About 150 years ago, the Oahu island of Hawaii was the home to a number of plantations, on which lived the planters and the laborers immigrated from across the Pacific ocean. They first grew sandalwood, and then sugar canes, and then pineapples, the last of became the signature fruit of the island state.

Surprisingly, among the laborers, Chinese were the first to come, followed and outnumbered by Japanese and Filipinos. 

Early picture of laborers working on a Hawaiian plantation

 

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The Chinese signed contracts with the planters stipulating their terms of passage to Hawaii, housing, food, and clothes. In these early contracts they were to be paid three dollars a month for five years of work.

Though subject to servitude, they lived a far better life than their countrymen back in China. Some of them sent money back home to support their family. Others had their entire family gradually all immigrate to here.

A Certificate of Residence of a Chinese Laborer

Notice the circled area, says Chinese.

 

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A document for the laborer’s child living with him on the plantation

 

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The Plantation Village we visited is a gathering of reproduced laborer residence and some public facilities such as clinic, union hall, noodle restaurant and grocery store. It was built with the donation by people whose grandfather or great grandfather truly worked on a plantation. They donated their family treasures so that the authorities could piece them together and restore the lost plantation culture.

The Plantation Village in Waipahu

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As we wandered about in the museum of the Plantation Village,

the weird-looking thing caught our attention. Guess what this is? 

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It’s a sugar cane smasher. Juice from it was made into sugar.

 

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There’s a story about the stone or monolith shown in the picture below. When the local people tried to make way for a new highway, they shoveled up the big stones and planned to move them to another place. They marked all the stones and later found one of them missing. No one knew where it went. Years later, when people started to dig again, the misterious stone came out, right at the place where it had been spotted.

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We took a group picture in this antique train

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A typical Hawaiian Shack

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Even today, there’s one pineapple plantation still in operation. You may be familiar with its name from the juice brand Dole. Between the highway and the mountains lie swaths of pineapple field.

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Before the western civilization invaded Hawaii, the aboriginal polynesians had basically fed on taro and fish. So taro patches used to be an essential part of Hawaii’s landscape.

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Besides pineapple, another signature produce of Hawaii is macadamia nut. Though it was first discovered in Australia, it is Hawaii that made it world famous. The picture shows macadamia nuts in all maturing stages.

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A boat shelter which traditionally served as children’s classroom

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You can always spot plants affluent with life and vigor, like this multi-root tree.

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That’s me against a hand-made quilt. Not sure if it’s home-grown art though

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Move to Sina

I came here to annouce that I was gonna swtich to blog sina, only to get pissed by the cyber wall erected between China and the outside world, which makes me have second thought if I should make the move…

Anyway, for now I am going to blog at blog.sina.com.cn/leilani4ever, so friends old and new, please come to visit me there.

与贾樟柯对话

夏威夷电影节都快闭幕了，才猛然醒悟，在不抓住贾樟柯这个尾巴，作为记者的自己实在不能原谅自己了。

22日，贾樟柯做客夏威夷大学，播放了他最成功的一部电影《山峡好人》（Still Life）。这部电影确实很独特，沿袭的导演一贯使用非专业演员的路数，除了赵涛这个唯一的专业演员显得格格不入外，其他演员的都特别自然。整个拍摄过程只用了10天，抢在三峡拆迁的历史就要被淹没前，通过外乡人的视角，拍下了重庆奉节县的生存状态。

像这样的影片在商业影院是没有票房的。贾樟柯说，国内也有人曾努力建立文艺片影院，但最终没有成功。像《三峡好人》这样不娱乐、不讨好的影片要与Avatar竞争，实在争不过。

但就如当初的《黄土地》被禁，他相信，《黄土地》在当时虽然没有多少中国观众，但它最终对中国社会的影响远比票房超过2亿（当时票价2角）的《喜迎门》要大得多。出生于70年代，在80年代度过了青年时期的一代人，特别反感虚假的宣传。所以，为了纪录“真实”，他将用long take的现实主义手法，继续走独立制作的路。

