Story: The Jade Kuanyin

"The Jade Kuanyin" was apparently an older example of the vernacular fiction that would grow so ornate in examples like "The Oil Peddlar" (and "The Pearl-Sewn Shirt," and "The Courtesan's Treasure-Box"). It's about how a Hsiu Hsiu, young girl in imperial service, defies her Prince to marry her lover Tsui Ning, and the two run away, but are caught, with ... ghostly consequences.

It doesn't quite work, at least to the modern cultural context. Hsiu Hsiu was engaged by the Prince as an embroiderer, and promised to Tsui Ning, the jade carver. Her transgression was not to wait for the Prince's consent, but to elope with Tsui Ning and run away. Why did she do that? Why did Tsui agree to her demand? Still, the fantastic element at the end is fun. I'm not sure I'll be able to find the Chinese text to this one so easily, but I'll give it a try, later.

The Oil Peddlar and the Queen of Flowers

To this day a man expert in the art of pang ch'en is nicknamed "Little Master Chin" or "the oil peddler" by those wise in matters concerning breeze and moonlight.

I just finished one of the great late Ming love stories, "The Oil Peddlar and the Queen of the Flowers," translated by Wang Chi-chen. It's the story of Yaochin aka Meiniang, "The Queen of Flowers," a poor orphan girl turned courtesan, and Chin Chung, a poor orphan boy who becomes a respectable oil merchant. As the last sentence of the story (quoted above) indicates, it has a happy ending.

I quite liked the quaintness of Wang's 1943 translation, with its Wade-Giles, use of words like "erstwhile" and "sycee," and snappy poetry translations: "For he who can read his fair lady's thoughts/Only he is without peer in the arena of love." I want to get right back to my reading, but I leave this note here for further updating, especially after I locate the Chinese text of the story.

Education: Notes on Pannapacker

One of my former students posted a piece in Slate.com that responded to an earlier statement by Prof. William Pannapacker, now well-known for his advice against pursuing PhDs in humanities. She wrote, "Some inspiring counterpoints by the readers - maybe there is hope for us yet!" Indeed, they do. Perhaps the best response was by Corinne Martin with,

Graduate school is a financial risk and as the single mother of two young children, I am well aware of the sacrifice I am making by continuing my work. I am not guaranteed a job when I am finished; I will have to conform to the standards and the pressures of an unstable job market which may mean a change in my career path; but I do not believe anything in life is guaranteed. For now, I'll stick with my choice and accomplish the task of a doctoral degree which, if not always a pleasure, still affords satisfaction and pride in my own determination. I will continue my work because, as Stanley Fish puts it, "[t]he humanities are their own good," and to insist otherwise is to buy into the notion that the only education worthwhile is that which is instrumental.

I'm not sure I could have said it better myself, but this sums up wonderfully just how I feel about it. Another respondent was able to look at it from a positive side because they put it more in context with the rest of the economy, the world of employment:

The path to the Ph.D. offered me the chance to live (precariously) off of what I was good at while giving me a chance to grow and get better. It was clear that the odds were stacked against me going in—and well-meaning professors had warned me—but it opened a world where I felt like I belonged, and which allowed me to live according to my values. Along the way I learned to research, write, manage collaborative projects, fundraise, network, speak in public, and I've been welcomed into institutions and social circles unimaginable to me when I started.

That's exactly how I feel going to the University of Minnesota, Duluth, next month to teach in the English department. Another good respondent said graduate work in the humanities helped her to become a "master teacher" an "independent school" (note to self: learn more about that!). As another reader put it, the experience "was like getting fitted with a second nervous system—I feel that much more acutely alive and responsive to the world." I agree and think that the heightened awareness of the world is ultimately worth it (even if we end up deconstructing our menus). "Ultimately worth it" is a personal judgement, of course, and one that remains mutable, as another respondent reminds us:

There are times when I am certain that this profession was designed for me. There are times when I wonder if I should walk away, as Pannapacker suggests. I remind myself that I did walk away only to learn now what I know for sure—that I can no longer deny the pull of what I love.

That being the case, we must return to the job with a political and social consciousness of the challenges, and a better sense of what we must do to face them. As Pannapacker sums them up in his response, we need to:

• Make graduate programs in the humanities more "transparent" to students. They need to know what they are doing and what will happen to them, I think he means. 
• We have to fight for "more equitable working conditions and academic freedom" so we can "provide the best possible education for their students." That means publicizing the biggest problems in our business, as Stanley Fish similarly recommended in Save the World on Your Own Time. ("The rapid transformation of college teaching into part-time, low-wage, no-benefit positions," is just one) 

The question remains: is there anything that can be done to ensure that students in my position don't fail to find successful employment that uses the skills they learned? My gut tells me, no, there will always be a failure rate. But what level of failure is acceptable?

Politics: The Issue of Government Spending

Will have to come back to this, but feel compelled to leave a note after breakfast conversation with A. Robert Reich's blog entry for yesterday included citations of his Keynesian mantra on spending:

Now that the deal is done, Obama and the Democrats will have a much harder time passing anything close to the stimulus necessary to breach [I think he means "bridge"] the gap between what consumers (who are 70 percent of the economy) are willing to spend and what the economy can produce at or near full-employment.

