愛情故事

Tomorrow is Chinese Lovers' Day, so it seems appropriate to resurrect a story that I wrote--with lots of help from the former native Chinese speaker--for a Chinese class that I took during the summer of 1996. My teacher asked us to write some sentences using Chinese idiomatic phrases (成語) that we had learned in the course, but I decided to write a story instead. Any mistakes in grammar or usage are mine!

每年一到七夕，人們成雙成對上街，情人濃情密意地赴約會，卿卿我我。而我每年七夕有自己的習慣：身上穿著黑衣服，臉上帶著憔悴的表情，晚上七點睡覺。

今年七夕也不例外：電視新聞的播報員一開始眉開眼笑地報告有關台灣貪官污吏搜刮人民財產的事情，我就生氣的關了電視、關了燈，並上床睡覺。可是，我在床上輾轉反側，無法入眠；千頭萬緒，環繞我心。

想起我的老母常常苦口婆心地對我說：「兒子，我以我這輩子最寶貴的經驗告訴你，你如果覺得煩惱，無法接受世界快速變遷的話，你就去夜市走走，因為，夜市反映了人生百態。千萬記得，可別光說不練！」

母親的啟示讓我怦然心動，所以我就到了夜市。到了夜市之後，我遇到了一位和尚，他手上拿著一個缽。我丟了一個十塊錢的銅板進去。和尚對我說：「祝您多子多孫多福壽，生意昌隆。」我問他這句話有甚麼涵義，他說，就是祝我能有很多的子孫。我告訴他說，世界那麼亂，社會形態瞬息萬變，我不想有孩子。和尚說，我的話是大逆不道的，生孩子就是一件理所當然的事。古人說：「不孝有三，無後為大。」然後，我罵他是個墨守成規的老頭子。之後，我們就吵得天翻地覆，不可開交。最後，我把我的十塊錢從他的缽中拿回來。

其實，我是想用那十塊錢去買隔壁攤子的木瓜牛奶。我問賣木瓜牛奶的小姐說：「妳認識那位和尚嗎？」她說：「認識。他常常來夜市跟市民講道。他非常關心世界大問題，尤其是政府勞民傷財的情況。」我跟她說，他好像要以增加人口數量來救世濟民。她說：「他是個言行合一的人，已經有好幾個孩子了！」

我常常回去夜市幫那位賣木瓜牛奶的小姐，我們分工合作：她賣木瓜，我賣牛奶。雖然生意不是很好，但是我們兩個很談得來。不久之後，我們便結婚了。

P.S. The former native Chinese speaker wants everyone to know that she never sold papaya milkshakes at the night market. ;-)

Something of an update

Still working on the diss. Have been working on a chapter that I intended to send to my advisor this weekend. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to (in the words of my high school classmate Dwight) "aggregate my fecal matter". (Dwight is, I imagine, a high-powered lawyer by now. He'll probably sue me for quoting him here.) So the chapter will take a little longer to get together. I can probably focus more on it during this typhoon that will hit us this week.

Saying goodbye to friends

Just saw off my friend and colleague Michael Jacques at the bus station. Didn't get mushy or anything, but I hope he and Karen (and Henry!) know that I'll miss them a lot. Although it's easy to stay in touch through e-mail, Skype, etc., their leaving Tunghai/Taiwan still feels so ... permanent.

Best of luck in your new lives (back) in the States! (And by the way, Karen's got a book of translations of Zhang Ailing novellas coming out in October. You can preorder at Amazon ;) ...)

Bilis coming for a visit... and a weird dream...

Here's how it looks as of midnight 7/13...


Click here for a more up-to-date satellite image from the Central Weather Bureau.

In other news, I had a disturbing dream last night: Our department received official notification that because of an oversupply of university graduates and a worsening economy, English majors who graduated in the bottom third of their class were to be executed on the athletic field immediately following the graduation ceremony. The most frightening thing about the dream was how calmly everybody (including the graduating students) was taking the news. Students just said, "Wow--I hope it's not me..."

Open Call for Proposals: Writing Research Across Borders

Hoping we can get some representatives from Taiwan to go...

Open Call for Proposals: Writing Research Across Borders
February 22-24, 2008
University of California Santa Barbara

Conference website; http://education.ucsb.edu/netshare/wrconf08/

Proposal Deadline: May 1, 2007
Email: writing@education.ucsb.edu

Recent decades have seen the growth of writing studies in many nations, focused on all levels of education, and all uses of writing in society, using the resources of many different disciplines. This increased research attention to writing reflects an increased recognition of the importance of writing in modern societies. Yet to a large extent the many emerging traditions of writing research have neither connected fully nor shared their work.

This conference brings together the many writing researchers from around the world, drawing on all disciplines, and focused on all aspects of writing at all levels of development and in all segments of society. This will be an opportunity to learn from different research traditions, share our findings, seek common agendas, and lay the groundwork for future communication and alliances.

