Chinese Poetry

I'm not usually one for poetry. I find it too whimsical, too obscure, too concerned with the appearance of depth and meaning. Despite that, there are several poets, and poems which I find myself appreciating, as though there's something to them that shows the author gets 'it', whatever 'it' is. I would never have considered composing poetry myself, claiming the realm of my interest was purely prose, but recently, that changed. The reason for that change has to do with Chinese poetry, specifically ancient Chinese poetry, 文言文。There's a fluidity to the translations of these poems that appeals to me, and here's a blog post from another place talking about issues of translation and the beauty of Chinese poetry.

I think composing poetry that apes the translation of a Chinese poem in English to be very enjoyable, try it!

The sky outside is clear,
but my heart is unsettled.
The snow has gone away,
but will return tomorrow.

I like the short nature of these, as it makes me feel less pressured to rhyme, or to have a good structure, while still having a format to adhere to, loosely. And I can worry less about it being good or bad afterward. Maybe one day I'll compose in Chinese!

Let me know what you think, or what your favorite poetry style is. Do you think poetry can ever be translated effectively?

Dinner at le lure

Our first night in California, having dinner at the lure, swordfish here I come!

Busy week

Sorry, this week will be lacking in posts, we have tests coming up. I'll be studying.

Until next time

-Ben

The Olympics!

I'm guessing the Olympic Village was more interesting during the Olympics. Having a 2400 meter long 160 meter wide walkway is great, unless there's not much reason for people to be walking on it. Although it was far from a ghost town, full of tourists, mostly in-country tourists.

It didn't help things that the pollution level today was pretty high too. Trying to get clear pictures was near impossible, and with the size of the stadium, also known as bird's nest, the pollution was evident inside as well.

The architecture of the stadium is pretty interesting, but it's old, faded and rusted in parts, and generally seems uncared for. They charge for admission to walk around and see the inside concourses, and the field is large, you can get a great view of the occasional segway races held for tourists around the infield track, but other than that and videos about the olympics, there isn't much else.

There's also the water cube across the way. But during the day, it's just a blue box with weird circles on it.

The long and the short, I was unimpressed with the 'tourist' site. I don't doubt it was exciting during the event, but now it's just gathering dust, almost literally.

-Ben

The more the merrier

Today, a new student arrived in Beijing from the University of Kentucky. His name is Reid, and he's come to intern in China for a few weeks. I managed to catch up with our KEI partners as we had lunch, and helped Reid get a rundown of the campus. I'm worried about him, since he doesn't speak a lick of chinese. He should be ok, but it isn't the easiest thing to just jump into a society where your communication is troublesome. We'll be going to see the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest olympic installations tomorrow. I'll bring back pictures.

In other news, I spent a long time talking with my close friends Brandon Swanberg and Maja Fus, (separate instances) it's good to catch up with old friends. I also managed to meet up with Cherry and we talked for a good while about many things. Other than that, I spent my day studying and drafting notes for a short story I'm writing for a friend.

Apologies for the lack of big news in this post, today was uneventful, although the weather continues to be stellar,*knock on wood*.

-Ben

Another day in the life...

We started a new book in class today. Our final exam only covers our first book though, so I'll be spending the next week reviewing for that test. I've got a good freling in regards to the final.

Apparently, my study company partner thing, KEI, has a new student coming in, so I'll be meeting them tomorrow, I'll let you know.

Other than that, today was pleasent and uneventful, and the weather was very comfortable.

-Ben

Dragon Boat Festival, 端午节

Today was the Dragon Boat festival, a holiday that celebrates the suicide of an ancient poet and statesman known as QuYuan, 屈原，and also celebrates the turning of the year and such not. People eat ZongZi, specially prepared rice, and have boat races with crew teams on boats with dragon-styled prows.

I spent the morning sleeping, awakening to a phone call at noon from Crystal with an invitation to hang out for the day. We were joined by XiaoBai and spent 3 hours+ sitting in a coffee shop talking and making up stories together, it was a great time. Before everyone else arrived, I spent time perusing the bookstore nearby. When I was about to leave, a man kindly stopped me and asked me to help him find a book to learn english with. Being a bookseller at heart, I didn't hesitate to search around with him until I found a certain type of book I'd used myself which had chinese and english side-by-side.

When I got back to the dormitory, I was greeted with a wonderful sight. Enjoy,

I hope that pasted,

Ben