be "true, likable, familiar, and convincing". They proceed to reward companies with these features with higher stock prices and such, at least in the short run. What a finding. What a coincidence. This is precisely what I strove to achieve in my translation of the Analects -- close representation, smooth reading, and easy retention. (In my talk Sunday, I illustrated each of these with many examples, not repeated here.) Reading that NYT article made me quite happy -- my instinct of what a good translator needs to do is endorsed, making my hard work all the more worthwhile.

The Operetta of Kunshan: Kunqu (#136; Topic I)

A good friend and fellow World Bank retiree (and a well-known philathropist to boot) gave my wife and me two VIP tickets to the Society of Kunqu Arts's 2006 performance, Sunday evening, May 28. I was first exposed to Kunqu -- a performing-arts innovation by the literati of Kunshan (near Suzhou) during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) -- a decade ago. Kunqu combines (1) recitation with (2) singing, accompanied by (3) instrumental music and (4) acrobatic display, complete with (5) libretto, (6) in a unified stage performance. Though each of the first four art forms had their separate existence, some as early as the third century BCE, their integrated presentation via a unifying libretto was a revolutionary innovation -- the birth of the operetta. Its immediate success was due, undoubtedly, to the literati-prepared libretto, at once educational and entertaining, as well as elegant. Each libretto's story line is mostly a mixture of history and fiction (not unlike, say, the Da Vinci Code), and the phraseology is undeniably elegant (worthy of scholars' participation). When attending a Kunqu performance, I invariably try to sit close to the subtitle screen -- its biligual rendition of words spoken or sung allows me to learn some archaic Chinese words and appreciate the beauty of fluent translation. Saturday's performance was no exception -- and with VIP tickets, it was easy. Four segments from the repertoire were performed. One, Dreamland Revisited, a solo performance of a maid seeking, in vain, of meeting a young man whom she first encountered in a garden a while ago -- the focus was on the maid's dreamy demeanour. Two, The Lioness's Roar, on a young wife's commanding her husband to knell before a pond to atone for his transgression, and on her being forced to invite a well-known scholar (who played host to the husband the evening before and was partly responsible for his transgression, if any [the husband did not acknowledge], who came to visit unexpectedly and attempted to intercede unadvisedly) to leave -- the emphasis was on the wife's many moods and her husband's reluctant cooperation; both were played by national-level performers from China in their master-class guest appearance. Three, another solo performance, based on a famous historical novel covering the final years of the Northern Sung dynasty (960-1127), focusing on acrobatics by a young army officer in exile. Four, Princess Floret, based on a true story in the late Ming dynasty (1368-1644), on a chance meeting between a commoner and a princess, on the princess's falling in love, and on her giving the commoner her sword as a token of her love -- the focus was again on the pair's changing mood, also played by the two guest performers. All in all, it was a most enjoyable evening, accompanied by a six-member orchestra playing beautiful traditional Chinese musical instruments. A flyer I received on the way out suggests that another Kunqu performance will be mounted, on August 4-5, at the Smithsonian Institution's Sackler Gallery. I hope to be in town to see it again.

You too can be a "translator" (#135; Topic C)

