March 14th, 2012
pheona

Start with the passionate red

Ended with the cold blue

I am wondering what color the story will be in the next season

November 25th, 2011
triciawang
November 25th, 2011
triciawang
November 25th, 2011
triciawang
November 25th, 2011
triciawang
November 23rd, 2011
triciawang
November 20th, 2011
reginaldzhu

How to become a perfect Chinese American kid

we might think about Chinese education style again, apart from the stereotype.  

-Reginald

url:http://my.backchina.com/chineseblog/201111/user-299872-message-130030-page-1.html

How to become a perfect Chinese American kid


There are many inside jokes circulating around the Chinese American community, but one is particularly relevant, and in a way, bitterly funny. “To be a perfect Chinese-American kid,” it goes, “you must score 2400 on the SAT; apply to and be accepted by 27 colleges, all of them in the top parameters of the annual “US News & World Report” rankings; and win enough scholarships to pay for it. Have three hobbies: math, piano, and more math; love classical music and detest talking on the phone; and lastly, accept your parents unfortunate fashion choices with enthusiasm.”


The joke reflects the fact that lofty aspirations have become a standard expectation, and of course, it reinforces the stereotype of the corkscrew glasses wearing, eternally studying, and no social life-ing Chinese American dork, who, to the dismay of his former tormentors, ends up becoming an Internet billionaire by the age of 25. It’s a rather uglifying stereotype, except for the billionaire part. But as the saying goes, a stereotype isn’t a stereotype if it’s not at least partially true.


It was back in the 1980’s, when Chinese Americans first began entering elite institutions like Harvard, Princeton and Stanford in mammoth numbers that the mainstream USA realized the scope of their academic excellence. In other words, they noticed that “Hey, Chinese are really smart”. Everyone from talk-show hosts to “Popular Mechanics Magazine” was fascinated by the supposedly new phenomenon. They tried to pinpoint its origins, bottle it, harness it, find that magical elixir that seemed to take every fresh off the boat Chinese immigrant and stuff his mailbox with big fat acceptance envelopes. It seemed like every family with a last name of Wong had three sons who were top of their class at Harvard, or three model daughters with perfect moon-pie faces and GPA’s in the 5.0 range.


Piano competitions became a wide swath of Asian territory, dominated by little musical prodigies with black hair and cheeky barrettes. California MATHCOUNTS state top-10 finales were inevitably dominated by 7th and 8th grade Chinese boys in bowl cuts and corduroys, scribbling answers to impossible math problems, their proud parents answering congratulations with the usual Chinese humility, “No, no, he’s lazy, doesn’t like to study at all, always wants to watch television, play with his friends.”


Of course, watching T.V. and hanging out with your buddies are two entirely unacceptable pastimes in the Chinese American culture, except under certain circumstances when you’re watching a documentary about Napoleon on the History Channel, or studying for the Academic Decathlon. 


And then there’s the unavoidable competition. The science test results are always succeeded by an interrogation regarding the scores of the top students in the class. Course grades are eagerly compared among anxious Chinese parents. “What about this girl,” they ask, “how did she do?” Chinese American kids are expected to maintain up-to date records on everyone’s SAT I, SAT II, and Advanced Placement grades.


An awful lot of articles have been written about the “infamous” Chinese American overachievers. An awful lot of words have been spent denying it. You can debate endlessly about whether these seemingly impossible expectations actually help or hurt these Chinese kids. It’s probably both.

The pressure and the competition and the stereotypes are unavoidable as a Chinese American kid. It comes with the territory. I, for one, have learned to embrace it. No other parents are as supportive and dedicated when it comes to education as Chinese parents. No other culture gives more chances for inside jokes and hysterical anecdotes. And when you look at people like Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo, Steve Chu, the Nobel Prize winner, and Steve Chen, the founder of YouTube, or the legions of lawyers, scientist, doctors, and musicians, who made it alive through the gauntlet process, and who are living extraordinarily happy and successful lives, it’s hard not to be convinced that maybe, just maybe, there’s something right in Chinese American parenting styles.



Read more: 如何成为一个完美的华人孩子? - 白露为霜的日志 - 贝壳村 - 
November 20th, 2011
reginaldzhu
November 15th, 2011
triciawang

Bell, who teaches politics at Beijing’s crack Tsinghua University, is well placed to comment on changing Chinese attitudes. He detects signs of a reviving interest in, and practice of, pre-communist traditions, whether in the lecture hall, in the streets, or inside karaoke bars. The latter especially attract Bell’s attention. It is within the karaoke bar that the bonding properties of music – so beloved of Confucians – become manifest. If the hostesses offer sex as well as harmonious conversation, that too is as the Sage Master might wish. “I never met anyone,” he told his 5th-century BC students approvingly, “who values virtue more than physical beauty.”

Moreover (Bell argues) such arrangements, while providing profitable “employment opportunities” for the hostesses, also help preserve the family - the ultimate Confucian good. Husbands may err, but return to base soon enough. Health workers and feminists may grimace, but Bell has a sharp sense of cultural differences. What matters more to him than political correctness is China’s political direction. He senses greater inclusivity ahead, though not a Western-type democracy. Dismissing Yu Dan for her lightweight reconfiguration of Confucianism as an inner quest, he prefers Jiang Qing, whose Political Confucianism is distinctly socialist while upholding the role that non-elected wise elders should play in China’s governance.

November 15th, 2011
triciawang
November 14th, 2011
triciawang

slavin:

Via humanscalecities, amazing portfolio images under the heading: “Why Is China Building These Gigantic Structures In the Middle of the Desert?”

Comment stream below it is a pareidolic nightmare. An entertaining nightmare, however.

Reblogged from Fresser.
November 13th, 2011
pheona

High school and college students may be ‘digital natives,’ but they’re wretched at searching… In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can’t read. Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?

