Advertisement

New York Subway:

Johnnie Walker:

"Say it without saying it"

John Jameson:

"It doesn't take a genius to think of distilling whiskey three times for flavor.
But he's probably honest, loyal and criminally handsome."

French

2012.2.12

Pardonne mes lèvres. Elles trouvent la joie dans les endrois les plus inhabituels.

Forgive my lips. They find joy in the most unusual places.

-- A Good Year (2006)

2010.11.12

La petite ville de Verrières peut passer pour l'une des plus jolies de la Franche-Comté. Ses maisons blanches avec leurs toits pointus de tuiles rouges s'étendent sur la pente d'une colline, dont des touffes de vigoureux châtaigniers marquent les moindres sinuosités. Le Doubs coule à quelques centaines de pieds au-dess...ous de ses fortifications bâties jadis par les Espagnols, et maintenant ruinées.

-- "Une Petite Ville," chapitre premier, Le Rouge et le Noir (1830), Stendhal (1783-1842)

掙不脫這一八三零的巴黎，剪不斷那波旁王朝的背影。


2010.1.27

民主把一个人永远地抛回给他自己，最终将他完全禁锢在内心的孤独里。

...it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart."

...elle le ramène sans cesse vers lui, et menace de le renfermer enfin tout entier dans la solitude de son propre coeur.

-- De la démocratie en Amérique (1835), Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

老男孩 片尾曲

Song from the Chinese internet movie "Old Boy," 20 million views since its October 28 premiere on Youku.com. Originally titled "ありがとう," composed and sung by Takuya Ohashi (大橋卓弥).

青春如同奔流的江河 一去不回来不及道别 只剩下麻木的我 没有了当年的热血 看那满天飘零的花朵 在最美丽的时刻凋谢 有谁会记得这世界他来过



老男孩

作词：筷子兄弟
作曲：大桥卓弥

那是我日夜思念深深爱着的人呐
到底我该如何表达
她会接受我吗

也许永远都不会跟她说出那句话
注定我要浪迹天涯
怎么能有牵挂

梦想总是遥不可及
是不是应该放弃
花开花落又是雨季
春天啊你在哪里

青春如同奔流的江河
一去不回来不及道别
只剩下麻木的我没有了当年的热血
看那漫天飘零的花朵
在最美丽的时刻凋谢
有谁会记得这世界他来过


转眼过去多年时间多少离合悲欢
曾经志在四方少年
羡慕南飞的雁

各自奔前程的身影匆匆渐行渐远
未来在哪里平凡啊
谁给我答案

那时陪伴我的人啊
你们如今在何方
我曾经爱过的人啊
现在是什么模样

当初的愿望实现了吗
事到如今只好祭奠吗
任岁月风干理想再也找不回真的我
抬头仰望着满天星河
那时候陪伴我的那颗
这里的故事你是否还记得


生活像一把无情刻刀
改变了我们模样
未曾绽放就要枯萎吗
我有过梦想

青春如同奔流的江河
一去不回来不及道别
只剩下麻木的我没有了当年的热血
看那满天飘零的花朵
在最美丽的时刻凋谢
有谁会记得这世界它曾经来过

当初的愿望实现了吗
事到如今只好祭奠吗
任岁月风干理想再也找不回真的我
抬头仰望着满天星河
那时候陪伴我的那颗
这里的故事你是否还记得

如果有明天祝福你亲爱的

Status updates - 2010 - Second Half

12.16

“在本案 [连胜文案] 水落石出之前，类似的口水战还将持续上演。身在狱中的陈水扁这次决定不帮民进党说话，他9日发表一篇狱中札记，词锋尖锐地说，一颗子弹打不掉17万票，民进党别输不起。扁在文中还详尽分析选举得失，贬苏贞昌，赞蔡英文，指点江山意气风发一如往日。” ── 这牢坐得相当爽！

12.14

Received an email from "CIUBeijing@state.gov" on my sixth and final year as a student in the US. Feels like winning a lottery. Apparently Hillary Clinton is doing great things for US-China relations by emailing us this discount information for visa renewal.

12.13

火烧眉毛

12.12

1031(e) Exchange of livestock of different sexes. -- For purposes of this section, livestock of different sexes are not property of a like kind.

12.11

Don't click.

12.10

倾举国之力对一个人进行迫害、抹黑、打压，可悲、可笑、可怜至极。

他只是尽了一个读书人的本分。

欲加之罪，何患无辞。

纸里包不住火。

12.9

Reading everyday the two most popular news outlets in the America and China -- the New York Times and 163.com, respectively, I find a new and mind-boggling pattern: that people from both countries are increasingly prone to deride their own countries and openly admire the other. The two peoples must be so in love. In fact I suspect they might get married if the Pacific did not exist.

