kinmen

Kinmen (金門) is a group of small islands off the southeastern coast of China. Far away (116 miles) from Taiwan but within view of mainland China, it had been a fierce fighting ground between Communist China and Taiwan from late 1940's through the Cold War era and remained under Taiwanese military administration until the early 1990's, when the tension between China and Taiwan eased.

I went on a tour organized by my college alumni association for a three-day-two-night visit to this once dreaded no-man's land for the first time.

Tunnels and fortresses everywhere are signs that Kinmen had been synonymous with war-zone for nearly half a century. There are over 50 miles of tunnels dug underneath the island's rocky terrain, caves for command centers/ammunition storage/meeting halls, etc., and waterways for supply ships. There is a rampart on a tidal island, cannon hide-outs on the hills, machine-gun embankments and tank stations all around.

 

 

And there are villages—yes, people had been living here long before (and after) the mid-20th-Century Chinese civil war made it a hellish battlefield. They are traditional South China cluster housing with familial courtyards, and Western style "trophy mansions" commissioned by overseas Kimeners who made it out there after emigrating and working hard for years in Southeast Asia.

 

With hardy soil, limited water supply, gusty seasonal winds, about the only agricultural plants Kinmen can grow are whit and sorghum, and they make the best out of it by turning them into high quality Gaoliang Wine (高梁酒) that now takes up 80% of Taiwanese hard liquor market and generates $400 million annual revenues for the islands.

 

During the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958 (八二三砲戰, nine years after the first one, 古寧頭戰役 in 1949 when Communist China tried massive invasion of the islands and failed), over 480,000 artillery shells fell on the islands in 44 days. The ingenuity of Kimeners came to work again after the crisis, converting the deformed/defused bombs into sharp, durable kitchen knives that became yet another famed commercial success for Kinmen.

 

Though I was never stationed in Kinmen during my military service in Taiwan in the early 1980's, I saw on this trip the same weaponry—anti-air machine guns and cannons—my military unit was equipped with in mainland Taiwan; I also heard anecdotal stories from some of my fellow travelers—many of them about my age—who had served in Kinmen during those times: One almost got shot on his first day in Kinmen when he went out for relief and got stopped by a sentry demanding password and he forgot what it was; another served as an artillery commander and lost his partial hearing permanently due to constant exposure to the cannon gun firing. And we all heard of the gruesome "midnight slaughtering" by enemy seal men who came ashore at night and cut-throat a whole platoon at sleep, and the massive shootings by disgruntled soldiers against their own officers or fellow soldiers...

As I remarked one evening at the banquet table in the five-star hotel we stayed at, it was unthinkable the peace and prosperity we would have today at Kinmen versus the paucity and precariousness we had four decades ago... May the former continue for a long long time, and the latter never come again!

Happy Thanksgiving!

* For more photos and narratives of the trip, go to 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=cdwongx&set=a.10231341035934289

emptiness 空

Went to a seminar at a Catholic university in Taipei on one Buddhism school's interpretation on Emptiness.

到輔仁大學旁聽一個佛門學派（中觀，根本中論）對【空】的解釋。

"The world is one big illusion, nothing has its real own-being, all things are cause-effect related" are some fundamental assertions of Buddhism, as you may well know, but here's some simple, interesting logic this particular Buddhism school (Madhyamaka) uses to explain them:

【婆娑世界只是幻象，不存在本相，萬物互為因果】是我們熟悉的一些佛門基本信念，中觀學派卻以一套簡單，有趣的邏輯思考來闡釋這些道理：

When we say something has some quality, it implies that "thing" and that "quality" both exist at the same time, otherwise that thing shows no such quality, and that quality has nothing to apply itself to.

當我們說某物具有某種特質時，隱涵的意義是該物與該特質是同時並存的，若不然則該物無該特質可顯現，而該特質則無該物可附著。

Similarly, the concept of cause requires and cannot occur without the concept of effect, and the concept of effect requires and cannot occur without the concept of cause. When "x is the cause of y," it implies that the requirement for y is built into the nature of x.  

