Get It in Writing

Lonely Planet, in its China travel book, calls The Bund “the single most evocative symbol of “The Paris of the East,� and tells us that the word is an Anglo-Indian term for the embankment of a muddy waterfront. It is a mile long promenade along the west bank of the Huangpu River that wends through the center of Shanghai.

View image On its western side, it parallels a main thoroughfare that is lined with grand edifices in an assortment of neoclassical 1930s-style New York architecture. Eastward, across the river, is the Pudong New Area, Shanghai’s financial district. The view of modern architecture makes a stunning contrast to the classical buildings on the opposite bank.

View image The promenade is lined with Chinese and foreign tourists, strolling or skating along the ceramic surface.

View image The Jinmao Tower, considered Shanghai’s most beautiful piece of modern architecture, is the tallest building in China (420.5 meters) and the fourth tallest in the world. Next to it is the incomplete Shanghai World Finance Building, which, when finished will total 90 stories and be 460 meters (1518 feet).

View image In contrast to the elegance of the Jinmao Tower, is the nearby Oriental Pearl Tower, an inverted hypodermic that serves as a television tower.

Several tunnels cross underneath the river, including one that whisks passengers on futuristic train modules through a tunnel lined with psychedelic lights.

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Days at the United States
Yi Li View image

Until today I can still clearly remember all the details that I experienced in the United States, specially the part about the days at Yale. They were all engraved into my memory deeply. This short period was like a window that enabled me to perceive the life and education in the U.S. in person.

Seeing from the JFK airport in New York City, the gray but clear sky and the remote built-up Manhattan composed my first impression of the United States. On the way to Yale, we talked about everything coming into our sights. The yellow cabs having big LCD advertising screens on their tops, small houses with different styles along the road, and the McDonald’s with green M on its front door in which we bought our first meal in the United States, were all fresh to us. I was exited on the school bus that looked like the one in the movie “Forrest Gump� though its color was white. A new life began.

Before I came to New York, I had only seen it from films. One of those most famous films, “Gangs of New York� made me an image of New York that had lots of dark and narrow streets between old buildings. And common people living there had pale faces while gangs’ members looked cool. However, when I arrived there on a Sunday morning, what I saw was the underground Central Station like a big sleepy animal and the blue and clean sky outside. It was a sunny day when I met New York for the first time. Streets along which were closed stores were quiet, and the Time Square was also silent as the day life had not yet begun. It was vigorous and looked young rather than dark and damp. Only a few minutes after our arrival at Time Square, we saw a screaming fire engine running very fast towards a shop in front of us, from which smoke was coming out. It was really a surprising event to us though we finally got used to the frequent fire engines, ambulances and police wagons in New Haven.

Besides the distinctive city itself, people there were very warm-hearted and of course not the same as what I had been aware of from gang movies. One interesting thing happened once when my friend and I were waiting for someone on the roadside of a crossing. We were looking around to see if that person came. Then a gentleman came to us and asked if we were lost, and if we needed he could offer help to point the way for us. We were amazed by his kind action, which we might never have chance to meet in China. Then we said thanks to him, and he replied us with a pure smile. A similar thing happened when my friend and I were visiting the Metropolitan Museum. A young lady asked us if we wanted her to take pictures for us when we asked her to let us take a picture of the sculpture that she was appreciating. I think it is very precious for people living in a metropolis to have such an accommodating character.

Although I like New York City, I love Boston. It is not a big modern city like New York and has an intense cultural atmosphere. Buildings there are not high but historic; people there are not in a hurry but standing on the square and applauding for the street performers; the residential area we once visited in Boston is as beautiful as the picture on one of the postcard I bought in a store in M.I.T.; the beautiful harbor from which I saw the gray blue Atlantic was tranquil like a place very close to the heaven. I can not help thinking about living there, in a small two-floor house having a big old tree in front of it. There is a big lawn in Boston, and we once lay on it after a day of walking around this magic city. The day we arrived in Boston was a sunny day after a rain in the early morning. When sunlight was shining through the leaves, we saw the lawn in the campus of Harvard blinking. The scene was so beautiful that I wandered if I could study there in the future.

