Journal

Months ago I saw the movie Monga(艋舺). Monga is a movie about the early gangsters fights in Wanhua District around 1960s. In the movie, the fierce and rude of gangsters are fully portrayed, but at the same time the director points out the great friendship between the young gangsters. In other words, for these young gangsters, fighting is not really to maintain the power and the territory of the gang, but to show their tough and strong friendship.

I enjoyed the movie very much. But I think the real Monga is not like what the movie depicts: a district full of gangsters, prostitutes and crimes. I've been to Monga area, somewhere around Lungshan temple, many times and I really love the classical Chinese style there. Wanghua district, where Monga is located, is famous for its fabulous culture and the ancient historical sites. I believe that the movie might somehow show some part of the history of Monga, but it might be misleading for the audience if we don't clarify that Monga has more cultural beauty than gangsters' fights.

Related Link: http://blog.yam.com/upart/article/25436416 我為什麼反對電影艋舺

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During the winter vacation, my friends and I held a winter camp called “2010烏鴉邦校園民主實踐營.” We invite students who have critical thinkings to join us and discuss what would it be like if we have a more democratic campus (or say learning environment).

The students were mainly from Northern Taiwan. Each of them had different stories about their life, their campus life and their family. We shared our experience at school and discovered that there were many unfairness should be improved. For example, the restriction of appearance (hair, dressing, shoes, etc.), the over-crowded courses embedded within one day, the prohibition of eating-out, and so on. We had hot discussions on the campus issues. And we even held a role play activity for them to try to persuade the so-called “stubborn teacher” and the “indifferent classmates.” It was a lot of fun.

Before we end the camp, we asked the students to come up with a working plan, which they will either directly or indirectly promote democracy in school after the winter camp. I was really happy that we can have such a nice camp in winter vacation, just before the Chinese New Year. I believe the students had learned a lot from the camp and it is very likely that they will play an important role of the society in the future.

Now we're planning to held a summer camp during the summer vacation. I hope that this time we can get to know more students who are interested in democracy and willing to learn more and have fun at Wu-lai (烏來).

Journal

Recently I have been working as a volunteer in the Green Party Taiwan for the coming 2nd Congress of the Asian Pacific Greens Network(APGN) in Tien-Mou Convention Center at Taipei. The congress of APGN is the most important Asia-Pacific symposium on climate change since Copenhagen in 2009. And it's the first time for Taiwan to gather internationally well-known environmental activists and delegates from more than twenty countries. Also, we can proudly claim that this congress is an implementation of participatory democracy and environmental justice through innovative application of green conferencing. The goal of the congress is to come up with practical plans for the future five years.

I'm one of the members of the translators and the receptionists. As one of the translators, I have to translate articles from English to Chinese, and from Chinese to English. When doing the translation, I encountered a lot of problems that I have never had. Most of the articles I have to deal with are about environmental issues, pollutions and government green policies. However, I wasn't familiar with most of the terms and phrases. This slow down the translation process. Instead of simply translate the article, I have to spend hours on googling the related information. After I have the background information, translating the article is more or less a piece of cake.

As one of the receptionists, I have to know how exactly the whole congress works and understand where and when should our delicates be at. Since its an international congress, English communication ability is very important. I'm very proud that with the professional training in English department, I am good at speaking in English. Start from this Friday, I will be at the convention center standby. I hope I can play my role perfectly during the three days. =]

APGN
http://apgn2010.org/

Journal

My reflection on the course "Chinese Culture in English"

From the course I discovered the beauty of Taiwan and learned more about our culture. However, what I've learned from the course conflicts with what I've known. When we are talking about the beautiful scenery and tourist spots, I thought about the constructions and pollutions the factories and companies brought. For example, we learned that Yunlin (雲林), Changhua (彰化) and Chiayi (嘉義) counties are famous for its wonderful sceneries and the agricultural culture. However, the plan of Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區計畫) is actually ruining all these beauties. Farmers are being evacuated away from the land their rely on. Fishermen can't make their livings because the water is polluted. The Highest Court has already announced that the environmental assessment of the Central Taiwan Science Park is invalid. But the Environment Protection Department didn't use its power to stop the construction. There are hundreds of thousands of reasons to stop the program but our government departments ignore the declaration of the highest court, despite the law of our country and the happiness of the people of the nation, continuously work on the illegal project on Science Park.

