I found Lord
Denning’s “The Discipline of Law”, along with his other books, at the big
Xinhua bookstore at Wangfujing street. His books were translated into mandarin
2 years ago. I wonder what the reader would make of his brand of judicial
activism. Looking forward to being able to reread this classic again, albeit in
a different language!
Second Star to the Right
Friday, 1 March 2013
Sunday, 24 February 2013
Professor Ronald Dworkin
I was very sad to read about Professor Ronald Dworkin’s passing. He was one of the greatest post-war legal philosophers. I think most law students of the past 25 years, have probably read his most widely-quoted book, Law’s Empire (1986), where Dworkin developed his theory of “Law as integrity”.
I’d enjoyed his last book “Justice for Hedgehogs” (2011), about living our truth, showing how its different facets manifest in society. It encapsulated his gentle argument that our responsibilities and obligations to others, flow first from our personal responsibility to take our own lives seriously. That “We are charged to live well by the bare fact of our existence as self-conscious creatures with lives to lead.” Our obligation to “make our lives good lives: authentic and worthy”, to lead a live of “authenticity”, and “style”, because “life, particularly human life, is itself part of the vastly larger story of the natural evolution of the universe.”.
I bought my usual copy of the Southern Weekend newspaper (南方周末), and was surprised to see a full (!) page obit. on “Remembering (Ronald) Dworkin” (“纪念德沃金”). Interesting that his name in mandarin has been translated to mean something like “Full of moral character” (de2 wo4 jin1)… …
The air quality hit the “Hazardous” rating again this Sunday. But it was worth the trip out, for the sheer joy of reading Dworkin’s jurisprudence in mandarin. It was also a lovely, albeit bittersweet, reward for my hard work of the past 2 months, working at the language, reading his jurisprudence in mandarin about the “intrinsic value” of human life, “our responsibility to ourselves”, to lead a good and valuable life.
“德沃金留给我们的答案是这样的:每个人如何过他的一生,对我们的政治社群而言,都具有内在而客观的重要性;在这样的政治社群中,每个人都对自己一生应该如何过,承担个人责任。他也强调,人在这样的政治社群生活,才活得有尊重。不论我们是否同意德沃金,要改善我们此地的政治生活,我们没有别人可以依赖,除了设法让自己的思想尽早脱离充满粗糙理解的状态“
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Mangoes!
It’s
been a while since I’ve had a really juicy, tasty mango. Maybe when I was in
Mumbai. Today, I was delighted to find at my local street market, these
luscious little mangoes. The vendor assured that they were so delicious, she
could eat 6 of them in one go.
I ate 3 mangoes, but only to reduce sample bias. They
were utterly delicious, and definitely the kind of mango you’d never ever find
in a supermarket- small, thin skinned, and fragrant. The seed was also really
flat and tiny, approximately the same thickness as a piece of cardboard
(really!). So plenty of mango in one tiny fruit!
Nowadays, with the distances that fruit has to travel from
the orchard to get to the supermarket shelf, soft skinned fruit like mangoes
and tomatoes have been selectively bred to have thick skins, all the better to
weather bumpy transportation.
I’m drying out these mango seeds, to try to grow them, back
in S’pore. Then all I have to do is wait 8 years to taste the fruits of my
labour! Anyone who’d like to try out one of these mango seeds, please let me
know. I’d be delighted to eat an extra mango on your behalf : P
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Drum Tower and Houhai
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Handmade Sugar Animals |
Walking
around the Drum Tower area is fun, if a bit touristy. Most of the hutongs here
sell interesting touristy stuff, and you’ve got the usual street vendors
selling all kinds of interesting things to eat! J, my mandarin language
exchange partner, knows this area very well, and we had a good time wandering
around.
Lunch was Sichuan style hotpot. Everything I fished out from the pot was coated in a tongue searingly hot film of chilli oil. Fantastic. After lunch, J and I went over to the famous “双皮奶“ (Double skin milk) store in the drum tower
hutong. I learnt that this type of custard comes from Guandong, and the milk
and egg and boiled and steamed. Beijingers are crazy about this type of
custard. The queue was incredible, and they sold out on everything except the “燕麦红豆双皮奶“ (Double skin
milk with cereal and red beans). It was velvety smooth and absolutely
delicious. Well worth the wait.
I think this blog could just as easily be called “Eating my way around
Beijing”.
Thursday, 14 February 2013
Sichuan Cooking Class
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Sauces used for the class |
I tried out
a Sichuan cooking class today, and learnt to cook a spicy Lotus root cold dish,
twice cooked pork, beef with pickled long beans. Using the correct ingredients
and the right techniques, really helped to bring out the authentic
flavours. Plus we enjoyed what we
cooked, for lunch! The class was held in the middle of a little hutong, which
made it a bit of an adventure to find.
