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my space, like new born CHINA.
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8月16日 定下目标了。该是好好静下心来规划规划人生的时候了。
目前觉得要在美国留下来还是得靠会计。毕业后一定得进UIUC或者UNC深造才能竞争得过白人。
要加10倍得努力才行了。
中国我爱你，上海我更爱你，不过现实所迫我估计是回不来了。
所有正在留学或者有意留学的兄弟姐妹们，趁早开始打算啊。选一条最适合最可行的路吧。
6月28日 Marriage is a risky investment.Marriage is a very risky investment. First, think about what you use to make the investment? Second, think about what do you base on when you make such investment? Finally, think about how many factors may influence the “profitability” of the investment? So how can marriage be not risky? You invest YOURSELF into it; you dated your would-be “significant other” for like 3 or 4 years and you use that as the most important reference which usually is the most romantic and unrepresentative period of the whole relationship; and finally, there will be tons of things that may affect the marriage and those best known ones are financial crisis, “men’s nature” and time. And most tragically, what make people make such investments? Hormone and LOVE!!! What’s hormone? Something makes people horny. What’s LOVE then? LOVE is some amazing thing that can make people extremely brave, optimistic and illogical.
So here are a couple of measures that I think people could take to make marriage a bit safer: 1. Date your future “significant other” long enough. I used to believe that dating someone for a long period is not healthy if it finally comes to marriage because nothing is gonna be fresh anymore and honeymoon will no longer be like honeymoon, no to mention having consummation. But now is seems to be more like a bull-shit theory to me kz if you really love ur significant other, it doesn’t matter how long you two had dated, if love is still there and holding strongly, nothing should seem old or not fresh.
2. Know what kind of person your significant other kz you plan to spend the rest of your life with her/him. If there’s something about her/him that you can not stand (especially if he/she is LAZY/ignorant/having an addictive personality, kz these kinds of people can get into financial crisis quite easily), you better figure that out before you two get married. And DO NOT force yourself or even change yourself to accommodate her/him. DO NOT sacrifice yourself kz it’s not worth it and it WILL come back. You better find a way to accept this her/him truly and completely. By saying “completely” I mean 100 percent, by saying “truly”… I mean “TRULY”…!!!
3. Not only do you need to accept your significant other, but also need to be similar to her/him. If there are not enough common things that you two share, then it will be a pain in the ass once you get married. IT WILL BE, TRUST ME.
4. Be sexy. We call ourselves “advanced/superior/smartest animals” and that’s exactly why we are more easily dominated by our lust than dog/cats/donkey/tiger etc. So take good care of yourself once you get married and be a sexy wife/husband. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with pleasing your significant other visually& sexually.
