Deng Guida then used a wad of ¥4000 cash to hit her face while yelling, "Didn't you want money? I bet you have not seen any money before. How much money do you want? Just say it. Believe me or not, I shall smack you to death with money."
Deng Yujiao retorted, "Yes, I have never seen any money before. If you have the guts, today you smack me to death."
Deng Guida then replied, "I am going to smack you to death with money. I'm going to get a truckload of money to squash you to death."
I recently readFinding Them Gone, Red Pine's book combining a contemporary Chinese travelogue with an introduction to ancient Chinese poetry. Through this book, I learned about chang2xiao4 长啸, an ancient Daoist spiritual exercise. It is known in English as "transcendental whistling" -- or, in Red Pine's translation, "droning."
pg 47
I discovered that in the mouths of Daoists, changxiao had a very different meaning, and involved breathing out in a way that could be heard for miles. Such droning was done from the top of a hill or a raised platform. None of the Daoists I've spoken with, however, have been able to tell me how to do it. Either the regimen behind such a skill has died out, or such knowledge is transmitted in secret.
Indie Web Camp East 2020 will be taking place on November 14-15. I'll be there, and I hope you'll join me.
The magic of any special-interest social gathering will mostly be destroyed by the need for a virtual conference -- but, having attended Indie Web Camp West 2020, I can verify that the remaining 10% of the magic is enough to enjoy oneself.
Come make your first-ever website, or tinker with the one you've got. Come share what you've learned as a website enthusiast, or listen to others as you decide what to implement next. Come fall in love with personal websites, or storm off after two hours to take up fishing. There's so little downside: register today!
I'd watch a food review show where the host apes Bedivere as portrayed in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, making up ludicrous explanations for everything and having to open and close the little door on his helmet for each bite.
It would be called "Sir Fedivere" -- or perhaps, if the other knights got involved, "The Bites of the Round Table."
What a great book. Bill Porter, known in Chinese as Red Pine, has for decades been an important figure in the world of translated Chinese poetry. His travel writings have also gained a huge following in China.
In thirty chapters, Porter describes a personal quest: spend thirty days tearing ass all over China in search of graves, hometowns, and shrines from the lives of important Chinese poets so that he can toast them with fine American whiskey.
The book is not only a modern Chinese travelogue, but also a primer on Chinese poetry. Breaking up the travel narrative are over 200 Chinese poems, accompanied by Porter's translations.
Chinese title: 十个词汇里的中国. Chris Stasse, Alexi C., and I are reading and responding to this as part of a Chinese reading group. Each chapter is an essay prompted by a single two-character Chinese word. Below are the ones I've read so far; I'll definitely end up blogging more about this book.
人民 People
领袖 Leader (finished 2020-09-21)
阅读 Reading (read 2020-10-10)
7 more chapters... [edit: the middle chapters turned into a slog, and we gave up.]
At night I lie in the mountains. It's quieter when birds sing
Strangers aren't likely to approach this lonely wilderness
My car is cold. I'm lonely. My thoughts twist around
One day away from home is like ten months
Naturally, I wanted to reply in kind. My goal was to show I had grokked Chris's poem by restating its sentiments in different words.
In addition, I challenged myself to work within the constraints of a line-internal rhyme scheme: the 2nd, 4th, and 7th (final) syllables of each line all share an ending sound.
A certain Mr. Stasse (featured several times on this website) has temporarily withdrawn from society to live at a Buddhist retreat.
Original Title: 《老傻赐新隐士》
2020-10-13: On reflection, I dislike the third line and will probably change it. It's a leftover from the first draft, and out of place.
秋风摇树果不应
愿隐士身旁同赏
人生弯曲预无因
他稳似果拟之值
Rough translation (updated 2020-10-13):
Autumn wind shakes the trees, but the fruits don't go along
I wish the hermit was here to appreciate it, too
Life's twists and turns aren't worth guessing at
He is steady, like the fruits, and that's worth imitating
Today at 6 PM Pacific, I'm hosting the IndieWeb's Homebrew Website Club West Coast. If you have a personal website, come join in the fun!
HWC is informal, so there's usually no fixed agenda, but I'd like to start this week's club with a discussion about the tradeoffs between posting on a website to perform data storage (as with bookmarks), vs. using a website to display information ultimately stored elsewhere (on disk, or in a database, or live-updated from some service.)
In September, Chris Stasse sent me a letter which concluded with his calligraphic rendering of "Countryside Pleasures No. 6" 《田园乐——六》, by Tang-era master poet Wang Wei. My reply to Chris included a parody of the same poem.
My version's title swaps out the third character, 乐 le4 "pleasure, happiness", for the rhyming word 恶 e4 "evil, vicious, harmful." Here is "Countryside Nastiness," by Wang Wei's little-renowned cousin, Wrong Wei.
桃红中坏烈焰
柳绿烧成灰柱
花落腾于热气
鸟啼出窝恐离
Translation:
Red peaches suffer from fierce flames
Green willows burn up into pillars of ash
Flowers fall, then rise on heated gusts
Birds cry, leaving their nests in fear