同樣的道理，【因】的觀念必須有【果】的觀念同時存在才能成立，【果】的觀念也必須有【因】的觀念同時存在才能成立。當我們說【甲是造成乙發生的原因】時，我們意指造成乙發生的元素已經存在甲裡面了。

 
Since the truly existing own-being of a thing has to exist autonomously, independent of the aid or influence of anything else, this built-in need for an external condition will preclude real own-being. Therefore the world is not real, but one big illusion.

既然真實本相是自有而不需依賴或受外來因素影響的存在，這個萬物皆隱含需外力誘發才能顯現的世界並非本相，而是幻象存在。

This doesn't mean the "worldly" things we experience daily do not have their effects on us, or the seeds won't sprout, or a person's actions cannot achieve their intended effects. Like objects experienced in dreams, reflections seen in a mirror, echoes, and like illusory creations conjured up by a skilled magician, they all seem so real and fancy changing.

但這並不表示我們生存在這個【俗世】裡的所有感受都是不真實的，或者種子不會發芽，人的努力不會有成效。而是我們如同活在夢裡，或看著鏡中的影像，或聽著迴聲，所有一切就像一個高明的魔術師為我們製造出的幻象，讓我們感覺他們是多麼真實又富變化。

But the real real behind all these has always been in a state of calm. "One need not seek deliverance from things that have never existed but must merely awaken to the true state of affairs," as concluded by Dr. Anne MacDonald, the speaker from Austrian Academy of Sciences of Vienna.

但隱藏在這些繁複背後的卻是一貫平常的真實本相。如同來自維也納科學學術研究院的主講人Anne MacDonald的結語所說的：【人們不需追求逃離原本就不存在的虛無世界，而只需覺醒看見萬物的本相。】

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language

You are in a fog of mind, and I ask "tell me what you think," out comes from your mouth a string of words that make sense to both you and me...  Ah, the twin magic of language: it organizes our thought, and communicates it to others.

To what extent does language aid us in expressing our innate thinking, or it actually forms and develops our thought, is still debatable in the academic circle, but no one denies the ability to use language to communicate and coordinate group actions is one key evolutionary advantage that helps human species reign supreme in the natural world.

Compared to the ephemeral exchanges among a number of people limited by how far the sound waves can travel and remain audible that is spoken language, written language has the advantage of presenting our thought and idea in clear, structured form in plain view that allows easy review and revision, and more importantly, when kept on formidable material, transition and distribution of what's recorded on it.

Without a centralized writing system, there would not have been a Chinese civilization over its diverse ethnic and geographical compositions through thousands of years, just as the Western civilization would not be what it is today had it not carried the Greek-Latin languages through the medieval times. The written language is so powerful it could even revive its spoken counterpart: see how the ancient Hebrew language was brought back from the dead to become the day-to-day, verbal and literal lingua franca of Israel today!

While on the subject of audio (spoken language) vs visual (written language): The alphabetical language, due to its phonetic nature, molds the sequential, logical thinking of the Western mind, while a hieroglyphic language such as Chinese that has both audio and visual components built-in in its semantical characters (形聲字=形思惟+音思惟) induces the more holistic (logical + emotional) thinking of the Eastern mind, or so say some oriental cultural nativists.

In my own theory of language, human consciousness is like one big, fluid dark hole that, once a bit part of it gets perturbed by a thing or emotion, consents to use a word or expression for that thing or emotion that it thinks triggers the same perturbation experienced by other conscious beings.

And that assumption always has some margin of error, thus a word or expression will mean differently between people of different cognitive dispositions or cultural upbringing, sometimes subtly, sometimes disastrously.

The dark hole is so huge that our existing language can only cover a tiny bit of our conscious cosmos, that's why we are constantly creating new words, twisting old words with new meanings, using metaphors and analogies to explain things, etc.

There is a form of literature, poem, that uses minimalistic words and obscure expressions on purpose, so as to leave room for readers to "fill in the blank" from the grab bag of their seemingly bottomless conscious mind.