In order to make my point even more clear and not to digress, let’s see how doing these things helps to make marriage a less risky investment. The reason behind it is quite simple and straightforward --- the more profitable the “investment” looks, the more the couple are willing to be involved in such “investment”. In another word, the more the couple believes that they will constantly get abundant happiness out of this marriage, the more they are willing to devote to the commitment. Therefore doing those four things simply makes the whole “investment” look more assured and profitable and at the same time, eliminates as many undesirable factors as possible. Thus, once the stability of the investment is created, a virtuous circle is pretty much established. 1月3日 什么叫红颜祸水 --- 发生在我朋友身上的悲剧.很久没有更新博客了，因为很懒。但是这次一件发生在朋友身上的事情让我感触颇深，故记之。 目前我身处波士顿，在我的好朋友Chau家里借宿。Chau的妈妈不要我一分房租，可见她是一位慷慨的女士。而这一优良素质也幸运地遗传到Chau 身上 —— Chau是我所遇到过的最慷慨，最不拘泥于小节的人之一，是一个很容易相处的人。 Chau有一个交往了将近8年的女朋友。在我看来交往8年是一件很愚蠢的事情。因为在女孩子还拥有青春这个筹码的时候，年龄相仿的男子往往是一无所有。恋爱就像是一场赌局，如果进行了太久（比如8年），输者通常都是没有什么筹码的男方。（其中当然也有类似男方吃白饭的变数）。 而事实便是如此。Chau 的这段从高中时期便开始的恋爱更像是一场，说点不好听的，葬礼。而陪葬的便是我的好朋友Chau。 整个事件（对我个人而言）的高潮是昨天看完电影后他们两人的争吵和今天早上与Chau家人的闲聊。话说昨日Chau载着他女朋友还有我去看电影。电影结束后我独自走在前面，到了Chau的车时便开了门坐进去了。Chau和他女朋友随后也入了两个前座。不知在哪个瞬息，火药已经悄悄燃起，Chau的女朋友在Chau要求后仍然拒绝绑起安全带，申称“When do you start to care about me? （你什么时候开始关心起我来了?）”随后路上Chau女友也有将广播调得很大声的举动以示她的不快。到家后，我立马下车开门进屋，留他两人在车内争吵。 稍晚，女方怒气平息后，我向Chau询问其女友发怒缘由，答案在我看来是如此荒谬：只因为我看完电影后先行进车，而没有先帮她开前门让她进车。我当时的反应是一句发自肺腑的“What the fuck!?（我操!?”） 事前发生的种种细节加上此女当晚的无理举动让我陷入沉思 —— 虽然我深信此女在无理取闹，但我还一度置疑自己是否真的缺乏绅士风度。但翌日，也便是今日早晨与其家人的一席对话顿时让我彻底打消我对我自身的疑虑，也证明此女发怒不仅仅是无理取闹，其中更深的缘由也是被全盘托出。
今日我醒来时两人已经离开。于是洗漱后我便独自下楼吃饭。Chau的母亲一如既往的在厨房里忙活着。他的母亲不太会说英文，平日她与我的交流无非都是类似于“good food?（饭菜好吃吗?）”,”cold?（(房间)冷吗?）”的嘘寒问暖的片言，但是得知Chau和其女友昨晚吵架一事的她这次竟然主动和我攀谈起来。
一句开门见山的 “Girl friend trouble. （女朋友是很麻烦的。” 让我了解了她对她儿子拥有一个这样的女朋友的看法。然后她又跟我叙述了Chau因为要支付两人开销，大二时便辍学开始工作，还有去年Chau将变卖自己的爱车和倒买倒卖Baseball tickets赚来的 一万美金全部花在两人出国游行上，此女自然是一分未出。她还总结出那咋一听是陈年老调细细一想却是心惊肉跳的真理，“when you have a girl friend, you spend everything, but then they leave you when you don’t have anything!” 翻译过来也就是现在的女人当看到你没有利用价值的时候会毫不犹豫的抛弃你。 我在表示同意的时候也告诉了她昨晚Chau女友发怒的缘由。她的回答非常的睿智“what mean that she is a lady if she do that?（她这样做说明她更本不是什么淑女）”然后她还说：“Chau had a lot of friends and they came here all the time. But now they all left him and I don’t know why. （Chau过去有很多朋友，而且他们经常来访。不过现在他们都不在和他来往了，我不知道为什么.）” 听到这个后我真的为Chau感到惋惜 —— 男人可以没有爱情，但是不能没有友情。随后Chau的母亲还告诉我Chau女友吃完东西后从来不洗碗碟，还有她在得知Chau要与其分手后以自杀威胁的事情。“Chau is scared so…（Chau害怕了）”Chau的母亲用“mean（刻薄）”来形容这个十有八九的未来的儿媳。 Chau的哥哥后来也加入了讨论。他跟我说“ that girl is so tight about money issue（那个女的在钱的问题方面很是斤斤计较。”）这当然也是Chau花了400块帮自己买了个GPS（全球定位系统）而不敢让她得知的缘由。不禁又让我联想到此女的家境：家里目前唯一的主要经济来源，是其在超市做搬运工的父亲。
照现在这个趋势来看，两人结婚是一场不可避免的悲剧了。是的，在我看来这注定将是一场悲剧。Chau将无数钱财，精力，时间耗在了这么一段在我看来毫无可取之处的感情上。他现在23岁了，上个学期才重回学校开始念大二下半学期。而他的女朋友，在Chau当了她8年车夫后（此女现在在一家医院实习，每次上下班都由Chau开车接送，让人不难相信这早已是十年如一日的“传统”了），明年将顺顺利利得获得她的Doctor in Physical therapy（物理疗法博士学位）。两人今后的社会地位，照目前的状态来推测，势必将再讽刺不过。其实他们根本可以算是早就结了婚了，而Chau最宝贵的那段人生也已经在这过程中被耗完了大半。
上文说到Chau的妈妈告诉我Chau过去有很多朋友，记得那时她还问了我这么一句话： “Will you come back with Chau again?”（下一次你还会再来玩么？） “Sure!”简单的回答之余，我感到一阵莫名的心酸。 12月23日 历史论文注：这学期的习作。 Globalization is often used as “a term to describe the changes in societies and the world economy that are the result of dramatically increased cross-border trade, investment, and cultural exchange.” (Globalization) However, there was such a dark period of globalization during which the size of the old European colonial empires reached its peak and “led contemporaries to speak of the ‘new imperialism.”(McKay 774) In this essay, the essences of colonialism and imperialism permeated the mid 19th Century to early 20th Century which was the pronounced degree of economic exploitation will not be examined detailedly. In stead, to define who were the winners or losers will be the main task.
