No.69: A Different Culture

Since there are 56 ethnic groups in China, not exaggerating, China can be said to have 56 cultures. The ethnic groups include a majority Han, and 55 minorities. I belong to the majority group and I always admire those people who have a different ethnic group than Han. I think it is good to be different. I am in charge of marketing in a student organization, Chinese Circle of Communication. And about two weeks ago, it was my turn to prepare the power point on the topic that I was assigned to at the beginning of this quarter. The topic was Ethnic Groups. I did not know much about other ethnic groups before I researched on this topic for the organization. I even learnt a lot on my own group, Han, after the research.

The ethnic group I like the best is Manchu. It is one of the oldest ethnic groups recognized. The last dynasty, Qing, was established by Manchu people and the royal family members all intermarriage with another ethnic group, Mongolian. So many of their descendent are mixed with two distinct kinds of blood. Around China, the total number of Manchu people is greater than ten million, according to the census in 2000. It still is a small number compared to the majority Han, which is about 1.3 billion. Most of the Manchu people live in the northeast part of China. Manchu language is different from Mandarin Chinese. But it sounds close to Korean and Japanese, because they all belong to Altaic language family. I read something interesting on the Internet and it said that Mandarin Chinese was formed when Manchu people were trying to learn the dialect in Beijing and that Cantonese was actually influenced the most by ancient Chinese.

No.68: Something Scares Me

I am scared of ghosts. I believe there are ghosts existing on the world; just not everyone can see them. Some people only believe in the things that can be explained by science; however, there are a lot of things happening around the world that cannot be explained by science. My parents do not believe that ghosts exist. They always tell me that it is ridiculous and I am just scaring myself by imagining things. It is always said that people with weaker bodies or weaker nerve system (or something like that) can usually see the ghosts. Because I am afraid of ghosts, I like to sleep with the light on. Ghosts do not appear when there is light. So it is kind of like a mental comforting.

Although I am scared of ghosts, I still enjoy reading ghost stories and watch ghost movies. I usually do it during the daytime and I am never scared at all with the sun high up in the sky. Then it comes the night time. This is when I start to think about the ghosts in the stories or movies and become scared. I have to turn on all the lights in the room or have someone stay in the room with me. Otherwise, I will be thinking about the ghosts all the time. Even when most of the time, I force myself to not think about them and shift my attention to something else, funny or interesting. But it usually does not work. So basically, I scare myself just like my parents tell me.

No.67: Earthquakes

The things that are happening in the world and I am really concerned about are the earthquakes. Just a couple of days ago, earthquakes took place in YunNan Province, China and along the east coast of Japan. The levels of these two earthquakes are around 5.8 and 8.8, respectively. The earthquake in YunNan Province happened at 12:58 on March 10. Two aftershocks took place again after it with levels 4.7 and 4.5. As the reports at 23:30 that day showed, 25 people died and 250 injured. Thousands of houses collapsed to the ground. It was kind of luckily that the earthquake and the aftershocks happened during daytime so many people can feel the shake and run away from buildings to avoid being killed. Instead, the earthquake took place in TangShan, China in1976, if anyone know it, with level 7.2 took place in the midnight. A lot of the people were killed in their sleep! My middle school geography teacher described the TangShan earthquake to us in class one day. She said that she was very young at that time. Before the earthquake happened, she was happened to be outside in the street. She saw orange light emitting from the horizon far away from where she was standing. Then at the next second, she felt the shaking of the ground. People who were awake at that point ran out quickly from their houses and yelled loudly to let everyone know what was going on. Cracks appeared on the walls and grounds. In TangShan earthquake, thousands of people died and injured; thousands of houses broke down. It was tragic. Earthquakes happen around the world and no prediction about when they will occur is accurate. If some organization or some person can find a way to tell, that will be so awesome and can prevent people from getting killed.

No.66: About Myself

I guess it is hard for me to blog about myself in a creative way since I just go like “My name is Yujie Feng. And I am a freshman, Business major.” all the time. Introducing myself is the part that I want to do the last. When I am with a stranger, I do not want to feel like we are strangers. For the most of the time, I can be talking to a person for a very long time without knowing his or her name. I never ask.