In most of time at Yale I was busy studying. I chose a writing course mainly concentrated on English literature. I had to say that it was really hard for me. Not only because most of the students in that class were native, but also the reading and writing assignments seemed impossible for me to manage. However, I learned more than I had expected. The atmosphere of the discussion in class was extremely free and I liked it. Rather than many students sitting tightly and silently in a classroom listening to the teacher, we fourteen students and one teacher sat around a round table. Whenever we had questions we could ask at once even not necessarily asking for the teacher’s permission first. Although I had heard of this kind of study in American universities, it was still amazing to me when I experienced it personally.

Six weeks was only enough for me to touch the surface of American society and the education system. Nevertheless, it was still a worthy experience for me, not only because it helped me substantiate my imagination of the U.S. but also because I made several best friends in my life at Yale.

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One of the first things to be lost when coping with the double whammy of jet lag and culture shock is one’s exercise routines. The jet lag leaves you physically exhausted and the culture shock mentally drained.

In time, a matter of weeks, the body adjusts to the new time zone and physical energy returns. The culture shock takes longer to abate. The lack of exercise begins to wreak havoc, but inertia fends off good intentions.

The body rebels and there is no choice but to find a new exercise routine, something more than the short bicycle commutes and walks around the block. Fortunately, there is a 400 meter track within blocks and early visitors include a number of health-minded companions: young, old, male, female. Most walk or jog around the oval. Some gather in a corner with a boom box and do aerobics. Many do stretching exercise, individually or grouped in a circle.

So, with the heart rate strap around the chest, the numbers game begins again. Day one: 7 laps, 41 minutes (door to door, including the climb up ten flights of stairs), 113 average heart rate, and 19 minutes in the heart rate zone. The road back has to begin somewhere.

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Reading response to A Trifle From Real Life

The author has done a very good job at description. This can be seen from paragraph 4. He describes the boy’s behavior and innocence. We can see that the boy is very cute. This foreshadows the story that is going to happen: an innocent boy will face trouble.

The second success lies in the dialogues. Quotations are sometimes a very powerful tool to communicate to the reader the personality of a character. It makes the story vivid. Throughout the fiction, if we do not focus on the narrator; if we pay attention to the dialogue, we may infer that the boy is innocent and he knows nothing about the adult’s world. We may also get to know the difference of Belayeff’s tone before and after the boy tells the truth to him. He becomes mad, not as he promises not to be angry. He has deceived the little boy. This will have a great influence on the kid because he can not understand why Belayeff does so, and he may have developed the habit of cheating others.

I am very sick of Belayeff. He not only deceived the little boy but also ruined a family. He was not the husband, he was just the lover. He should not be like that. The husband was very kind ,I suppose. He just told the truth. I think it natural for him to see his children because he gave birth to them and loved them. Belayeff ruined a family, and he even blamed the husband. He is so disgusting.

Perhaps the main character was a very noble person in Russian society and the author wanted to reveal the dark side of such people and condemned them. The story doesn’t tell a moral story directly; instead, it just used dialogues and some narrative languages to push the story and create such a strong effect.

I feel sympathy for the boy and I hope such tragedy will never happen again. It will be weird to add “deception� into the vocabulary of childhood.

Posted by Ron Corio at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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My reading log on The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

It is not strange for me to see the scenes in novels that women were oppressed to obey their male “dominator� (often fathers, brothers and husbands) and be deprived of their basic emotional desires. The condition was quite universal before feminism and advanced civilization appeared, as you can figure out more or less the same bitterness and struggle that Chopin’s character experienced from the novels by Pearl S. Buck.

But when The Story of an Hour came to me, I still can’t help feeling sad, sympathetic and furious. In this story, something hard to define but overwhelmingly powerful seemed to have built a solid wall of depression and repression that Mrs. Mallard wasn’t able to escape at all.

