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.

The Funniest Commercial This Month

Almost every month I will pick out what I think is the funniest commercial and put it on my blog.

This one is really good, because it shows our desire to do something evil. Pay attention to the movement of camera. It's brilliant. You never see the person who is holding the camera in the first 40 sec, but we get the idea of who is holding it and what's her character.

Here is the description of this commercial on the veryfunnyads.com: "A German hardware store promises a hefty reward to the best do-it-yourself project--and sets the stakes very high."

We're attacked by millions of messages everyday and our desire for more funny video clips is harder and harder to be satistied. I feel sad that I've to find an interesting video in ads, but maybe only ads can meet my expectation. I am going to amuse myself to death......

Endless Protests

Yesterday on WSJ, I saw the image of a North Korean defector tried to set himself on fire to halt the torch relay, and the image of hundreds of red-clad Chinese supporters marched to the anti-China protestors, waving national flags as they took the streets of the South Korean capital to defend the torch.

We can see more clashes between the pro-China and the anti-China demonstrators on the media. Both sides know the camera is out there sending images all over the world, and both sides act crazy. Set oneself on fire? Waving national flags on the street of another country? Like Thomas De Zengotita said in Mediated, "we are all method actors now." All of these protesters are self-conscious performers. Who cares about whether the Dalai Lama is going to talk to the Chinese government? The image of conflict is the one that will attract readers and viewers.

Picture--Giselle

As most of my classmates know, I am living in the image of Giselle right now.

Again, this is the drawing I use in my video project. I first use photoshop to create a black-and-white version of her picture, then using pencil to copy it on paper. The drawing is not ART, but it looks good, right? We all love the remediated pictures of reality.

The decisive actor in boycotting the Beijing Olympics

As the torch relay heralding the Beijing Summer Olympics turns into a duck-and-cover operation in several cities, the conflict between pro-China and anti-China sentiment has intensified the duality of the pros and cons of boycotting the Beijing Olympics.

On the side of boycotting the Games, the anti-China camp focuses on the Chinese government's notorious human rights record, including backing the military thugs in Burma, blocking Internet access, fettering journalists, buying two thirds of Sudan's oil, and brutally cracking down on ethnic-Tibetan unrest. They believe boycotting the Beijing Olympics is a righteous way to bring China further into the community of responsible nations.

On the other side of the coin, the pro-China camp points out that the boycott will have opposite effects than intended. They claim the boycott of the Games' opening ceremonies and radical individuals' effort to extinguish the Olympic torch are odd ideas, for these moves might feed China's nationalism, make the regime in Beijing more defensive, and fortify Chinese people's belief that the West is trying to humiliate China.

But in spite of all these efforts to call for China to take its responsibility for its status as a superpower and bring the 21st century to a better place, people will find out that the pro-China and anti-China protesters are not the real determinative of the future movement in this boycotting issue; the decisive actors are the multi-national corporations.

Lenovo, the world's fourth-largest PC maker, sees the Olympic torch uproar as a threat to its brand image. Investing more than $100 million in sponsoring the torch relay, Lenovo hope the Beijing Olympics can blast its name around the world and underscore the reliability of its computers, as it is now making an aggressive push into the U.S. market. However, the company now fears that the protests, intensified by the crackdown in Tibet, will tarnish the Olympic brand and Lenovo's association with it.

Lenovo's concern of the protests will certainly play a more powerful part than outsiders' demands in the government's decision making, because China's Communist Party leaders—mostly engineer—care more about the fate of the computer company that might influence China's economic growth than the human rights issues. We can imagine what enormous amount of fear will be aroused in China's Communist Party when the Western consumers boycott products made in China.

While some multi-national brand's disquietude over the protests might bring China to greater awareness of its crucial position in global politics, other companies might just strengthen the stubbornness and inertia of the Chinese government leaders. Coca-Cola, McDonald's and PepsiCo are still appealing to Chinese pride and patriotism even as the country is being pilloried overseas. Looking to expend their market shares in China, these international companies are cheerleading for China, asking customers to chant its Olympics refrain (including McDonald's "I'm loving China wins!"), and using nationalism as a strategy to build a closer connection with the Chinese people.

These major corporations fend off criticism from Tibetan and free-speech groups who want these companies to use their influence to improve China's human-rights record, and they're even apologizing for their support for the Dalai Lama or their use of Tibetan monks' image in commercials. Their attitude reminds us the fact that most surveillance software is manufactured not in China, Russia or India, but in North America. Shouldn't the world boycott America for manufacturing and exporting spyware to China?

As Joshua Meyrowitz warns in No Sense of Place, "The vacuum in our visible political realm of authority may be giving undue power to invisible men and women who run large national and multi-national corporations." These invisible business leaders who refuse to be viewed and examined by the public media can determine all forms of national and international communication technologies, university research, or even government foreign policies. One might argue that we, as consumers, can affect business leaders to push the Chinese government to negotiate with the Dalai Lama. But the fact is that not everyone is a consumer. Can you imagine what Chinese government's attitude toward Tibet will be if Tibetans are the largest consumer group in China?