Back to the topic. I always describe myself as a cat. Cat is my favorite animal and I think all the cats are cute, not matter which breed they are. I read a short article talking about the ten reasons why people like cats. 1. It is selfish. 2. It constantly changes like women do. 3. It is lonely. 4. It only does the things that can make it happy. 5. It can keep cleaning itself for a whole day. 6. It is the queen in every family. 7. It knows how to act. 8. It can always get the food it likes. 9. It is not liked by everyone. 10. It is smarter than any human. Personally, I admire cat’s life and I want to live a cat’s life. I think and believe that there is a bound between me and cats. There was a cat lived in the apartment building where I and my dad lived for the last two years. The cat ran away from her old master and never went back. I loved that cat and I smiled to her every time I went pass her. I never really patted her though because I was kind of afraid that she is not as clean as she looked, maybe bacteria. However, one day I got back from school, she followed me up to the second floor from the first. We lived on the third. I was afraid that she would follow me home. I would not mind but my dad would get mad. She stopped me at the stairs when I was going up to the third floor. Literally, she shopped me with her front paw and put her paw on my jeans. I bent over and patted on her back. As if she understood, after a while, she released her paw and went downstairs. I felt kind of sad.

Maybe I talked too much about cats, but not about myself. However, I think I have the same traits that cats have too. Just like the short article listed, if I did not see the title, I would probably think that the article was talking about me. Looking at cats is like looking at me, I guess.

No.65: Different Time Period

If I could choose which time period I would be born in, I would choose the Qing Dynasty (1636-1911). To be more specific, I would like it to be around the years that KangXi Emperor was on the throne, around 1700s would be the best. The reason that I would choose to be born in this time period was because a famous and noble person existed during this time period, the eighth son of the KangXi Emperor. His name was YinSi, and family name was Aisin Giorro.

I was watching a TV drama series called The Palace like two weeks ago and it was about the stories between the sons of KangXi Emperor and this girl called QingChuan Luo. In the drama, YinSi is a very good person; he cares about his brothers and protects the people that he loves. He is also a very filial son to both his father and mother. Although I have to admit that the drama dramatized all the characters and YinSi was probably not as nice in the history as in the play, I still like him a lot after I watched The Palace. He is like the perfect man for every girl.

In the history, YinSi was born in 1681 and died in 1726, at the age of 45. According to the historical record, YinSi’s mother was only a servant girl before she became the concubine of KangXi Emperor. So YinSi did not have very high up social status as his other brothers. However, he was one of the smartest sons of KangXi Emperor and KangXi Emperor liked him a lot. Then the conflict of choosing the crown prince came along. YinSi was the ideal crown prince among the ministers, but KangXi Emperor thought his social status was relatively low. From that point on, KangXi Emperor started to dislike YinSi. Then YinSi died at the fourth year of the reign of the next emperor. It was kind of sad because the new emperor did not like him and blamed everything on him.

I wish I could be born in the Qing Dynasty and find this perfect man to give him support and protection.

No.64: The Biggest Mistake

The biggest mistake I ever made and I am still making is not working hard toward the end of the quarter because I start to get bored with the classes that I am taking. I am all excited when I do the course scheduling and am really looking forward to the new quarter. And by the new quarter starts, I am all excited to go to the class and learn everything about it. However, I think it’s after the midterms, to give the exact time, that I start to lose interesting in the courses and begin not to work hard both inside and outside of class. I know I should not stop working hard even when I have lost interesting, but I cannot help it. I start to push to do everything until it is almost the due day and of course, the quality of the homework is low. Sometimes, I lose interest in a course not because I do not like the material taught in the class, just because there are so many things to do for that class. And every time I think of the homework or the things I have to do for that class, I have a headache and cannot keep my mind on it. I am an easily distracted person, so that can count toward a second reason why I stop working hard at the end of the quarter. Too many things going on around campus and among my friends and they make it hard to concentrate on my study. I am a board member of a student organization here and we have a meeting every week. So that kind of takes some time off from me and makes me distracted more. Actually, I do not think this is the biggest mistake I made or still making, it is one of the flaws in my character.

No.63: My Best Friend

The best friend I want to write about today is the first best friend I ever had when I was in elementary school. Her name is Sixi Hu. I do not quite remember how we became friends. But I know we were best friends for about four and half years before I transferred to another school and lost contact with her. She was a pretty girl in my memory and she had long hair. Different from the black hair most people including me had, her hair color was brownish. Her hair was really thick, as I remember it. She used to pull her hair into a pony tail and it was a handful when I felt it. We used to do everything together. Even when one of us wanted to go to the bathroom, we would ask the other person to “come with me”. I missed her a lot after I lost contact with her. For a long time, I had been asking my mom to look for her so that I could see her again. Because my mom’s workplace was very close to where she went to school, it was convenient for my mom to do so. But I never really heard anything from her since then. What made me excited was that just couple of weeks ago, I met her on the Internet and we chatted a little. The chat was not long, we basically asked “how have you been”, “which college are you in”, and very formal things like that. I felt that it became uncomfortable now to talk to her since we had not talk for about eight years. It feels like we have become strangers and that makes me sad.