This entry is inspired by a column by John Tierney in the New York Times ("You too could be a pundit"), including the slightly altered title. For my presentation on "Issues related to translating Confucius's Analects into English" Sunday (#134), I was introduced by a good friend of mine -- I call him my wise younger brother, since he is a few years my junior. He insisted on a flowery introduction; I resisted, on the ground that the topic of my discussion had nothing to do with my academic preparation or my professorship -- my contention is that doing translation well is the result of hard work, not of brain (similar to the argument in #129) . To prove my point, a segment of my talk dealt with how 11 others translated an 8-word passage -- all common words, deceivingly simple but unexpectedly treacherous. 三人行，必有我師焉。 The first two words, 三人, together, refer to "three persons" -- this compound phrase lends itself to a question: Is the speaker among the three? The third word 行 has two disparate meanings -- one (which occurs much more frequently and jumps at a reader almost instantly upon seeing it): walk/walking; two (which occurs infrequenty, has a completely different pronunciation, and must be couched before a reader accepts this interpretation): group/grouping -- this word, together with the first two, lends themselves to another question: Are the three persons walking? (The next 5 words form a puzzle in logic, and lead to additional questions -- omitted here.) Thus, in the process of translating the first 3 words, a translator must necessarily answer 2 questions. In my random sample, of the 5 translators whose mother tongue is not Chinese, to the 10 questions, there are 7 positive answers. Similarly, of the 6 Chinese-native translators, there are 7 positive answers as well (though out of 12 opportunities). As it turns out, both questions must be answered in the negative -- the 3 words simply mean "a grouping of 3 persons." And, in my translation, I simply said: "In any trio" -- 3 words in the original, 3 words in the translation. The 11 translators all were teachers of Chinese literature or self-styled students of Sinology -- and they were all wrong! I am the lone exception. This confirms a statement Tierney made in his column: "the less you know, the more forceful you can be."

Ancestor worship and honoring thy parents (#134, Topic C)

One of seven topics presented in my talk on "Issues related to translating Confucius's Analects into English" yesterday (#133) was on deliberate mistranslations by western missionaries -- beginning with the Jesuits in 1687 (when selected passages, translated into Latin, were published in Paris) and later with James Legge of the London Missionary in 1861 (when the translation, in English, was published in Hong Kong, funded by Joseph Jardine who made his fortune as an opium overlord). It was Legge who, in the process of translating Analects, introduced the term ancestor worship to English-literate readers. Trying to justify what he did, Legge later wrote a 310-page diatribe (The Religions of China, 1880), imputing, inter alia, that Confucian teachings constitute a religion. To soften his charge on the Chinese practice as ancestor worship, Legge first stated that "Both Confucianism and Christianity enjoin filial piety" (p 257) -- I challenge even this: Christianity, being a religion, may enjoin piety, as piety connotes a religious state of mind; Confucian teachings do not constitute a religion; the Chinese practice is filial reverence. As his very next sentence, Legge said: "The fundamental concept of it in the former system [Confucianism] is a ministration of support; in the latter [Christianity], a rendering of honour." This is laughable -- as to the former, it is inadequate: Confucian teachings clearly state that "provid[ing] food to their parents ... without reverence" (2.7) is insufficient and unacceptable; as to the latter, it is an overstatement: "a rendering of honor" is but four empty words. Legge went on by saying that "But Christianity has no worship of the dead, and its belief and practice in reference to them are more healthy and true than those of Confucianism" (p 259). Today being the Memorial Day, the editorial in Washington Post leads off with "Does remembrance matter?" Reading it, it suddenly dawned on me that the argument on ancestor worship (and its twin, filial piety) is but another instance of west's "Do what I say; don't do what I do;" here, semantics is used as camouflage. What people of Chinese ethnicity do is ancestor worship, which is a no no; what the west does is remembrance, a yes yes. What is/are USA remembering today? Members of the armed services who are living or those who are no longer living?

Losing [輸] and losing [虧] (#133; Topic M)

I gave a PowerPoint presentation on "Issues related to translating Confucius's Analects into English" to a group of professionals of Chinese ancestry today at noon (it meets on the last Sunday of each month). Sitting at the same table during lunch was a past president of this organization and a fellow World Bank retiree. He mentioned that, at the time of his retirement from the WB some 20 years ago (he retired from the WB before I joined it; this lack of overlap prompted the discussion), he withdrew one-half of his pension-plan contributions and used the proceeds to buy a house. At that time, the housing market was, I presume, slow; following his son's advice, he sold the house and invested in stocks. Though he did not mention specific dates, I suspect that it was probably the time of the dom-com boom and subsequent bust. In any case, he promptly lost the entire proceeds from the sale of his house. We were conversing in Chinese; though the word he used must necessarily be translated as lost in English, the Chinese word he actually used was much more specific and revealing -- it has the connotation of a gambling loss [輸]. At first, I thought his choice of words was odd. Then, with his repeated use of that same word, I began to see the logic of his word selection. Apparently, at that time, the stock market was very volatile; it resembled more a casino than an investment institution. Though my tablemate did not give any specific number, I suspect that his loss would be at least half a million dollars. His message was sober. Though it did not affect my presentation, which followed the lunch, it did give me a lot to think about later on. At this very moment, the stock market's volatity is rather high. Though not as high as that in the 1990s, it is high enough. Is my tablemate trying to tell me something? One of my topics for discussion this noon involves a sentence in the Analects: "In any trio, one must be my teacher." Is he trying to teach me something? I need to think this through.