Besides, when we have more option to choose whether to boycott Lenovo, McDonald's, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola for its association with China, we will, as Thomas De Zengotita points out in Mediated, only become more indifferent to our own decisions and to what is happening in the world. How many people think that their money spent in Starbucks will indirectly fund Israel arms fair when they enjoy a Tall Skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte? Or how many people will even bother to know about the conflict between Israel and Palestine?

The real decision makers are still behind the camera, and all we can see on the media are the celebrities' boycotts of the Beijing Olympics and the Chinese Internet users' boycotts of companies for purportedly supporting the Dalai Lama. The issues of Tibet and Darfur will slowly be driven away by all these self-conscious performers until we no longer notice what is really happening.

Video Project

I draw this sketch for a video project, not for fun. The model--also the main actress in my video project--is my beautiful classmate. I hope all my classmates can recognize who she is.

I give this art work a 70, because it is not "real" enough. You know, I am not good at using the strategy of immediacy--imitating the real world without audience's awareness of the medium--to remediate reality through painting. I prefer drawing abstract painting. Besides, I don't have 2B, 4B, and 6B pencils, so the sketch is not dark enough. We have no fund in filming this project, and the paper I use is the cheapest one I can find in stationery store. It's difficult to draw without the right tool..................................... Alright, I admit that I am just not a good at sketch.

In the video cutting process, I plan to use this painting to dissolve in the real image. That means I got to depict exactly what's presented on the screen. It looks like I overestimate my ability, and I have to reduce my sleeping hours to finish four more paintings. Ahhhhhhh.

The biggest challenge in my life

Yesterday, my girlfriend, living with me, found out that two of her former colleagues got married. She looked all their wedding pictures and commented on every detail of their wedding ranging from the style of their dresses to the size of the wedding reception sites. She was particularly interesting in the wedding of a nurse colleague who marry to a rich doctor, because they invited almost 500 people to their extravagent "wedding of the century," as the bride shamelessly dubbed it. I worked in the same hospital with my girlfriend for three months, so she meticulously explained to me who hated the bride and who wanted to pursued her best friend while I was struggling in writing an English essays.

Then, she suddenly said, "What if I don't have so many friends in my wedding?" Yap, I know she wanted to get married after seeing all these pictures. Especially when she is now thirty years old (five years bigger than me), wedding pictures can easily stimulate her fantacy of having a romantic "wedding of the century."

Many friends said I am living a very boring and easy life--reading books, drawing ink painting, and cooking food for my girlfriend everyday. My parents pay for my tuition and I never have to worry about taking care of them after I graduate. But me living a carefree life? Look at my situation. Few months ago I just turn twenty-five years old, and now I have to worry about getting a decent job and pursuading her mother to permit our marriage. I also have to earn enough money in two years to satisfy my girlfriend's fantacy about her wedding, for she wants to get married before thirty-two years old.

Promising a girl who are five years bigger than you that you will marry her is definitely a challenge. In fact, I think this is the biggest challenge in my life.

Beach

Three places that I've lived for more than two years--Taiwan, Indonesia, and Singapore--are all surrounded by sea. It's natural for my parents to bring me to some beautiful beaches every year since I was a small kid. Indonesia and Singapore close to equator, so you can go to beaches and swim in the ocean every month. In Taiwan, the time you can go beaches is from April to November. But here in New York, we only have three months--from June to August--that are suitable for swimming in the ocean.

Singapore is just a tiny island, so there isn't much to say about its beaches. Most of Taiwan's beaches are too dirty, for Taiwan has overdeveloped heavy industry clustering in the small island. Indonesian's environmental protection is worse than both Singapore and Taiwan. However, I would say the most beautiful beaches I've seen is in Indonesia. You know, Indonesia has around 17,500 island, and many of them are far away from polluted cities. It's really easy to find a "paradise beach" with stylish resorts in Indonesia.

Yesterday, I've got the chance to go to Long Island Bar Beach Park. The sand is not so good, for it fulls of small stones and shells. I can't take out my shirt and lie on the beach because the weather is still cold--around 50 Fahrenheit. It seems like I've to wait for at least one more month to go to the beach, and when that time comes, it will full of people. Where can I find my ideal beach in New York?

My Professor on Japanese News Report

It's not only cool to see your professor on a TV news report, but also fascinating to watch how another culture presents him. The video clip above shows my professor Paul Levinson on Japan NNN-TV News talking about Obama's oratory skill. Here are few small things I notice:

1. In the beginning of Professor Levinson's comment about Obama's speech, he says, "I will give Obama a 98. You know, once in a while, he slips off, but he is really superb. I would give Hillary an eighty." However, in the Japanese translation, we can only see that "Obama's speech is 98 points, and Hillary is 80 points." It seems like only the scores matter.

2. The pronunciation of "writer" in Japanese is "laita," which sounds like "lighter." "Speech" is prounced "supiichi; "Hillary" is "Hilaly;" and "Obama" is--"Obama." Ohhh Yehhhh!

3. My school--Fordham--in Japanese is "Huodamu." I believe no Japanese will hear about Fordham unless I prounce it Huodamu.

If Japanese people value so highly the first hand information that they even come to America and interview my professor about his opinion on the US election, why can't China and Taiwan do the same thing? I gotta produce some video clips about the US presidential election for Chinese, so they don't have to tolerate the mishmash of China Central Television's reports.