Tommy says…

A favourite book genre of mine is museum books. When I say “museum books”, I mean those publications which sit curiously between a catalogue and a scholarly publication. These are not meant to be academic treatises. Instead, they showcase the highlights of the museum or gallery’s collection. At the same time, they are more than a mere catalogue. The works are presented in their chronoloigcal and stylistic contexts. For a well-resourced museum or gallery, this means an entry-level introduction to the body of artworks and artefacts represented by the collection, which is accessible but at the same time, of sufficient depth to be interesting for the keen amateur.
This loose categorisation covers a whole range of publications. On the one hand, there are brief highlight catalogues with small blurbs introducing the period or style – in the nature of a (rather heavy) souvenir brochure. On the other, there are comprehensive introductions to an entire movement, illustrated with the museum’s own collection.

One of my favourites from the latter category is The Asian Collection from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I happened upon this book while roaming the stacks one day at Fisher Library (as one does). Published on the occassion of the opening of the new Asian galleries at the AGNSW, the book traces the development of several strands of Asian art, with comprehensive illustrations from the Gallery’s extensive collection. One part I found most fascinating was the coverage of Chinese and East Asian porcelain – from which I understood exactly what “celadon” is – what it corresponds to in Chinese, and how it fits in with the styles that came before and after it. The illustrations are superb, of course, but the writing was a delight as well. Authoritatively authored and edited, it was also great prose, with great clarity and narrative quality. Read more…

I’m writing a research paper on the role of juries in sentencing, which has, perhaps, made me especially sensitive to the way tabloid journalism reflects public opinion. While many assume that tabloid journalism reflects the voice of “the masses” – the plebeian, if you like – in reality this seems to be simply untrue. This point surfaces here and there in the debate on juries, usually in the context of questioning whether there is in fact a crisis of confidence in our legal system, as would appear from the reportings of tabloid media, such as the (Sydney) Daily Telegraph, and increasingly the Sydney Morning Herald.

So the Olympic torch relay is being disrupted by – not angry Tibetans after an independent country, but smiling Western anarchists who have nothing better to do and jump on these bandwagons like an annual county fair. WTO one year, Olympic games the next. If it gives them the opportunity to smash a window or to or bash a handicapped girl in wheelchair or two, then they seemingly don’t care that they are supporting a feudal theocracy that has only minority support in the land they claim to represent.

Many tabloid journalists are probably drawn from the same stock as the anarchist protesters: angry, ignorant, and eager to claim a moral high ground. Not only are they ignorant of the facts, they are also ignorant of the true opinions of the community that forms their readership. So I looked on the Sydney Morning Herald website, and this survey showed more clearly than anything that disjoint. The question asks “Should [Kevin Rudd] use this impressive combination of [language and professional] skills to push Beijing for a fair deal for Tibet?” Patronising, ignorant, prejudiced — laden with so many false assumptions one might question whether the author would be able to find his or her own country - let alone Tibet – on a map of the world.

If one believed that the SMH represented the opinions of the community, one might expect the ensuing answers to go something like this: 50% saying “Yes, Kevin Rudd is not doing enough to criticise the Commie-Nazi pigdogs! Long live the theocratic government of the Dalai!”, and 40% saying “No, Kevin Rudd is such a wimp, and he’s like, half Chinese already – he’ll just roll over”, and finally one lonely comment posted by a Chinese netizen going something like “White people stupid. White people imperialist want to split China. Wait for China nuclear missile, fuckers.” Something like that.

The reality is quite different. About half the comments belong to the first and second categories discussed above. There is a random sprinkling of the third king, but about half of the comments speak with a rational and contrary voice: yes the Tibetans have a right to protest, but the bandwagon jumpers who are bashing torchbearers and trying to steal or extinguish the Olympic flame? Their actions are despicable. They are selfish. They try to attract the spotlight, whether for their own perverse personal satisfaction or to promote a political agenda – in either case, selfishly destroying an event that means so much to so many: athletes, torch bearers, governments, Olympic officials, a nation of 1.3 billion people. No-one should be allowed to mar an event that is sacrosanct as a symbol of world unity and peace for some political agenda- regardless of how right or wrong that agenda is. The marked contrast between this large proportion of the comments with the assumption-laden question clearly shows up how out of touch with their readership the SMH really is.

