每個孩子／父母都是第一名？

最近看完了陳之華的兩本書：《沒有資優班：珍視每個孩子的芬蘭教育》（台北：木馬文化，2008）和《每個孩子都是第一名：芬蘭教育給臺灣父母的45堂必修課》（台北：天下遠見，2009）。來回翻閱網誌，發現幾個月前看完前書，居然沒有留下半點痕跡；連至少摘錄原文，以存記錄和參考，也沒有，只剩下圖書館的館際借還記錄。可惜，今日幾乎記不起內容，只留下對書名的推想。後者還在手上，讀完擱下多時，摘錄要文如下：

有時我不禁懷疑，如果觀摩他國經驗到了最後，無法從根本的價值與事物的本質上，去探索自己的生活與體制到底哪裡走岔了路，只是一味嫌棄他國的模式不適合解決我們現在的問題，那再派多少學者訪團，再怎麼高談借鏡、學習，與「他山之石，可以攻錯」［《詩經》原文為「他山之石，可以為錯......他山之石，可以攻玉」］，也只是在自我設定的框架裡打轉；頂多在原有框架的外圍繞了又繞，連跨出去一步的基本方向都找不著，遑論檢視自我的勇氣。最後的結語就是一句話：國情不同，無法套用。（自序，頁29）

你們亞洲孩子的數學就很厲害！（一位芬蘭大學教授，頁116）

國家與為政者的首要責任，是給大家希望，而教育不是只有給菁英和所謂「優秀的人」希望吧？（頁126）

才七歲的孩子，就被大人驅策去做一些超齡的較勁，不僅似乎是早了點，而這其中的大人與師長心態，總不免讓人思索。（頁135）

資優，不是犧牲基本公平的藉口；而菁英，也不應建築在廣大社會的匱乏上。（後記，頁282）

這個世界上太多人習慣以大國，或莊至就以美國的習慣性思維與「標準」來看世界。（後記，頁286）

孩子第一名，父母都是嗎？

Armenians in China

Sebouh Aslanian, “Trade Diaspora versus Colonial State: Armenian Merchants, the English East India Company, and the High Court of Admiralty in London, 1748-1752,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, Spring2004, Vol. 13 Issue 1, pp. 37-100.

"In the first half of the eighteenth century, Julfans had settled in what are now Malaysia; Indonesia (Hordananian; Coless; CoUectie 606 Armen Joseph; Sarkissian); Canton (Guangdong), China (Poladian, "Chinastani hay"; Morse 2:84-5); and, starting in the 1660s, in Manila in the Philippines (Quiason 37-41, 88-90, 93, 98, 171-2; Clarence-Smith, 118-119; Aslanian, From the Indian chap. 4)." (p. 48)

In PRO, the trial proceedings of the capture of the Santa Catharina, along with numerous bundles of "Armenian papers", "1,700 mercantile letters and contracts...five or six letters in Italian and Latin from the Carmelite mission in Rome addressed to recipients as far away as Beijing..." (p. 54)

"the presence of New Julfa's intelligence networks allowed its merchants to exercise influence in regions where they did not have immediate representatives. As an example of how this was done, consider the case of a merchant ship called the Santa Reta, owned by two merchants, an Armenian and a Greek, both trading out of Madras. The ship was confiscated as a 'prize' by the British navy near Canton (Guangdong), China, in 1780 after its owners were forced out of Manila, where they were trading at the outbreak of war between Britain and Spain...its Armenian owner, Muchertich Vasseli...wrote a petition/letter to the only fellow New Julfan known to him, who resided in London at the time...What is noteworthy about this document is the rhetoric of kinship and 'nationality' invoked by the Armenian in China to establish long-distance trust and solidarity with another New Julfan residing in London" (p. 67)

Sebouh Aslanian, "From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: Circulation and the Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa, 1605-1747," unpublished doctoral diss., Columbia University, 2006.

L. Ter-Mkrtchyan, "Armenians in China (from ancient times to recent history," The International Association for the Study of the Cultures of Central Asia: Information Bulletin, Vol. 4, 1983, pp. 24-31.

