In Taiwan--Obama rocks

I am a little surprise to see the posters of a book about Obama in Taiwan's bookstores. Almost every big bookstore has these posters catching people's attention. The title is ''Obama： The first black President of America？'' The content of this book (written by a Taiwanese) is like a combination of the summary of Obama's memoirs and the brief account of the 2008 Presidencial Election. It's like an introduction of Obama to all the Chinese who are not familiar with him.

What you can't see is often more important than what you can see. In Taiwan's bookstores, what one seldom see is the books of Hillary Clinton and John MacCain. I can't help to think that the whole world is expecting Obama to be the next President of America. Obama, thus, become a symbol of progress and a representation that ability, not skin color, is what we value most in the 21st century. He might be the inspiration of people all around the world, not just America. Had MacCain or Clinton become the next President, I wonder they can achieve the same impact on people.

Forward!

Most of my friends know I can draw, so they often ask me to draw their portraits for birthday presents. What they don't understand is that I am not reading an art school or planning to become a professional artist, so nine-tenth of my work is really sucks. However, one of my characteristics is that I don't like to give up. The picture below is my latest art work of an old friend's portrait.

Here is the original portrait she asked me to draw as her present (completed in January, 2008) : See, the new one is much better than the old one. Don't ask me why I draw the same person again, even she doesn't ask me to do it. It's about self-esteem. It's seems like doing our best is not enough. We also have to use our brain. Sharpen our mind, ruminate the best answer, and practice more!

Humanity

I am reading Jonathan Glover's Humanity now. This book shows us how a war can intrigue the worst side of human being--selfish, cruel, and sadistic. We can gorge our enemies' eyes and torture them to death without blinking eyes. We can erase our conscience in order to kill people efficiently. We will even smile at an amputed body while feeling excited for our own survival.

In the preface of Humanity, Glover asks a serious question: what is humanity? Without humanity, we are just murderers killing each others for nothing. Without humanity, we are just like the thug in the movie Rashinmon (羅生門), claiming that "if we are not selfish, we can't survive." On Time's China blog, I saw the smiling faces of people who rob the materials that are sent to help refugees in Sichuan. Why these people--who are neither the victims of the earthquake nor the refugees who need help--smile? I think they might be excited that the earthquake didn't kill them, so they trample others' life to assert their distorted self-identity.

Morality is not how we mention about ourselves, but about how we response to an extreme situation. In the Sichuan earthquake, some people choose to be a rescuer, some choose to be a thug. Of course, we need to build our humanity constantly; but in the end, human beings are--as Victor Frankl says--"self-determined."

Sichuan Earthquake. No drawing today.

Yesterday, an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale has hit Wenchuan in Sichan province. Latest estimates put the possible death toll at more than 10,000 according to shanghaiist.com. Right now, there are still thousands of people bruied under collapsed buildings.

For those who want to donate money to help people in Sichuan, please look at the following information below. This comes courtesy of the shanghaiist website:

"For those who are looking to contribute to current aid efforts underway, you can now donate money to the Red Cross Society of China which has formed a disaster relief working group to be dispatched to the earthquake-stricken Wenchuan County in Sichuan.
They have also published an emergency relief hotline, along with bank account information to receive donations to assist their cause:

Account name: Red Cross Society of China开户单位：中国红十字会总会

For those who want to donate in RMB: you can send money to the RMB account at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China branch below:人民币开户行: 中国工商银行 北京分行东四南支行人民币账号: 0200001009014413252

For those who want to donate in foreign currency, you can send money to the foreign currency account at the CITIC Bank branch below:外币开户行：中信银行酒仙桥支行外币账号: 7112111482600000209

Hotline: (8610) 65139999Online donations: Red Cross Society of China website: www.redcross.org.cnClick the tab for online donations "

The Death

Today is my last class in this semester. As some of you know, this blog is part of my class assignment. That's mean my professor might come to this blog and see what I'm doing. However, we have already finish our final, and I think the professor already gives us our grades.

So from now on, I will just draw anything that comes into my head. No matter how wield it is. The topic of the painting above is "The Death." If there is Death, I hope "she" is beautiful.

Chinese Patriots in Foley Square

This video clip is produced by my senior in Fordham University. I don't know exactly the purpose of that assemblage in Foley Square, but I think it wants to show how Chinese feel proud of their country.

On one side of the coin, the clip shows how Chinese people can express their patriotism in a peaceful way without hotile, anti-French sentiment. Not every Chinese is insecure, xenophobic nationalist as Time magazine correspondent Simon Elegant portrays. Many Chinese still want to show a nice face to the world.

But on the other side of the coin, a person who questions the wisdom of a call to boycott Carrefour or the way Chinese government handling Tibetan issue can easily be the subject of attacks and be branded as "traitor" under the rising nationalism of Chinese.

Jacques Ellul warns us in Porpaganda that "man is terribly malleable, uncertain of himself, ready to accept and to follow many suggestions, and is tossed about by all the winds of doctrine." An individual's emotion, impulsiveness and excess can be stimulated with ease when he or she is in a group. I think the same peer pressure that makes people become the prey of propagandists is also happening on the torch-grappling anti-China protesters. Does political assemblage do any good?

Mind as Sword

Tonight I went to Union Square with my friends. I met a Taiwanese girl who studied computer art in San Francisco and now got a job in R/GA, an interactive advertising agency. When I heard the name of her company, I almost dropped my jaw. It's the company I was looking for my internship!

I haven't sent my resume to R/GA, but I know I've very little chance to get an internship in there, because the company is mainly focusing on online interactive ads and Web page design. I can do neither of them. The area of my expertise is "communication," and what I mainly learn in school is to understand media's impact on society. I live and breathe in the words of Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Joshua Meyrowitz, Jacques Ellul, David Bolter, and other titans in media studies. I observe how media affect human perception, understanding and feeling, and try to combine these knowledge with other fields of studies to interpret our social movements. But looking for a job in advertising agency's creative department? Sorry, I have to learn to produce a nice 3D animation or a cool digital image.

I still have confidence that I can find a job in the U.S., and I will keep on deepening my thoughts and strenthening my communication skill. For me, mind is like a sword. If you don't sharpen it everyday, it will rust.