"Live and let live" (#132; Topic F)

Earlier, in talking to 200+ impressionable high-school students in West Virginia (#122), I mentioned that, even with several thousand years of culture and history behind her, China maintains a "live and let live" attitude. Little did I know that this view was shared by Henry Kissinger -- some 34 years ago. Yesterday, George Washington University's National Security Archives released 2,100 memoranda on Kissinger's secret conversations with senior officials home and abroad between 1969 and 1972. As reported by the Associated Press (and published in today's Washington Post), Kissinger, when accompanying President Nixon to China in 1972, said, to Premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing on 6/22/1972: "If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina." That is indeed the "live and let live" spirit. At first, I was surprised that Kissinger shared this view. On second thought, I am not surprised, on three counts. One, Kissinger's ancestry is Jewish -- people of Chinese or Jewish ancestry, both with long history but an underappreciated culture, think alike on many fronts. Two, Kissinger, before he entered politics, was an accountant, as I am -- accountants are trained to respect facts and abhor wishful thinking. Three, Kissinger, after he left politics, was a management consultant, as I was. (Though I cannot claim a clientile as prestigious as Kissinger's, when I was the president of a consultancy firm in Taipei, I had many international business firms as well as the American Institute in Taiwan as my clients.) And management consultants are pragmatic -- they aim for achievable structures built on sound cost-benefit analyses. Yesterday, when interviewed on his words uttered more than three decades ago, Kissinger said: "One of my objectives had to be to get Chinese acquiescence in our policy." Well said. Given that "live and let live" is a reciprocal proposition, perhaps the reverse would hold as well. We'll see.

Memory loss (#131; Topic D)

My wife and I moved into a retirement community in April 2005, about 13 months ago. Though the move is within the same county, involving but 8-9 miles, I somehow can no longer remember my old neighborhood. On May 6, I lost my way trying to be on the same Freeway exit to northern Virginia (where, on the first Saturday of each month, I attend a class on Dao De Jing, which happens to use my translation as the text), resulting in my abandoning the trip -- the class would be half over before I could even find an exit to drive on. Learning from this sad experience, I wised up -- now, in going to northern Virginia, I simply use the Freeway exit closest to me; it is longer, takes more time, but the drive is straight forward -- on May 19, I took my sister and brother-in-law, visiting us from Hong Kong, to the airport without undue delay, a major accomplishment, given my present state of affairs. Sunday, May 21, I was to attend a lecture on "US-China diplomatic relations: past and present," held in a Chinese restaurant I have frequented at least several dozen times, though none since moving to our present address. Even the restaurant is situated between our old and new residence (thus, only about 5 miles from us), somehow, I could not remember how to drive there. Looking at my map was no help either; somehow I could not locate the street. Taking a chance by leaving early, I was promptly lost. Asking for direction while driving -- on a street presumed to be nearby -- was no help either; a driver who said "follow me" led me to a shopping center, and I was worse off. Luckily, I drove out, and was on a street reasonably familiar; it led to the restaurant -- I was just a couple of minutes late. What sheer luck! On Tuesday May 23, after returning from attending a board meeting of the Library of Congress's Asian Division, I somehow could not locate my wallet when I was ready to go to our branch library yesterday afternoon. I called our retirement commnity's security office and then the administrative office (the latter held my wife's pocketbook when she lost it a few months ago); no luck. Remarkably, I found my wallet in the back pocket of a pair of walking shorts -- I simply forgot that, around 4:30 Wednesday, before driving to a post office just outside our compound to mail a few letters, I apparently put my wallet into the shorts' back pocket I was then wearing. I simply could not remember that I did that. Completely upset, and taking advantage of my wife having a shopping-and-dinner outing with several of her friends in the community, I decided to see a movie instead. The movie did not cheer me up; I came to the unescapable realization that my memory is beginning to fail me.

