This is from Harvard Family Instruction book. It is a very touching piece, written by a daughter about her mother. Her father died in Vietnam when she was 4 years old and her mother raised her all by herself without ever getting remarried. After her mother died, the daughter found a poem written by her mother for her father. It goes like this,

“I remember –
When I borrowed and damaged your new car,
I thought you would be mad and scold at me, but you didn’t.
When I dragged you to the sea, you said it would rain, then it indeed rained,
I thought you would say “I told you so,” but you didn’t.
When I flirted with other boys,
I thought you would be jealous and enraged, but you didn’t.
When I smeared your new carpet with strawberry cake,
I thought you would think me annoying, but you didn’t.
…
There were so many so many things I thought you would do but you didn’t.
You tolerated me, you loved me, you protected me…
I once promised I would give back all that you gave me —
after you got back from battlefield —
But you never came back.

When getting ready for a relative’s visit, I took up this book again, Harvard Family Instruction, and suddenly remembered that I should return the books to its owner. There are so many interesting stories that I simply do not have enough time to dwell upon them all.

Here’s one on Albert Einstein. He used to fool away most of his time with some children, resulting in having a few fails for his school. When his father talked to him about it, Einstein replied, “Why are you worried about it? Jack and Robert also have some fails. They also go fishing.”

Next his father told him a fable about two cats who dropped into a chimney and one of them smeared his face. When the clean-faced cat saw the dirt on the other cat, he thought his own face must be this dirty. So he went to the river and gave it a thorough scrub. However, the dirty-faced cat, seeing the clean face of his friend, believes his own face is as clean as that of his friend’s, going about the town proudly without ever a scrub.

“Albert,” said his father, “Nobody can be your mirror. You are your own mirror. If you use others as your mirror, you will eventually end up being an idiot like the dirty-faced cat.”

“I am unique and am not going to be as mediocre as others,” thus thought Einstein. The fable had since motivated Einstein to embark on his own unique and exceptionally outstanding life journey.

Quotes from the book,
“We are fractious and over paid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen. Most of us likes most of everyone, a few of us hated specific individuals, one or two people loved everyone and everything. Those who loved everyone were unanimously reviled.” p. 3

“It bored us every day. Our boredom was ongoing, a collective boredom, and it would never die because we would never die.” p. 4

“Might it be true, … that we were callous, unfeeling individuals, incapable of sympathy, and full of spite toward people for no reason other than their proximity and familiarity? We had these sudden revelations that employment, the daily nine-to-five, was driving us far from our better selves. Shall we quit? Would that solve it? Or were those qualities innate, dooming us to nastiness and paucity of spirit?” p. 5-6.

“We love killing time and had perfected several way of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy. We refilled our coffee mugs on floors we didn’t belong on…” p. 28

“The cardinal rule of advertising has always been, make your communication dumb enough for an eight grader to understand.” Quoted from another person, ‘It’s true that there’s a twelve-year-old mentality in America. Every six-year-old has it.’ p. 48

“We liked wasting time, but almost nothing was more annoying than having our wasted time wasted on something not worthy wasting it on.” p. 53

“The people with whom we spend the most time are those we know the least. And yet, somehow, they’re the ones we know better than anyone else.”

“We would listen with only one ear, and with one eye always over our shoulders, in case we needed to bolt back to our desks and commence the charade that our workload was as strong as ever, because only then would we not be laid off.”

I have just managed through a book called Then We Came to the End: A Novel by Joshua Ferris, 2007. How I dislike the content of the book. It is said that “Americans spend more time with coworkers than with their families.” That is, more time at work than at home. Can you imagine that!

The book describes the daily engagements of office cubicle dwellers. The descriptions are so pathetically realistic and unflattering, revealing everything we don’t want to see in ourselves or we want to escape from, yet sadly to say, the author seems to show us that there is a bit of us in his descriptions. No wonder the book is said to be “A small, angry book about work.”

In peace times, office is occupied with irritable, sarcastic, grumpy, gossipy, and absolutely frivolous beings, whose minds, deficient in ideals, dreams and aspirations, are shaped to think in group and act as one team. When business goes downward, fear and insecurity prevail, with everybody taking care of him/herself and devil taking the unfortunates.

The cubicle dwellers are thoroughly and hopelessly smothered with trivialities, drudgery, and pettiness, that absurdity seems to scream out at your face, making you wonder if white-collar work is meant to be this senseless, this soul-killing. The author expresses his discontent over this office life through the voice of one employee.

