Unusual light in the sky…..

….was visible at 4pm GMT yesterdat the 13 Feb 2009. Out with dog Smud the beagle at Riverside and the sun which was very bright – due to set say forty minutes – yet so very bright i thought ‘thank goodness i wasn’t out in this all day’.  What was interesting and had me fascinated was another ’sun’ to say twenty degrees to the north with spectral colours ie a mini rainbow at the southern end ie closer to the sun.

 Clever meteorologists please advise.

I haven’t much time to search this out, by chance here is a treatment of high altitude ice – perhaps this was the phenomena I was viewing.

http://milesobrien.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/nothing-super-cool-about-it/

When I’ve time I shall have to have a shufty over Miles Obriens blog, looks a good ‘un. At present I’m enjoying a couple of hours studying Mandarin in the kitchen – that is where the light is good for book work and I can hear the birds in the garden. I’ve also product to assemble and depatch as well as a desire to be out with Smud. Zaijian (see you agn in Mandarin).

see http://kllrchrd.livejournal.com for a more regular regurgitation of my minutae……..

Spring in a Small Town.

This is a highly regarded film, out of favour during Communist Party fervour and again rated highly. 小城之春 Xiao3 cheng2 zhi1 chun1.

http://www.archive.org/details/spring_in_a_small_town

http://v.youku.com/v_playlist/f1540737o1p0.html

Lastly here is something found quite by chance, a comedy yet engaging:

http://v.youku.com/v_playlist/f1152617o1p1.html

White haired girl.

This is a very well known Chinese film, not the later ballet and subsequent film. Here is an introductory page;

The White-Haired Girl

Director: Wang Bin, Shui Hua (1950)The most outstanding representative film soon after the founding of the People’s Republic of China is The White-Haired Girl, co-directed by Wang Bin and Shui Hua. It is based on the legend of a white-haired female immortal. It tells of Yang Bailao, a tenant farmer who shares his life with his daughter Xi’er. The despotic landlord, Huang Shiren, attempts to forcibly take Xi’er for himself. On the eve of the Chinese Spring Festival, Huang forces Yang to sell his daughter as repayment of the debt Yang owes him. Yang drinks bittern and dies. Xi’er is taken by force to Huang’s house and raped by the landlord.The girl is in love with Dachun, a young farmer in her village, who tries to help her escape but fails. He goes to find the Red Army. Xi’er runs away from Huang’s house and hides herself deep in the mountains. She leads a miserable life, and her hair urns completely white. Two years later, Dachun returns to the village with the army unit he is in. He finds Xi’er and helps her get even with the hated landlord. They marry and lead a happy life after emancipation. The film shows the oppression suffered by millions upon millions of Chinese peasants in the Chinese society before 1949 by describing the fate of the leading character and showing the theme that “the old society turned a person into a ghost and the new society turns the ghost back into a person”.Xi’er was not only the sufferer of the oppression caused by the old society but also a girl who showed the resistant spirit of the laboring people. The film had a distinct national style with its integrated plot and artistic form. It combined analogue with montage and used comparison of the atmosphere and coordination of the plot to achieve a high artistic effect. The White-Haired Girl was an important effort to explore a national style in the China’s films after 1949. In 1951, it won the Special Honorary Prize at the Sixth Karlovy Cary International Film Festival. More than six million people watched the film in the first round of release in China. In the 1950s, it was screened in more than 30 countries and regions. The French cinema historian Georges Sadoul set a great value on the film in his book Annals of the Cinematographic Art.(chinaculture.org January 19, 2004)I am trying to find a youtube or youku for this……In pinyin is  Bai Mao Nu. ……..here it is ……白毛女; pinyin Bai Mao Nu- White Haired Girl – an incredible film of 1950, wonderful atmosphere, excellent . hint – search using google and capture any chinese characters that appear ie bai mao nu then paste into youku search box – hey presto: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzE5NTI2MjQ=.html I’ve waited a lot of years to see this film.

Learning Chinese poetry.

Here is an excellent selection of poems with good audio, clear characters and lots of replay options. Great for beginners like me. Click on the options to the right of the page. Most useful.

http://www.china.org.cn/learning_chinese/ancient_poems/node_7046034.htm

Learning Mandarin ……..

At four plus years of effort I am settled into a  CCTV textbook which stops me from whizzing around and writing up notes that can soon be forgotten. The CCTV Chinese 400 course was given to me by my penpal Xiao Xia when I knew her in England. Its virtue is that I can work over previous lessons and get the characters, hanzi (pron. ‘hanssurr) burnt into my brain. I am not that clever a person so the rote / repetetive approach is essential, just as in primary school years ago, re-testing myself over old notes.

I have a sheet of A4 with the 300 hanzi so far encountered on the CCTV course that I can sight read at random with another maybe 80 in addition learnt elsewhere. I seem to be merely learning characters, other courses and the indispensable Oxford Starter Dictionary provide me with phrases I’m more likely to remember.  Its just as well I like talking to myself……

Ting talking dictionary gives me good audio for correct pronounciation,   quick and easy.  http://hua.umf.maine.edu/php/search.php?eng=rice&p_input=&c_input=&search_limit=7&search_type=exact

Try to concentrate only on pinyin pronounciaton, however occasionally I work in the Wade Giles system as I have two invaluable dictionaries, a modern technical and a traditional huge tome that has beatifully drawn characters that help to get the ‘feel’ of a character. Also, Wade Giles with its alternative romanisation ie ni zeng shuo from pinyin becomes ni tseng shuo in WadeGiles so its a help in getting a good sound. I have started to learn a few lines of the knockout Rainie Yang song Jue Jiang (Stubbornness).  http://chinat0wn.blogspot.com/2008/04/rainie-yang-stubborness.html   Its useful to work through each character on paper and write down all the relevant dictionary entries.