I started a group on Facebook called “Defend the Olympic flame”. Interestingly, the comments of several people who joined were “I thought I was the only one who thought like this”. If you read Australian newspapers and watched Australian news, you would think so – I certainly thought that I was out of step with the general community, who are all baying for the blood of torch bearers. But no – once again, tabloid journalism has been shown to be the voice of the mob, and not the voice of the plebeian.

Finally, on an unrelated point: lest it be misunderstood that I’m supporting the Chinese government on this one – I have absolutely no sympathy for the “loss of face” (as it has been called by Western media; why must they use an improper expression of Chinese origin only for China? “Loss of dignity” could serve just as well in this context) — by the Chinese government. Ordinary torch relays do not “belong” to the host country. The torch is carried from Olympia – perhaps through several intervening countries – and eventually wind up in the host country. “Relay” describes not only the relaying of the flame from runner to runner, but also from country to country. China, however, just needed to prove how great and mighty it is. So it ships the flame from Greece by plane to Beijing, where the torch relay is declared “open” by the President in an elaborate staged ceremony on Tiananmen Square, before it gets flown – by a Chinese jet and escorted by Chinese agents – to each “leg” of the relay where the torch gets a tour of the city before re-joining the Chinese jet. It’s a strange “relay” when the same player – the host country – controls the torch all the time.  This move by the Chinese government in one sense is inviting the protesters to disrupt it. Whereas disrupting the flame on an ordinary relay would be just that – disrupting the Olympics - disrupting the 2008 rally is in fact disrupting a Chinese torch relay, since the Chinese government both in words and in action has shown that it owns the torch relay. The (London) Daily Telegraph has on several occasions described the London and Paris legs as descending into “farce”. Well, from what I can see, the Chinese government managed to turn it into a farce even before the whole relay got started.

There has been a series of indignant articles (couldn’t find the most indignant ones, but here’s one of them) in the SMH over the decision of the NSW government to award the contract for the next generation of CityRail trains to a consortium that will outsource the construction to Changchun Railway Vehicle Company in China. Every time the company is mentioned in the SMH, it is followed by the tagline “a company with little experience of supplying rolling stock to developed countries” (or words to the effect).

So yesterday, riding home on a rickety 1970s CityRail train with dirty seats, dirty floors, mismatched window panes and the suspension of a blender, I realised just how misguided the Herald’s “consternation” is. If you want third world trains, then CityRail has got to be the perfect specimen.

Badly maintained? check. Unreliable timetable? check. Crappy ticketing system? check. Hired goons who terrorise passengers? check. Lack of basic station infrastructure (rubbish bins)? check. Breaks down every two hours? check.

By contrast, rail systems in China are by and large reliable, on time, clean (if crowded), and well maintained. Rides are more comfortable because they’ve bothered to build suspension into the trains and properly maintain the tracks. The newer double decker trains have all the comforts and conveniences of the Millenium trains, but with smoother rides and without the regular breakdowns. (I couldn’t find any photos of Chinese trains – but here are some of the new Shanghai South station.)

What’s more, Changchun Car Company is in fact a joint venture with Bombadier of Germany, which builds carriages for Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Toronto, and Chicago, among others.

So instead of the xenophobic drivel from the SMH, it is more likely that we will finally get some trains that meet first world standards! Then if only CityRail would improve its running to 1930s standards, we’ll be about as well off as Mussolini’s Italy.