Mesrovb Jacob Seth, Armenians in India: from the earliest times to the present day (Calcutta, 1937; New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1992). "Sir Catchick Paul Chater, C.M.G., LL.D., the 'Grand Old Man' of Hong Kong," pp. 550-560.

Michael Greenberg, British trade and the opening of China, 1800-42 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1951), pp. 114-115. "the Senate [of Macao] has positively forbidden the Portuguese ships to bring any Armenians as passengers next year [1802]."

Hosea B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635–1834 (Oxford, 1926–1929), vol. 2, pp. 84–85; vol. 3, p. 103, 106, 225.

Sir John Barrow, Travels in China : containing descriptions, observations, and comparisons, made and collected in the course of a short residence at the imperial palace of Yuen-min-yuen, and on a subsequent journey through the country from Pekin to Canton... (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), pp. 611-612. The Armenian and his Pearl. "I have been told a curious history, by a gentleman who was on the spot [Canton] at the time it happened."

H. E. Richardson, "Armenians in India and Tibet," Journal of the Tibet Society, Vol. 1 (1980), pp. 63-67.

Keram Kevonian, “Un Itinéraire Arménienne de la Mer de Chine [An Armenian Itinerary of the Sea of China],” Histoire de Barus Sumatra: le site de Lobu Tua: etudes et documents [A History of Barus, Sumatra: The Site of Lobu TUa: Studies and Documents], ed. by Claude Guillot. Paris: Cahiers d’archipel, 1998, pp. 35-118.

Keram Kevonian and Michel Aghassian, "The Armenian Merchant Network: Overall Autonomy and Local Integration," Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era, ed. by Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau. Cambridge: CUP, 199, pp. 74-94.

Keram Kevonian and Michel Aghassian, "Armenian Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Asian Merchants and Businessmen in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea, ed. Denys Lombard and Jean Aubin. Oxford: OUP, pp. 154-177.

Ronald Ferrier, "The Agreement of the East India Company with the Armenian Nation, 22nd June 1688," Revue des Études Arméniennes n.s. Vol. 7 (1970), pp. 427-443.

Ronald Ferrier, "The Armenians and the East India Company in Persia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century," Economic History Review, 2nd. ser. Vol. 26 (1973), pp. 38-62.

Joan George, Merchants in Exile: The Armenians of Manchester, England, 1835-1935. London: Gomidas Institute Press, 2002.

Sushil Chaudhury, "Trading Networks in a Traditional Diaspora: Armenians in India, c. 1600-1800," Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, ed. Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Gelina Harlaftis, and Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou. Oxford: Berg, 2005, pp. 51-72.

Vahan Baibourtian, International Trade and Armenian Merchants in the Seventeenth Century. New Delhi: Sterling, 2004.

Vahé Baladouni and Margaret Makepeace, eds., Armenian Merchants of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: English East India Company Sources. Philadelphia: Am. Phil. Soc., 1998.

Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, "Merchant Capital and Knowledge: The Financing of Early Printing Press by the Eurasian Silk Trade of New Julfa," Treasures in Heaven: Armenian Art, Religion, and Society, ed. T. F. Mathews and R. S. Wieck. New York: Pierpont Morgan, 1998, pp. 58-73.

Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, The Shah's Silk for Europe's Silver: The Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India, 1530-1750. Atlanta: Scholars P, 1999.

Mesrovb Seth, History of the Armenians in India from the Earliest Times to the Present. 1937. New Delhi: Asian Ed. Service, 1992.

Nadia H. Wright, Respected Citizens: the History of Armenians in Singapore and Malaysia. Victoria, Australia: Amasia Publishing, 2003.

Romanise/Modernise or not?

Growing from a workshop entitled "Romanisation in Comparative Perspective: Explaining Success and Failure," held at Bilkent University, Andara in September 2007, the latest special issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Series 3, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2010) contributes to the current literature in the field from a comparative perspective. Six papers with an editorial introduction were published drawing prime romanisation campaigns, whether success or failure, in Turkey, Azebaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, India, Pakistan, and Japan (disappointed by the absence of China).