It should be surprise to see that one of the primary losers, China, were not at disadvantage at all when facing western imperialism at first. When “spices, which evoked the scent of the Garden of Eden” (McKay 472) fascinated the whole Europe, it became one of the most important motives of the explorers. On the other hand, it was reasonable to deduce that the suppliers, especially China, were at a prime decision-making position. The “tributary system” that China had adopted for a long time could be a great evidence of its once dominant position in the world. The tributes were so essential for getting the recognition from the Chinese emperors that around 1502 “there were more than 150 self-styled rulers trading with China from the western regions”. In addition, “caravan merchants forged public letters in the names of the kings whom they profess to represent and under pretense of being ambassadors go and offer tribute to the Emperor”. (Fairbank 10) During the Qing Dynasty, which was not too long before the Opium War in which Britain smashed China’s door with its more advanced weapon, China was still maintaining a complete self-sufficiency status and as a decision maker. Thus, in 1793 when Lord Macartney from Britain brought “six hundred cases packed with British goods that he hoped would impress the Chinese court and attract trade,” (McKay 638) he got the reply from the Qianlong emperor saying that “the Qing Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its own borders” thus “trading with Europe was a kindness, not a necessity.” (McKay 639) However, back at that time, who could have imagined that China, the country where the Silk Road originated and had been on the winners’ side for hundreds of years since the globalization started, would almost end up being carved up by Western imperialist countries after half a century? Neither could Lord Macartney foresee that all the effort he put in with the aim of helping Britain open China’s market was far less effective than a brownish gummy substance taken from the poppy --- opium. Started from the late eighteen century, “the English had been carrying opium from India to China in order to exchange it for tea, silk, and other Chinese goods.” (Logan 2) Though the trade was forbidden by Chinese government, it seemed that hardly anything had been done to stop the rocketing amount of opium that is smuggled into China --- it increased “from 4,500 chests a year in 1810 to 10,000 in 1830 and to 40,000 in 1838.” (McKay 811) This directly led to China’s suffering from a great drain of silver. At the same time, it realized one of British government’s most urgent goals which was entering China’s market. However it was definitely not the end of the story, but the beginning. The British are probably the only people in the world that could utilize drugs to such an extent --- they used it as a key and opened the market which had been unapproachable to everyone for hundreds of years; they also established a powerful combination between it and their warships; and after they used this “combo”, the fate of a country with hundreds of millions of people was changed completely. The Opium War of 1839, which marked a turning point in Chinese history, “much as the Civil War did in America and the French Revolution in France.” (Stockwell 74) The aftermath could not be more significant --- it resulted in widely opening China’s door to an influx of all kinds of imperialist powers. Then, “France, Russia, the United States, and other nations soon began to complain that the Treaty of Nanjing in effect gave Britain complete control over trade between China and the West. These countries insisted that they should receive similar privileges. Envoys of each power sailed to China on their own naval vessels to impose similar treaties.” (Stockwell 77) Soon, more humiliating events would ensue one after another. Today when Chinese people skim through the pages of their country’s modern history, they still receive cold chills. How the Anglo-French forces looted and burned down the whole Summer Palace, which could have been one of the most amazing human legacies if it still remains intact till today; How absurd it looks when Russia and Japan fought over the vast DongBei territory that belonged to China; and all those atrocities that were done by the Japanese invaders since the beginning of 20th Century. definitely had made a statement that can hardly be rebutted: during this dark period of globalization, in addition to the countless properties that were lost in this special globalization period which was colored by the imperialism, China also failed to retrieve its dignity for a lengthy time. During this same special period of human history in which some people showed unprecedented abundance of greed and bellicosity, a similar horrific disaster was going to be inflicted on a whole continent. Africa, which is at once the oldest and also the newest of all the continents in political history, was sliced up like a cake in no time, and the pieces were “swallowed by five rival nations --- Germany, Italy, Portugal, France and Britain (with Spain taking some scraps)”, and “at the centre, exploiting the rivalry, stood one enigmatic individual and self-styled philanthropist, controlling the heart of the continent: Leopold II, King of the Belgians”. (Pakenham, xxi) This frenzied imperializing action which turned Africa into a vast colony is the notorious “Scramble for Africa”. Some of the motives which initialized this sudden surge of division of Africa were noteworthy. For France, the reason of creating a huge North African empire within a few years was no more than “to demonstrate by colonial expansions that France was still a great power despite the humiliations of 1870”. (Taylor 20) German’s motive of colonizing an unknown continent was even more of a kind of nonsense, since “many Germans demanded a colonial empire simply because other great powers had colonial empires.” (Taylor 20) Even Bismarck who at first “was personally opposed to German colonization” (Taylor 21) was later influenced and swayed by the public opinion somehow. Therefore, the way that an entire continent which had been sitting silently in the corner of the world for centuries was suddenly carved up was quite absurd ---some of the main reasons that serve as the catalyst of the partition of Africa were mainly just the pursue of the lost Franco-dignity and the desire of colonies that comes out of nowhere. When we look back, it is like that the Europeans treated this unfamiliar land as if it was their own property from the right beginning. Then, in only about 30 years, occupations went on one by one rather smoothly and quickly and Africa was divided into many pieces with tens of borders drawn by the European