And when we are talking about the various and abundant cultures in Taiwan, I thought about the suppression of aboriginals and the disadvantaged ones. For example, once we talked about the groups of people in Taiwan, we mentioned the aboriginals in Taiwan. The seemingly wonderful aboriginal cultures are actually invaded by us (I mean most of the Han people and other cultures). Indeed, they used to do hunting, singing and dancing. Their culture involves a lot of ceremonies for different time periods and they have special dressings and decorations.

But today these are all just something for sale. The unique dressings and decorations have become products in the souvenir stores. The ceremonies have become parts of some tourist programs. Today the aboriginals have to leave their hometown and come to big cities such as Taipei or Taichung to make their livings. Most of them become the labors who build the skyscrapers and the mass transportation systems. These labors work hard and are exposed to dangerous working environments but they received small amount of money, which is just right enough for them to make the ends meet. With insufficient salary, these workers can't rent a place to live and they have no spare money to send back home. This become a cycle for them: they can't earn more money because after their own living expense, there is no more for them to use; they haven't earned enough money to go back home, thus they stay at the cities for a longer time to earn more.

If we take a look around us, we might found that there are plenty of aboriginal tribes living at the countryside around Taipei county. I've been to a tribe of A-may under the bridge between Sanshia(三峽) and Yingge(鶯歌). The experiences and discoveries I had there really struck me and influenced me a lot. If possible, I would like to invite our classmates to visit the tribe.

For me, it is really a suffer to take the course because every time I learned something precious in Taiwan, the reality keep bothers me. It is really pathetic that at the same time we students are figuring out methods to promote Taiwan, but at the same time people are damaging the beautiful island. If we can have the chance to discuss about what is really happening in Taiwan, we can understand what kind of problem we are facing and come up with some solutions to make Taiwan better.

The followings are the links to some article to what I've mentioned. If you are interested in the issues, please take a look.

中科四期精選懶人包
http://antictsp.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/中科死四期，精選回顧-懶人包/
撒烏瓦知、崁津、三鶯部落後援會
http://support-sanying.blogspot.com/

Journal

Again, this was the dream I had the other day.

I was back in the high school, standing in the crowd of student with my school uniform on. Silence overwhelmed every corner of the campus. An old men went onto the platform, picked up the microphone, and then began his long speech.

“No matter what happen. It is very important to obey your teachers' words.”
“The only thing you need to do is study, study and study.”
“We have to be responsible to your parents because they expect us to push you students hard.”
“You are the students who are about to get involved into the war. Thus you have no rights to have fun.”

Obviously, the air was filled with the impatience of the students toward the lengthy speech. However, no one really showed his/her true emotion. I felt very uncomfortable in the crowd. My face turned red and I couldn't help but my body kept shivering. I sweat a lot and I could feel that there was a flow of anger coming up to my throat. I raised my hand, suggesting that I would like to talk in front of the crowd. The old men saw me, but he chose to ignore me and continue his speech. I waved my hand. He saw me waving but still ignore my request. I waved again. This time with the exaggerated movement and I made some noise. Someone came to me and told me not to be so rude. “Why did you say that I am rude? I raised my hand to show that I want to talk instead of interrupt him directly. This is polite enough.” I talked back.

Suddenly, a group of men in black pushed away my classmates to get into the center of the crowd, and dragged me away. Hundreds of thousands of pairs of eyes witnessed the whole incident, but did nothing.

Three days later, I was being dropped out of the school because they claimed that I was too disobedient to be taught, and I insulted the teachers at school, which is unacceptable behavior for them.

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The story was an actual event happened to my friend. My friend who was studied in Penghu was dragged away from the assembling because he wanted to talk to the principal in front of the students.

The situation was quite similar to my dream. The only difference is that he wasn't being dropped out of the school. However, after the incident he was constantly “cared” from teachers and 教官. His friends treated him indifferently. Furthermore, it became regular that he had fights with his family. Everything changed.

I think the dream shows my feeling of insecure and anxious about what I was doing and my future. As an activist in the campus, it is very common to receive mock and disapproval. Sometimes I became very upset because it was as if I were only one who was insane and crazy about fighting for fairness and justice. The feeling of loneliness always frightened me. Although I have friends who have the same ideal and passion as I do, I still feel frustrated when things didn't go on as the way I thought.