I talked to my daughter about this book. “It gives you a suffocating feeling,” I told her. “Then, why do you read it?” asked her. “I want to understand the work place culture in America,” was my answer. Also, I wish my children could read this sad little book someday and make all efforts to escape from this kind of existence. I shared the book with a colleague of mine who told me, “The book makes me depressing.” If it is not a real picture, it is at least uncomfortably close to the truth. Well, if truth is depressing, let it be.
To be continued …

An individual in a crowd –
–loses his/her individuality
–is irrational, impulsive, and irritable, with dead fixed mindset
–is under total control by emotions,
–has zero tolerance of any different views, with death-to-those-who-differ-from-me mentality,
–sees the world as absolute two colors: black and white, nothing in between
–tends to go to extremes, admitting no doubt or uncertainty
–behaves more like an animal or one of the Herd as Le Bon called,
–is quick to action, good or bad, which is exactly what the demagogues intend in the first place.
–will do something that he/she would not if he/she is not in the crowd
–serves as the best instrument for demagogues

The crowd can be powerful and destructive, so much as that sometime the juries had to genuflect to its power, as in the case of O.J Simpson trial. China’s Cultural Revolution offers classic example on the destructiveness of crowd behavior on the greatest scale.

Time is the crucial factor. The author believed the modern age was an era of crowds. Demagogues work their wonder in time of deep economic hardship. Demagogues always capitalize on fear and insecurity that are lurking in the minds of those who are in want of mental power. Now is the time for demagogues to rise and fly.

Avoid the crowd, if you don’t want to subordinate yourself to a downgrade level of existence.

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, by Gustave Le Bon, first published in 1894, latest edition 2002. This is an excellent book, the first one of its kind, on crowd mentality and behavior. Le Bon, 1841 –1931, was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and amateur physicist. I read it at graduate school and it comes back to my mind every time I see phenomenon like Glenn Beck. It is especially true in the age of mass media, with TV and internet.

The larger the crowd is, the less people think and the bolder they become, believing themselves indefeatable and capable of doing any crazy things — anything can go and everything is possible. So you can say the capacity of one’s mental power diminishes and is even reduced to zero as the crowd gets large. Once in a crowd, people totally delegate their thinking and reasoning power as human beings to demagoges who articulate, magnify and fire up to a wild prairie fire using whatever discontent lurking in people’s minds.

People who are not in the habit of thinking by themselves have an instinctive need to obey a leader and are easy victims to demagoges like Hitler, Mussolini and now Glenn Beck, the winner of the crowd control. Mussolini once said, “The crowd is like a woman, the crowd likes strong men.” How women hate these words!

Last weekend I read this piece with my daughter and will share it with my son. I often hear him say how busy he is and he has no time for this or that. This is especially written for him.

A certain modern American poet and novelist “Alesking” used to take piano lessons from a man called Karl Ward. Apart from piano, this teacher also taught him an important lesson on time management.

The piano teacher told him this — you should get into the habit of seizing every small amount of time to practice. Such as, prior to going to school in the morning, after lunch or break between your work, even if you have only 5 minutes. It will be a huge amount of time if you add them up. This way piano practice will become part of your life.

Later in his life, while Alesking was teaching in a college, he was planning on writing novels. Yet, two years passed without his ever writing a single word. He was frustrated over lack of time for writing until one day the words of his former piano teacher came back to him.

With that he started adopting this so-called “short-time practice” method and writing a few words or lines or pages whenever he got as little as 5 minutes. To his surprise, he had written a rather handsome volume in just one semester. Hence he continued using this time management method until he became an accomplished poet and novelist, and a successful college professor.

It will be too harsh to say that “no time” is a convenient excuse for the mediocre. If we always wait for a whole chunk of time to work on our agenda, we will always fail to find this time and equally fail in whatever we want to pursue.

911 global alarm! 8 years after 911. Who counts how many Iraqis and Afghan lives have been lost because of 911? And there is no stop of it in these two countries now, thanks to God-loving America-backed Bush administration! If anything, 911 provided Bush an excuse to go killing rampage in their unrelentless oil quest.

I read this documentary book lately, Tiananmen Paper: The Chinese Leadership’s Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People — In Their Own Words, compiled by Zhang Liang, edited by Andrew Nathan, written 12 years after the 1989 Tiananmen demonstration. After the lapse of these years, participants in the movement must have cooled down and started reflecting upon the futility of this event.