The Three Gorges Dam (#130, Topic I)

Today marks the completion of the Three Gorges dam -- a dream of Sun Yat-sen (George Washington's counterpart in China) ever since 1918. Of particular interest, though I saw no mention of in the western press, is that the design of this hydroelectric-cum-flood-control facility, the world's largest, was done entirely by Chinese engineers. All the western press (such as the Washington Post and the Economist) talks about is the number of residents being resettled; their stories were pitched as if the government never gave this matter the careful thought it deserves. Wrong. This attempt at misinformation is unworthy. Quite a few years ago, my wife and I were on a Three Gorges cruise, which made several stops at sites that would be submerged upon the dam's completion; we learned the care the government exercised, and the phased-in approach it took -- residents were suitably compensated and given options as to when and where to move. Indeed, the World Bank was, at one time, involved in the financing of this project; this matter was raised and apparently answered to the WB's satisfaction. Come to think of it, how can there be progress without change? The Yantze river had tormented China for over five millennia, killing many million people and displacing perhaps hundreds of millions in the process. (A 1931 flood killed 145,000; another one in 1935 killed 142,000.) With the dam, slightly over a million need be relocated. So what. Compared to cumulative damages in the past, this one-time human cost can easily survive the severest cost-benefit analysis. In reality, the west's concern is with the dam's substantial contribution to China's energy needs, generating some 85 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity by 2008 -- 20+ times than that generated by the Hoover Dam (4 billion kilowatt-hours) on the Nevada-Arizona border. Early on, I had visited both the Itaipu Dam (the world's largest before the Three Gorges Dam came along) and the Hoover Dam; I could not recall reading anything, both on-site and off-site, about the resettlements that were inescably needed in these projects. Why not? Why impose a double standard to this Chinese project?

"Why are Asian-Americans so good at school?" (#129; Topic E)

Our son, upon returning to Brooklyn after a Mother's Day visit, sent us a clipping from that day's New York Times (5/14/06). With a provocative first sentence, quoted as the title to this entry, columnist Nicholas Kristof proceeded to cite some impressive statistics: "In 2005, Asian-Americans averaged a combined math-verbal SAT of 1091, compared with 1068 for whites, 982 for American Indians, 922 for Hispanics and 864 for blacks. Forty-four percent of Asian American students take calculus in high school, compared with 28 percent of all students." Indeed, in a 5/16 article to celebrate the Asian-American month (May), the Washington Post stated that 49% of Asian-Americans 25 years of age or older have at least a baccalaureate degree, while the national figure for all Americans is 28%. To answer his own questions, Kristof offered "two and a half reasons." One, "the filial piety nurtured by Confucianism for 2,500 years." I share his view, with one minor exception: his unfortunate choice of words. (For the past two years, I have been reading away, with the hope of doing a book on the influence of western theology upon Chinese culture; "filial piety" was a term invented by missionaries to misrepresent Chinese's respect for their parents -- but I digress.) Two, "Confucianism encourages a reverence for education;" this I totally agree -- indeed, I want to take my hat off to Kristof for his insightful view. The "half- reason" focuses on American students' viewing those who succeed in school as the "brains," while their Asian-American counterparts view success in school as due to "working hard" -- I share the second half of the argument (the "half reason"?). Kristof's concluding paragraph is a gem: In his view, "the success of Asian-Americans is mostly about culture, and there is no way to transplant a culture." Again, my hat is off to him. Arguing that "respect for education pays dividends," Kristof suggests, as one solution, "higher teacher salaries," a point I also made in my presentation to high-school students and their teachers in West Virginia a couple of weeks ago (#126).