The beginning of the story described the urgency and difficulty of the situation so successfully that it awakened a strong curiosity with upset worries from me. I also loved the way how the author represented the thoughts in Mrs. Mallard’s mind: just by combining the vivid and persuasive words together in an artistic way, Kate Chopin generated my sense of reality as if I were on the spot witnessing the whole event. I could even feel what a desperate anticipation Mrs. Mallard had when the words “Free, free, free!� burst out of her mouth. She must have been expecting the refreshed life of freedom for so long, as we can see from “Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her� She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. “To her, freedom didn’t only mean that “she would live for herself�, but also a kind of self-assertion which she “suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being�.

It was so miserable for me to think about what fierce struggle women like Mrs. Mallard should take before freedom reach in their life completely, as this basic human right had already been guaranteed to most of us nowadays.
However, the more depressed ending just came soon after this short time of gladness: Mr. Mallard wasn’t dead at all, actually “he had been far from the scene of accident�! What did that mean? Wasn't it cruel to turn all the illumination of a helpless woman into inaccessible illusion?! The author sent us onto the peak of frustration through the unexpected O- Henry Ending. Sorry as we felt, Mrs. Mallard died after all, “of joy that kills�, of torture that hurts. And the only relief we could get was that this kind of tragedy would never happen again. Anyway, it is still altogether essential that we pay tribute to the author of the story, for having revealed to what extent the hardship could be, both physically and mentally, in the life of a woman at that time.

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For master’s candidates View image View image View image

For doctoral candidates View image

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The Center for American Studies (CAS), established in 1985, is one of the pioneer institutions for American studies in China. Professor Xie Xide, the former President of Fudan University and a founding director of the CAS contributed to the establishment and development of the Center.

In December 2000, the CAS was designated by the Chinese Ministry of Education as one of the key research institutes of the Humanities and Social Sciences in China. In 2004, the CAS was credited as the National Base for American Studies. CAS, through Fudan Foundation in Washington, D.C., received financial support from the American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA) program affiliated with the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). (From CAS information brochure.)

A photograph of Eugene Trani, President of Virginia Commonwealth University, taken at the time of his visit with former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, is on display in the lobby. Photographs of other noted Americans include: Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Henry Kissinger, Warren Christopher, Joe Biden, and Orrin Hatch.

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Architecture of the new high rise buildings in Shanghai is unusual and innovative. An Internet search for “Shanghai architecture� produces numerous sites that describe the phenomenon, for example, Shanghai Architecture: From Its European Past into Its Chinese Future.

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Most of the students studying English here take on an English name, probably to make it easier for the non-Chinese speaker to remember and pronounce, or maybe for the fun of creating a new persona for learning the languge. There are contemporary ones, e.g. Angelina, Tiffany, Tanya, Jackie, classic ones, e.g. Anna, Emma, Iris, Philip, Vincent, and less common ones, e.g. Edwina, Delia, Celia, Ivy, Samantha. Then there are the unique and unusual ones, e.g. Jingle, Nice, Winning, and Idea.

Here is what some students had to say about their English names:

Tracy. I’m always chasing after grand stars in the NBA. Tracy McGrady takes up most of my heart, whose name is also the source of my English name.

Seven. My Chinese name is [characters] sounds like Qian-si-wen [q in Chinese is pronounced /ch/, thus Qian is pronounced /che-an/]. It was given to me by my father, though I don’t like it very much. I don’t think it is a name for a girl. As to my English name, I prefer you to call me Seven. It’s simple and sounds like my first name in Chinese

Emma. When I came across Harry Potter in my junior school, the smart girl, Hermione, impressed me, so I choose the actress’ name, Emma, as my English name.

Flora. My Chinese name is [characters] means yellow. [one of the characters] stands for bud. Because of bud, I got my name, Flora.

Winning. My name is Winning Bryant. I chose the word “Winning� for the meaning of “lovely,� not ‘win.’ Anyway, participation is more important than result. And then, as I am a fan of the NBA games, I love the Los Angeles Lakers. Their great star, Kobe Bryant, is my favorite player. That’s why I use “Bryant� as my family name.