powers. Started in the Northern Africa with the “establishment of a French protectorate over Tunisia in 1881 and the British occupation of Egypt a year later,” (Wesseling 9) the partition was undoubtedly a one-side colonial game. On 24 April 1881, when “35,000 French soldiers crossed the Tunisian border… the expedition proved to be a walkover.” (Wesseling 28) When the bey faced a treaty of ten articles abolishing Tunisia’s independence, he had no choice other than signing it; after the British warships marched into the Suez Canal, “the British force under Wolseley gained an easy victory over Arabi’s men” (Wesseling 52) at Tel el-Kebir on 13 September 1882; and the Berlin Conference, in which the colonial affairs regarding Africa were discussed, was held without a single African country’s presence. Though later, there were larger battles like the “Anglo-Egyptian re-conquest of the Sudan, the Italian re-conquest of Ethiopia, the German colonial war against the Herero people in South-West Africa” (Pakenhem 539), the better-equipped European soldier overwhelmed a large number of lightly armed Africans was always the case. Moreover, the biggest war fought in Africa, the Boer war, was not even between black and white, but between white and white over the colonies in the southern part of Africa and to say that none of the African countries survived as a winner is never exaggerated. Right now, though it looks like that primary winners during this frantic half-century-long period of “global(colon)ization” could simply be defined as those Western-Powers, it would be too cursory to make such a statement. Among all the losers, there was one country survived the intrusion from Western Powers first and grew up as an imperialist power later. This exception was Japan. When Mathew C. Perry of the U.S. Navy “arrived with a small fleet in Tokyo Bay and coerced the Japanese into bringing to an end a period of 250 years of self-imposed seclusion” (Clough 88) in 1853, it is reasonable infer that another Asian country would reduced to part of the colonization empire owned by the Western Powers. However, who would’ve thought that only 50 years later, Japan was able to crush China’s PeiYang fleet and the content of the ensued peace agreement was no less humiliating and even more avaricious than the Treaty of Nanjing --- China was forced to “recognize that Korea was an independent state, cede the liaotung peninsula and Taiwan to Japan, pay Japan an indemnity of 200 million taels in seven years, open up four treaty ports, grant Japan most-favored-nation status as well as the right to navigate the Yangtze River and give the Japanese the right to engage in manufacturing in China”? (Iriye 314) Moreover, no one could imagine that Japan would win a series of battle against Russia merely after another 10-year development and the notorious Russo-Japanese war would end up with Russia initiating a negotiation for peace after its decisive defeat “in the Straits of Tsushima in May 1905… by Togo Heihachiro”. (Beasley 78) Being the first Non-European country that had a win over a European power, there was no doubt that Japan had successfully transited from a feudalistic laggard to a formidable imperialist power. Japan’s suddenly rise which shifted it to the winners’ side definitely made a strong statement that this whole imperialism game should not be regarded purely between the overwhelming Western Powers and non-western countries. After failing to attribute “Western” as the commonest trait to those winners, now the most obvious and important characteristic that they share is they all had been through a certain amount of industrialization. As the pioneer of industrialization, Britain definitely showed an unbreakable connection between it and its prosperity. During the period, due to the invention of new technologies, mass increase in output of products like coal, iron, cotton and woolen goods…etc. made England “become the world’s clothier and the world’s workshop” (Jackson 132); also new technologies like “The Bessemer Process” cheapened the cost of producing steel and made the mass production of it possible which served as a strong base for building the most powerful modern fleet in the world. Britain could not become the biggest imperialist power in the world without experiencing a full-scale industrialization. Another crucial factor which helped those imperialist countries gain dominating positions in the world was their openness and there could not be a better example than Japan. Soon after the Harris treaty which opened Japan forcedly, the shogun realized that exclusion could never succeed. Therefore, they immediately embarked on dismantling the barriers that had established between the country and the outer world by sending “a series of missions to the West in the 1860s”. (Jansen 172) At the same time, Japan’s trade “exceeded the modest expectations that had been held of it.” (Jansen 175) In only five years, “exports had quadrupled and imports were up ninefold” (Jansen 175) comparing to the total amount in 1860 and the contact with the outer world became more and more frequent. The end of the seclusion and its willingness of learning from the West definitely “contributed in substantive ways to building the technological foundation for Japan’s successful industrialization.” (Yamamura 113) To Japan, if transiting from a weak feudal states to a strong modern imperialist power is an a thousand miles’ journey, being open is undoubtedly that fateful first step. The third important factor that can not be neglected is a centralized government -- It was simply amazing to see how Prussia became the most powerful state in Europe after its unification in 1871. Not to mention that merely 23 years before that, still “the German states were locked in a political stalemate” (McKay 738) in the aftermath of 1848. The unification not only aggregated the power of all the German states in which modern industry were growing fast, but also “laid the basis for more rapid further growth in Germany”. (Tipton 139) To see that German acting as the most influential power in the “Berlin Conference” later was surely not a surprise. Had Britain failed to use much more advanced gunboat to support its foreign policy, the weak Qing government still had enough determination and ability to stop the opium trade; had Africa been able to unite its more than 10,000 political entities and formed a couple of centralized states before the partition of it started, the “scramble for Africa” might not go on that easily and completely. All in all, in this very special period of globalization, being open, united and industrialized made a country a winner and the aftermath of missing one or more of those essential components was well rendered by the losers.