* * * * *

Speaking of xenophobic drivel from the SMH, this article is so ridiculously biased and misinformed it is not funny. Writing about Taiwan, and the 2008 Olympic torch relay controversy, reporter Mary-Anne Toy regurgitates undigested Chen Shui-bien’s propaganda by the chunk. She assumes that Taiwan is an independent country, which has nothing to do with China, and that Taiwan by rights should be in the UN and should be treated as an independent country by China and the rest of the world. For example, she talks about “24 countries that recognise Taiwan…” Anyone with any semblance of knowledge of modern Chinese history will know that those 24 countries recognise the Republic of China government (or Taiwanese government) as the government of China. No country recognises “Taiwan”, per se – but President Chen Shui-bien would clearly like you to think otherwise, and Mary-Anne Toy duely regurgitated his version.

I don’t know if she is seriously out of touch with reality, or whether she was just bought by the Taiwanese government’s hospitality (the telling line, in bold in the online version: “Mary-Anne Toy visited Taiwan this month as a guest of its government.”) The truth is, polling consistently show that the vast majority of Taiwanese want to preserve the ambiguous status quo, and only a small minority want to push for independence, or believe that Taiwan is a country independent from China. And, of course, Mary-Anne Toy cares nothing about what the rest of China thinks. They’re all commie-nazis anyway, so who would care what they think?

I think I will stick with Fin Rev. They might care only about money, but at least they don’t pretend bias is neutrality.

A story that’s been doing the rounds of the international Chinese press (example (in Traditional Chinese)) concerns Taiwan’s Kuomintang presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou: while touring the electorate, he was asked to autograph a fan’s shirt. He wrote “盡忠報國” (jin zhong bao guo), “serve the country with utmost loyalty“, a phrase reputedly tattooed on the back of Song Dynasty national hero, Yue Fei. Beside it he wrote “– Yue’s Mother, Northern Song Dynasty”.

Immediately, reporters pointed out his “mistakes”: that the tattoo had been “精忠報國” (the first character being jing instead of jin), and that Yue Fei was of the Southern Song Dynasty. The story then spread across the world, carried by all major international Chinese media, all pointing out Ma’s mistakes.

What nobody bothered to check, though, is that Ma was correct – or at least, arguably correct. While there has long been a popular view that the first character of the tattoo is “jing“, there is no historical evidence for that view. The History of Song, the official dynastic hsitory, records it as “盡“, “jin“. The inscription on the wall of Yue’s tomb in Hangzhou (see my photo at right, larger photo here) also reads “盡忠報國”(jin zhong bao guo). Even if we can’t be sure of what was written 1000 years ago, all the historical evidence point to Ma being correct.

The second matter is whether it should be “Northern Song” or “Southern Song” dynasty. Yue Fei was born in 1103, and enlisted in the Song Army in 1122, and again in 1124. The Northern Song dynasty ended in 1127, replaced by the Southern Song dynasty. By that time, Yue Fei was 24 years old, and an Officer in the Song army of the 7th rank. If the story of the tattoo is to be believed, his mother gave it to him to motivate him to fight for his country. This would hardly be necessary after he had already achieved distinction – and pretty hard to achieve, considering that she was at home and he was fighting on the front! In all likelihood, Yue Fei received the tattoo when he was young – during the northern Song dynasty. Again, Ma is most likely right.

I have another point, though, in addition to vindicating the honourable Ma Ying-jeou, JSD (which is like PhDs for lawyers in the US). This whole story of “Ma Ying-jeou makes a mistake” is based on an erroneous understanding of history. A brief flick through any serious historical source will tell you this. However, it has travelled the world, and no media source has corrected the�error of the initial report. This shows up the poor quality of the international Chinese press. “What about the Chinese Chinese press?”, I hear you say. Well, such an error would not escape the rigorous checks of the PRC state media – or at least I would like to think so. But Chairman Ma being a Chinese nationalist, is viewed as “friendly” by the PRC government, and thus no negative news about him ever gets mentioned, let alone discussed.

As a result, the international Chinese media really has no authoritative, responsible source to look to for guidance, whereas here in the Anglophone world we know we can rely on, say, the BBC even if the SMH sometimes gets it wrong. In the Sinophone world, no media organisation has the resources or the expertise to be that ultimate authority except the Chinese state media; yet censorship and propaganda in the Chinese state media means that it often cannot provide this guidance. Even where it does, its message is often warped by political agendas, so that other media sources are reluctant to trust it.