The compiler of this document fully realized that the failure of the movement was inevitable, that “the arrival of democracy in China will have to depend on people in China,” that “the building of democracy in China has to depend on forces rooted inside China” instead of outside. A fair judgment on the purposeless and good-for-nothing activity.

It does not point out directly that the students tried to capitalize on the occasion of Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit and the gathering of major international news media in Beijing.

They thought they could checkmate the Chinese leaders, even with the threat of hunger strike, making the Chinese leaders lose face in front of global media, only to force the leaders to come out with force. I must admit that the all governments use iron fists to deal with any disruptive forces and Chinese government is still no match to American force in Iraq, having killed tens of thousands and many more.

Among others, the students demanded the top Chinese leaders should move out of Zhongnanhai and turn it into a public park, Mao Zedong’s body should be removed from Tiananmen Square and that Square should be turned into a place like London’s Hyde Park. p. 109. So much lovely baby whining. They sincerely believed the Chinese leaders would do what they were asked to. Come on, this is Beijing, not London. Do we have to be westernized to that extent?

Yesterday morning, at my daughter art class location, I received two books from a friend of mine. I am not sure of the English title of the book, though it was claimed to be a translated book from a Harvard scholar named William Bernard. It is called Harvard Family Instruction, yet I couldn’t locate this title on the Internet.

The books consist of short stories, revealing deep moral lessons to the readers. I told my daughter one story on the way to her friend’s house in the afternoon after skating.

“A man confessed to a pastor that he was the real murderer in a criminal case, yet an innocent person was arrested and was going to be executed for his crime. Upon learning this, the pastor should go to the police and set free the innocent, yet he couldn’t because he had sworn to God that he would not break the confidentiality rule. So, he decided to remain silent. In order to clear the guilt from his conscience, he confided this to another pastor. In the end, both pastors had their lips sealed and witnessed an innocent going to Heaven…”

“It isn’t real, I hope,” my daughter commented.
“It is real when you think of the fact that pastors are very much afraid of offending God and not being able to go to Heaven,” I explained.
“Well, God is … if he allowed innocent to be killed. I would do anything to free him.” she said.

I wish the story were not real. Otherwise, I would be very much disappointed at religious leaders who place their own salvation above the life of others. Or can they escape punishment from God for their selfish act? If they can, what can we say of God? Let’s pretend it is only a fiction.

While at Border’s, I picked up a book called Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History by Lynn Sacco, out early this year. To be sure, it is a deeply disturbing topic and book. I cannot help feeling sick, indignant, furious, and abhorred over the extent and the wide-spread practice of all forms of patriarchal sexual abuse against girls inside the so-called place of haven — our family, across all classes.

The book certainly serves to shatter the myth about the safety of a family and parents as the protectors of their youngsters, etc. It emphasizes the sad vulnerabilities of our young girls and the heavy responsibilities on the shoulders of mothers in such families.

The book brought to my memory the infamous Fritzel case that surfaced last April, in which the 42-year-old Elizabeth Fritzel from Austria revealed to the police that her father had kept her in captive for 24 years to serve his bestial sexual desire, resulting in the birth of seven children and one miscarriage, fathered by her own father. The book also reminds me of the character in Bible — Lot, who was made drunk by his daughters so that the latter committed incest in order to “preserve seed of our father” (Genesis 19:32-36). I can never understand the degree of depravation demonstrated in many places in Bible.

The book Unspeakable is a good read, only you need to get ready for shocks, disgust and the perverted side of life that you won’t believe it is real.

There are so many activities around and so much to write about but so little time for writing. Isn’t that what we all face in our lives? In short, the big nephew came back after summer school around the first week of August and left for school yesterday. My son arrived in China safe and sound. My daughter is getting ready for high school that is coming next Monday. I have devoted much of my time to the activities of my daughter, working with her to hammer out a SMART action plan for her first year of high school, and also plenty of time to the vegetable garden and to house-cleaning that is never ending, especially with one more person in house.

Still, I tried to find time for reading and of course, writing. Last weekend at Barnes and Noble’s bookstore, I was reading a book called China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa, by Serge Michele and Michel Beuret, 2009.