References: · New World Encyclopedia.11 September 2007.Universal Peace Federation. 28 November 2007 <http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Globalization#History_of_globalization> · McKay, John P., Bennett D. Hill et al. A History of World Societies, Seventh Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007 · Fairbank, J. K. “Tributary Trade and China's Relations with the West.” The Far Eastern Quarterly (1942): 129-149. · Logan, John Frederick. “The Age of Intoxication.” Yale French Studies (1974): 81-94. · Stockwell, Foster. Westerns in China. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2003. · Pakenham, Thomas. Introduction. The Scramble for Africa: 1876-1912. By author himself. New York: Random House, 1991. xxi-xxv. · Taylor, A. J. P. “Bismarck’s Accidental Acquisition of African Empire.” The “Scramble” for Africa. Ed. Raymond F. Betts. Boston: D. C. Hearth and Company, 1966. 19-23. · Wesseling, H. L. Divide and Rule. Trans. Arnold J. Pomerans. Westport: Greenworld Publishing Group, Inc., 1996. · Clough, Ron. “Samurai, Shoguns & the Age of Steam.” World History, 9th Edition. Ed. Mitchell, Joseph R. and Helen Buss Mitchell. United States of America: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2007. · Iriye, Akira. “JAPAN’S DRIVE TO GREAT-POWER STATUS.” The Emergence of Meiji Japan. Ed. Marius B. Jansen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. · Beasley, W. G. JAPANESE IMPERIALISM 1894-1945. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 1987. · Jackson, J. Hampden. ENGLAND SINCE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. London: Victor Gollancz LTD, 1936. · Yamamura, Kozo. “Success Illgotten? The Role of Meiji Militarism in Japan's Technological Progress.” The Journal of Economic History (1977): 113-135. · Tipton, Frank B. Jr. “Government Policy and Economic Development in Germany and Japan: A Skeptical Reevaluation.” The Journal of Economic History (1981): 139-150. · Jansen, Marius B. “The Meiji Restoration.” The Emergence of Meiji Japan. Ed. Marius B. Jansen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
7月23日 感触颇深...这段时间，感触颇深。
先从最近的说起。
凌晨两点，也就是刚才那会儿，看了Frank黄晟的Space。
看了Frank拍得很多照片，印象中最深的有两张。一张是湛蓝的海边的红顶小房，另外一张是日出时那滚滚袭来的暗红色的云朵。发现这应该是我一时半载都不会具有的情趣的产物。
我一直以为自己是个还算有情趣的人，不过我突然意识到，自己活得很沉重，而活得很沉重的人是很难算得上有情趣的。
原因估计是一直以来我都给自己的肩上摆上许多的压力。因为我知道爸爸工作很辛苦，我若是不努力读书会对不起他；我也清楚作为一个男人，将来是要做顶梁柱的；每当我看到那些我认为的活得很底层的人，我总会以此来告诫自己要更用功的念书…
一直以来，虽说不上引以为豪，但我还是为自己有这般居安思危的意识而感到满意的。不过Frank的这几张照片真的有点近乎当头棒喝的意味，让我开始反思：为什么同样身在北美的我找不到这般的景色？得出的答案是估计自己忙得有点盲了吧。有句3岁小孩都知道的话：眼睛是心灵的窗户。我虽不瞎，但觉得自己的窗沿上貌似已经积了一层薄薄的灰。
接下来是第二件事：俺恋爱了。 a
最后要谈谈自己在枫华招生办打工的感想。
这两天一直有一个叫罗成的初三毕业生和他的妈妈联系我，向我征询关于入学枫华方面的建议。
说实话第一次他的妈妈打我手机我心中有一丝莫名的烦，但是又用手机接了他们母子几次电话以后，我真的感受到他妈妈的一片焦心和对自己儿子的期望，还有就是罗城自己心中慢慢形成的一片上进心。
然后我觉得自己有责任去帮助他，协助他的妈妈，告诉他我积累的经验，用自己过去的那些经历，来引导他。我真的希望因为我曾经为他指过路，他今后在枫华的学习生活能一帆风顺。
小节一下：Brian，你不能忘了有一样东西叫生活。
7月6日 忘贴了..上学期最后一篇essay...The Study of the Two Categories of Borders ChunQing Yin
It is obvious that borders are not the same. They could be titled in different way and thus change completely. However, the categories of the borders in the First World War and the Second World War are considerably limited. Those borders could basically be sorted into two groups: the byproduct and the catalyzer. For instance, geographic borders were nothing more than one of the byproducts of the First World War, whereas racial borders that Nazi Germany built over Jewish people in the Second World War not only serves as one of the most predominant aspects of Hitler’s racial superiority lie, but also maximized the cruelty of the war by being an essential precondition of the holocaust. This border could definitely be considered as an extremely powerful catalyzer of the escalation of the war. In the following paragraphs, the negative influences that the “byproduct” border cast upon people and the significant role that the “catalyzer” border played will be examined in a more detailed way. It is very necessary to introduce a great Austrian writer before the investigation of various borders starts. Stefan Zweig (November 28, 1881 – February 22, 1942) was born in Vienna in a wealthy Jewish family. His experiences in the two world wars transformed into a great amount of inspiration and cast a big influence on his creative works. In many of his fictions, very simple plot was complemented by extremely rich descriptions, which always reflect the helplessness and desperation engraved in those characters’ hearts straightforwardly. In the introduction of one of his bibliographies, it says that “Zweig felt duty-bound to bear witness; he knew that he had an urgent and incredible tale to tell, and he hastened to get this memento of an age down on paper while he was still able to do so.” (Introduction of World of Yesterday, vi, by Harry Zohn) As a matter of fact, Zweig had already fulfilled his role as a witness of those two world wars perfectly by composing master piece fictions. In connection to Stefan Zweig’ two short stories Buchmendel and The Royal Game, similarities between the byproduct–borders built in those two wars will be looked at first. Readers may feel an intense sense of sympathy after reading Buchmendel, in which the tragic story about the “murder” of an eccentric but brilliant man was told. Jacob Mendel, a Russian-Jewish second-hand book dealer who devoted his whole life to books, had an encyclopedia-like brain, where numerous information about hundreds of thousands of books was stored --- his titanic memory “was indelibly recorded a picture of the tile-page of every book that had been printed” (Kaleidoscope, 238). The narrator of the story, “I”, made acquainted with Mendel through consulting him about the books relevant to Mesmer the magnetizer, “who is even today too little known” (Kaleidoscope 235). After sneezing at the librarian’s unwillingness to provide help by redefining it as his incompetence, Mendel “closed his left eye for an instant, as if excluding a grain of dust…Then, as though reading from an invisible catalogue, he reeled out the names of two or three dozen titles, giving