Who advocated romanisation? Who were the romanisers? Unsurprisingly, they belong to the political/intellectual elite. In his editorial introduction, İlker Aytürk identifies three distinct groups of romanisers. First and foremost were the colonial rulers "who wanted to bring order to local administration and believed that Roman alphabet could serve that purpose best in being the writing system of the supposedly superior overlords." Romanisation was considered as a beneficent policy "to improve the condition of the native people". Second were local advocates "who regarded their native writing system as problematic from a practical point of view only and aspired to join what they saw as a global trend of romanisation." It should be noted that "it did not in any way imply the inferiority of the adoptive culture". Last but not least, the third group were local actors "from underdeveloped or developing countries as a rule, who adopted an extremely negative attitude toward their own culture, religion, or civilisation, to the point of blaming them for the backwardness of their societies." (p. 5-8)

Recent readings XIII

Giorgio Riello, "Asian Knowledge and the Development of Calico Printing in Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Journal of Global History, Vol. 5, 2010, pp. 1-28. concepts involved: import substitution, useful and reliable knowledge, European epistemic base, knowledge transmission, knowledge reinterpretation, and global colours

Marina Carter and Crispin Bates, "Empire and Locality: A Global Dimension to the 1857 Indian Uprising," Journal of Global History, Vol. 5, 2010, pp. 51-73. The Indian Uprising [rather than Mutiny] in 1857 coincided with dramatic increase in global sugar price and aftermath the surge in numbers migrating to the sugar colonies.

Pierre-Yves Donzé, "Studies Abroad by Japanese Doctors: A Prosopographic Analysis of the Nameless Practitioners, 1862-1912," Social History of Medicine, Advance Access, 2010, 17 pps. 手塚晃：《幕末明治海外渡航者總覽》

Constance J. S. Chen, "Merchants of Asianness: Japanese Art Dealers in the United States in the Early Twentieth Century," Journal of American Studies, Advance Access, 28 pps. Bunkio Matsuki and Sadajiro Yamanaka. Their stories "illuminate the ways in which certain notions of Asianness and the reconceptualization of aesthetic categories were linked in complex ways...fabricated and sold definitions of race and art to peddle Oriental goods; their Japaneseness became cultural capital and a marketing strategy."

Ray Forrest, Adrienne La Grange and Yip Ngai-Ming, "Neighbourhood in a high rise, high density city: some observations on contemporary Hong Kong," The Sociological Review, Vol. 50, Iss. 2, May 2002, pp. 215-240. English literature on neighbourhood in low rise, low density environments in contrast to HK's high density, high rise living space. strong attachment to the neighbourhood but rare interaction with immediate neighbours (even on the same floor).

Leigh K. Jenco, "'Rule by Man' and 'Rule by Law' in Early Republican China: Contributions to a Theoretical Debate," Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 69, No. 1, February 2010, pp. 181-203. Liang Qichao, Zhang Shizhao, The Tiger 甲寅雜誌

David Rooney and James Nye, "'Greenwich Observatory Time for the Public Benefit': Standard Time and Victorian Networks of Regulation," British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 42, No. 1, March 2009, pp. 5-30. The widespread adoption of standard time in Britain took more than fifty years and simple public access to a representation of it took longer still. power, intelligence, state, and individual. Quotes "Victorian were obsessed with alcohol. Among the literate and the articulate, the proper place of drink in society was debated with an intensity and an exhaustiveness which is now difficult for us to comprehend." ( A. E. Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition in Victorian England, London, 1980, p. 8)

Clare Midgley, "Can Women Be Missionaries? Envisioning Female Agency in the Early Nineteenth-Century British Empire," Journal of British Studies, Vol. 45, April 2006, pp. 335-358. female missionary memoirs in the Cape of Good Hope and India

Federica Ferlanti, "The New Life Movement in Jiangxi Province, 1934-1938," Modern Asian Studies, Advance Access, 40pps. state building, hygienic modernity, mass mobilisation

No Film Studies in Japan?

Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto's "The University Disciplines, National Identity: Why Is There No Film Studies in Japan?" South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 99, No. 4, Fall 2000, pp. 697-713.