The
pollution hit the “Hazardous” level yesterday, so I stayed in. Today, the local papers
were naturally furious about the pollution. The causal link between the
hazardous level of PM 2.5 in the air, and various serious health problems, is
already scientifically proven, and was cited again.
My camera’s
memory stick went kaput yesterday, so I lost my photos of the Ditan CNY temple
fair, and visit to the Temple of Heaven.
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Bike Repair
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修车-Bike repair, Beijing style!
|
It’s taken a
little longer than I expected, to get going on my sketching. This sketching is
a newish thing for me, but I’d like to think that brevity of participation is
no indication of the level of my enthusiasm : )
The
pollution in January didn’t make outdoor sketching pleasant, but thanks to the
wind, the weather got better. Only “Very Unhealthy”, instead of “Hazardous”,
according to the air pollution index. Then I had another problem to solve when
sketching outdoors in winter- cold fingers or losing my grip on my paintbrush
by wearing gloves?
As always,
James Gurney’s blog is a treasure trove of information, about drawing,
painting, and sketching. He had a wonderful post, “Winter Painting Tips”, about
plein air painting in winter, including what to do about cold fingers!
Hence on
Friday, I bought myself a cheap pair of woolly gloves ($2), snipped off the
finger tips, then did a bit of DIY by whip stitching the ends of the now
fingerless gloves. I kept my non-drawing hand in the warmer glove, and kept my
drawing hand in the fingerless glove.
I’ve been
fascinated by those roving bike repair guys in Beijing, with their bicycle carrying
a big cupboard full of bits and pieces, to repair bicycles. The big red letters
on his cupboard, “修车(bike repair)”,
are a dead giveaway. This being the first day of Chinese New Year, bike
repairman was of course not around, but his mobile bike repair kit certainly
was! So time to whip out the sketchbook and do a quick sketch. I used my
Schmincke travelling watercolour kit.
I like
Schmincke watercolours. They’re pretty saturated, so a little goes a long way.
Here’s a longer watercolour study I did about 2 years ago, also with Schmincke
watercolours, using local stones that I collected from Blackpool Sands in Devon. The colours haven’t been Photoshopped, they
really are that intense. The rocks were sketched using an old fashioned dip
pen, with Winsor & Newton sepia calligraphy ink. This little study got
converted to postcard, which I sent to J.
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Change, and a Most Erotic Smog
Change
This January in Beijing has been most extraordinary. I’ve
been able to experience first hand how citizens, including wealthy
establishment figures, have been most emphatically and publicly voicing their
grave concerns about significant quality of life issues, including the abysmal
air pollution in major cities in Northern China. What’s been most interesting
is that not only do so many people say that they have a right to speak
out about the quality of life they should have, but they also say that they
believe that they have a responsibility to speak out.
Collectively, they’ve pushed the Chinese government towards
more openness in quality of life issues, and to take some steps towards
tackling air pollution.
In 1952, the Great Smog of London resulted in 12,000 deaths,
and public outrage compelled the state to pass the Clean Air Act of 1956. This
act banned the use of coal for domestic fires in some urban areas, and required
power stations to be sited away from cities.
Led by Pan Shiyi, a real estate magnate who has more than 14 million followers
on Sina Weibo and is a representative of the Beijing
municipal legislation, as of today, more than 50, 000 people (98.9% of voters)have voted online in favour of similar legislation for China. The results of
the survey will be delivered to the Beijing municipal government.
A
most Erotic Smog
The
wonderful thing about typing in mandarin on the computer, is that using the
qwerty keyboard, you can simply type in the hanyu pinyin, and then pick the
word you want from the various options that Word offers from the hanyu pinyin
you typed. But watch the tones, or you may unwittingly be saying something you
did not intend!
A late night
typing my homework that my teacher set me, on civil liberties (exhausting for
me to write in mandarin : ( ) , I drew a parallel between the pollution smog in
1950s London, subsequent legislation, and the current efforts in China to pass
similar legislation. Hence I made reference in my essay to the “pea souper”
fogs in London of the 1950s.
BUT I
unwittingly made a typo, while gaily typing my little essay, when describing
the green fog that enveloped the city: “…由于情色的烟雾笼罩着城市。最恐怖的日子就是1952年, 伦敦的烟雾造成12,000 人死亡。舆论哄然迫使英政大力治理空气污染问题,所以英政在1956年出台《清洁空气法案》(Clean Air Act of 1956 )… …”
Spot the typo? Obviously, I meant 青色(qing1 se4- green), not情色 !I (qing3 se4- EROTIC). Hence my teacher
collapsed in laughter when reading about “the erotic fog that enveloped the
city… …”.
Btw, for those keen linguists out there, 情色means “erotic”, but reversing the words,
色情, means “pornographic”.
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