in each case a place and date of publication and approximate price.” (Kaleidoscope, 237) Such a man who was so generous about his knowledge, however, could also be offended easily. Later when “I” proposed to write down the names of those books for him, he flashed a scornful and overwhelmingly superior look at “me” --- “the royal look with which Macbeth answers Macduff when summoned to yield without a blow.” (Kaleidoscope, 238) Nevertheless this kind of arrogance was definitely understandable, which further consolidated his identity as the absolute authority in this area. However, tragedy befell on him partially because his remarkable mind --- Mendel was too concentrated to let the fact of a war going on enter his mind. In his world which was the universe of books, the First World War never happened until he was held custody for the accusation of collaborating with Austria’s enemies --- he merely sent a postcard to Paris, an enemy country to complain that the magazines he had subscribed failed to reach him. The real disaster came later when Mendel was questioned about his birthplace, he did not even hesitate for a single second before admitting that he was actually a Russian draft-dodger without Austrian nationality. He was sent to a concentration camp consequently and was deprived of everything --- his watch was taken away, his spectacles were broken on his way to the camp and most importantly, he was separated from his beloved books. Up to now, several different borders have been set up --- the clearly-defined geographic border, which was marked with conspicuous red lines on the map of Europe; the barbed-wire fences, behind that a magnificent brain in its unique perfection, which was “no less remarkable a phenomenon than Napoleon’s gift for physiognomy, Mezzofanti’s talent for languages, Lasker’s skill at chess-openings, Busoni’s musical genius” (Kaleidoscope, 239) was apart from its once abundant irrigation forever--- those words, titles, names; in addition, out of those two types of borders, the most detrimental and lethal border was constructed: a powerful mental border which forcedly dragged Jacob Mendel out of his Eden and imprisoned him in the reality, which was a piece of barren land without any findable knowledge, a huge suffocating human dunghill in which Mendel got lost and wilted unceasingly. He was no longer a lonely astronomer immersed in the observation of his familiar stellar of books --- two years later after he got out of the concentration camp, he was never the same man, “the blood-red comet of the war had burst into the remote, calm atmosphere of his bookish world”. (Kaleidoscope 255) By that time, Jacob Mendel had already been assimilated into a piece of wretched belonging of the concentration camp, a grain of dust vanished in the cold wind full of the smell of blood, and one of the thousands same victims who perished at the edges of those borders. Jacob Mendel fell down in the street on a freezing January morning and died of pneumonia in the hospital soon after. Same kinds of borders were present in the Second World War, too. In Stefan Zweig’s most famous novella, The Royal Game, which was written in the last four months of his life, similar tragedy was staged again. One of the main characters, Dr. B, once was targeted by Nazis since huge amount of funds could be elicited from the crucial information of Austrian imperial families which he was holding and protecting. Inevitably, Dr. B was captured and sent to a concentration camp. Instead of torturing Dr. B physically, Nazis merely locked him in a single room in a hotel. The room did not seem unpleasant at all at first, but in this confined space, Dr. B felt a total void surrounded him physically and spiritually, “a complete vacuum in time and space”. “There was nothing to do, nothing to hear, nothing to see” (The Royal Game & Other Stories, 24) and Dr. B spent four months in this room with several pieces of silent furniture. An unexpected breakthrough came on a humid rainy day --- Dr. B stole a book! However, it was merely a chess hand-book, a collection of 150 championship games. Noticing that rehearsing the games on the book as the only option besides going crazy in this dead silence, Dr. B started to play these games through. Little by little, playing chess concentrated his mental energy and reconstructed his messy mind, and his brain was no longer worn out by the surrounding void. The readers may think that Dr. B was finally out of danger. Contrarily, this was the start of an even worse “self-torture” to some extent. After playing every game twenty or thirty times, “the pleasure of novelty and surprise was lost”. (The Royal Game & Other Stories, 33) The only way out of this peculiar maze sounds extremely absurd: Dr. B had to invent new games by himself, so he forcedly split his own brain into two parts --- a white brain and a black one. We may generalize that Dr. B was not only a victim to the Nazi, but also to the Second World War, and three layers of borders was built orderly during this devilishly clever “solitary confinement”. The first border consisted of the walls of that hotel room, which even though was the shallowest one among the three, separated Dr. B from the entire world, and more importantly, all the human things. The nothingness around him never stopped destroying and corroding his mind since the first day he moved in, which incurred the second layer of border consequently: Dr. B was no longer in touch with his sane mind and was pushed by this motile border to the edge of insaneness. The incident of practicing chess, which even though postponed the date of Dr. B going crazy, failed to prevent it from happening. It even worsened the situation, since when Dr. B played against himself, the separation of his mind gradually matured and developed into the white ego and the black ego. Each part also gained the desire to win, to dominate, to defeat the other and they kept rushing each other to move forward. From morning to night, one game after one game, Dr. B was totally controlled by his two selves