Lynn. My name is Zhu Meilin and you can call me Lynn. My English name just comes from the last word of my name.

Iris. My name is Dong Qinyun, and my English name is Iris, which is the name of my favorite flower. “Dong� is my family name. In the Chinese way, your surname has to come first.

Charles. My name is Liu Zefan and my English name is Charles. I got this English name because of the Prince Charles of Britain, whose personality impressed me a lot during his visit to China in 1997.

Allan. Sports are my favorite, especially basketball and football. In the NBA, I like Allen Iverson best. His fighting spirit impresses me. Now, I still remember the final games between the 76eres and Lakers. Though Iverson lost at last, I regard him as the winner. He was injured at the time, but he was fighting from the beginning to the end. Only a true warrior can achieve that.

Delia. My name is Lu Jie. I come from Shanghai and major in philosophy. A few days ago, I replaced my English name Cordelia with Delia because the latter is much simpler.

Sally. My Chinese name is Sun Tao. I like my name Sun. Will you see sunshine when you read my name? My name is a combination of the first names of my father and mother. Sally is my English name, which first letter is the same as “Sun.� Although I always hope friends call me Sally, I don’t know its meaning and have never looked up a dictionary to know it.

Clare. My Chinese name is [character] and you can call me Clare. I got this name from my English teacher in junior school, although I did not know why she chose this name for me. I still love it. Because this name is full of her high expectation of me. (P.S. If you can tell me what Clare stands for, I will feel grateful.)

Edwina. My name is Edwina, which means a worthwhile friend in English.

Emily. I think such a brief that begins with “My name is . . . .� is very boring. So firstly let me introduce a French movie to you, Angel Amelie, which is my favorite movie. The main character, Amelie, is just an ordinary girl, who lives an ordinary life. One day she saw the funeral of Princess Diana on air. She suddenly realized that life was so short that she wanted a change. Amelie returned an old box to its owner, thus reminding him of his childhood. She helped a blind gentleman walk along the street and described what she saw to him. She found her true love in a very brave and singular way . . . she is changing her own life while changing others’. I love this character because we have something in common more or less, that I’m also always caring a lot about some details inside or outside myself. Daily life is so trivial indeed, but I’m the very person who has the sole right to master it. Just like Amelie, I’m trying to make life meaningful every minute, every second. So I name myself after Amelie, or Emily.

Lucky. My Chinese name is Chen Si and my English name is Lucky, since I am so lucky to have attended Fudan University.

Irene. My name is Irene. As it is known to us, there is a very famous ‘Irene’ in the scientific history—Irene Curie, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Curie always been dreaming of winning a Nobel Prize one day, not in physics, but in literature; not for myself, but for my beloved country, China.

Alice. My name is Alice. I treasure this name very much as it was given to me by my first English teacher six years ago. But unfortunately, there are two Alices in this class. Since our family names happen to be the same again, you have to call me Alice 2, which is a bit strange.

Alice. My name is Alice. Alice in wonderland. This name was given by my first English teacher, who lead me to the palace of English and helped me open the door.

Maggie. I got my English name from the famous TV series The Growing Pains. The mother in the show was called Maggie. So I thought that was a pretty name and took it up.

Alberta. I ‘d like to start my introduction with my name. I have a really fantastic Chinese name Di Yi. The pronunciation of my name is just like D and E in alphabet. I did have an English name, but I can’t remember it. I’ve learnt Italian for a month, so I made Alberta my Italian name my English name. The origin of my Italian or English name is very funny. I am a football maniac. My favorite national team is Italy (It goes without saying . . . ) and I have a big infatuation for Filippo Inzaghi, so I thought Filippa would be my name, but, you know, this name sounds . . . terrible . . . . So I turn to my second favorite guy Alberto Gilardino, then the name Alberta came into being. That’s crazy, isn’t it?