Who’s to blame? Not the students. If they’re naive at Googling, it’s because the ability to judge information is almost never taught in school. Under 2001’s No Child Left Behind Act, elementary and high schools focus on prepping their pupils for reading and math exams. And by the time kids get to college, professors assume they already have this skill. The buck stops nowhere. This situation is surpassingly ironic, because not only is intelligent search a key to everyday problem-solving, it also offers a golden opportunity to train kids in critical thinking.

Clive Thompson on why kids can’t search and the importance of educating against the filter bubble (via curiositycounts)

I wonder is it only in the US or actually happens everywhere? Are Chinese students even worse? Or they are better than American kids because so much things they like are banned by the government?

Reblogged from Fresser.
November 13th, 2011
triciawang
November 11th, 2011
triciawang
Chris Chang’s photo of construction in China. I love his photos. He has a great eye. Click here to see more photos from Chris.

Chris Chang’s photo of construction in China. I love his photos. He has a great eye. Click here to see more photos from Chris.

November 7th, 2011
pheona

Expanding the Definition of Avatar: Artists, Avatars and Self-Portraiture

Anxiao discussed how our “Avatar” represent us online and how we act differently according to the different online environment. It’s so interesting!

So is the design of a social networking website the only factor of what user use it for? If not, then what are other factors? Artists’ art is definitely part of themselves, does online identity work the same way for everyone? And how should we interpret individual’s social media presence? And how can it help website designers to design better website?

From Anxiaostudio

Artists and avatars. I’m always very conscious about the way I use my avatar, the message it sends to the world. Some call it branding, some call it self-expression, some call it communication. But my avatar represents me in some fashion. Kyle Chayka in LA Weekly wrote a thought-provoking essay about artists and their online avatars:

Think about your Facebook profile picture. For the most part, these small images are close-ups on faces or group photos with friends. Maybe it’s a vacation shot, or a cute picture of your pet. That profile picture is your avatar, a representation of yourself, or a particular aspect of yourself, on the Internet. Avatars, whether on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, are our online ambassadors.

And this is what I said on the matter:

“I often obscure faces to focus us on what else is present in digital media,” Xiao notes. “How can we communicate our identity just through text, or just through images that we share of our life without us in them?”

These pieces subvert the traditional idea of an avatar by forcing us to work without the one avatar we are most comfortable with – our own bodies.

In addition to publishing my first Chinese pun*, the article covers the avatar work of Man Bartlett and Petra Cortright. Bartlett sees “avatar use as an unmediated, organic outgrowth of identity and personality”, while Cortright creates “weird, semifictional narratives” using a mixture of digital tools. It’s like Yin and Yang (and An) in a way: on the one hand, Bartlett says he “has nothing to hide”, Cortright obscures the avatar, and I tend to take mine away entirely.

72cdaf35jw1dlfdwmlnmnj.jpg

The word “avatar” is a funny one. It has religious connotations–according to Wikipedia, it comes from Hinduism, where a deity may descend (avatar means descend) into the world. Part of the descent is the physical manifestation, the way the deity looked. But part of the descent was the behavior, the way he or she acted.

When Chayka asked me how I use my avatar, I had this definition in the back of my mind, and so I replied in broader terms, beyond the image and into the actual use of media. This is most pronounced when you compare how I use Sina Weibo and Twitter, both of which are microblog services. Whereas in the former, my activity is driven more by images and personal stories, in the latter I’m more apt to post links and quick reflections. My avatar, the way I project myself in these media, varies because the platforms vary.avatarjuxtaposition.JPG

Could we expand the idea of avatars, and avatar self-portraiture, to include the full social media presence, rather than just the image? Chayka rightly points out that much of my works obscures the image of our body and face (our primary definition of what an avatar should be) so we can focus on other things–namely, the interaction between us, the message content, the way we use language and tell stories about ourselves and to each other.

I think back to the postcard installation I developed for Yale’s Haskins Laboratories, and how I called it a Self-Portrait in Postcards, a portrait accumulated over time as I sent tweet-like postcard messages to the gallery. This is what Jan Ellen Spiegel wrote in the New YorkTimes:

[An Xiao] came to art through photography, writing and an interest in communication that goes back to her childhood, when she wrote letters to her grandmother in the Philippines. The letters, she said, related little moments that add up to a portrait of the writer, the way social networking does now with a series of – as she put it – ‘totally inane things’

The inspiration for the postcard installation came from a long Times essay by Clive Thompson that changed the way I see the Internet and the way social media works. The essay argued–rightly, in my view–that social media and microblogging, over time, create a sense of who we are. More so than any other media:

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does – body language, sighs, stray comments – out of the corner of your eye. Facebook is no longer alone in offering this sort of interaction online. In the last year, there has been a boom in tools for “microblogging”: posting frequent tiny updates on what you’re doing.

That article was written in 2009, which feels like ages ago. Since then, we’ve seen microblogging implemented in everything from the Obama campaign to the Arab Spring, andone famous writer argued that social media can’t possibly develop strong ties. But over these past two years, I’ve become even more convinced that the way we represent ourselves online reflects who we are. Our avatars–both our images and our accumulated self representations–are indeed self-portraits, whether we construct them consciously or whether we let them develop naturally over time.

* The Chinese visual pun explained. The first character in my Chinese name, An (安), consists of the character for “woman” (女) under a character representing a roof. My avatar, then, is a bit of a play on the common practice of iPhone-in-bathroom-mirror photography. Standing in front of a women’s bathroom mirror in Beijing, I used the bathroom ceiling to spell my name. Chinese isn’t my native language, so most of my attempts at puns fall flat, but this one got a few laughs on Sina Weibo.