"Literature departments in Japan," Yoshimoto claims, "never embraced film or study of film as part of their intellectual endeavours." What is particularly puzzling and strange is "the absence of any institutionally sustained engagement with film in American studies in Japan." (p. 699-700) "English," in the Japanese historical and political contexts Yoshimoto suggests, "is an accomplice ofkokubungaku [national literature] in the construction of national subjects." The discipline of English, he argued, "divides the world into self-enclosed nation-states, and communicative model of translation that underlies the discipline constructs the relationship of equivalency and compatibility between Japan and the West." (p. 702)

Despite all these, I can't help asking: no Japanese film studies or simply English/American film studies?

Nostalgia

Once a week, I stroll into the university bookstore after work to check out new arrivals and more importantly recharge exhausted energy and soul. Last week, I rambled the bookstore as usual. The new anthology (《新賣柑者言》) of Steven N.S. Cheung (張五常) caught my eyes. I picked it up and flipped to the content page. Nostalgia. It remind me of the good old days in high school and HKAL Economics more than a decade ago. Quite coincidentally a couple of weeks ago when I was browsing an interesting journal Journal of the History of Economic Thought two articles glittered in my eyes, one on George J. Stigler the other on Milton Friedman (both are Cheung's mentors) by David R. Kamerschen and Deepa J. Sridhar, and David Teira respectively. Again, it led me to recall some of the long forgotten economics concepts in HKAL most of which originate from the Chicago school.

David R. Kamerschen and Deepa J. Sridhar, "The Theory of [Competitive] Price According to George J. Stigler," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 31, No. 2, June 2009, pp. 181-200.

David Teira, "Why Friedman's Methodology Did Not Generate Consensus among Economists,"Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 31, No. 2, June 2009, pp. 201-214.

John F. McDonald, "Graduate Education in Economics: Microeconomics at Chicago and Yale in the 1960s," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 31, No. 2, June 2009, pp. 161-180.

Recent readings XIV

Lancelot Forster, Professor of Education at HKU, observed that "Hong Kong is merely a pied-à-terre both for British and Chinese residents. The former looks forward to his next home leave and final retirement in England, the latter regards himself, like the former, as a temporary exile from his beloved Canton." from the private papers of Forster, "General Strike in Hong Kong," 1925?. File 3, Forster Papers, Mss. Ind. Ocn. S177. Rhodes House, Oxford University. Cited from Steven Evans' "The Evolution of the English-language Speech Community in Hong Kong,"English World-Wide, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2009), pp. 278-301, 286.

Edward R. Beauchamp, "'Scratches on Our Minds': William Elliot Griffis as Interpreter of Japan,"Asian Profile, Vol. 1, No. 3, December 1973.

Benjamin Wai-ming Ng, "Consuming and Localizing Japanese Combat Games in Hong Kong," in Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan (eds.), Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 83-101.

Anna Winterbottom, "Producing and Using the Historical Relation of Ceylon: Robert Know, the East India Company and the Royal Society," British Journal of Historical Studies, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 515-538.

Jayanta Sengupta, "Nation on a Platter: the Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal," Modern Asian Studies, 18pps.

Nile Green, "The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya: Persianate Knowledge between Person and Paper," Modern Asian Studies, 25pps.

Edward McDonald, "Getting over the Walls of Discourse: 'Character Fetishization' in Chinese Studies," The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Nov. 2009), pp. 1189-1213.

Simone Lässig and Karl Heinrich Pohl, "History Textbooks and Historical Scholarship in Germany," History Workshop Journal, Issue 67, 2009, pp. 125-139. "school textbooks...as instruments of socialization...the social and cultural knowledge found in textbooks not only reflects scholarly requirements and contemporary didactic codes: it is always of political relevance too." (p. 125)

Neeladri Bhattacharya, "Teaching History in Schools: the Politics of Textbooks in India," History Workshop Journal, Issue 67, 2009, pp. 99-110.

Romila Thapar, "The History Debate and School Textbooks in India: a Personal Memoir,"History Workshop Journal, Issue 67, 2009, pp. 88-98.

Mark Levene, "Historians for the Right to Work: We Demand a Continuing Supply of History,"History Workshop Journal, Issue 67, 2009, pp. 69-81.

