Presumably, we are different from each other in different ways.  Besides different appearances,  people also have different personalities. Some appear to be friendly and talkative; whereas some are shy and clumsy.  Often making such comparison with folks around me, I sometimes wonder why I am what I am.   It's said that we are what we eat.  I mean we have the same kind of food available in the supermarket, yet the proteins getting into our brain function quite differently.  The reason is surely out of the scope of this discussion.  However, my wonder of why I didn't have a personality like Jane, or John, who all have 'better' personalities than mine, lingers in my mind from time to time.

Through the years, I realize that one's personality can affect one's life or career tremendously.  Individuals with "nicer" personality tend to be more successful. Yet others are lusterless even if they are very professional in their fields.  It's true that individuals live in society, and one can't survive alone. Thus, communication between people is essential. There is no doubt that if an individual's personality tends to be communication-friendly, the individual has the first advantage of appealing to others, either in promoting him/herself or letting others to know about him/herself. Unlike machines, we, human beings have feelings and affections toward others.  To establish and maintain the bonding with others, one must talk to each other, work together, etc. If you can build and keep such connection, then you all have pleasant relations with other people. If an individual lacks such trait, the individual won't achieve the individual’s maximum potential despite that he or she is  technically capable.  I have seen well enough examples of that.  I am not surprised to see that someone is always getting her job offer from time to time if she is given a chance to a job interview.  Someone is always doing well in her workplace and loved by her colleagues, friends and family members.  At the same time, it will be uneasy for someone else to do well in job interviews and has to continue to stick to his banal job, without a chance of promotion.  

With all the things being said, the worse thing is that one's personality is born with the person from the beginning. It's irresistible and helpless for those less unfortunate.  But before a future medical miracle helps us to refine our imperfect personality, which I believe will come true in future,  please be considerable and be open-minded to those with flaws in their personalities.

不知不觉地, 我们在美国生活已几十年了.   大家中国人之间还是会用中文交流.  我们平时也看看中文报章, 看中文电视,但是这只局限于说和看.  要动手写中文的机会不是很多, 除非你是从事中文工作的人.  问题这就来了, 在这样的环景下, 如果某天我要用中文写点东西, 我会惊觉字写不出来了.  就算写出来了, 我也会觉得那字写的怪怪的, 不确定写得对不对.  现在还好, 我可用计算机帮我选字.  但总的来说写得还是比较费勁, 且常被某君拿我的中文国学冷嘲热讽的, 什为烦恼.  这也难怪, 我当年在国内没把中国语文学好这也是事实.  至于英语水平, 只能算是半路出家, 冲其量, 仅能混口饭吃, 也惨变被嘲讽之列. 今仅以我平常之心, 论一论学两语之心得, 以君共勉.

中国文字有悠久的历史, 是中华文明的载体, 有其深度和广度.  她记载中华上下几千年兴衰, 文人轶事.  她体现着咱世界四分一人口所蕴藏的巨大能量.  我虽不是文字专家, 但我的感觉是, 如从语义(semantic)来看, 中文语义宽广且繁覆, 千变万化.  从语法(grammar)来看, 比较松散且多变.  诺定熟成的东西可任意破坏句子的结构, 甚至于使句子毫无语法结构可言.  而文字是象型符号, 难写易忘, 单音多字, 同字多音, 同字多义, 句子结构及标点纷乱, 互相混淆.  如不是生于华夏, 活在中原, 相信很难活学活用.  君不见我在美华裔莘莘学子, 虽有汉语拼音相助, 也叫苦连天, 学得死去活来, 片言只语, 只是一知半解.  中文想冲出东亚, 影响天下, 简直是痴人作梦.  我相信华夏文字很难成就世界之语, 尽管越来越多外人为某些目的而学习她, 接受她的洗礼.

如上文所说, 英语我只是半路出家, 那敢再现丑.  但深耕细作之下也有所领会.  虽说拉丁二十六字母变化无穷, 但穷中有节, 变中有理.  君不见硕大字典, 前后有序, 井井有条, 精确无比.  再看汉语字典, 虽有百家争鸣, 却是杂乱无章.  再看英语语义, 一是一, 二便是二, 童叟无欺.  细读其文理语法, 主谓宾三分天下, 相互配合, 互有法则. 主句从句, 层次分明, 共容和谐.  句子结构可谓有法可依, 违法必究, 以力求精确, 极其科学及逻辑性.  世界科学文献皆用英语莫过于其精密属性也.  但其也有不足, 宇宙无穷, 其词汇势必也无尽.  中文字则可延伸造新词, 其字量则相对稳定, 其新词汇也可趋无穷, 词汇虽新, 字依旧,  便能望字生义而自解, 有其优势.  读书人竟必不能穷尽宇宙万物于一时.

若将两者再比较.  我觉得中文在表达较为抽象概念的时候, 由于她的模糊(fuzzy)特性, 汉语有其优势.  所以我们从古到今能不乏意景优美的诗词歌赋.  "花非花, 雾非雾" 如说白了,  意景就没了.  然而正是这种模糊特性, 欠缺准确的科学性,  阻碍古代科技发展.  中国古代的科学也只能停留在"勾三股四弦五" 的水平了.  再看看今天, 这个坏影响还在.  君不见中国学生的文理分科还长期存在, 且越演越裂.  人文科的不喜欢科学, 理工科的不喜欢文学.  我想是汉语没有把他们有机得结合起来.  国内能文通理的人才可能不多. 可在欧美, 这样的人才多的很. 很多人是工程师也是企管家, 律师或政客.  他们都有比较科学的语言为载体, 可兼顾不同学科, 以达个人的全面发展.