——

23日是实实在在的贾樟柯一日游。一早出发，在电影节上看了他的成名作《小武》，接着是panel discussion（其间犯了个大错，把一个英语说得很native，中文说得也不错的日本教授认成中国人；p，上来就问：“你不是从中国大陆来的吧？”）然后又看了贾樟柯此次获奖的纪录片《海上传奇》，仍然感觉赵涛的多余。

晚上颁奖，写稿，聊天，凌晨3点发现国内周末，没人挂在网上，找不到人帮忙传稿，急火攻心~后来开心网上遇到内罗毕的WYN，谢天谢地~~~

——————

这次的意外收获是，遇见了孔子学院的Cindy Lynn，超级崇拜~那个口译的水平是没得说的~

China Townhall

Bumping into the UH Warriors’s “cheer leaders”~

A glimpse at China Townhall, you will understand how high on agenda the American government put issues related to the rising China.

Every year, 55 locales across America and Greater China, people gather together, most of them American citizens, to watch the live webcast of U.S. Ambassador talking about US-China relations. Their Questions are posted promptly and answered by the Ambassador. On top of that, the local organizer will have a senior official or entrepreneur, veteran in dealing with Chinese, to deliver the local address and take the Q&A session.

On Monday afternoon, I was invited to such an event. Ambassador Huntsman diplomatically presented the American government’s views on China’s politics, economy, currency policies, environment protection…all those universally acknowledged and on the record on the part of America.

What strikes me as something new or something I wasn’t so aware of, is that Americans keep their hopes high in China’s next generation, probably the post 90s, to reconcile with the American values and embrace all those apply to China’s politic and economic reforms. Huntsman repeatedly declared, the young people of across the Pacific will creat a very different bilateral relations in the future.

I can’t help recalling, 10 years ago when I attended a New Oriental class in Beijing, the teacher told the class what his relative in America read about U.S.’ China policy. Americanize the Chinese values over the next 50 years, assimilate them, then China will be a U.S. Ally rather than a counter force in East Asia.

This is some kind of ideological warfare. Only after I came to America did I realize how good American government is at this and how far and wide they have extended in the Pacific region. Hawaii is 5 hours away from U.S. continent and 7 hours away from Japan. Its radiation of soft power reaches all Pacific islands, the other side of the ocean and even South Asia. The East West Center where I attend my program has numerous influential alumni. Apart from Obama’s mother, the list includes Indian Prime Minister and ?Chinese Vice Minister of Education. The U.S. ideological agents are infiltrating every corner of the world.

 How can the Americans be so sure that they can change us Chinese? Up to present, the Han civilization has been the most capable of assimilating other cultures. History tells us that the invaded Han invariably converted the invaders into Han philosophy believers and culture lovers

That being said, as a post 80′s, I dare not speak for the post 90′s. Whether the America’s persuading policy can succeed rest with them.

ZT: A comment on KRUGMAN’s recent piece of Take On China

Article Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/opinion/01krugman.html

As a nation we believe in child labor laws, environmental protection, occupational safety and health, a federal minimum wage, social security, medicaid, etc… We require our corporations and manufacturers to meet these requirements, however we leave these same corporations free to manufacture in other countries that do not have our same values and none of these requirements. These corporations can go oversees, pay low wages, mess up the environment, provide a dangerous work environment, pay no social security or medicaid and then sell their products in the United States without any recourse. If we want to level the playing field in the global economy than we should require corporations who sell their products in the United States to meet the same requirements that US corporations meet for wages, environment, safety, social security, etc… If they do not, then they pay a tariff or do not sell their product here. This would expand our values or create more manufacturing jobs in the US. In either event we win. Now the playing field is uneven and our workers are laid off by their employers who have no choice but to send their jobs overseas to retain their competitiveness. Our Congress, Corporations, and Government can and need to do better.

a recent shot on Puu Pia

搬家感言

被强制搬家这里，发现跟blogbus好像。感觉是博客大巴抄袭国外blog风格，MS抄袭博客大巴。

anyway，photo album的功能被取消了——单边行动，实在过分。

过去的照片全在这里，包括我最近上载的100张在夏威夷的照片，大家一定捧场啊http://cid-75d99ef9679ae77d.photos.live.com/albums.aspx