All can speak, but not all can write,
What things can you tell me that words cannot describe?

Be bothered not by a stirred mind,
All shall subside into a good night!

south america

Following our previous trip to Ecuador and Peru, we continued to learn the ABC's (Argentina, Brazil, Chile) of the South American continent: Specifically, we visited three major cities (Rio de Janeiro of Brazil, Buenos Aires of Argentina, Santiago of Chile) and one natural attraction—the Iguazu Falls on the border of Brazil and Argentina, on our 13-day tour to South America in August.

Rio de Janeiro, the city by a river (Rio) discovered by the Portuguese on a January (Janeiro) day over five hundred years ago is a geological spectacle, straddling over a river mouth dotted with rock islands, surrounded by mountains and peninsulas, beaches and bays and lagoons, all under the watchful eyes of a man-made wonder, a 30-meter tall 28-meter wide Christ the Redeemer Statue standing on top of a hunchback-shaped mountain. It's a lively city with year round beach parties and "Samba schools" preparing for the annual carnival parades that vivify the heart and soul of the city!

Located on the river that separates Brazil and Argentina, Iguazu (Indian word for "big water") Falls are wider than the Victoria and taller than the Niagara Falls. We walked one trail on the Brazilian side and three on the Argentine side to view this great natural wonder from afar and aside, above and below, up close and personal on bridges that led us to yards away from the roaring downpour whose water flutters had us wet all over.

Buenos Aires was yet another city by a (way wider) river mouth, but without the jagged geography, only a serene waterway with silvery glitters and a city landscape reeked of European charm (the "Paris of South America," as they say). We went to a dinner theater and enjoyed a great Tango show and a suburban ranch that took us for a wagon ride and a cowboy skit for a taste of the Argentine "Wild West" of the old.

Crossing the Andes, we landed on Santiago, the capital of Chile. Landlocked by the snow capped Andes and a coastal range, the city seemed to hold a dignity of its own, yet felt more approachable than Rio or Buenos Aires. We also went to a winery for the country's famed wine production (Chile is the world's fourth largest wine exporter), and a seaside city donned with cliff top houses, colorful stores, artistic murals, and street musicians.

Then there were people we traveled with: Bob and Judy were a couple from Florida in their mid 70's who'd been traveling around the world since Bob's retirement a decade ago, while Julie and Ron, another couple from Florida in their early 60's who still owned and ran their own business, just started their traveling track now. What's strikingly similar was both couples married young, to their high school sweethearts, and had their first kids while in college!

Ryan and Molly were a young couple in their early 30's from Texas. Molly was born in Palestine but grew up in LA and still had a father living in Lebanon. Ryan was a Walmart project manager who carried a GoPro stick that automatically recorded 360-degree high quality videos as a drone would wherever he went, from whom I asked and got a couple of great clips of the Iguazu Falls scenes for my own records!

Aline was a true-life coal miner's daughter from West Virginia, who joined the Navy to escape poverty when she was young. Now in her 70's, she still walked big, steady strides that oftentimes left us youngsters behind. Unfortunately she got struck down by Covid during the last couple days of the tour and we missed our chance to say goodbye to her at the farewell dinner.

There were two multi-generation families in our group: Margaret was a quiet African American old lady who had worked all her life in a Queens' school district in New York, her daughter a school counselor, and the granddaughter a sweet, disciplined, athletic teen-ager who jogged every morning throughout the tour.  

Rosie was an energetic, passionate Latina who loved her job at Southern California Edison helping vendors do business with SCE. She brought her two aging parents who at times needed wheelchair assistance for sightseeing. Her father came to the States as a dirt poor immigrant and through hard work and a bit of luck had become owner of a tire store that he now delegated to his two sons to manage. He and his wife were quiet and probably didn't speak much English but had the bright smiles of happy, contented parents who had worked hard all their lives and were now being taken good care of by their loving offspring.