12.6

虱虱啼危

12.5

近读中国新闻，屡屡想起去年清华大学孙立平教授提出的中国“最大的威胁不是社会动荡而是社会溃败”论，深有感触。

12.4

一念愚即般若绝，一念智即般若生

My biography begins like this: 18 years of schooling in China and 6 years of schooling in America later, this 3-year-old boy finally finished his education.

This is my 47th consecutive semester since going to kindergarten at 3 years and 3 months old. I'm so sick of taking final exams 23.5 years NONSTOP and so glad that after my 48th and last semester in school it's gonna be ALL OVER.

12.3

Attach. Bond. Depend.

I take it as a good sign. It shows that press freedom is expanding, and journalists are not sitting idle on these gold opportunities to fully explore and faithfully record all sides of China's metamorphosis, and the audience are not turning a deaf ear. Bad things happened in the past - they just didn't get reported real-time and broadcast to the world.

Mr. Friedman's painting of an unjustifiably favorable picture of China is, unfortunately, as misleading as the demonization of that country. And he plagiarized himself in the following quote, which I read some time ago from one of his columns: “When someone calls you from China today it sounds like they are next door. And when someone calls you from next door in America, it sounds like they are calling from China!”

12.2

It's scary when someone insists on retaining you as his or her lawyer, unless the person actually pays and the ABA takes that "unauthorized practice of law" out of the Model Rules.

12.1

The balance in my printing account speaks volumes about how little I studied this semester. or how environmental I have turned.

11.29

才贪了五千万就上了报纸头版，这样的国力怎么跟美国争第一。

11.24

editing newsletters is escalating my 变态程度 from moderate to severe.

11.23

最近常干的一件事是跑到健身房，拿一条大浴巾铺在垫子上，然后躺下开始睡觉。然后听到旁边人们都在很卖力地运动感觉很爽。

unwilling hero

11.21

expert literary debt collector

I compose 100 status updates in my head everyday and I suppose that's not very healthy. In fact they might call it a symptom.

11.20

dear hi dear hi dear

11.19

east and west each took couple of thousand years to develop their ways independent of each other, and i'm not surprised that it takes couple of hundred years to sort out the differences and come to terms with each other. of course, america is way ahead of other places in this regard.

11.17

高三时，努力学习的最大动力就是为了以后不要再过这样的日子。整十年，绕了一大圈之后又变回了当初的自己。

Finally back on track. Hope it's not too late.

税法：按图索骥

11.15

戳破这层纱

Moments.

Double Jeopardy (Newsletter and Note)

请全体指战员各就各位

Upriser in Suit 穿西装的造反派

11.12

再信一次

掙不脫這一八三零的巴黎，剪不斷那波旁王朝的背影。

11.10

I still believe that we have an obligation to free our nation from this monumental stupidity. (responding to NYT article "China bars rights lawyers from leaving country.")

11.6

Congratulations to all newly-minted New York lawyers!

春風得意馬蹄疾，一日看盡長安花

11.4

don't suppress, don't indulge

和諧之錘

11.2

Icebreaker, jukebox, wedding crasher.

10.20

I was 3/4 asleep in the Income Tax class until the professor suddenly proclaimed: "...oh that was a great year to die!"...and just because Congress enacted some stupid law??
[recorded on 11.20]

9.17

Writer, essayist, novelist; speaker, orator, conversationalist.

Bostonian, Washingtonian, Chicagoan.

8.28

岂能因为声音小而不呐喊

On the eve of the ceremony

James Fallows:

South African officials eventually looked back with regret on the years in which they jailed Mandela; while racial inequalities are still with us in America, even Glenn Beck pays honor to Martin Luther King. Let's hope Liu and his family live to see the day when official China can look back with regret on its decisions at this time.

Jon M. Huntsman, Jr.: America Lures Chinese Who Dream Big (WSJ 2010.12.1)

Jon M. Huntsman, Jr.: America Lures Chinese Who Dream Big (WSJ 2010.12.1)

One year ago, I posted a blog, "十萬青年," a title that echoed a slogan by Chiang Kai-shek in World War II, and inadvertently anticipated Ambassador Huntsman's recent piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Michael Pettis: How China Can Avoid the Japan Trap (WSJ 2010.10.29)

A very insightful piece from Michael Pettis, professor of finance at Peking University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

World leaders don't agree on much economic policy these days, but one thing that does set heads nodding is the idea that China needs to rebalance its economy toward greater domestic consumption. The only question is how. Beijing clearly worries that making the transition too quickly could prove economically disruptive and politically destabilizing.

But China is not the first country to have attempted─willingly or otherwise─such a transition. Leaders in Beijing can look across the sea to Japan in particular for a case study in what to do, and what not to do, during such a transition.

Japan became an export powerhouse in the 1980s and '90s following a strategy very similar to what China does today: Policy makers discouraged household consumption by suppressing wages and holding interest rates on savings deposits artificially low. Meanwhile, they encouraged investment through cheap lending rates and subsidies on many inputs used by manufacturers, including socializing credit risk.

