A Force for Evil

This is just looking at a pair of characters and how character simplification works.  In spite of the ominous title, I don't have any philosophical story, or even anecdote around this theme.  I just think this is fun.

There are three sets of 'Chinese characters' 汉语、漢字used in the world today, Traditional 繁体字, Simplified 简体字, and Japanese Kanji （日本語の）漢字.  All three are based on the same set of characters.  Traditional characters have remained unchanged.  Though what words are used most often have changed, the way of writing words is no different.  Think of it like the difference between Dickens and Rowling.  Words have taken on new meanings, but the spelling is more or less the same.  Kanji underwent slow changes over a thousand years, and a few new characters were invented.  Then after World War II, the Japanese education system was reformed, standardized, and a number of characters were simplified.  Mainland China also simplified its character system.  In order to explain further how they were simplified, I would have to get into what makes a character and how do you read them, which I feel should be in another post.

One of the main things I've noticed, coming from Japanese to Chinese, is that most characters in Japanese fit into one set or the other – they are either the same as simplified or the same as traditional.  I found it interesting that one character, the character for evil, has turned out different in all three.

惡 Traditional  繁体字

悪 Japanese  漢字

恶 Simplified  简体字

On the other hand, the character for demon/magic (usually appearing as a pair with the word 'evil') is the same in all three.

(惡, 悪, 恶)  魔

Same combination, three ways of writing.  One changes, the other stays the same.

I guess the devil is in the details.

Travel Journal, Beijing, January 13th

I kept a notebook with me during my trip, and when I had free time I would write about whatever I was thinking in various places.  This will take me a little while to type these up, so these will be in episodes.  Accompanying photos will be added soon.

I am an 中山公园. In the spring I'm sure it's very beautiful- full of flowers and people.  Right now it has a much quieter beauty- full of evergreens, stones, and ice.  A few people walk through, but their conversations are drowned out by the crows calling to each other.

I am sitting outside the teahouse, listening to a recording of a biwa.  I can hear when the player plucks the string and moves his fingers. When he lifts his fingers while the string is still resonating from the previous note.  I think of my violin.  For all my complaining, and the many many days I didn't practice, I miss it now.  The bare, singular biwa notes remind me of the trees – without foliage, naked, exposing their branches.  They are natural and random.  Logical and asymetrical.  Cold, but honest and elegant.

It may sound a little silly but for the my first two days I haven't eaten much Chinese food.  For breakfast, there's a great little 包子 place I have been frequenting, but otherwise I've eaten Korea, American, and now Italian.  Yesterday, the Korean place was one that Ting's friend recommended, and Pizza Hut because Ting confessed she really wanted to go there.  Today I'm at a surprisingly inexpensive Italian place nearby my hostel because I've secretely been imagining spagetti and it's only 10 块 here.

What Was Once Lost Has Now Been Found

Thanks to Eaaf, to whom I am forever grateful for many many things, I now have my photos back from vacation.  I went to Beijing, Harbin, Mingshui (a small town nearby Harbin) and Osaka.  Over the next few weeks I will share stories about travels mixed in with stories about the new semester.  But without further ado, here is what I wished to share with you.  Please click on them to open them up to full size.  That is the only way to do them justice.

Pink Carnations and a Caterpillar

In Japan, amidst Valentines Day sales and decorations, in Kyoto station I found a gift store selling key chains, folders, and other paraphernalia – the sort that Japan is so good at making, pretty and practical enough that you almost can't resist buying it as a gift for someone – all with the Very Hungry Caterpillar on it.  And I thought of my mother.

My mother is a unique person whom I have often tried to describe, but I don't think I have every really been able to capture her.  I have described her to friends, and occasionally one might say, 'I bet your mother would...' and say something that to me sounds so completely unlike her that I think I must have been unable to portray her.  She is very civilized, in a way which I have always thought of as being European.  Every morning even on the weekends she is very well put together, but she is not a clothes horse or fashion conscious.  And, though this is my own quirk not hers, I remember her favorite books and cartoons from my childhood better than my own.

My mother loved Eric Carle.  Now that I am older, I can see the artwork with a mature eye and see why, but at the time I thought it was a dull book.  I was in first or second grade, perhaps too old for it when she read it to me and my younger brother, who would have been at the perfect age for that book.  I have been told that I was a slow reader in first grade, and by the end of second grade I consumed them.  But I don't remember it.  I don't remember any of the books that I read then, or the books that I liked though I'm sure I had strong opinions about them at the time.  But I remember that green caterpillar.

When other people talk about their favorite cartoons as a child, my contributions are usually followed by, “that was one of my mom's favorite cartoons.” 'Batman Beyond,' 'Dexter's Laboratory,' 'Rocky and Bullwinkle,' I know there were other shows.  I do remember them.  But they are never the first ones I think of.  And rarely to I get as excited remembering them as I do those ones.

And usually when people ask my opinion on Valentines Day, the first thing I think of is not mine, but my mother's.  I remember one year my mother telling me that she had decided to no longer celebrate Valentines Day.  But we all brought her cards and flowers anyway.

I remember in middle school we could buy white, red, and pink carnations.  We could send them to other students, or keep them to take home.  I would buy one or two and take it home, make a card with a large heart and glitter, and give them to my mother.  Because even if she wasn't celebrating Valentines Day, I wanted to say 'I love you.'

I know it's been many years since I bought you carnations.  I know my memory is not clear, and things may have happened in a different, less poetic order than I think they did.  But standing in that decked out for Valentines Day store, staring at that hungry green caterpillar, I thought of those pink carnations.  I and just want to say, I love you.