Traveling is a journey of discoveries, and sometimes you bump into things you have never heard of, or "myths" that nobody has definite answers for. For example, before this trip, I didn't know there were rumors that long before Christopher Columbus "discovered" the New World, ancient Phoenicians had appeared in the South American continent and left their marks on a rainforest mountain outside the city of Rio de Janeiro:

And have you heard of the urban legend: As storms in the Northern Hemisphere always spin counterclockwise and those in the Southern Hemisphere always clockwise due to Earth's rotation movement, so does toilet water in the Northern Hemisphere always spin down counterclockwise while that in the Southern Hemisphere always clockwise?

Well, I cannot give you definite answers on whether Phonecians had arrived in South America long before Columbus did since I am no archaeologist nor geologist, but as for the toilet water swirling down thing, I can tell you something about it since I had done some experiments of my own at various locations of the Southern Hemisphere continent I just visited.

 

But that'll be another story for another day!

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For more photos and details of the trip:

Rio: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10230815618439180&type=3

Iguazu: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10230816938752187&type=3

Buenos Aires: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10230818021379252&type=3

Santiago: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10230886472890497&type=3

a little trip

We drove north to the Bay Area to a high school friend of mine Michael's home the week before last, stayed there overnight, then went to visit another high school friend Joseph who was recuperating from a cancer surgery and a couple of chemo treatments since early this year. Joe was my best friend in high school who drew me to Christian faith in Taiwan. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just last August. Shocking news to us all and I'd wanted to visit him but could not until now. He looked even thinner than his usual thin self and was still adjusting his diet trying to gain back weight but seemed very well taken care of by his wife and hired help and in good spirit. We had long, vigorous conversations (wearing masks, at their yard outdoors) for the whole morning, before finally bidding farewell and wishing him a smooth recovery and left. 

We then drove northeast to a little rural town in inland California for a wedding. It was for the son of my best friend from elementary school Sunny who passed away almost three years ago. It was a lodge in the woods with a little pond, volleyball, mini-golf fields, pine trees and lawn, etc., a modest but relaxing environment. We stayed there for two nights, attending the pre-wedding rehearsal dinner the first night, then taking a stroll in the woods, attending the wedding ceremony and the reception dinner party the second day. It was a very happy occasion. We knew the young couple for some time (they'd dated for over seven years), but met the bride's family and friends for the first time. All very nice, folksy people. I was also impressed by the maturity the son had become and how blessed this marriage looked to be, and happy for Sunny who must be looking down in heaven smiling.

We then drove back to Michael's home in the Bay Area again, and had dinner with him and his wife and another college/high school friend in the area, Ching-Cheng. Ching-Cheng was one of the early achievers to the monumental "Grand-Pa" status ("做人成公") among our class, whose cap-headed picture at his grand child's birthday party inspired me to create and make "Come Spring Again" hats (回春帽) for all our classmates a few years ago. His knowledge broad-span and witticism entertained us as usual, but nothing soothed my ears more this time than hearing him say that new studies had found high cholesterol levels do not cause harm to Asian males...

Michael took us to a grand dim-sum restaurant for early lunch before we left town the next day. I so admired this "side-kick" friend of mine since high school and his wife who had hardily and beautifully raised an autistic son and a wonderful daughter Carol whose wedding I just witnessed last year in New York City. Carol and Andrew, their new son-in-law, had planned and booked a joint vacation for them and Andrew's parents for the coming months in Canada...  The start of a rewarding second half of their life they well deserve, I could tell.

Happy Summer!

war and peace (3)

Conventional wisdom says Napoleon Bonaparte was a military genius who won every major war and battle until got devastatingly crushed in his Russia campaign by the severe winter, poor logistics, and the scorched-earth strategy of his Russian opponents. While conceding weather and terrain being a major factor, Tolstoy has nothing but contempt for the so-called military genius and strategic maneuvering of the generals: “What theory and science is possible about a matter the conditions and circumstances of which are unknown and cannot be defined, especially when the strength of the acting forces cannot be ascertained?"