Mieke de Vos, "The Return of the Canon: Transforming Dutch History Teaching," History Workshop Journal, Issue 67, 2009, pp. 111-124. The Dutch Canon and the Ten-Periods framework. nationalist and Eurocentric bias, absence of guiding principles, and the arbitrary and exchangeable character of the items

Postmodern historiography

Samuel James's "Louis Mink, 'Postmodernism', and the Vocation of Historiography" (Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2010), pp. 151-184) draws me to return to postmodern historiography to read Michael Bentley's Modernizing England's Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870-1970 (2005), William H. Sewell Jr.'s Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (2005), Jonathan Gorman's Historical Judgement: The Limits of Historiographical Choice (2008), and François Cusset's French theory : how Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. transformed the intellectual life of the United States (2008).

Chinese Cannons and their Modern Applications

Jeremy Paltiel's "Mencius and World Order Theories," The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 3, 2010, pp. 37-54.

Paltiel argues that "Pre-Qin China is both a rich source of data for international relations specialists and a rich source of analytical insight" because of "an independently authored set of historical texts [the work of Han Fei, Mo Di, Mencius etc.] that lay out the narrative of inter-state relations in ways that allow us to independently evaluate the relationship of data to interpretation and analysis" which allow researchers "to place modern scientific analytic frames around the interpretive propositions of pre-Qin thinkers, and independently evaluate the data in that light." Researchers, he suggests, "should look at the reframed ancient wisdom and ask whether or how this wisdom allows us to fill out or expand the frame of our scientific knowledge and how this new synthesis allow us better to interpret data." (p. 37-8) Drawing on this theoretical framework, Paltiel examines Mencius's theory of hegemony (Badao 霸道) and the kingly way (Wangdao 王道), and its implications in modern international relations theory and its relevance to contemporary international conflict such as the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and contemporary Chinese foreign policy (very briefly and superficially though). For those who are taking the GE course: Chinese Cultural Cannons and their Modern Applications, have a look of this article. It won't disappoint you.

You Asians

Naoki Sakai's "'You Asians': On the Historical Role of the West and Asia Binary," South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 99, No. 4, Fall 2000, pp. 789-817. Japanese historical contexts

"the unity of the West is far from being unitarily determinable. The West is a mythical construct." (p. 789) In North American academia, "[t]hings Asiatic were brought to scholarly attention by being recognized as 'different and therefore Asian...'being Asian' were taken to be synonymous in its anthropologizing gesture." (p. 790) "Asia was a postcolonial entity from the outset." (p. 791)

Cultural Studies again

A few weeks ago I read Raka Shome's "Post-colonial Reflections on the 'Internationalization' of Cultural Studies", Roxy Harris's "Black British, Brown British and British Cultural Studies" (Cultural Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4, July 2009, pp. 483-512) came out from my suitcase this weekend. 

Drawing on Caryl Phillips' lament on the absence, in British fiction of the 1950s and 1960s, of black and brown immigrants from the British Commonwealth, and Paul Gilroy's critique of "strategic silences" in the works of major figures in British Cultural Studies, such as Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson, Harris suggests that the "strategic silences" are part of a long and deep tradition in the serious analysis of Anglo-British culture.

According to Shome, most of the literature "about the popular cultural tastes of young people of South Asian descent in British in the 1980s and 1990s had emphasized their attachment to Bhangra music." Noting nowadays young people's choices of music being grunge, rock, heavy metal, pop, rap, hip hop, jazz, r & b etc, Shome's, himself of Sierra Leonean descent, irritation frustrated him. Stuart Hall's theoretical formulation of "new ethnicities" opened up his mind to recognize the musical tastes of them "were representative of the tastes of other British youth of their generation in the late 1990s, not of the imagined and guaranteed tastes of some sort of essential South Asian ethnicity." (p. 503)

Suggesting the continual process of translation of black and brown British, Hall contended that "[s]uch people retain strong links with their places of origin and their traditions, but they are without the illusion of a return of the past...they are irrevocably the product of several interlocking histories and cultures, belong at one and the same time to several 'homes'...People belong to such cultures of hybridity have had to renounce the dream or ambition of rediscovering any kind of 'lost' cultural purity, or ethnic absolutism. They are irrevocably translated...They are the products of the new diasporas created by the post-colonial migrations. They must learn to inhabit at least two identities, to speak two cultural languages, to translate and negotiate between them." (Hall, 1992, p. 310)

Are we Hong Kong Chinese in the same way in the middle of illusion of a return to the Chinese past forgotten and unrooted but imagined and guaranteed by their parents and earlier generations?