；）不过，以后在哪share photo呢，真是个头疼的问题。难道我非要在sina开一个博？

另外，因为周三要讲微博，去sina上体验了一下，大家以后多关注：http://t.sina.com.cn/1775901313

ZT – Too Many Hamburgers?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

To visit China today as an American is to compare and to be compared. And from the very opening session of this year’s World Economic Forum here in Tianjin, our Chinese hosts did not hesitate to do some comparing. China’s CCTV aired a skit showing four children — one wearing the Chinese flag, another the American, another the Indian, and another the Brazilian — getting ready to run a race. Before they take off, the American child, “Anthony,” boasts that he will win “because I always win,” and he jumps out to a big lead. But soon Anthony doubles over with cramps. “Now is our chance to overtake him for the first time!” shouts the Chinese child. “What’s wrong with Anthony?” asks another. “He is overweight and flabby,” says another child. “He ate too many hamburgers.”

That is how they see us.

For the U.S. visitor, the comparisons start from the moment one departs Beijing’s South Station, a giant space-age building, and boards the bullet train to Tianjin. It takes just 25 minutes to make the 75-mile trip. In Tianjin, one arrives at another ultramodern train station — where, unlike New York City’s Pennsylvania Station, all the escalators actually work. From there, you drive to the Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center, a building so gigantic and well appointed that if it were in Washington, D.C., it would be a tourist site. Your hosts inform you: “It was built in nine months.”

I know, I know. With enough cheap currency, labor and capital — and authoritarianism — you can build anything in nine months. Still, it gets your attention. Some of my Chinese friends chide me for overidealizing China. I tell them: “Guilty as charged.” But have no illusions. I am not praising China because I want to emulate their system. I am praising it because I am worried about my system. In deliberately spotlighting China’s impressive growth engine, I am hoping to light a spark under America.

Studying China’s ability to invest for the future doesn’t make me feel we have the wrong system. It makes me feel that we are abusing our right system. There is absolutely no reason our democracy should not be able to generate the kind of focus, legitimacy, unity and stick-to-it-iveness to do big things — democratically — that China does autocratically. We’ve done it before. But we’re not doing it now because too many of our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class are more interested in what keeps them in power than what would again make America powerful, more interested in defeating each other than saving the country.

“How can you compete with a country that is run like a company?” an Indian entrepreneur at the forum asked me of China. He then answered his own question: For democracy to be effective and deliver the policies and infrastructure our societies need requires the political center to be focused, united and energized. That means electing candidates who will do what is right for the country not just for their ideological wing or whoever comes with the biggest bag of money. For democracies to address big problems — and that’s all we have these days — requires a lot of people pulling in the same direction, and that is precisely what we’re lacking.

“We are not ready to act on our strength,” said my Indian friend, “so we’re waiting for them [the Chinese] to fail on their weakness.”

Will they? The Chinese system is autocratic, rife with corruption and at odds with a knowledge economy, which requires liberty. Yet China also has regular rotations of power at the top and a strong record of promoting on merit, so the average senior official is quite competent. Listening to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China tick off growth statistics in his speech here had the feel of a soulless corporate earnings report. Yet he has detailed plans for his people’s betterment, from universities to high-speed rail, and he’s delivering on them.

Orville Schell of the Asia Society, one of America’s best China watchers, who was with me in Tianjin, put it perfectly: “Because we have recently begun to find ourselves so unable to get things done, we tend to look with a certain overidealistic yearning when it comes to China. We see what they have done and project onto them something we miss, fearfully miss, in ourselves” — that “can-do,” “get-it-done,” “everyone-pull-together,” “whatever-it-takes” attitude that built our highways, dams and put a man on the moon.

“These were hallmarks of our childhood culture,” said Schell. “But now we view our country turning into the opposite, even as we see China becoming animated by these same kinds of energies. I don’t idealize China’s system of government. I don’t want to live in an authoritarian system. But I do feel compelled to look at China in an objective way and acknowledge the successes of this system.” That doesn’t mean advocating that we become like China. It means being alive to the challenge we are up against and even finding ways to cooperate with China. “The very retro notion that we are undisputedly still No. 1,” added Schell, “is extremely dangerous.”