I’ve been conned.

For months, I’ve been using the Oxford Dictionary of English on Oxford Reference Online site as my primary online dictionary resource - it’s a subscription-only service, so I’ve been accessing it through the University of Sydney library site.

All this time, I’d thought that this was the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) – although the funny word order was a bit suspicious – because this was the link that shows up in the “Linguistics” section of the library’s online resources catalogue.

As it turns out, the Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE) is not the Oxford English Dictionary, which in fact has a separate site. Despite the similarity in name, the ODE is a tiny one volume dictionary, and very very different from the dozen volume OED. I finally clued in when I couldn’t find anything like etymology or quotations in the ODE.

Saw this on a Maths-orientated facebook group (called “I want to be your derivative so I can lie tangent to your curves”, or something like that). It’s a question for a university entrance exam, and the difficulty of it prompted the BBC to lament the quality of Maths education in Britain: article here, especially when compared with the standard of questions asked at a similar level in Britain.

Well, it ain’t that hard, is it? High school 3D trig, not very hard for anyone who’s gone through 3 unit Maths. It’s no surprise that everyone in China can do this easily, of course, but reading the BBC article and the facebook comments seems to suggest that this wouldn’t be the case in Britain or the US. It makes me proud of Australia’s education system, despite what everyone says about “responding to a text”.

Unlike (it seems) the Americans or the Brits, we somehow manage to turn out students who, at the end of year 12, are able to derive sec(x) and draw pentagons on an Argand diagram, and at the same time know the meaning of “paradigm” and can spell weltanschauung two tries out of three. But unlike the Chinese, these same students are not brainwashed into doublethink. Oh, and plus, these Chinese students would know nothing about complex numbers or integral calculus.

(On a patriotic note) go Australia! New South Wales! *waves flag*

So many ways to procrastinate, so much notes to be done. Just today, I’ve learnt the following in lieu of doing my real property notes:

• Sydney Uni’s northern cloisters in the main quad were never completed due to lack of funding (duh, should’ve been obvious…)
• RSS is cool.
• This is the truth.
• I have an Adobe Acrobat 6.0 CD in my laptop packaging.
• My laptop has contracted serious (and probably expensive) monitor disease.

Yesterday was June 4, by the way. 18 years since the day when Nothing Happened in China.

Got 50% in the BnP knowledge quiz. *cries*. must study harder.

But I got an 85% in my international law class test, bringing my average so far to 82.5%, so now I’m even more complacent about the upcoming exams. *must study*

Finally graduated from Commerce! The graduation ceremony was on Firday 1 June. Amazingly (given the way they charge you exorbitant prices for everything) the food was for free! Ran around taking lots of photos. Fortunate to have friends come along and celebrate (Collin, Bobby, Enoch). Went out for drinks afterwards, and had dinner with parents.

Saw the Sydney Uni mace and staff for the first time, looking very heavy and authentic. Not so authentic was the bloke in the Chancellor‘s robes. Not that I’m complaining. It was Governor Marie Bashir’s first day as Chancellor, and she probably had more important things to do - like signing laws.

Tripped on the way down from the dais, thus fulfilling Belinda’s prediction. Comic relief of the whole ceremoney -_-”

Received two complimentary transcripts with my certificate, adding to the other 3 I’d bought 2 weeks ago which are sitting idle and will be out of date in about a month.

 I’d thought that Esq. was the same as Mr., but it turns out it (technically) isn’t. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esquire, esquires are the lowest title of dignity above gentlemen.

So are you an esquire? You are, if…

• You are the oldest son/grandson etc of a knight, or the son/grandson etc of a peer;
• You are a judge;
• You are a sheriff, JP, QC, or just a barrister;
• You have a degree from Cambridge or Oxford;
• You have a bachelor’s degree in Law, Divinity, or Medicine;
• You are a high ranking military officer, or
• The Queen calls you an esquire.

This is the (complicated) British usage. In American usage, if you are a lawyer, you are an esquire. So, who’s an esquire?