Stuart Hall, "The Question of Cultural Identity," in Modernity and its Futures, eds Stuart Hall, D. Held & T. McGrew (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992)

Read another Shouleh Vatanabadi's "Translating Transnational: Teaching the 'Other' in Translation," Cultural Studies, Vol. 23, Nos. 5-6, Sep-Nov 2009, pp. 795-809. Vatanabadi' explores the uneven landscape of cultural flows across the global south and north in the production of knowledge through translation and teaching.

Up in the Air vs. 香港的鬱悶

上星期Happy Friday剛剛看過Up in the Air，加上剛剛讀完韓江雪，鄒崇銘著，廖偉棠攝影的《香港的鬱悶：新生代 vs 嬰兒潮世代》（Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2006）。讀到韓江雪的〈High-tech high嘢－－嬰兒潮的「快閃」哲學〉其中一節令我心下一沉：

以香港專業和消費服務質素之高，其實都可以透過電腦化和自動化，把專業知識和工作流程，轉化為電腦軟件和標準化程序……猶如以往工廠機器代替人手一樣。如此不但可大大提高服務業的生產力，令服務質素更加有保證，而且軟件程序本身就是新的資產，服務人員則變成技術人員，可以作為區內國家發展的範式。（頁32）

看過Up in the Air的話，應該會覺得似曾相識。戲中剛畢業於Stanford的Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) 帶著同樣的理念，獲得嘗識。Natalie得到一間專門為企業「不犯法地」（至少免被起訴）解僱員工的企業管理層（一直隱藏在後）的提拔，引導改革，安排一年三百四十日到處「飛行」裁員的談判員返回辦公室工作（以Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) 為代表），繼而將談判工作流程「電腦化和自動化」，「服務人員則變成技術人員」。等待被解僱的員工面對的不再是活生生的人，而是電腦屏幕上面目模糊的流程執行員。學會流程，任何人都可以當談判員。換句話說，任何人都可以被取代。結局，一如影片的題目：Up in the Air。Jason Reitman的電影，豈只有男女關係。

不過，這本書算是睿智加幽默的作品，讀來甚有樂趣。以下照錄一些原文，以存記錄和參考。

韓江雪：〈考據香港的「三個五」文化〉。「三個五」的稱號……年屆五十、中五畢業、月薪五萬（頁10）這階層的最大優點，就是能中規中矩、不多不少、（那怕只是表面上）有效率和有紀律地完成上司指派的一切任務。（頁11）他們還有一個共通點，就是喜歡「看」書，特別是管理學和勵智〔志〕的書，附孫子兵法或名人金句例子的一類，似是用以彌補學歷上的不足。（頁12）

嬰兒潮的精英……即使在七十年代中期，大學畢業生亦只佔香港人口約百分之二……絕大部份和他們同齡的……其實均沒有接受專上教育的機會。（頁10）

韓江雪：〈香港故事－－從涂謹申、鄺其志，到何兆煒、黃仁龍〉。沒有人會告訴你，透過個人努力、勤奮拼搏，就必然會達至成功；也沒有人會告訴你，投機、靠運氣、「走精面」，便不能達至成功。（頁21）

韓江雪：〈盛事之都－－「體驗經濟」抑或「做騷經濟」？〉。「盛事之都」……最能反映香港旅遊以至整體經濟的特質。它賣的是一種最短期的、最虛幻的、最浮誇的、追求最大哄動效果的事件……毋須講求長遠和可持續性。（頁26）二○○四年香港大球場曾搞了三場「大騷」－－海嘯賬災籌款」歡迎奧運精英和紀念黃霑世－－儘管好像風馬牛不相及，但令人震驚的是，節目道同樣可以是那些歌星，上台同樣唱那些歌，司儀同樣搞那些gag，然後，便什麼內容也沒有了。（頁27）

韓江雪：〈High-tech high嘢－－嬰兒潮的「快閃」哲學〉。特區政府大力操控土地供應，七家地產商操控全港樓；三家發展商＋曾＋許，五個人操控西九龍文娛區；一家「高科技企業」＋唐＋曾，三個人操控數碼港－－對不起，已經改名為貝沙灣！（頁31）

