烟花三月下江南

也许因为2月只有28天，所以一直感觉3月是一年中最漫长的一个月，于是休假去了南方。

第一站是南京。阴沉的天空，破旧的建筑，这个城市给我的第一印象是一个落寞的古都。中午刚到就遇上雷阵雨，天空瞬间犹如夜晚，正好被困在新街口的商场，逛了久违的H&M。南京并没有江南水乡的细腻和浪漫，如果不是好友从上海赶来做伴，这将是一段单调的旅程。临走前一天晚上特意去吃了朋友推荐的鸭血粉丝汤，没有留下遗憾。

然后来到苏州，小桥流水，白墙黑瓦，一个很精致的小城，只是人工雕凿的痕迹太重。苏州人怎样，短短的一天或许不足以公正地评价。但是下了火车就不断碰壁，甚为扫兴，于是第二天一早便踏上下一站的旅途。

非常幸运，到杭州头几天一直阳光明媚。一下车看到马路两边绿绿葱葱的大树，便明白了上海人为什么会把杭州称作他们的后花园。在路边看站牌的时候，有人问我要去哪儿。其实我也不知道，只想随便走走，看看沿路的风景，碰到有意思的地方进去探个究竟。漫无目的的旅行才放松，而且导游书里介绍的景点未必是我的兴趣所在。于是就这样误打误撞地来到太子湾公园，满园的樱花仿佛世外桃源，美不胜收。

从杭州去了乌镇和西塘。两个小镇的旅游业都已经很成熟，巷子里挤满了卖特产和手工艺品的小店，而原汁原味的古镇却随着游客的增多在渐渐消失。在乌镇看了皮影戏，吃到了热腾腾的青团。想起去年这个时候在上海也见到过，但那时觉得把糯米团子做成绿色实在太奇怪，便没有尝试，这次可不能错过了。

知道西塘，是因为几年前那部Mission impossible 3。如今西塘的西街仿佛是北京后海的翻版。一路上吃了很多小吃，一口粽，芡实糕，麦芽糖。。。最惬意的是在春日温暖的午后，停下脚步，在烟雨长廊的河边饭馆儿晒晒太阳，尝尝当地的特色菜。

古人说：“读万卷书，行万里路。”前者对现代人来说可能真的是mission impossible，而后者还是可行的。走过这么多地方，回来抬头一看，日历还停留在3月。回到北京，天气干燥阴冷，不过心里很踏实。

A story of innocence in a world of ignorance

Cubicle rules

For Chinese working in foreign companies, one should understand the following rules, which cannot be found in the employee handbook.

1. Salaries are confidential. We usually print on blank paper in the office, but the other day our environmental-friendly HR lady put some used paper in the printer and I happened to be printing ahead of her. Then I turned the pages and noticed something I shouldn’t have seen. It was part of last year’s headcount list, our salaries included. Well, I’m actually very happy to know that. But be careful, sometimes this might be hurtful.

2. Emails are in English. I was interning at a French company before graduation. Once my colleague asked me to translate an email she wrote to the China club, one of the top four clubs in Beijing. But I asked a stupid question: “we are all Chinese, then why bother to write emails in English?” “You know…” Oh I see. If you don’t want to be disdained, use English. It’s a little bit hypocritical, isn’t it?

3. Handwriting is important. You are what you write. I often connect people’s faces with their handwriting and would wonder to myself how such a good-looking person can write so poorly. By the way, I’m no calligraphist. This is merely my personal opinion, no offense.

Finally, just a reminder: No baozi, boiled eggs or garlic in the office. Imagine the fragrance of perfumes mixed with the odors from the foods in a closed room.

Basically, that’s what I’ve learnt in the cubicle.