Despite the derogatory terms that are so often inevitably spit out throughout the book, readers can see the acknowledgement and admiration that the authors express for the achievements and progress that Chinese people have brought upon the African continent. Wherever they go, they magically transform the once disease-plagued, starving, and war-torn land of hopelessness into something much better with the possibility of a bright future. The Chinese people win praise from local people for what they have brought to their land and what they have accomplished there.

On the way back home, I shared this incident with my daughter. An American company planned to operate in a country in Africa. Instead of creating all the needed conditions for their operation, the company asked the head of this African government to get everything ready for them. If the government could, they wouldn’t have asked foreign company for help. So this government turned to a Chinese company and was told, “No problem.” The moral lesson is this. When you plan to start a project or an operation, instead of asking others to get everything ready for you, you create the right condition and environment for yourself. Things are never ready for you if you don’t take initiative in all your projects, venture, activities or any major endeavours. A good book.

I have been reading non-fiction Nixon’s Watergate investigative report All the President’s Men by two wonderful journalists — Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. The investigation started from infamous 2:30 AM 17-June-1972 Watergate break-in by five burglars. It is an exciting and interesting read, with occasional mixed feeling of disgust, sickness, bewilderment, disillusion, and sense of sudden wake-up.

You see how some people would do any dirty things when necessary, yet with an appearance of a person of integrity and principle; and learn how much people were willing to do in order to reach their goal, whatever that might be. In the end, the tree collapsed, so did all the monkeys living off the tree.

The only person that is positively depicted in the book is Hugh Sloan, who came to Washington an idealist and was determined to leave it forever, thoroughly disillusioned. He deserves greatest sympathy from readers. I feel a boundless respect and admiration for the two journalists for their persistence and determination to get the truth out and diligent documentation of this unique historical event for future generations.

There are so much to learn from this rich event. I would think it beneficial that every politician or aspiring politician keeps a copy of this book by their bedside, so that history will not repeat itself.

Recently a book came to my attention as it actually happened in Kansas City. I did not believe it was a true story. But after a shallow digging, it is sadly and dreadfully true. The Devil’s Tickets: A Night of Bridge, a Fatal Hand, and a New American Age, by Gary M. Pomerantz, newly published June 9, 2009, 80 years after the murder.

The plot is very straight-forward. A couple play bridge with another couple, with each couple as partner to each other. Mr. Bennett of Kansas City had the habit of slapping his wife when he was mad. He it again during this fateful evening of bridge, driving his wife to the same degree of madness, to the extent that the wife killed the husband with a few gunshots. The wife was later acquitted.

The story may be tragic, yet the book is a good read, entertaining and also opening a window into American life in 1920s, the roaring age and leaving readers wondering about all possibilities involved in family, bridge, and marriage. A family violent fight can possibly turn deadly. So scary when you think of your house as a haven instead of a battleground. Read it with a sweet chocolate in hand because the book does not leave you a pleasant taste in your month.

You will have a better understanding of the 1920s after you read Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s, by Frederick Lewis Allen, originally published in 1931. It is an excellent and interesting history book on an unique era of drastic changes in American history–between the end of the WWW I in 1918 and the stock market crash of 1929.

By the way, I talked to my mother over the phone on Wednesday evening, 7/15, and learned that a fight between two adults, not just verbal but physical, occurred in the family of the 11-year-old boy who used to live with me here. The couple even got my mother involved. Things became ugly to the point that my mother told them to move out of her house. There is always something going on, as if we don’t have enough of domestic violence.

Last weekend, 6/28-29, as I sent my daughter to Border’s, my eyes caught a red-covered eye-catching book right as I entered the door. I was wondering what kind of book Borders was promoting now. The title of the book, Finger Lickin’ Fifteen, (Stephanie Plum Novels) (Hardcover) by Janet Evanovich, list price: $27.95. Thinking it must be a worth reading, I took it up and started reading.

I must admit I feel both disappointed and a bit cheated, disappointed over the level of taste of folks at this Border’s, a reflection of the popular taste of folks in our area, cheated for wasting time on reading it. I feel like having visited a land filled with stinky garbage. I must stop here before I spurt out any unpleasant comments.

Finally, here’s something to brighten the day. According to Aristotle, those who can only follow orders are slaves. More accurately in modern term, those who can only follow orders have a slave mentality. Isn’t that horrible! Think of this everytime you follow orders issued to you.

How we love getting rid of any household work! These are from Woman’s Day magazine, 5/2009, that I read while waiting for my daughter’s art class.