韓江雪：〈香港故事－－從公共屋邨到豪宅屋苑〉。嬰兒潮精英最常掛在口頭上的話，其中一句是：「我以前是在屋邨長大的。」……呂大樂教授所指出的：這句話還有更深一層的意義，就是「我們已經靠個人努力，出人頭地，在社會階梯向上爬，脫離了公屋的行列。」……我倒想理直氣壯的告訴他：「對不起，我從來都沒有住過公屋！希望未來有機會享受這種免費午餐吧！」（頁38）

韓江雪：〈香港社會科學的貧乏〉。以前我有一個在報館工作的朋友，經常都要邀約學者做訪問……發現，很多學者並沒有每天閱報的習慣，既不太緊貼時事脈搏，也不太了解社會事件的來龍去脈－－那怕是研究社會科學學者！（頁124）

鄒崇銘：〈Dying Young：學運這一代和那一代〉。成功並非必然，和「新中產階級」一起唸小學的人當中，同期的不少正是「新中年失業」……能晉身精英頂層的畢竟只是少數，公屋師奶茶餐廳一族，陶大宇和陳秀雯，或許才是香港的活力精神命脈所在。（頁138）

台灣創作

林怡芬的《十二味生活設計》（台北 : 大塊文化，2008）。在十二組創作者的作品、生活和品味，看見日本強烈的北歐風格。

李瑾倫的《靠窗的位子，光線剛好：我在英國皇家藝術學院》（台北 : 大塊文化，2009）。插畫家留學英國的瑣事筆記。

Can art work make money? Can it afford not to?

Stephanie Taylor and Karen Littleton's "Art Work or Money: Conflicts in the Construction of a Creative Identity," The Sociological Review, Vol. 56, No. 2, 2008, pp. 275-92.

Taylor and Littleton open the discussion by referring to Angela McRobbie's research findings that "in the contemporary cultural industries in the UK, a new understanding of the connection between creative work and money has replaced past 'anti-commercial' notions." However, Taylor and Littleton mention, as "critics point out that many creative workers have very limited job security ad are low-paid or even unpaid," (p. 276) the conventional art-versus-money repertoires persists. According to McRobbie again, "it is not an exceptional circumstance but normal that creative practitioners in the UK's cultural industries cannot earn a living" and "in the highly competitive, de-regulated working environment of 'the cultural sector' where most workers are 'freelance, casualized and project-linked persons', many people connive in their own 'self-exploitation' as they pursue self-actualization." (p. 277)

Their analysis reveals, however, that on the one hand "art and money-making are discussed as incompatible and even directly opposed." In this respect, I am inclined to say creative or art work is simply not as lucrative as outsiders think. On the other, "money validates the creative work" "as if 'good' art would logically carry a high monetary value." (p. 280). Seriously, in the commercial world, "good" product does not guarantee good sales and in the same way bestselling goods is not necessarily good products.

Investigating the subjects who are postgraduates in Art and Design, Taylor and Littleton propose three types of repertories, first being art-versus-money, second money-as validation, and last but not least, sense-and-responsibility. Below are some interview extracts from two postgraduates.

An interviewee, who has been teaching part-time and continuing her art work at the same time said, "there's probably not very many other professions where you become so skilled little reward at the end of it...you have to accept that as a fine artist you gonna get paid peanuts...I'm not under any illusions that I'll earn money out of my art work...if you're not losing money you're successful" (p. 282-3)

Another interviewee said: "the course leader said to us you know expect it would be nice to just make your work and have it um break even...so I'm not under any illusions that...it's going to be my only kind of income." (p. 285)

Water and the Industrial Revolution

Terje Tvedt's "Why England and not China and India? Water Systems and the History of the Industrial Revolution," Journal of Global History, Vol. 5, 2010, pp. 29-50.

