Orpheus in Shanghai

Pretty pleasant. Interesting beginning that doesn't get followed through. The Preston Sturges screenplay doesn't have the bite of film he later directed. Basically it's a Lubitsch without the verbal and visual wit (the camera has not sense of humor), o...

Recently a comparatively new Baroque soprano caught my fancy.

Catalyst: Dorothea Röschmann - Handel Deutsche Arien.

I share the enthusiasm of many about this emerging artist. Just want to add one personal note: for a gre...

在豆瓣上建立这个帖子，为了分享交流中文“鸟兽草木之名”的英文和/或拉丁文对应。

Gooseberry:醋栗。记得第一次知道有这种果子，是小时候读汝龙翻译的契诃夫短篇，《醋栗》。至今凄然。

第一次真的吃到这个宝贝，是2002年夏在德国西部的Dusseldorf的一个街角农产品市场---摊主好像是吉普赛人后裔。当时记下他告诉我的德文名字，Stachelbeere；回去一查，原来就是 gooseberry。果肉粘粘的，面面的，甜...

先秦诸子的说话，常常令我愉快地诧异；不要说老子的精准赅洽，韩非子的痛快，即使比较一本正经的荀子，在不那么知名的《大略篇》，也能令人眼镜落地成千万碎片，暗叹“今夕何夕，遇此良人”，低徊不已。
譬如我做了父亲以后，才深深感动于这个话的难得：“君子之于子，爱之而勿面，使之而勿视，道之以道而勿强。”何等的通达。“行”之难且不论，即“知”已不易。
又如：“礼以顺人心为本，故亡于礼经而...

There has been a lot of publicity around Jia Zhang-Ke, a well-respected Chinese film-maker, when he decided to withdraw from the Melbourne International Film Festival "in protest". Frankly I was puzzled why an independent film-maker like Jia,...

There is much criticism about China's minority policies. To the extent that Chinese government and its bureaucrats have often been inept, the criticism is quite justified. But when the reader tries to pinpoint precisely what is wrong with the policy, i...

It occurred to me when I was reading about the Mumbai flood in NYTimes from yesterday that India and China attract very different groups of westerners to them. You read about Americans and Europeans working NGOs and supporting the poor, the young, and ...

See below quote from 新语丝，the leading Chinese wistleblower.

[ZT]google被曝光的色情关联词汇是被陷害的

作者：janz
下面是转载，上面是文中提到的谷歌搜索趋势图link。原文配图没有Guangdong，而且现在点在Guangdong会显示：Not enough search volume to show graphs.
原文配图用的是被央视提到的色情词汇，儿子母...

As a belated new father a couple of years ago, I came to recognize what a sympathetic soul Charles Dickens was to the psyche of children, from this quote in "Great Expectations":

"In the little world in which children have t...

Note on contemporary art (incl. Chinese art):  Art Appreciation = Pathology of the Artist.

The 20th Century has seen the reduction of art appreciation to "getting the message".