Blog for wangd2

When you are old
William Butler Yeats
When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire,take down this book,
And slowly read,and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once,and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur,a little sadly,how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

The day i went to Monticello, i met an old couple. The tour bus drove us up the hill. When they were about to get off the bus, the man who was behind his wife in the line, stepped forward and got off first.Then, he turned around, offered his hand out towards his wife and nodded. She smiled and held his hand. The silence scene was more powerful than any word. It is the most beautiful smile i've ever seen.
Living in the modern society, people seem to forget what really matters in our life. I was staggered by the high divorce rate worldwide. Once i talked with an American professor and asked him about this. "Aren't the American serious about love and family? Why can't relationship last long?" He said that the Americans cared too much about love and family and once they found it was not their true love they would leave each other without hesitation. It is too important? Is it a reason or an excuse? I don't know.Back in China, I see sweet couples on campus, hanging out happily or breaking up and get more and more confused about what love is. Maybe we all don't know what love is and only don't want to be alone. But does being alone equal lonely? I don't know.
I wanted to talk with the old couple but decided not to.I watched them strolling the path of Monticello hand in hand. Once pick up one's hand, never let it go easily.Maybe,maybe.

If we do not know the culture differences,misunderstanding is bound to occur. we do not do enough on our part,Lin Yutang and Gu Hongming are still the ones who introduced China to the world.They lived in the early 20th century and Lin was an anarchist and Gu support the empire of the Qing Dynasty,though they are famous in culture studies. Some of their analysis about the Chinese character are impressive but only one aspect i must confess.
Nowadays, Chinese government invest a lot in building Confucious College around the world, which intend to introduce China to the world. It is a good start. But we find that we can not get enough teacher for the Confucious College. For us ,the challenge is not only whether we can understand the essence of Chinese culture but also whether we can express it in English.It is a long way to go.

It is a pity that i have not got a chance to see the midnight sky in America.We will leave for NY the day after tomorrow and definitely there will be no clear scene of the sky there because it's too bright. I love the starry night. It gives me lots of memories.
I spent a whole week with some friends in the countryside when i was in junior high. It was the first time that I saw the Milky Way so clearly. I lay on the grass, hoping the sun would never rise which would scare the galaxy away. R sang for us and his voice was so beautiful, beyond imagination. In the dark, the thatched cottage that we rent and i stood in silence,looking at each other. It lies there and gave me a sense of safety.People come and go. Of course, I was the guest.
I am a guest here in America. I am lazy and like spending a whole afternoon chatting on the balcony at my house. But the faraway land is forever an attraction to me. To meet different people and to walk on the exotic land is of great fun.Starry starry night, no matter where i go, my beloved sky remains the same.

I spent the whole weekend at Erik's parents' house. The house is not very big but it is a fairly sweet home. It was an awesome weekend.
I could still recall the last night we spent in the house. We three girls had showers and went to bed early. (Erik always let us use the bathroom first) Laying in the bed, we talked about the weekend experience. Everything was planned so well and Erik was like our elder brother, always considerate and tolerant to us. He got up early and cooked us breakfast. Different breakfasts for each day. He took us to his friends' pool and had BBQ there. He guided us to UVA despite of the summer sunshine. Every time we got home, he cooked us dinner while we were watching the cartoons. We wanted to help, but found all we could do was to stand in the kitchen and gave him verbally "support"..."We have 'tortured' Erik for the whole weekend" one of us said. "Why has he never been angry with us?"the other said. Our dialogue went on like this and finally we decided to have a talk with Erik.It was over 11 o'clock at night and we four were all tired but we just wanted to talk with Erik.
I asked him why he was never annoyed by our various request,"what if we want to go somewhere and you are hungry and want to have lunch?" "Oh, it doesn't matter,we can eat tomorrow." His answer impressed me a lot. He was so considerate and always thinks for others.I began to think whether i was too self-centered in the past 20 years! It was over 1 o'clock at night when we let poor Erik go to bed.I definitely learned a lot from Erik.

Are what we've discussed the whole picture of the world at the present? Are everyone satisfied with the impact brought by the globalization? In fact, globalization is rather a controversial topic. As I've mentioned above, it is a double-edged sword. The critics of globalization target at the damage it has done to the natural environment and the increasingly large gap between rich and poor which involves the inequality of human beings.
In terms of the environmental crisis, we can, first of all, challenge the way of measuring economic achievement that most of organizations are using now,such as GDP used by the authoritative World Bank. The critics have other measurement such as the Green GDP,Happy Planet Index, etc. In this perspective, globalization does an awful job.some argue that by accelerating the process of the capitalist exploitation of nature,globalization spins the globe faster and faster and will certainly lead to an ecological collapse.It helps spread an unhealthy of way of development. Secondly, the last few decades of the past centuries witnessed a great increase in population.The population bomb,explosed from less than 300 million people at the time of Christ to over 6 billion today. Critics contend that it is compounding the ecological impact of the 260,000 people added to the planet every day.
----to be continued

At the beginning of the 21st century, globalization is an inevitable trend and is bound to develop as time goes by. Globalization is a double edged sword. On the one hand, it improves the communication and interaction between countries through technology, economic and politics. On the other, it assaults national sovereignty and diminishes local tradition. The daunting question is whether we can make the best out of it or it will come to control us.
People often regard the latest 100 years as the globalization era which witnesses a great expansion in population and economic growth. In fact, globalization is a trendy word for an old process. Different cultures met dating from the Greece time and during the Mongol time, there was greater integration along the silk road… However, it is in the past 100 years that the process accelerated.
Supporters of globalization claim that the economic prosperity benefits the rich and the poor alike and leads to a more efficient allocating of resource. Jeffery D. Sachs, the current professor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, pointed out in his book The End of Poverty, “One of the ironies of the recent success of India and China is the fear that... success in these two countries comes at the expense of the United States. These fears are fundamentally wrong and, even worse, dangerous. They are wrong because the world is not a zero-sum struggle... but rather is a positive-sum opportunity in which improving technologies and skills can raise living standards around the world.” In this perspective, the world market is a cake and globalization not only make the everyone has a piece, but also makes the cake bigger and bigger. Therefore, it is a bless to all of the world. According to World Bank figures, the percentage of people living on less than $2 a day has decreased greatly in areas effected by globalization, while poverty rates in other areas have remained largely stagnant. For example, in East-Asia, the percentage decreased was 50.1% compared to a 2.2% increase in Africa. Countries who are involved in globalization do benefit from the reduction or elimination of the tariffs and capital controls.
Accept from the economic benefit, globalization has made communication and everyday life easier and more exiting with the development of technology. Information flows smoothly between geographically remote areas. Satellite, submarine cable, internet and wireless cell phone, all these make an important part of our life. In the process, people from different areas get to understand each other better. The world-wide sport event such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games removes the language barrie between nations.People get plenty of opportunities to experience the exotic culture, which makes life more colorful. According to a 2003 survey of teenagers from New York, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, and the Philippines, teenagers both in the United States and elsewhere are largely in favor of globalization. The concrete statistic give us the hint that globalization is popular because of the convenience and wild choice that it offers.
----to be continued