中国是否可考虑语言改革, 完善一下汉语呢?

* Qibei Elemantry School(旗北小学)  I stayed in that school with my father. I didn't have any pleasant experiences there. It's located in a hill. I had my early elemantry school years there. I remeber that this was the school where I learned a quite a lot of things, reciting the multiplication table, practising Chinese calligraphy, abacus and having some sport trainning for young kids including ping-pong trainning. Looking back now, it would be the period of time when China and the US initiated the 'ping pong' diplomacy. It's surely a period of time when schools strangely had the so called 'labor lesson', where teachers and students in school, led by the local peasants, would work on the field. We would plan all kinds of produce and vegitable, sweet potato, peanut, sugar-cane, corn, wheat, rice and even castor-oil plant(蓖麻). We would make compost out of grass and weed collected in the hill, and we would aslo raise pigs in school, all in an organic way. It seemed as if we all knew the future trend of being organic in advance that time.....

* Qinan Elemantry School(旗南小学)  This was the school that I finished all my elemantry schooling. I swithched to this school becase my father switched work in the same region. Nothing out of extraordinary happened as I remembered. We would walk to school and would have normal classes. It's the peroid of time I didn't spend enough time studying because we started to some sort of entertainment. We would listen to those long story series on radio, classic masterpiece such as Three Kingdoms, Outlaws of the Marsh and Journey to the West. We would never miss an episode because the story was so attractive and the story-teller was so professional and skillful that we would literally stick our ears next to the radio. At the same peroid of time, we would also listen to RTHK's(香港电台) radio programs. Their radio series was very professional and their music program was crystal-clear because they were the leader in high quality of FM stereo broadcasting at the time. In later years in the peroid, we started to have televisions. We would also watch TV channels from Hong Kong. We watched a few dramas such as IQ成熟时,骤雨中的阳光, 大地恩情, 天龙决, 天蠢变, 武侠帝女花.  It's interesting that the first westen TV series that I watched from CCTV was Man From Atlantis(大西洋海底来的人), a science fiction, by Patrick Duffy and Belinda Montgomery. Although it's a fiction, I was enchanted by it. It might be the first scientific encounter that enlightened me and help me to cultivate my insterest or potential in scientific and engineering field.....

* Zhuoshan Middle School(桌山中学)  This middle school had a long history of being the best in the region in history . I was placed one of the advanced classes, in which students were specially trained to be better prepared for college. In spite of it, I didn't feel anything special except that we would have better teachers for us this the class.....

* Oversea Chinese High School(華僑中學)  I finished my high school in this school. This was the school which I would need to learn how to take care of myself and be more independent. I would need to leave home and would live in the dormitory in school's campus. This school is established and supported by many people living oversea. It's a modern school in terms of its hardware at that time. It had very good teaching facility, such as standard classrooms, advanced labortaries, a sport stadium, a swiming pool, and a nice dormintory. I was moved to see that so many people living oversea made donation to support education back in their hometown. These people loved their hometown although they were living oversea..... After visiting all web sites of my old schools, my first impression was that the educational system there has been excelled to a level that I counldn't believe. Not only do they have the state of the art facility, but also the mentality they have toward education. They understand that education is key to their future. They put all necessary resources to vitalize the schools. The teachers are now all college graduates with teaching credential, which was very desirable back on the day when I attended these schools. To my astonishment, all schools have their IT department and IT classes to promote science and technology. That is awesome.

It's been decades since my last visit to my hometown after my family came to America. Living here these years, we learned, worked and survived in this part of our world. What happened in our howtown has basically become sort of 'out of sight and out of mind' things. Somehow, the rainy days this week reminded the rainy season back in my hometown, humid and wet verywhere including the floor inside the house when it's severe. Driven by this impulse,I searched 百度(www.baidu.com), the predominate search engin in the country, trying to learn something from it. It's pretty cool that it returned many information. I could look at the map of the town in its satellite images. I could browse all kinds of the web sites, from the local government, commercial business and local schools. What I was interested in was those local schools' web sites. I attended several schools through my childhood. It's amazing that they all have their web sites, primary school to high school.

Here are the schools that are still in my memory.

* Nanwen Elemantry School(南文小学)

I wasn't old enough to remenber clearly if I attended the kindergarten at this school at that time when I stayed in this school with my mother. My memory about it gradually has faded away. However, I still have a vague memory of one incident that I ran few miles from our home to this school alone after I got upset that I was ordered to stay home and couldn't follow my mother to the school. The school as I rembmer now had some traditional Chinese-style buildings with red walls and green decorative elements on roof-top. Particularly, its main building was tall and splendid-- a big oval-shape stair leading to the first floor and a fancy balcony with hand-crafted fence on the top level with a big bell, as seem in the church, that served as timer to signal the beginning and ending of the class. It's said that the big bell, if struck in certain patten, was also served as an alarm of all kinds of emergency because the sound could be heard within a few miles...

I am fond of watching CSI(Crime Scene Investigation)-type of show on TV.  Not long ago, I watched a TV serial related to that theme in Chinese.  A policeman was stabbed to death while he was trying to stop a criminal committing a crime.   The criminal escaped.  All other officers in the the police department were very sad and vowed to catch the criminal.  It was a reasonable reaction given the situation.  However,  something started to irk me when I tried to digest the phrase, "avenge the murder of their colleague", coming out from one of the officers.  Would it be more appropriate if he said they would catch the criminal and bring the criminal to justice for the victim instead?