One unascertainable force he refers to is the morale of the troops, the skittish human psyche that can easily flip the outcome of a battle one way or the other: "Sometimes—when there is not a coward at the front to shout ‘We are cut off!’ and start running, but a brave and jolly lad who shouts ‘Hurrah!’—a detachment of five thousand is worth thirty thousand, as at Schön Grabern (where the Russian army triumphed), while at times fifty thousand run from eight thousand, as at Austerlitz (where the Russians lost)."

That same morale, applied to all Russian people, peasants and soldiers alike, was what drove them to expel the French out of their fatherland by way of guerrilla warfare and self sacrifice, not any smart strategies or military maneuverings by the generals.

It is probably for the same reason Tolstoy gives a much more sympathetic light to the Russian commander-in-chief, Kutuzov, a one-eyed war veteran field marshal who had been accused of leading tardy, evasive retreats instead of confronting the French army head on to stop their advancing. In Tolstoy's mind, Kutuzov did what he did because "he knew that the result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in his power" without incurring unnecessary casualty on either the Russian or the French side.

The greatest antipathy Tolstoy shows toward in his novel, however, is the inhumanity war imposes on ordinary people.

During Pierre's imprisonment by the French in Moscow, he himself as well as other prisoners struck friendly, buddy-like relationships with their captors. But as the retreat from Moscow started, a mysterious force seemed to completely control their guards. "From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what seemed like personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to their former friendly relations." And as the long march continued and the simple, happy Russian peasant soldier Karataev whom they all used to like got sick and could not keep pace with the procession, they shot him to death.

Pierre also recalled how a French officer examining his case was about to release him but was interrupted by his staff member and went on to care for other business thus leaving him in prison along with others to be executed. Both the officer and his staff member showed no intention of killing him, Pierre could tell.

Then who was executing him, killing him, depriving him of life—him, Pierre, with all his memories, aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And Pierre felt that it was no one. It was a system—a concurrence of circumstances.

A system that kills, not only human bodies, but humanity itself.

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Two docu-videos on Napoleonic Wars for those who are interested: 

Napoleonic Wars 1805 - 09: March of the Eagles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91OmO2YMiDM

Napoleonic Wars 1809 - 14: Downfall:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBSGSkIasRY

war and peace (2)

Pierre was an illegitimate son of a very rich aristocrat who was recalled home from France to appear at his father's death bed in Petersburg and inherited tremendous wealth upon his death.

Shy and socially awkward, he was coaxed into marrying the beautiful but shallow daughter of a conniving old aristocrat who pretended to be his elderly benefactor. He went into a duel with a young officer who was rumored to have an affair with his socially active wife and decided to lead a separate life from his wife afterwards.

Always in search of life's true meaning, he joined the Freemasonry Society and became a devoted member, contributing his wealth to help achieve the lofty goals of brotherly love and welfare for the poor, with little or counter effect as people took advantage of his naivete and lack of pragmatism.

As Napoleon's army approached, he decided to stay in Moscow to have a chance to assassinate him when he came to town. A fire accident turned him into a prisoner by the occupying French, where he witnessed innocent people being executed and he himself barely escaped that same fate; he saved a French officer who deemed him a lifetime friend and had a heart-to-heart conversation with; he refused to be in company with other high ranking prisoners but stayed with lowly soldier prisoners where he witnessed a peasant soldier conducting a simple but happy life under the meagerest circumstances:

Karataev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in contact with, particularly with man—not any particular man, but those with whom he happened to be... To Pierre he always remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable, rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth.

The enlightenment he had long searched for finally arrived:

He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice; he had sought it by reasoning—and all these quests and experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.

He was rescued by the Russian army from the retreating French and regarded as a legendary hero when he returned home.

He met Natasha, a girl he had long loved but dared not admit. They talked about their mutual friend Andrei and his death, and Pierre's extraordinary ordeal. They eventually got married and had four children.

Pierre of old vs Pierre of new:

Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people had been inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played around his lips, and sympathy for others shone in his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his presence.

Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he talked, and seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in conversation and knew how to listen so that people readily told him their most intimate secrets.

Previously he had equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space, where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen.

Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and therefore—to see it and enjoy its contemplation—he naturally threw away the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men’s heads, and gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him.