In addition, as a junior student now, it is the time that I should think about my own future. Before I entered Fu Jen Catholic University, I was planning to become a translator. But after I've taken the English-Chinese translation courses, I found out that it will be hard for me to make a living by simply doing translation. In other words, working as a translator will not make the end meet. Afterwards, I thought working as an interpreter might be good. Thus I took the Introduction to Interpretation course. However, interpretation was not as interesting and easy as I thought. It is really a tough task to transfer between the two different languages and the two cultures either in writing or speaking. Although I constantly received compliments from my teachers and classmates on translating and interpreting, I think these are not the things I'm that interested in. I want to find out something that I'm really interested in and that I will fully devote myself into the field.

Journal

Should Taiwan be proud of Tzuchi?

On March 11th the Chinese Culture in Chinese course, I watched a series of video clips made by a group of Taiwanese students introducing Taiwan. I appreciated the hard work on gathering so many fabulous pictures and I did like the video very much because it reminds me how beautiful the island is. However, there is one point mentioned in the clip that I don’t really agree with. Here I want to share my idea with you.

In the “famous people/thing” part of the clip, they mentioned Tzuchi (慈濟), the most famous foundation and charity from Taiwan. As we all know, Tzuchi was established by the Dharma Master Cheng Yen in 1966, mainly dedicate themselves to education, medicine and humanistic culture. Of course, we Taiwanese are all very proud that we have such a charitable organization. But after I read the article from the journalist Hu muqing (胡慕情), I don’t really think that Tzuchi deserved such praise from Taiwan and other countries.

Here is the article. http://gaea-choas.blogspot.com/2010/02/blog-post_8012.html【災後半年】慈善有界線

As we all know, after the catastrophe on August 8 in 2009, Taiwan government and Tzuchi help the victims to rebuild their home. The most controversial part of the rebuilding is the “temporary residence” or “eternal home.” The local residents are mainly separated into two parts: the ones who want to stay at the shelter or the temporary residence, and the ones who want to go back to their shabby hometown. Doubtlessly we should respect their choices. Hence it is the government and Tzuchi's responsibility to fulfill their needs and help them to get back on their feet.

However, Tzuchi use their great love and mercy as a disguise, but in fact intruding the locals’ life. Tzuchi helps the local to rebuild their home and at the same time adds some “Tzuchi” flavor to their house: the big rocks with description to remind the broken-hearted locals of how the tragedies happen to their family members, roads named by Tzuchi, and disturbing the locals’ religious beliefs.

Of course Tzuchi is helping out of good will, but we have to make sure there’s a boundary between helping and invasion. Also, we Taiwanese should rethink whether Tzuchi is really Taiwan’s proud.

For more reference:
慈濟的愛，不如一碗白飯
http://www.wretch.cc/blog/Bernstein/15990229

Journal

My Trip to Tai Zoung

Soon after the winter vacation began, my friends in Black Ditch club and I went to Tai Zhong to have a three-day winter camp at Gu Guan. The winter camp was held by the president of the Taiwan Studies Club from TungHai University. Through the applied theatre theories in the courses, the president hopes that the students who attend the camp can discover the limited and unlimited part of themselves.

I was very looking forward to have the courses and hoping that I can gain something after the winter camp. However, just before we arrived Gu Guan, I lost my wallet on the bus to our destination. All my important documents and money were all gone. I was so desperate that I would do anything to get my wallet back. However, after numerous calls to the bus station, there was no sign for my wallet. Then I decided to put down all the negative feelings from the incident, indulge myself into the activities and join the group of people, hoping that there would be some one kind-hearted and send my wallet back to me.

The tutor of the course applied the theatre techniques into games. Through playing games, I found out that I was actually very suppressed in my life which led to my stiff body language. I didn't really like to talk to others about my personal life and what I was working on, especially to my family. Constantly I felt alienated from my friends and family because I seldom talked to them and I received no acknowledgement from them. After the series of courses in the camp, I felt better because there were many other people had similar problems as I did. I wasn't alone. And we figured out that it would be good if we can try to make some progress.

During the winter camp, I had more time to talk to my friends about the club I belong to, what I think about certain issues, and my concern about my family. The small talks really cheered me up that I felt optimistic and energetic as if I can do anything better. In addition, the physical demanding courses really helped me relax. My friend entitled the camp as “the liberation of body, spirit and soul” and I think surely it was. Now I am more confident and willing to tell others what I've been busy with.

A week after the winter camp, I had my wallet back. Someone sent it back to me and all my important documents were back. Sadly, I still had lost about four thousand TWD. I think this is a lesson for me that I should keep in mind. Next time when I go out, I should be very careful with my wallet.