and “thought of nothing else except Bishops and pawns, Rooks and Kings, Ranks and files, and Castling Mate”. (Royal Game & Other Stories, 36) Playing chess, which used to be a self-salvation a few months ago, had turned into “a compulsion, a mania and a frenetic madness”. (Royal Game & Other Stories, 37) Dr. roared to himself and never stopped pacing angrily and impatiently, as if there were really two aggressive people there playing against each other. Finally he fainted from the exhaustion under this madness. This by no means created the third border based on the other two, which probably had engendered the most amazingly destructive schizophrenia ever. If the border is not significant enough, neither is the war. Though the physical and mental damage on people done by the “byproduct” border like the ones showed in Zweig’s stories can never be neglected, the significance of the “catalyzer” border is way more catastrophic. This explains why the Second World War could be considered as an updated version of the First World War in both its scale and ruthlessness. One of the goriest borders in human history was installed in the Second World War --- the racial policy which first aimed at Jews and extended to other non-German race later. Its range and absurdity was unprecedented, as Hitler’s intention was to build a purified Germanic Empire; and so was its unmeasurable influence, since it had physically and mentally traumatized the whole Jewish race so severely that Zionism was created and treated by Jews as a necessity to survival. Hitler claimed that a non-ideological program is like a church without its dogma, he also declared before his military leaders on 23 November 1939 that “a racial war has broken out and this war shall determine who shall govern Europe and with it, the world” (Cesarani, 87). Hitler was completely an advocator and fanatic of social Darwinism. In his lunatic mind, “war was not a moral issue, a question of right or wrong, but the physical means to a social end: the survival of the superior Germans” (Cesarani, 86). Nazi German’s invasion into Poland was marked as the commencement of the Second World War which was also the point where “the corrupting process of racial imperialism could be launched most easily.” (Browning, 430) This victory should mean a lot to Hitler, since in his concept, it was the moment that the Diktat Versailles was tore up and the start of not only the conquest of German’s survival space, but also the process of gaining the political power with the intention to achieve the extinction of World Jewry. In order to let this process accelerate, Hitler embarked on setting up the racial border by putting forward the notion “the Jewish Problem” --- A glance at Hitler’s writings and speeches indicates that two Jewish problems existed: “First there was the ‘conspiracy of world Jewry’, by which Hitler meant the power of Jewish-led international finance to do Germany harm”. This lie definitely worked very well in causing the hatred in Germans. Secondly, “there was ‘sub-human Jewry’ ... which had contaminated German blood and would still do so, unless checked” (Michman, 238) It should never be hard to understand Hitler’s euphemism --- the discrimination and dehumanization against Jews are shown clearly here, and the word “checked” can not imply anything other than aggression and slaughter. Based on the ideas of those two problems, a whole set of long-range provocatively racial concepts like “Lebensraum (living space), Volksgemeinschaft (folk community), Entfernung der Juden (removal of the Jews) and Vernichtungskrieg (war of extermination)” were set up step by step. (Cesarani, 99) Also, it is intriguing to see how the growth of those racial concepts synchronized with the escalation of the war --- In September, after succeeded in the blitzkrieg against Poland, Hitler initiated a demographical reorganization based on his racial lines; In May and Jun 1940, delighted in the victory over France, Hitler consented to the disposal of the eastern populations and the Madagascar Plan (the evacuation of European Jews to the island of Madagascar); In July 1941, when German troops marched two-thirds the distance to Moscow after penetrated Russian border defense and besieged huge number of Russian soldiers, the implementation of the mass murder of European Jewry was foreseeable after Hitler granted his approval to it; and when Hitler retrieved the hope of destructing the final Russian forces from the victory of Vyasma and Bryansk, he permitted the executions of all Jews --- men and women, old and young, which was the very notorious “the Final Solution”. Though the idea “that the euphoria of victory emboldened and tempted an elated Hitler to dare ever more drastic policy” (Browning, 427) is valid, it seems even more proper to say that every victory injected more confidence about the realization of racial purification into Hitler and those followers of the racial dogma. In Hitler’s peculiar mind, there was a belief that “conflict in all its forms was inevitable and the father of all things” (Cesarani, 86). Therefore, it is not hard to find the reason of the exponential growth of the war’s scale, since both the racial ideologies and borders were evolutionary: at first, only the German-Jews were targeted, who were blamed for causing the contamination of German blood; then disasters befell on Polish Jews, of which one of the most significant events could be the ghettoization in Poland --- from 1939 to 1941, “the Warsaw ghetto contained more Jews than all of France; the Lodz ghetto more Jews than all of the Netherlands. More Jews lived in the city of Cracow than in all of Italy.” (Browning, 194); and when German troops finally raced towards Soviet-Union, it was obvious that “the idea of acquiring living space through the conquest of Russia was inextricably intertwined with the extermination of Bolshevism and Jewry”. (Cesarani, 97) Here, another new ideology which was the anti-Bolshevism was added to Hitler’s vocabulary and the troops were indoctrinated that they should see