Moment in Peking

... But Mulan was a child of Peking. She had grown up there and had drunk in all the richness of life of the city which enveloped its inhabitants like a great mother soft toward all the children’s requests, fulfilling all their whims and desires, or like a huge thousand-year-old tree in which the insects making their home in one branch did not know what the insects in the other branch were doing. She had learned from Peking its tolerance, geniality, and urbanity, as we all in our formative years catch something of the city and country we live in. she had grown up with the yellow-roofed palaces and the purple and greenroofed temples, and the broad boulevards and the long, crooked alleys, the busy thoroughfares and the quiet districts that were almost rural in their effect; the common man’s homes with their inevitable pomegranate trees and jars of goldfish, no less than the rich man’s mansions and gardens; the open-air tea houses where men loll on rattan armchairs under cypress trees, spending twenty cents for a whole afternoon in summer; the enclosed teashops where in winter men eat steaming-hot mutton fried with onion and drink pehkan and where the great rub shoulders with the humble; the wonderful theatres, the beautiful restaurants, the bazaars, the lantern streets and the curio man’s shop credits and poor man’s pleasures, the openair jugglers, magicians, and acrobats of Shihshahai and the cheap operas of Tienchiao; the beauty and variety of the pedlars’ street-cries, the tuning forks of itinerant barbers, the drums of second-hand goods dealers working from house to house, the brass bowls of the sellers of iced dark plum drinks, each and every one clanging in the most perfect rhythm; the pomp of wedding and funeral processions half-a-mile long and official sedan chairs and retinues; the Manchu women contrasting with the Chinese camel caravans from the Mongolian desert and the Lama priests and the Buddhist monks; the public entertainers, sword swallowers and beggars, each pursuing his profession with freedom and an unwritten code of honor sanctioned by century-old custom; the rich humanity of beggars and “beggar kings,” thieves and thieves’ protectors, mandarins and retired scholars, saints and prostitutes, chaste sing-song artists and profligate widows, monks’ kept mistresses and eunuchs’ sons, amateur singers and “opera maniacs”; and the hearty and humorous common people.

Mulan’s imagination had been keenly stimulated by her childhood in this city. She had learned the famous Peking nursery rhymes with their witty commentary on life. She had, as a child, trailed on the ground beautiful rabbit lanterns on wheels and watched with fascination the fireworks, shadow plays, and Punch-and-Judy shows. She had listened to blind minstrel singers telling of ancient heroes and lovers, and “big-drum” storytellers by whom the beauty of the Pekinese language was brought to perfection of sound and rhythm and artistry. From these monologue declamations she had first realized the beauty of language, and from every day conversations she had unconsciously learned that quiet, unperturbed, and soothing style of Pekinese conversation. She learned through the annual festivals the meaning of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, a system of festivals which regulates life like a calendar from the beginning to the end of the year, and enables man to live in close touch with the year’s rhythm and with nature. She had absorbed the imperial glamour of the Forbidden City and ancient institutions of learning, the religious glamour of Buddhist, Taoist, Tibetan, and Mohammedan temples and their rites and ceremonies and the Confucian Temple of Heaven and Altar of Heaven; the social and domestic glamour of rich homes and parties and exchange of presents; and the historic glamour of ancient pagodas, bridges, towers, archways, queens’ tombs, and poets’ residences, where every brick was fraught with legend, history, and mystery...

-- An excerpt from Moment in Peking written by Lin Yutang in 1939

Qingdao, 1931

It was more than a decade ago that I last visited this old house where my grandparents used to live. The blue door plate writes the address from which I once received LETTERS in the 90s; the red wooden spiral stairs lead home on the second floor; inside, the big family squeezed in the bed as the room was too packed for chairs; the black-and-white family photo is still hanging on the wall, but the old generation in it has long gone and the babies grown up.

Today the coal stove in the room has been changed to an air-conditioner; we no longer write letters on paper; the old pictures have been scanned and saved to the computer.

This house built in 1931 by the Japanese listens to the firecrackers blown up every Chinese new year and it has witnessed the changes upon people over the years. It can be nostalgic and also a reminder of how we used to live.

2008 in pictures

Been to some interesting places during the past one year and here they are:

Cambodia, Dec.

Outside the forbidden city, Beijing, Oct.

Houhai, Beijing, Oct.

Duolun Road, Shanghai, Mar.

A journey across time

It happened to be Christmas Day when we arrived at Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. It was 9pm, humid after the rain. There was no trace of the festival. The streets were quiet and dimly lit and scattered with stalls selling local foods. The scene suddenly reminded me of my hometown in the 80s.

The journey began the next day. After a six hours’ drive, we were in Siem Reap. The bumpy and dusty road, the strange words, the ocher-red soil and the wilderness of the land made this place like Xinjiang in the tropical world.

Angkor was swarming with tourists and you could hear a polyglot of languages. Near each scenic spot, there were kids selling knick-knacks. Young as they were, their bargaining skills surprised me. “One dollar, yi kuai”, “I don’t have money to go to school…” That was their cue when you turned away.

Needless to say, the temples are formidable. People may marvel at the mystic sculptures and centuries-old trees in the jungle during daytime, they can also have fun in the pub street at night. Clusters of lights from bars and restaurants lightened the sky. It was just as vibrant as any other bar street in the world. But locals were seldom seen, except the tuk-tuk drivers vying for business.

A few miles’ distance separates the ancient and modern world, locals and foreigners. Here, everyone seems happy-go-lucky. There are no high-rises, no glittering shopping malls, no fast food chains, no financial crisis. It’s a temporary haven, or heaven.

Back to the hotel, I saw a commercial of Discovery channel, it says “The world is just awesome.” Yes, it is.