Tips on reducing housework
(1) Time yourself
(2) Make things easy. Always look for easy way to get things done.
(3) Move thing the right way, top to bottom, inside to outside
(4) Clean while messing, clean while cooking instead of leaving a big mess after cooking
(5) Do a quick 5-minutes cleaning instead of waiting for things dreadfully piled up.

Sweet and short. More from this magazine on health later.

Recently, I have talked with some friends over the phone about our teenage children. To be sure, there are more complaints than anything else. I have to admit that my children are far from being perfect, but no matter how upset I feel at times, I try to remember the time when they were just tiny babies and the huge responsibility on my shoulder. In fact, they are still children in many ways, even though they may act like they are independent grow-ups.

This reminds me of the conflict between my own child and the other adult in our house which almost led to the outcast of the minor. The irrational nature of some parents can very well write a tragic ending for any real parent-child conflict story. Yes, sometimes reality appears more unreal than fiction. Thus, every time I hear parents complaining of the minors, I firmly believe the parents are the guilty ones, without any exception. All children are angels, that is, until parents bring out the demon side in them through the most ugly form of fight and abuse.

No matter what happens, we only need to remember one thing, that is, we need to continue caring and protecting them till they become truly grow-up and ready for any challenges that may come on their way.

This is what I read from a book on teen problems. There are four main factors that can contribute to teen problems

1) Teen’s personality
2) Parent’s personality
3) The childhood experience
4) Parenting style

The decisive factor is the last one — parenting style. A proper parenting style can eliminate the impacts of the first three factors, those that are beyond our control.

Imagine what life would be like if both teen and the parent have a temper as hot as fire, reacting to each other in the same unthinking and knee-jerk manner, having the same negative and conflict-ridden attitude toward each other!  One of them got to change in order to avoid constant clash. It is the parent who is supposed to act like a responsible adult and take initiative in managing any conflicts between a child and the parent. I know this can be a real challenge to some adults who stubbornly refuse to change for their children.

One step backward. What if unfortunately that parent is not mature enough to change him/herself? Don’t be surprised. Some people grow up only physically but never emotionally, remaining pure teenager mentality throughout their lives. This is when the adult acts like a immature child, degrading him/herelf to the same level as the teen and this is how the problems or conflict are set in motion and escalating in most cases, which might eventually lead to a very undesirable and even disastrous ending.  

Wait! This is not the end of the world. There is still hope. The hope lies in another adult. If the teen is fortunate enough to have another parent who is understanding and capable of enlightening this problematic immature parent, or who is powerful enough to intervene between the two conflicting sides.

The real disaster can fall upon a teen when both parents are hopelessly irreparable, child-like warriors, with you-name-it irredeemable flaws in them, capable of creating hell instead of a heaven for the child under his/her roof. In case like this, the teen is better off living under a foster care.  Bless your heart that this is as rare a case as seeing a real panda in a super-market. One more blessing to count.

My experience with my teens confirm my belief in the overwhelming power of parenting style. After all, a teen is still a child, not physically though, and you are their unfailing protector. Behold, the sun will break through the dark cloud and shine in your house, as long as we parents act like responsible adults and maintain our rule with proper parenting style. I have seen this sunlight. Yes, life is so good with dreams like this.

I have been lately reading a book, One in Three: a son’s journey into the science and history of cancer by Adam Wishart, 2007. The author is a London-based documentary filmmaker. The title of the book implies cancer is the disease that touches the lives of one person in three. Not pleasant to know. Forget this.

The author interweaves memories of his father and the story of his father’s cancer treatment with the western medical history of this disease. To be sure, the book is very informative on the one hand, making us appreciate the advances in science and technology in medicine. On the other hand, to me, the book is more like a celebration of a wonderful relationship between a father and his son. I am touched by the growing up experience of the author and his father, a very loving, caring and positive one!

The author recalled his childhood moments with his dad, his dad’s unremitting quest to educate him; the story of Dr. John Snow’s discovery, the first piece of work on epidemiology, the story of cholear epidemic of 1854, how the father and the teenage son went to movie together, so many such intimate moments of father and son … The readers can see the definit imprint of his father’s caring work in him.