the German-Russian war as “a struggle between two different races and act with the necessary severity.” (Cesarani, 90) During the invasion of Soviet-Union, “the capacity of the Nazi regime to mobilize Germans to kill even non-Jews by the millions is evident. In these cases anti-Semitism was not even a relevant much less sufficient motivation” (Browning, 432), since Nazi racial imperialism had already devalued the lives of whole categories of human-beings in addition to Jews. Thus, Russian was categorized as a degraded race in Hitler’s concept, too and Nazi racial policy definitely “was radicalized in quantum jumps… with war shaping those objectives by its own momentum” (Cesarani, 99). Once again, the racial border evolved; meanwhile it shadowed and devoured more victims with more variety. The dogma “blood and merit in battle formed the basis of the selection process of the new German National community” (Cesarani, 92) could be considered as a very important essence of the racial border (ideology). It would be no exaggeration to state that this border was generalized, radical and provocative enough to serve as the most powerful and decisive “catalyzer” to the escalation of this whole war. So much animosity had blended into Hitler’s malicious ideology that it seems like such an intangible thing was solidified to some tangible object --- any methods besides physical destruction of Nazi armies would seem to be futile in a battle against the racial border constructed by them. However, it is reasonable to infer that there might be some thing that was convincing enough to compete with the hatred derived from the racial border. Actually, such magic things are not hard to be detected and two movies, Schindler’s List and The Pianist which contain such magic things will be looked at first. Portrayed by Liam Neeson, German munitions manufacturer Oskar Schindler used up all of his property to save as many Jews as possible. It would not be possible to depict every single atrocity done by Nazi officers in that movie, since countless crimes committed by them were presented during merely those three hours; neither would it be necessary to acknowledge that precious list here, which was worth 1,100 lives, because numerous people have already thanked it. What will be focused here is just the ending --- how those Jewish survivors gratefully wrote a letter and every one of them signed on it to thank Schindler, also with the aim to assuring he would not be captured because of his identity, a member of the Nazi party; how Schindler put on the ring contained the bless from 1,100 people, which would definitely stay on his finger permanently; and how Schindler kneeled down, sobbing like a penitent and kept saying “I could have got one more person…” (3:03:25). The brief dialogue which was when Schindler said “I didn’t do enough”, responded by Stern “You have done so much” makes people think so much --- while most of the Nazis were engaging in slaughtering Jews, what makes this exception devoted everything that he had into the salvation of Jews? The answer is simple and obvious: the humanity Schindler possessed and his sympathy towards Jewish people completely transcended and smashed that powerful racial border. Too pathetic that so few Germans were able to find those two things which should be right in their own hearts. In another movie, The Pianist, which is based on the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, at the time Poland's most acclaimed pianist, the audience may see how the life of this genius was transformed during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw beginning in 1939. Though the scenes about this Jewish pianist’s life in the concentration camp and the ruin of every single block are indeed astonishing, they appear to be far less compelling than just a piano-piece, Chopin's G Minor Ballade that Szpilman played near the end of the movie. This piece of music not only melted the stone-coldness in the German officer’s expression, but also deeply moved that enemy officer. Music, one of the most important parts of human arts, is universally recognized borderless. Such a trait lets the beauty it reveals become extremely heart-quaking and the power it possesses is absolutely capable of competing with that border. Later, the German officer helped Szpilman by bringing him food and a coat. However, before that, merely from the German officer’s meditative gaze at the piano and the silhouette of Jewish pianist sitting in front of him when the melody died away, we might say that the racial border rooted in his mind had already collapsed at that moment. Now it’s time to looking back Zweig’s works, (also those that are not examined here) and it is not surprised that Zweig did not try to impugn Hitler explicitly, since such thing would be clearly identified as a political attack which seems to contradict his identity --- one of the purely greatest writers in the western world. Also, his depression which engendered his suicide was mostly caused by the thoughts about the decay of not only the literature in Europe, but also the whole human arts. It is a pity that such a great writer didn’t choose to use his pen to fight against the racial border set up by Hitler, which could have been a force that might be hardly neglected. However, on the other hand, such limitation in Zweig’s work helps us focus on the byproduct borders more easily, which definitely let the comparison between them and the catalyzer borders become more conspicuous --- In Zweig’s fictions, the borders that could be detected are more like supporting roles which merely constitutes part of the destructions of the war, whereas the racial border in the Second World War was so significant that they had already mixed with the war itself and moved along with it. Such trait can be the reason behind the success of movies about the Second World War, especially one like Schindler’s List, since intensive attention was paid to such noteworthy history events in that kind of movie.
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