"Only three Chinese were killed" (#128; Topic F)

The author of Oracle Bones (#127) was in Nanjing in May 1999 "when a United States B2 plane took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, flew to Belgrade, and dropped a series of satellite-directed bombs on the Chinese embassy, killing three Chinese journalists." (p 11) After the news was broadcast in China the following evening, there were protests, including thousands in Nanjing. Seizing the opportunity, our author followed the crowd, "hoping to ... interview somebody." Instead, he was asked: "Where are you from?" "An American journalist" (our author's job at the time was a "clipper" of newspaper articles for the Wall Street Journal's Beijing bureau) "What's your opinion about what happened in Belgrade?" "I don't know anything about it. I'm just here to report on the protest" (our author was making his "first research trip," planning "to write a newspaper travel article about the history of the city") When confronted with "how could it ["America, an advanced country"] possibly say that the bombing was a mistake," our author "admitted that the events had confused me as well." Fortunately, an Uighur came to his defense: "if America is such a great country ... they should be able to kill more than three Chinese people when they want to"(p 23). Our author was so impressed by the defense that he befriended him and asked him to be his guide in touring China -- analogous to asking a follower of Puerto Rico Independence to be one's guide in tourning USA. And our Uighur guide continued: "If Americans were trying to kill Chinese, you'd be dead right now." How true. Shortly after 9/11, a US citizen, seeing a turban-wearing "outsider" in a New York gas station and assuming him to be a Muslim, proceeded to kill him without bothering to ask "Where are you from?" As it turned out, the victim was a Sikh, and his only "crime" was wearing a turban. Oh well. Our author's book is a journal on China, not on USA.

"A Journey between China's Past and Present" (#127, Topic F)

Our daughter, visiting us with our son-in-law and two grandchildren for Mother's Day, brought me a book by Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones (2006), mainly on the strength of a review by her thesis supervisor at Yale, Jonathan Spence (New York Times, 4/30/06). Even before reading the review, I knew the book would take an antagonistic view of China -- after all, if one wants to have one's book on China be on any bestselling list, one has to denounce her, the more severe the better. This author certainly did not disappoint. In a Chinese newspaper, I read that, nowadays, there is a large number of Euro-Americans drifting from city to city and from job to job in China, peddling their being Americans in the hope of striking it rich; if such a drfiter can speak Chinese, making him/her bilingual, so much the better. Our author seems to fit into this mold. He began by teaching English in a rural area of China, and then got an assignment to do an "article about [Chinese] history." As to Nanjing Massacre, he prefaced his "research" by aligning himself with Japan's "right-wing groups," quoting their views with apparent delight. "For the Chinese, it [the Nanjing massacre] remained one of the most sensitive wounds of her past, and they hated the idea of any outsider telling them what had or hadn't happened." (p 18) Yes, indeed; how can a Euro-American opportunist, with a limited knowledge of China's language and culture and a short stay in China, be able to contribute? But, our author was brave. So, one afternoon, he visited the Memorial to the Nanjing Massacre -- which, incidently, I also visited last September and, thus, have a general idea of its exhibits. A display of black-and-white photographs -- "document[ing] his [Japanese soldier's] own worst moments" -- caught our author by surprise; they are so difficult to reconcile with our author's preconceived notions. And then comes the punch line -- he blamed all these on these soldiers!!. "Many Japanese troops had been stupid enough to take pictures and get the film developed at Shanghai camera shops." So, if this "photographic evidence of the Nanjing Massacre" did not exist, it would be much easier for an outsider, such as the author in question, to tell others that it hadn't happened. But, more was yet to come. Our author, after seeing "a three-photo series of a Chinese man getting beheaded [before, during and after -- "with a head rolling in the dust"]" realized that he "couldn't bear to do any more research in Nanjing." So much for "research" that does not jive with preconceived notions. So much for a book purported to be an impartial Euro-American view of China's past and present.