 

一篇因编辑疏忽而落下的经验之谈

全社英语水平考试已过去一段时日，对于这场考试的命题我有两点感受。第一，考试出题不再以生僻晦涩的俚语制胜，但较之以往整体难度有所提升。第二，考试题量大、时间紧，半天下来犹如一场高强度的压力测试。

首先，命题不再“往弯道里走”，这对于参考者来说是一颗“定心丸”。大家不用再担心像“Nappy-headed ho”之类极具本土特色的俚语会作为考点，也不用担忧由此带来的不确定性和不公平因素。本次考试着重考查的是实实在在的英文功底，包括参考者信息快速处理的能力、语言的表达、一般性习语的掌握和文字的思想性等等。对此，我们能做的就是苦练基本功，踏实积累，一点一滴地提高能力，以在考场上“厚积薄发、势如破竹”。

 应对较大的题量和有限的考试时间，参考者需要有灵活的应试策略，以最大化发挥三个小时的效用。在压力和时限下完成任务是一种贯通的技能，无论是考试、学习还是工作，很多时候都需要在条件不充分的情况下取得最好结果，这也是新闻工作者必须具备的职业素养。

回到外语考试的话题上来，我认为参考者首先需要有一个观念的转变。如今，我们面临的每一场考验，都涉及到“非充分资源”的最优化问题，包括考试。我们不能再认为以从容的速度答题可以做到尽善尽美，相反应该在有限时间内呈现自己的“次佳”状态，而竞争者比拼的也是展现“次佳”的能力。

有了这样的认识，参考者则能形成一种主观能动的策略和战术，如在答题顺序上有先后之分、在必要的时候舍得放弃、严格控制每一部分答题时间等等。在考试后的交流中，一些同事选择先看作文题目然后边做题边构思，还有一些同事做阅读时先看问题然后有针对性地快速阅读，这些都是很好的考场攻略。

没有多数，只有少数No Majority, Only Minority

 ——原文发表于八月底《新华国际》

     8月9日，在经历了14个小时的飞行（3小时停留东京）之后，我和社里的两位同事飞抵檀香山，在夏威夷大学开始为期9个月的留学生活。初来乍到，这个北太平洋群岛的多元化和多样性给予了我最为深刻的感受。
 
    夏威夷是美国最年轻的州。在刚刚过去的8月20日，我们庆祝了建州51周年纪念日。同时，夏威夷还是白人占少数的一个州。白种人仅占这里总人口的四分之一；而亚裔占据了人口的绝大多数，其中的四分之三来自菲律宾和日本，另外还有华裔、朝鲜裔等；夏威夷和太平洋岛屿的土著则占人口的百分之十。
 
    作为高等教育机构，夏威夷大学和比邻的东西方中心更是吸引了来自全世界的学生和访问学者。光是我们的宿舍就聚集了500多名30多个国家的学生。公共的活动空间，如厨房、阅览室、洗衣房、休息室等，是不同背景的人群进行交流和沟通的场所。
 
     尤其是我所在的三层厨房，几乎每天晚上总有正式或非正式、有由头或毫无缘由的派对。大家在一起分享各色美食，畅谈以往的经历。往届学员为新来者提供有关学习、生活和旅游的信息，而新来者又为老学员提供意料之外的见解。
 
    在三层厨房，我遇见了母亲来自香港、父亲来自台湾、在美国本土长大的Virtue Lin。攻读医学博士的Virtue喜欢大家使用他的中文名字林立峰。他十几岁时便移居美国，“浪迹”过美国本土许多地方。初来夏威夷，他立刻爱上了这片多元的土地。也许这正与他的家庭背景和生活经历相契合。在很多地方感觉“少数”的他，在这里感觉大家不分彼此，没有“多少之说”，“No Majority, everybody minority”。
 
    在这个多元文化的熔炉里，我还感觉到中国软实力的影响正逐渐扩大。斐济女孩Nani得知我是新华社记者后投来钦佩的目光。她说，第一次在斐济网站上读到新华社有关于太平洋岛国的新闻时颇感诧异，“原来中国新闻报道的覆盖面是如此之广！”在休息室里，我还与外国朋友们交流了王家卫、田壮壮的电影，我感觉他们理解中国抽象派和非主流电影的功力似乎比我强很多。