One consequence of this strategy is that households effectively subsidize manufacturers through the lower interest rate on savings that allows borrowers to pay lower rates, too. When Japan was still in an expansionary phase, and in China today, that amounts to hidden debt forgiveness because artificially low interest rates mean the present value of future payments can be less than the amount of money borrowed. Under these conditions, it makes sense to borrow even if the proceeds are invested in projects with low or even negative net present values.

In China now, the result also looks very similar to Japan then: a trade surplus the world increasingly is unable to absorb, and massively misallocated investment. This model also distorts the allocation of the proceeds of growth. During the last two decades of Japan's economic miracle, household income─and with it consumption─grew more slowly than overall GDP.

These similarities to Japan might cause unease among Chinese policy makers. But China can make the transition to domestic consumption more successfully by learning some Japanese lessons.

The first is related to debt. A major contributor to Japan's staggering debt level─approaching 200% of GDP in gross terms─has been efforts to transition to greater domestic demand with as little disruption as possible. Tokyo has used government money to clean up banks that had made uneconomic loans under the earlier industrial policy. It has also funded massive public-works spending in an effort to boost domestic demand. None of that spending has been very effective. Little of the money has filtered down to the consumer level.

Meanwhile, the amount of debt creates its own policy trap. Especially since so much of the debt is held domestically by Japanese savers, the same interest-rate subsidies households once were forced to offer to exporting companies now accrue to the government. This at least means Japan's debt may not be as burdensome as sometimes imagined─if interest rates are only half of what they should be, for instance, that would mean the true debt burden after factoring in implicit debt forgiveness is only half the nominal burden, or about 100% of GDP. That's high but manageable. Under conditions of deflation it is true that real rates are higher, but with nominal rates close to zero Japan can ignore the real debt burden as long as it can keep rolling over principal.

The problem is that the debt is only manageable as long as interest rates are kept low. If they rise to anywhere near a level that represents the true economic cost of capital, Japan's real debt burden will quickly rise to its nominal level. Yet continuing to suppress interest rates at the expense of households only slows the transition to consumption-led growth that Japan so badly needs. In effect, policy makers in Tokyo are forced to choose between hastening a growth-inducing rebalancing or servicing existing debt.

One lesson for Beijing is to avoid that trap. It may sound easy since national government debt as a percentage of GDP is only 20%. But factor in local-government and other contingent debt and the total percentage rises to well over 60%. And this is before the transition to domestic consumption has started in earnest. China must be careful to avoid Japan's practice of muting the effects of restructuring through unsustainable government spending.

The thought of allowing rebalancing to unfold without extending government aid to 'keep the peace' may sound scary to policy makers in Beijing keen to avoid any social disharmony. But here at least Japan offers a ray of hope to China: The rebalancing need not be as politically destabilizing as it sounds.

For 20 years one of the most puzzling questions for analysts was how the Japanese public accepted with such equanimity the collapse in growth after 1990. The answer is that some rebalancing was happening, albeit not fast enough.

Per-capita GDP stagnated. But consumption per capita tells a very different story. Adjusted for deflation and population shrinkage, real per-capita household consumption has grown only a little more slowly after 1990 than it did before 1990. The collapse in Japanese GDP growth did not come with a collapse in Japanese consumption growth because as the economy rebalanced, no matter how painfully, at least some wealth was transferred from the state and companies back to the household sector.

Social welfare transfers, higher real interest rates as a consequence of deflation, and a strengthening currency, helped transfer income from the government, from exporters, and from capital-intensive companies, to Japanese households. Most of the slowdown, in other words, was borne by businesses and governments.

These Japanese lessons suggest China doesn't need to fear rebalancing, as long as policy makers handle the process correctly. The key is to allow the transition to happen instead of trying to thwart it for fear of discontent that might well prove less scary than it sounds.

(Mr. Pettis is a professor of finance at Peking University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment. )

Niall Ferguson: In China’s Orbit

In China’s Orbit (WSJ 2010.11.18)

Not much new or surprising info - just a very readable 5-page summary by a first-rate economic historian, with an impeccable British accent.

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School.

新闻两则

清华博士家被拆 公开信问责市长

北京城管称"蛋形小屋"属违建应拆除

网易浙江杭州网友 [狙击伪爱]：这孩子不是富二代、官二代，在这个城市里，在这个独生子女时代，他或许连个有血缘关系的亲戚都没有……他没有不学无术、他没有因为贫穷而犯罪、他没有给银行导致不良资产、他没有……他的收入在支付了寒酸的饭菜、基本的通讯、简单的御寒衣物后，已经所剩无几……快春节了，节约点儿租房的费用，买张黄牛站票，回家给父母尽点儿孝道……城管大人！饶了他吧！* 顶[36232]