Following the widespread debate over why Europe and England industrialized first, rather than Asia, Tvedt, Research Group Leader in Centre for Advanced Studies in Oslo, contends that water systems is a crucial factor missing in the existing literature. He argues that "the transport revolution, the development of the modern factory system, and the growth of the iron and other industries that transformed parts of England from the 1760s to the 1820s were all related to changes in the human relationship to water" whereas the central economic and political regions of India and China did not have water systems that could be used or developed as easily and profitable as they could be in parts of England." (p. 48)

有音沒有樂

張彧暋：無人交響：音樂無夢也無情

「光有資格而毫無熱情與文化根底」。

「聽老師曾諷刺說，如果單看香港人取得皇家音樂學院各種術科資格的人數，其實香港老早變了維也納。」

Fireproof

James Russell's "Evangelical Audiences and 'Hollywood' Film:Promoting Fireproof (2008),"Journal of American Studies, 17pps, First View Articles article.

HSBC

Catherine R. Schenk's "The Evolution of the Hong Kong Currency Board during Global Exchange Rate Instability, 1967-1973," Financial History Review, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2009, pp. 129-56. Schenk's paper was written while she was a Research Fellow at the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. This is a very recent academic paper using the archival materials of HSBC Group Archive, London.

Why I am proud of U, Hongkongers?

I am proud of U, Hongkongers. WHY?

In cosmopolitan Hong Kong (with 7 million people in 1,104 sq km), according to the Environmental Protection Department, about 3,300 tonnes of food is thrown away daily.

How about other global cities in the west, say London (why should we look down on ourselves to compare with non-global/regional cities)? London, with 7.2 million people in 1,584 sq km, alone produces approximately 263 tonnes of waste every lunchtime (source here) Every year, London produces 2.7 million tonnes of organic waste, mainly from food. (source here)

In comparison, HK produces a little bit more than 1.2 million tonnes of food waste each year, less than half of London.

We Hongkongers waste much less than Londoners! I am proud of it. We Hongkongers are food savers. We consume less and waste less.

Dae Jang-gum

Sujeong Kim's "Interpreting Transnational Cultural Practices: Social Discourses on a Korean Drama in Japan, Hong Kong, and China," Cultural Studies, Vol. 23, Nos. 5-6 (Sep - Nov 2009), pp. 736-66.

Drawing from newspaper discourses on a highly popular Korean dram, Dae Jang-gum (DJG), as the prime example, Kim examines the ways in which East Asian countries approach and understand the transnational flow of Korean cultural products.

I found this article inspiring and her analysis on HK newspapers (Wenweipo, Mingpao, Apply Daily, and Asia Times) discourse particularly revealing. Compared to Korean, Japanese, and Chinese selected newspapers, HK newspaper failed to provide the readers with feature stories, commentary, or interview. (p. 744)

Concerning star coverage, HK triumphed by miles! HK is "star centered" focusing on star visits whereas Japanese "audience centered" on food or tour event, and Chinese "text centered" looking into forms and contents of the drama. (p. 751) "Hong Kong newspapers frequently report fans' enthusiasm for DJG stars without adopting any critical tone." (p. 747) Kim summaries the characteristics of Japanese, HK, and Chinese newspaper discourses as analytical, straight, and interpretative respectively. (p. 751)

Furthermore, HK social discourses, she argues, "consider the Korean wave as consumer popular culture in general," or "pop-culture consumption," rather than as 'Korean' popular culture." (p. 747, 749) Indeed, very true.

Two pitfalls in HK sources though. First, out of my ignorance, Asia Times is rarely heard or mentioned in the media. Second, without looking at the most widely read/circulated newspaper Oriental Daily News, a comprehensive investigation could never be reached.

What's more? On pp 748-9, Kim makes an interesting observation with a piece (commentary?) titled "it's ok to give up" from Apple Daily on 12 March 2005 (I tried to search the original one but in vain) as an oppositional reading with a feminist nuance. In my point of view, the newspaper piece was written in a highly political context. Just two days earlier, 10 March 2005, the Chief Executive of HK, Tung Chee Hwa, announced his resignation. Apple Daily is a highly critical and political daily newspaper against HK government and Tung Chee Hwa. The general public calling for his step-down had firmly found its root since 2003 but he consistently and publicly refused "to give up" his throne. For HK readers, like me, the newspaper article Kim quoted came in no surprise as a politically stirical piece.

Without recognizing contexts, textual analysis alone is obsolete.