As a first step to building this important conversation we have invited some of the leading writing researchers, and those listed at the bottom of this call have already committed to participating.

We are now issuing an open call for proposals for panels, roundtables, individual presentations, and poster presentations addressing

* current research on writing,
* methodological issues
* reflections on ongoing research programs
* considerations of national or disciplinary trajectories of research
* agendas for further research

We anticipate a program of up to two hundred and fifty presentations.

Proposals to present current research should specify research questions, methods, data corpus, and findings, as well as the scope and duration of the research project. Proposals to provide overviews of and reflections on research traditions and agendas should identify clearly the relevant literatures to be considered.

Proposals for individual and poster presentations should be from 250 to 500 words in length and panel and roundtable proposals, 500 to 1000 words. Please indicate your preferred format.

Proposals should be sent by May 1, 2007 via email to writing@education.ucsb.edu. Please include complete contact information.

For further information please visit our conference website:
http://education.ucsb.edu/netshare/wrconf08/
If you have any questions contact us at writing@education.ucsb.edu

INVITED SPEAKERS already committed to participating:

Paula Carlino, Argentina, University of Buenos Aires
Caroline Channock, Australia, Latrobe
Rosemary Clerehan, Australia, Monash University
Luuk van Waes, Belgium, University of Antwerp
Angela Dionisio, Brazil, UFP, Recife
Angela Kleiman, Brazil, Unicamp-Sao Paulo
Marilyn Chapman, Canada, University of British Columbia
Graham Smart, Canada, Carleton University
Denis Alamargot, France, University of Poitiers
Michel Fayol, France, University Blaise Pascal
Frederic Francoise, France, Universit� de Paris V
Annie Piolat, France, University de Provence
Sylvie Plane, France, IUF de Paris
Yves Reuter, France, Universit� Lille
Joachim Grabowski, Germany, University of Education, Heidelberg, Germany
Pietro Boscolo, Italy, University of Padua
Emilia Ferreiro, Mexico, National Polytechnic Institute
Gert Rijlarsdam, Netherlands, University of Amsterdam
Lisa Emerson, New Zealand, Massey University
Olga Dysthe, Norway, University of Bergen
Rochelle Kapp, South Africa, University of Cape Town
Liliana Tolchinsky, Spain, University of Barcelona
Linda Allal, Switzerland, Universite de Geneve
Otto Kruse, Switzerland, University of Applied Sciences Erfurt, Switzerland
David Galbraith, UK, University of Staffordshire
Ken Hyland, UK, University of London
Roz Ivanic, UK, Lancaster University
Theresa Lillis, UK, Open University
Brian Street, UK, Kings College- London
Mark Torrance, UK, University of Staffordshire
Arnetha Ball, USA, Stanford University
Charles Bazerman, USA, University of California Santa Barbara
Anne Beaufort, USA, SUNY Stony Brook
Carol Berkenkotter, USA, University of Minnesota
Virginia Berninger, USA, University of Washington
Sheridan Blau, USA, University of California Santa Barbara
Ulla Connor, USA, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Christiane Donahue, USA, University of Maine, Farmington
Ann Dyson, USA, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Jill Fitzgerald, USA, University North Carolina Chapel Hill
Steve Graham, USA, Vanderbilt
Kris Gutierrez, USA, University of California Los Angeles
Christina Haas, USA, Kent State University
Richard Haswell, USA, TAMU Corpus Christi
John R. Hayes, USA, Carnegie Mellon University
George Hillocks, USA, University of Chicago
Tom Huckin, USA, University of Utah
Susan Jarratt, USA, University of California Irvine
Ilona Leki, USA, University of Tennessee
Paul LeMahieu, USA, University of California Berkeley
Andrea Lunsford, USA, Stanford University
Karen Lunsford, USA, University of California Santa Barbara
Charles MacArthur, USA, University of Delaware
Paul Matsuda, USA, University of New Hampshire
Debra McCutcheon, USA, University of Washington
Heidi McKee, USA, Miami University
Sandy Murphy, USA, UC Davis
Bill Nagy, USA, Seattle Pacific University
Sondra Perl, USA, CUNY Graduate Center
Jim Porter, USA, Michigan State University
Paul Prior, USA, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
David Russell, USA, State University
Rebecca Rickly, USA, Texas Technological University
Tony Silva, USA, Purdue University
Peter Smagorinsky, USA, University of Georgia
Melanie Sperling, USA, University of California Riverside
Clay Spinuzzi, USA, University of Texas Austin
John Swales, USA, University of Michigan
Chris Thaiss, USA, University of California Davis
Gary Troia, USA, Michigan State University
Kathleen Blake Yancey, USA, Florida State University