A problem I have is that I cannot really assimilate / understand a character unless I know its associations and couplings with other characters in themselves as pairs forming new words, its only then that I can get a ‘picture’ of its intended use.

Any CCTV documentary on youtube has excellent voiceovers. Chinese newsreaders are phenomenal at tones. At random http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm1fGRHXYSA

Lastly, check out CCTV the English section, two good courses on there, tho in my opinion have too many instances of non native speakers occupying instruction time and the native speakers are a bit too fast.  http://www.cctv.com/english/vod/index.shtml The language courses are at the bottom of page, some very interesting documentaries as well. Beats UK tv…..

From experience try to be pen and paper based, and try to stick to a single course of instruction even if its only half of your study time (your ‘core’ course). Twenty minutes early morning and ditto before bed are sufficient to make valuable progress. Try not to get bogged down zipping around youtube.

Conversion chart pinyin to Wade Giles  http://www.heroic-cinema.com/eric/PYWG.html

Traditional names modernised to pinyin http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinlng3.html

www.cslpod.com is useful, tho no pinyin for beginners, not really a problem as the dictionary soon solves that.

Yesterday found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=015uo0nVeuA this man has over a hundred quick lessons, hearing and seeing himself explain the lessons adds to the learning experience. Can be a bad acoustic, tho stick with him, the oudoor locations provide a sense of real China. I appreciate his efforts. Xiexie fushoubing.

A Giant Squid……

is pictured on the tiscali homepage. I am appalled. The giant squid, poor thing should have been left alive if at all possible. In the text there is no hint of regret at the giant squid having been caught!

Surely any science that is not detached observation is bad science – ignorant science. Poking a dead mass is not very clever. Its wonderful to imagine how such a creature would look beneath the waves, did it have regular habitat, did it ever encounter other giant squid, what was its level of cunning and self preservation? I wonder how developed its vision was, its brain would process a vast amount of sensory input. Would it find another to procreate?

I find the pictures sad and sickening.

 

We need some art here….

……so here is an absolute stunner:

Paul Uccello painted this around 1455, can now be seen in the National Gallery, London. :

If only I could paint like that……

And here is an interesting blog just found after ten minutes googling : http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/01/more_thoughts_on_haw_par_villa.html

Well worth reading.

Mandarin tips.

Found this recently:

http://www.podomatic.com/people/index/ellenschinese

Very good, a little on the next level for me, yet I can catch parts.

I got this via http://ellenschinese.podomatic.com/

Which in turn came from:

http://friedelcraft.blogspot.com/

Take the time to explore these.I like ‘em all, was struck by the freshness of the ‘ellen podcasts’.

To get an accurate Mandarin sound is not easy, mouth geometry /tongue position is important, here is useful info:

http://www.sinosplice.com/lang/pronunciation/04/

Post Office closures.

	Post Office closures.
	…..our talkie 24hr radio tells us here in the UK that there is to be another wave/purge of Post Office closures. I don’t sell on ebay, yet for my little activities I despatch abt 150 parcels by mail a year. Due to my difficulties luckily have ONE Post Office and another a hundred miles away I use on holiday, that I can cope with. I am phobic abt shops and post offices, yet luckily the local one I feel okay in. Nice people, family run, not quite from round here, genuinely nice people. A couple of years ago expository tv revealed the ineptitude of short term PO labour in London. So bad you couldn’t make it up. This country is run by #rseholes. The ability to make straightforward reasoned evaluations has gone. The Post Office lurches from one blunder to another. Their pension fund is a sad story. We are taking the kickback. Near my place of work – usual story- little sub PO shut, lots of elderly in the area, now have to bus, if they can, three miles into town. The co-op store was a couple of doors away, everything neatly to hand. Seeing familiar faces, might be the only conversation they get all week.  Set routines they can cope with. The tenants of that PO didn’t want to shut down. Its the compoulsory thing that irritates. To anyone thats stood in a PO queue its baffling. Yet another instance of a grosss error of judgement. Heres an idea –  let them out to Pakistanis, they’ll jump at the chance. Better them than no-one. Fact. I’ve also posted the above on my http://kllrchrd.livejournal.com  as I feel very strongly on this matter. Something about which I would CERTAINLY MAKE AN ACTIVE PROTEST. I am Mr Angry today.

Hong Qi Pu: Red Flag story….

…..the characters are; 红旗谱.

 

Pinyin is Hong2 Qi2 Pu3. Translates literally as ‘Red Flag Spectrum’ the ’spectrum’ bit need more investigation. A Chinese film I am very impressed with. The scene of the son departing in the first reel is so very powerful. You don’t need Hanyu (Chinese language) to follow this. Also in the first reel is the market scene backed with an incredible female singer soundtrack.

The male lead is Cui Wei, he plays the father at the start, then the son returned as a grown man.  He is a famous actor director in China.

 

Directed by Lin Zifeng. I’ll ask my friend Zhu Zhu to look over the data to see if I have it correct.

Set one hundred years ago. 红旗谱 I think the title means Hong Qi story.    1960 by Beijing Motion picture studio. Some beautiful scenes and settings, excellent atmospheric musical score. Lots of well observed human characteristics, love, loyalty, ageing, family and struggle against an ignorant despot. To my mind it reads as anti Communist, reminding me immediately of the work of Shostakovitch in Russia.

A masterpiece.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDmwuwPXMpg