标签：everyday life
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Christianity as I Have Seen It & Christianity as I Understand It & Christianity as I Imagine It
Christianity as I Have Seen It & Christianity as I Understand It & Christianity as I Imagine It
Christianity as I Have Encountered It I came into a certain intimate contact with Christianity already in elementary school: the first four years of my primary education were spent at Sichuan South Road Primary School in Shanghai. The campus of that school was extraordinary: an iron-gated entrance with openwork filigree, with the three large characters “天主堂” (“Catholic Church”) engraved on top; beyond the gate was the playground; on the right stood a row of three-story Romanesque buildings of alternating red and gray brick, which were our classroom building; and straight ahead, solemn and stately, was a great cathedral. Although throughout my entire primary-school life I never once entered the church…
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A Very Comprehensive Analysis of Scorpio
A Very Comprehensive Analysis of Scorpio
I have absolutely no belief in horoscopes: I neither accept them, nor need them, and they’re not even all that fun. But I admit they are very “effective,” with many things said quite accurately, and the various suggestions they give are for the most part harmless; reading them is not a bad thing. Of course, I’m not interested in reading them, unless someone else mentions one and I suddenly feel like taking a look. Horoscopes are very good at exploiting human psychology. When we see a long analysis, if there are a few passages in it that “hit the nail on the head,” so accurate as to be astonishing, then…
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What Day Is November 10?
What Day Is November 10?
November 10 is marked in the almanac, in large type, as “World Youth Day.” China’s Youth Day is May 4, obviously commemorating the May Fourth Movement. So where did World Youth Day come from? I looked it up online and found nothing but “a Catholic religious gathering founded by Pope John Paul II in 1984.” “This festival was created to reverse the tendency of young people with Catholic faith to drift away from the Church.” But this Youth Day is not the one we mean today. With just a little careful looking, one can tell that this Catholic gathering is actually held at different times every year, and there is…
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When the Fisherman Meets the Shepherd
When the Fisherman Meets the Shepherd
Occasionally I write some words that make no sense at all. Literati and recluses of old have always had a special fondness for “retiring to the mountains and forests.” Though I hardly count as a man of letters, in recent years I too have developed an increasingly strong hankering for seclusion and withdrawal from the world. Of course, I am still young, and have not even yet stepped into this “world”; how could I talk about escaping it? It is only idle fancy. I will always have to go wild in this world for a while, and only after I have played to my heart’s content will I go in…
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On the A Yi “Crying Poor” Incident
On the A Yi “Crying Poor” Incident
The so-called “Peking University associate professor crying poverty” incident has become quite a sensation lately; for the specifics, a quick search online will tell you. The original blog post should be: http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/48dcce8e0100061k The follow-up journalist interview can be seen at: http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/48dcce8e01000687 After reading these two pieces, I still have some sympathy for this associate professor. The fact that teachers’ pay is not high is indeed a problem, and from the current reform trend in the educational system—for example, the personnel system reforms causing such a fuss at Peking University—I do not see any obvious tendency for professors’ situation to improve. Professors’ income depends on moonlighting; professors’ professional titles depend on…
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On Learning Middle School Mathematics
On Learning Middle School Mathematics
I had wanted to write this article before the summer vacation, but I never got around to it…… A teacher once said: if you can’t learn math well, you’re stupid; if you can’t learn English well, you’re lazy. I am obviously a lazy person, but apparently not stupid…… But in fact, although doing mathematics does indeed depend heavily on a certain kind of talent, and the fact that men are better at math than women is hard to deny, just as women are better at language than men, the influence of talent may show up more clearly in top-level mathematics competitions. For the mathematics required in elementary and middle school,…
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The Philosophy of History Is Quite Interesting
The Philosophy of History Is Quite Interesting
Inspired by an offhand suggestion from ZW, I thought of and chose the course “Popper’s Philosophy of History.” This course falls under the category of Marxist philosophy, but however the class may be taught, this topic is in itself well worth choosing for me. Popper is a very special philosopher. His primary identity is that of a philosopher of science, the founder of the so-called “falsificationism,” which is often paired with Kuhn’s historicism. He is also a liberal thinker of enormous influence, and moreover an important critic of Marx and Hegel. In philosophical circles, it would be more accurate to say that Popper is widely looked down upon than widely…
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Recent Life Jottings (October 1, 2006)
Recent Life Jottings (October 1, 2006)
Some time ago I was living in a very abnormal way, wasting a long stretch of time again in games and cartoons. My grandfather’s death hit me very hard. It was the sort of blow that others could not see. Apart from choking up uncontrollably at his bedside when he passed away, I did not cry again when the coffin was laid out, and after I returned to school everything seemed normal. But at bedtime every night, and when I called home every week—only Grandma would answer the phone now; it could no longer be Grandpa… In the past, when I called Grandpa, I actually did not say much: ask…
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Let me post a few earlier photos (the frozen Weiming Lake, heavy snow, a 28-inch bicycle)
Let me post a few earlier photos (the frozen Weiming Lake, heavy snow, a 28-inch bicycle)
When I was little, I did take quite a lot of photos, but after I grew up I stopped liking to be photographed (though I do like taking pictures for other people). I suddenly realized that there have been very few photos over the past couple of years. And most of the tiny portion I did have was lost because of the sudden failure of a certain computer hard drive… I found a few photos on the long-abandoned Chinaren alumni directory, taken around New Year’s Day in 2005 during my first winter in Beijing, when I rode a bike on the frozen surface of Weiming Lake. It felt really great….
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