The author fondly recalled, Dad “was always telling me stories about scientists, mathematicians, and revolutionaries … From my adolescence it was our habit to stay up late and, with Mum in bed, to sit talking about these things in the kitchen table. For two men who never spoke about their feelings, our intimacy consisted in sharing our interests in politics, history, or the progress of science. If I knew history, he thought, then I might be better able to navigate through my life, because he always used the past as a way to understand his place in the world.” p. 2

“When I was a child and Dad was in his early forties, he regularly carried me up the Lakeland fells so that I might see the English landscape laid out below.” p. 215 The book abounds with anecdotes like this.

Such a beautiful picture of father and son! Such a wonderful father! There are so many things that a father and his son can do together and so many chances for them to form a loving and meaningful relationship, yet some choose doing nothing at all or abandon these chances to live a richer life. How I wish most of the dad were like the dad of this author! Dreaming again, I know. Guess what? I just discover dreaming is the most harmless activity that one can engage, only on the verge of being useless.

I talked to my son about book China, Inc. He promised he would read it when he got a moment. I hope he had more moments for books.

There is one small section on “Reverse Colonialism: How Sweet It Is.” To be sure, the author talks about intellectual property piracy, with a rare understanding and sympathy.

“China’s vast counterfeiting schemes act on the rest of the world the way colonial armies once did, invading deep into the economies of their victims, expropriating their most valued assets, and in so doing, undermining their victims’ ability to counter.”

“But should China be blamed for behavior that robs the rest of the world of wealth it has spent generations accumulating? Perhaps. Yet perhaps the rest of the world also needs to examine itself. China is merely acting as other nations do when presented with the chance to increase their wealth and power.” p. 252

Indeed, when western invaders had their wild and profitable way in China back a century ago, observing no rule of fairness and justice, now China returns by the same no-rule-observing practice, defying any rule set for them by their former invaders, returning honey with honey when opportunity is given. Nothing is sweeter than this.

Now, understand, with sympathy?

Dedicate to the children and their parents from first generation immigrants.

My heart leaps up
By William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old
Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man:
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Dreams
By Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I am recently reading a book called China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, by Ted C. Fishman, 2005. The book is about 350 pages long, an international best-seller, informative and entertaining, having been translated into 25 languages. I would think it a must for anyone who is interested in China and wants to know the various factors in the making of China’s rise in economic power, and for people like me who have been aways living outside China and have been out of touch with this land of vastness and light-speed change. In fact, I am going to order an copy for my son.

The author observed China with an eye like a microscope. He often presents the topics by dissecting the changes and evolution of individual cities and companies both in China and in America. His decription of China — her culture, politics, pollution, her huge need for energy and food, daily life, health, and Chinese people — is rendered with detailed facts, warmth, and understanding, of course, never free from bias. I have not done an equally thorough research to verify the facts presented in the book. I am sure there are places where he has over-generalized a particular case.

The author Ted C. Fishman, a graduate of Princeton University, is a veteran journalist and former commodities trader, a leading expert on China and its development as a world power. I am sure there are much more people who are, like this author, very rich in experience with China. Yet, it takes much more to write about your observation and experience. First and foremost, the author is an excellent observer, researcher, and writer.

More on this book later.

As luck would have it, I found the same Parents magazine 9/2005 issue yesterday while waiting for my daughter. There is an article which is in a way related to Girls’ Night Fun article. It is the story written by a drinking mom about her drinking problem. We all drink, like tea or coffee. Don’t get me wrong. This mom drinks alcohol. Here’s the confession from this loving mom. “I started drinking when I was in high school. Growing up in a tiny rural Iowa, teenagers didn’t have much to do except drive around and guzzle beer … and the highlight of our social life was keg parties. I realized now that’s when my drinking problem began.” She and her husband were hard partiers when they were young. She was smashed thoroughly every night. p. 198

Here are some sober facts:
–24% of American kids live in a home where a parent or another adult is a heavy drinker, in other word, not sober;
–An estimate 5.3 million women in the U.S. drink so much that they put their health, safety, and well-being– and that of their children–at high risk;
–9% of young women, age 18 – 29 drink so much that they are considered alcohol-dependent.
–Women get drunk more quickly than men, nice.
–Even a moderate amount of alcohol has greater health consequence for women than for men;
–If the drinker is a mom, the consequences are even more far-reaching.

One lesson: parents watch out for those girls’ parties and alcohol drinking in the youngsters. A teenager drinking problem can easily carry into her adulthood.

Good news: women tend to be very successful in recovery. This is why her story has a happy ending, that is, she became a new person after going through some programs.