This is a strange way of formulating the idea. I guess he's saying, we need to boost the consumers and boost economic production through government spending. But Adam and I found dogmatic and obscure in this column. Congressman Donna Edwards plays a more antagonistic "hard ball" two days ago when she said,

...the American public believes that those wealthiest two percent need to pay their fair share and that they’re not doing it. They also know that they’ve received those breaks for the last 10 years, and contrary to the Republican mantra, they are not job creators, because otherwise we would have created a lot of jobs. (on Democracy Now)

Another incisive, but perhaps also a bit dogmatic, statement she made that concluded on a brilliant rhetorical note was:

...And not just that, but the contributing factors to our long-term debt are those tax breaks for the wealthy, a prescription drug bill from President Bush that was never paid for, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then you add to that a financial crisis that was brought along by the irresponsibility of the financial sector. The American public, middle-class and poor people, are saying, "Wait a second. We didn’t do any of that stuff. We haven’t benefited from any of that stuff. And we shouldn’t have to pay for it."

Perhaps most fascinating is Rep. Edwards' voice, which others share, that the President could have prevented default by paying debts even if Congress did not vote to raise the debt ceiling; in short, the President did not need to back down. But now I digress. I'll come back to this.

Chinese: Gloss list for August 4

As I was reading a Chinese document on the Kindle App for Android earlier today, I reflected that if I could export highlights I made to my .mobi files (which are stored in .mbp files), I could quickly build good gloss lists.

Alas, over an hour of researching later, it seems there is no easy way to export these highlights! The .mbp file format is inscrutable. Poo on Kindle.

Anyway, though, why not take a little time to make a short gloss list anyway? It was essentially a good idea.

黍秸	編上黍秸的牆，就圍成一個廁所 (一樓黍秸牆的廁所，好農民）
肥效	據說干校的糞，肥效特高（因為知識份子吃的好，肥料有效）
綠肥	我們挖了一個長方形的大淺坑漚綠肥。（綠色的肥料要漚好）
油氈	棚頂也用黍秸，上蓋油氈，下遮塑料布。(好像我們美國人不用油氈？）
窯	窯下散落著許多碎磚（窯是地下熱量高的灶）
鴨兒梨	一般只有鴨兒梨大小 （鴨兒梨沒吃過）
窩棚	住窩棚的三人（好像比牛棚好)
迤邐	默存每天沿著我們菜地東邊的小溪迤邐往南又往東去。(我覺得迤儷往比著急往安靜）
撂	可親自撂給我（她老了不要撂的太快）
瓷實	一旦捏來菜心已長瓷實（我心境沒達到這麼瓷實的樣子）
菜幫子	菜畦裡還留下滿地的老菜幫子（老叶脉，窮人覺得可吃）
疙瘩菜	我們種的疙瘩菜沒有收成(疙瘩菜好吃，新鮮切片也行，煮也行)
醃	醃也行，煮也行
訇	哈！哈！哈！」粗聲訇喝著圍獵野兔。
墳墩	指著菜園以外東南隅兩個墳墩
闃	闃無一人（實在闃然的地方）
	枯葉??宏簇串串??地響
行囊	一個老者背負行囊
枴杖	拄著枴杖(
灌水渠	灌水渠沒了（不要把灌水渠留給農人嗎？誇張）

That's a little over half an hour to gloss over twenty terms -- a good investment of time!

Review: The Day the Nineties Died :: Minnesota Fringe 2011 :: August 4 - August 14 :: Minneapolis + St. Paul

The Day the Nineties Died :: Minnesota Fringe 2011 :: August 4 - August 14 :: Minneapolis + St. Paul

The most positie thing I can think to say is that this guy is pretty cute

Seven young performers have us ask: couldn't anti-globalization, anti-capitalist activists at the turn of the century have decided to carry out a terrorist attack? To justify killing to turn attention to humanitarian issues?

There were some touching moments to this, but not really a lot of laughs. There were long stretches of arguments between passionate, but confused, individuals that didn't even seem intended to make us laugh. That's a bit strange for a show that bills as "comedy."

Of course, it also says "satire," so all that yelling at each other possibly was intended to poke fun at the stubbornness and dogmatism of young people who espouse progressive political opinions. That really doesn't work for me on a political level, though, as I kept thinking, "I espouse such progressive political opinions, but I'd never condone terrorism. What happened to these folks to change their minds?"

More successful was the satire of the other kind of young American,  "The Chad" who just wants to do it "in the style of the dog." He and his "bro" were actually pretty funny. The "bros" conversion to the progressive side wasn't terribly convincing, though.

All in all, kind of half-baked, and I have to say that even though I usually defend the autonomy of art against political content, in these last few days and weeks, I have really been hungry for positive or at least insightful looks at social progressives in America. This show just makes us pity the cause.

Comedy: Paul Mooney

Nigger Nigger - Paul Mooney - Click here for more home videos

One of my friends says he's reading Paul Mooney's memoir, and it's good. He certainly is surprisingly politically sophisticated. He does entire segments of literature and arts criticism, too: