I’m never much of a good communicator in a social sense. I mean I’m unschooled in the way of the world. I hurt someone or talk about some social no-no without even noticing it. Once I asked one guy to accompany me to a prize-giving meeting. This guy who seldom takes classes seriously (I’m not exaggerating, he plays games on the mobile phone almost in every class), excused himself from my request by noting that he had a class. I asked what that class was as there were some classes that were not worthy of attending in colleges. The answer was “the Party class”. (I don’t know if this translation is right; I mean the class that almost is an implantation.) Can you understand what it is? A lot of students are trying to get into the Party. But they are doing so just in quest of advantages in finding a good job with a high salary. I know for sure a majority of the students won’t like this kind of cultivation. Based on the impression I had of him- a guy so halfhearted in classes, I asked back: will you possibly listen carefully to this kind of classes? After one second pause, he asked back: “What do you mean?! Don’t look down upon others!” “Gosh,” I thought, “What is he talking about? I never mean so!” It was no use explaining; he wouldn’t listen and talk to me. Then……A long-time cold war began. I told this to a female classmate. To my surprise, she said she would be a little angry, too. The tune and words in the sentences can be really subtle in making a consequent feeling in other people’s mind. Even if I was telling a truth, it could be hurting. Another case is about money problems in a conversation. Upon my arriving at Kunming’s airport at the beginning of this term, a lot of drivers whether with a taxi or a car of their own had been waiting there to take students to their schools. A middle-aged man asked me where I was heading for. He took my luggage and asked me to go with him as soon as I answered and before I could hesitate. I trotted along after him and asked about the prize. Not cheap. Then I asked whether there were anybody to share the car. “Three are waiting for us.” He replied. Three…I calculated in my mind: this ride would make a fortune about 400 yuan to this man. “Wow,” said I, “then you are sure to make a lot of money from this ride!” Though I feel a little unwilling to part with my money, but I was sincerely thinking it as good thing for him as he could better support his family, buying a toy that his children liked or sending a gift to his wife. However, what followed next was SLIENCE. He became so quiet and just kept walking. Oh, I guessed I touched the social no-no. Actually I just don’t think money is what can not be talked about in a conversation. I always like to be straight forward and honest which only makes others feel unease. You see, I’m never much of a good communicator socially. I may not change it as I like to be straight and honest. But maybe I should change the way I say it in hope of not arousing misunderstanding.

(Well, it never works.) http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjMzOTQwMTA4.html?tpa=dW5pb25faWQ9MTAyMjEzXzEwMDAwMl8wMV8wMQ Here is the website,you can't miss it！It is worthy of clicking! This is a MTV my English teacher played in class, recalling the money-raising event launched by American singers in hope of helping African people out of drought and hunger in 1985. Maybe people nowadays scarcely know about this event, but it swept all over the world in 1985 and successfully raised a lot of money. Until now my words have been plain. But how should I describe it- I was almost moved into tears while watching! I can never be immune to this kind of charity-related videos. At first I was astonished by the beautiful sound of the first man. Then there follow other singers’ voices and each one is undoubtedly beautiful and unique. I see sincerity both for this helping event and for music from every engrossed face. It is this devotion that touches me so much that every time I see it I would feel blood pulsing quickly through my veins. And later a tendency of crying comes in a flash. I like the idea of people all over the world uniting together, living harmoniously as brothers and sisters. I don’t understand why politicians are intriguing against each other on territory, sovereignty or historical problems. Next I would like to talk about the music. Music always catches me successfully. I especially love the light music, like Bandari; it sets me free from the daily life and creates wonderlands for me to wander in. In this MTV, I see these singers controlling their breath and shape of mouth so well that voices turn out to be fabulous melodies rather than meaningless noises. How great human beings are-they are controlling air and vocal organs, creating something so fascinating! Can you feel it? In this song and in every beautiful music piece, there exits order fitting so well into the silence. They half closed their eyes, indulged in the wonderfully harmonious, melodious space they created on their own. I’ve been always admiring those who sing well; because they can express what they feel in singing through the lyrics and the tune. Instead, I can do nothing but keep silent for I cannot sing well and have no idea about how to control air and the vocal organ to express what I feel appropriately. Nor do I dance well. I’m never the one on the stage for flowers and applause. I do have a lot of interests, like painting, calligraphy, writing, etc. But they are talents that can not be shown on the stage in just several minutes. So we always find ourselves in a dilemma where our teachers complain programs being plain with a majority of singing and dancing ones in the dress rehearsals. Moreover, as is often the case, we find the contradiction between singers’, dancers’ or actors’ pleasant performance and their poor stock of knowledge or lack of morality, which is often mocked at by Medias and ordinary people. On the other hand, in skills and talents that can not be shown on the stage, or rather say, do not care about mere appearance, always hides a person’s deep thoughts. Great writers, painters are always those who have a deep and unique understanding of life. Thus performances become comparatively superficial, stimulating our sensory organ. But wait, I ought not to generalize about people. It’s true that there do exist song/dance performers and actors with knowledge and virtues people admire and become models people can learn from. Also, we shouldn’t evaluate people with the same standard. Many performing artists don’t do well in subjects (that is what my roommate laughed at just now), but they’ve get the talent in bringing the audience with laugh and enjoyment while we don’t. Take myself for example, I love movies and dramas, and I’m dreaming of performing on the stage on day, or becoming a comic star to make people happy like we often see on TV. I once applied for being an actor in a play arranged by senior students which required an interview. However, I was so used to primness and Grundyism that I couldn’t ease a bit and ended up standing there without knowing what and how to perform(they asked me to perform a fragment of a movie or a teleplay). Then, yes, the chance flew away. I was annoyed. Sometimes I don’t know who I really am. You know, one’s characters are decided by many factors, like the environment, your family, friends, things you confront with, etc. Now I’m shy and not outgoing. They may bring you a vast landscape of thinking, but I sometimes hate them as I want a wilder life where I can be free (you know, shy people are good at pretending and restricting which make them feel uneasy among a group of people). And I wander if my characters would change with different things coming along in the future. Will I become an outgoing girl? Will I become good at acting and performing? Will I become a renowned star whom people are chasing after for the newest information and I even enjoy it? I don’t know; it just seems to be so impossible for now. Or, am I just pursing fame like those who envy the popularity of celebrities? Well, this passage will be too lengthy if I keep on writing but thoughts just keep coming along, let’s talk about it next time, fame. By the way, good morning!

Today I met a girl when I attended my computer class. I had some questions about the homework, so I asked the girl who happened to sit beside me. The very moment she began to speak, I was totally astonished. She was speaking English! How could this be possible?! She is not in every respect like a foreigner; on the contrary, she is just as ordinary as any Chinese girl that you may not even notice while in the street. Confuses arouse in my mind. “Maybe she’s from a country close to China like Vietnam or Laos?” I guess. Excited about meeting someone from a country which I have never been, I changed my language and asked her in English merrily: “Are you a foreigner?” “No.” She replied. “Then…then why are you speaking English?” I opened my eyes and mouth wide. She laughed, “Because I joined an English activity, and today is my turn to speak English for the whole day.” “Wow, that’s wonderful,” I couldn’t hold back my curiosity, “What kind of activity? Will everyone in the team strictly obey the rule, speaking English the whole day?” She explained to me that it was an English program outside the class and was organized by people outside our school. To Obey the rule or not was , of course, decided by oneself as no one would be able to check it, after all. Whereas, this girl I met obeyed it very well and was brave enough. When I ask her would she be ashamed when people noticed her different speaking, she smiled yes and said “but you have to get used to it”. A girl like me of little words unexpectedly felt like talking this afternoon. I sought chances to talk to her during the whole class. There were things we didn’t know how to say, but there was an excitement of exploring, too. It seems that English, as an unacquainted language to me, is more vivid because it’s like we are describing things for the first time when speaking, so there exist many possibilities of how we describe them to be found. On the other hand, Chinese seems a little bit too familiar to me. (though I haven’t acquired all the details of it, and I think it is also an excellent language.) As a result, I am sometimes tired of saying a word. But when writing, I prefer Chinese as it is easier to keep up with my flowing thinking. And I like the wonderfully beautiful rhetoric in Chinese essays. You know what, I prefer using English when I am murmuring. I feel the mysteriousness in English. Just like in the famous movie Avatar, when a NA’VI(纳美人) say “I see you”, they are not simply saying I see you with my eyes, but that I see into you, I can feel you. How wonderful it is! Man’s deep thoughts can never be totally conveyed in words, conversely in the movie they are delivered in the most simple words but unexpectedly illustrate the vast landscape in one’s mind. When murmuring in English, I feel like wandering leisurely in my thoughts. Isn’t it a bit “崇洋媚外”? Actually I don’t mean I prefer the foreign culture to our Chinese culture. It’s just because my affection and maybe gift for learning a language and new culture. You know, some people don’t like languages, like my roommates. They can’t hate English more!

I will always be fascinated by beautiful English sentences, such as: Since your ship was first launched upon the sea of life you have never been still for a single moment; the sea is too deep, you could not find an anchorage if you would; there can be no pause until you come into port. All white save the river, that marked its course by a winding black line across the landscape; and the leafless trees, that against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty and intricacies of their branches. From a biological standpoint, human life almost reads like a poem. It has its own rhythm and beat, its internal cycles of growth and decay. Etc. Upon entering the high school, I had been fed up with writing plain and ordinary sentences which shows little imagination or thinking. I tried to use some imaginative rhetoric just as I was writing a composition in Chinese. But as a result, my English teacher in her fifties, who is said to be experienced but in my view a little stubborn and conservative, referred to my compositions as “Chinglish”. This kind of circumstances was numerous; I remember quarreling with her for a couple of times. (I’m sorry for this; it is partly due to the conceit I had got then. But I still think she’s a little conservative even now.) Content of what we quarrel about is mostly forgotten, but one remains distinct. I wrote once: “Every time......I’ll sank into deeper and deeper darkness”, meaning a stage of depression I got into in a figurative sense. It’s somewhat poetic in Chinese. However it was not understandable to others, my teacher said. Yet I could not change this habit of using my imagination, as if not, I would loss the interest in writing in English. Actually on the whole, I still got better grades in writing then than my fellow classmates. Now I’m in college; we don’t have much time communicating with our English teacher, and assignments are no longer much. Some days ago, our teacher recommended us a website to improve our writing skills. Compositions are examined by computer, or manual work if you like. I got 87 with a full mark of 100. Not too bad. But as I looked at the mistakes it pointed out to me, I was confused. It considered some phrases in my composition such as “a bible for life”, “those wisdom of the past”，“the interaction between their heart”, “marvelous declaration”, “endless inspiration” as mistakes because they’re not in store in the system, and suspected them as “Chinglish”. It seems to have put human brain in an inferior stage to a computer system, ignoring its imagination and flexibility. There may be some mistakes in my sentences, I admit, but I’ll never regard this mechanic method as a good way to improve our English writing. On the contrary, it kills creativity and interest English may arouse in students’ mind. Are those phrases and sentences really “Chinglish”? Passers-by of my blog, please help me if you would. And will you have such problems where you think what you write is right but is regarded as “Engnese”(English Chinese) or “Chinglish”?

Part of my university. I was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, southeast China, and hadn’t go out of the province until I was going to college. Anywhere, except Zhejiang, I thought, when I was choosing my university. At last I came to Kunming, Yunnan province, southwest China, whose blue sky and bright sun can seldom be seen in north or east China. I remember that one of the reasons for coming to Yunnan is that I can’t tolerate the city any longer. I remember the desire to escape the city was so intense; I dreamed Kunming as a less developed city with less noise, pollution and more human touch. Yes, I don’t like big cities. When walking in it, I always feel like going through a dessert and the more I get involved in it, the more depressed I become. Cars race besides me, one after another, emitting vehicle exhaust that makes me hold my breath every time and run away as quickly as possible. It seems that every person is heading for his own life, streets being their bridges to somewhere only. There is no life in the streets. Life, yes, is exactly what’s lost in big cities. In our ancient China, we used to see smoke curling upwards from chimneys and smell fragrance of cooking dishes in the neighborhood whether at noon or at dusk. And it is a common sight that elderly people sitting in front of their doorway, looking at the passers-by and talking to each other. Laughter can be heard now and then. Children chased around, shouting and screaming restlessly. It’s more like real life itself, isn’t it? Compared to Hangzhou, Kunming is a smaller city, with smaller streets, slower traffic flow, more relaxed people, most importantly, deeper sense of being in a life. Shaded small streets. Bougainvillea glabra is a special and widespread scenery in Yunnan. Some eldery people are playing saxophone besides a lake. A small square. Boys on the left were playing skateboarding; on the right, some people were surrounding an old man who was always flying a kate.(I also saw him fly a kate last year.) Some teenagers are dancing, a radio playing music alongside. Tall old trees. People relax under the trees. The more I get to know the small city, the more I like it. Walking briskly, my mind is free to roam. Maybe that is where happiness lies, a more relaxed and culture-cultivatied lifestyle. To live is to find a real feeling of living.

1. MOVIES IN MY EYES This is a microfilm made by me and my teammates in request of an assignment in our English class. So it is actually an English microfilm. I have been loving movies for a long time. We get from movie the excitement in a war, the legendary journey to the wonderland that would never happen to us, the heartbreaking separation falling on the protagonists we have deep affection for, the convulsion which hits us when we see something echoes with our heart, and most importantly, the wisdom for life. How limited our human beings are! We are limited in a certain time, a certain place, and in our own stories. Besides, everyone has only one chance of living and can only experience every moment of our life for once. However, movies provide us with chances to explore other possible lives, poor, wealthy, contradictory, passionate, disappointing……What a vast landscape! Moreover, there exist many moments when life comes into a dilemma, where we are at a loss just like wandering at the crossroads, hesitating about which road to take. But behold！Movies again! I believe every movie is, if not a bible, at least some notes for life. They give us hints about how a life journey goes with different choices more directly and straight than books, combining pictures and music together, which makes a more delicious feast for the audience.(Of course I love books, too.) 2. MY ENGLISH MICROFILM I was quite excited about this task my English teacher assigned. However, my teammates didn’t share my passion and ambition in making an English microfilm. I could hardly understand their indifference in this as making a movie was such a creative, imaginative and artistic job in my view. (Who our partners are is decided by our teacher.)So there were many times when I felt so upset about my lonely interest which received no echo from my partners. In the process of the making, I also realized one unpleasant character flaw those rich only children have, the self-centered character. They think little about others and only come to you when they need your help. Accordingly, I took the three jobs, director, scripter and editor, at the same time, upon myself. And on the prize-giving day, 10th May ,just last Sunday, when I was also required to give a speech, I only persuaded one teammate to go with me. But anyway, I would never have made it without their help. I still thank them from the bottom of my heart. However, looking at myself, I become unease as I suppose it is largely my fault that resulted in the lacking of solidarity in our team. I have been a shy girl since I was little, with few words to say and a poor sense of humor. I’m not good at uniting a team; I’m not what a good leader should be. In addition, it was part of my overflowing passion that made me a director, scripter ,and at the same time, editor. I took over these jobs willingly myself. It’s not all my teammates’neglect. Preferring to working all by oneself rather than with the teammates is also a character flaw in the only children. Well, yeah, you guess right, I’m also an only child as my teammates are. Incorrigible shortcomings! If only I can help it! 3. END I love movies. Actually, I have a dream of being a director, who, in my view, is the greatest architect of wonderful dream lands, freeing us from daily life and our own stories. This English microfilm, Loving Strangers, is a start in my pursuit of a movie career though it is not perfect and my face will turn red every time I see its imperfection. Loving Strangers is a little story based on part of my character. Hope you enjoy it!