Goodbye 2009. Hello 2010!

(Photo by F. Kersante)

We have now entered 2010, the last of the "Lost Decade" as it has been termed by the German weekly Der Spiegel. At eRenlai, we also ponder over the failures and the successes of the last ten years, and - despite the disappointment caused by the Copenhagen Summit - we are not so pessimistic. What about you? How would you evaluate the decade? Do not hesitate to share with us your reflections and your stories.

In our editorials section, Chu-Joe Hsia, an architect, explains the contribution of city-dwelling Aborigines to urban development in Taiwan, and Pinti shares a documentary shot during her visit to the Rukai tribe in Southern Taiwan. Also, we welcome a new member in our team -Paul Farrelly from Australia. Paul offers us his interpretation of the movie Avatar by James Cameron. As for myself, I examine the relation between drugs, addiction and literature.

Whilst A/H1N1 flu is still rife in the world, we dedicate this month’s Focus to the colloquium jointly organised with the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI) on the best practices for the management of global health outbreaks which was held on November 28 in Taipei. Watch video excerpts and read accounts of the debate led among academics, practitioners and civil servants:
- K.U. Menon exposes the Singapore experience in managing uncertainty in a pandemic.
Saifullah Khan shares his experience of health communication within a big pharmaceutical company.
- Steve Kuo, the Director of Centers for Disease Control in Taiwan, explains the strategies of communication with the Mass Media in order to strike the balance between alert and panic during a pandemic.
- Alain Vandersmissen, from the Directorate General of the External Relations for the European Commission, introduces the roles and limits of communication, in the context of global health crises in the European Union.

我看到

appel raté à 3 heures du matin, insomnie matinale, essai de traduction d'un texte sur l'amitié

Extrait de Panorama de la vie humaine, Yu Qiuyu

J’ai vu que sous la plus sublime des lueurs lunaires, les vallées sont des déserts
Et que les bras les plus intimes étreignent des amitiés orphelines

J’ai vu que les plus belles rencontres au soir de sa vie sont les adversaires de sa jeunesse
Et que les vieilles rancœurs les plus tenaces sont dirigées envers les amis de longue date

J’ai vu que les pactes les plus fermes sont conclus par intérêt
Et que les séparations les plus nettes sont décidées par amour

J’ai vu qu’il est plus aisé de se réconcilier après une guerre de cent ans
Que d’oublier un mot fâcheux

J’ai vu que les amitiés les plus quelconques s’exacerbent dans les flots de l’alcool
Tandis que les affections les plus nobles s’épurent sous les traits d’un pinceau pudique

J’ai vu que les gens de peu se précipitent au chevet des mourants
Quand les vrais amis n’apprennent les mauvaises nouvelles qu’au dernier instant

《人生風景》（余秋雨）

我看到，被最美的月光籠罩著的，總是荒蕪的山谷。
我看到，被最密集的「朋友」簇擁著的，總是友情的孤兒。

我看到，最興奮的晚年相晤，總是不外於昔日敵手。
我看到，最怨憤的蒼老歎息，總是針對著早年的好友。

我看到，最堅固的結盟，大多是由於利益。
我看到，最決絕的分離，大多是由於情感。

我看到，最容易和解的，是百年血戰。
我看到，最不能消解的，是半句齟齬。

我看到，最低俗的友情被滔滔的酒水浸泡著，越泡越大。
我看到，最典雅的友情被矜持的水筆描畫著，越描越淡。

我看到，最早到臨終床前的，總是小人。
我看到，最後被告知噩耗的，總是摯友。

Le dos de mon père

eRenlai consacre son focus du mois au thème de la paternité. En chinois, le magazine et le focus ont titré: 父親，不只有背影 , ce qui signifie "Un père n'est pas seulement un dos" (la traduction - de mon crû - n'est sûrement pas la meilleure, mais j'ai voulu garder la dimension involontairement comique de l'histoire).

En effet, le titre chinois fait référence à un texte apparemment incontournable des études secondaires à Taiwan : Dos (背影, voir le texte original en chinois) de Zhu Ziqing (朱自清) (1925). Le narrateur raconte sa relation avec son père qui connait des déboires professionnels et affectifs : jeune garçon puis adolescent, il voit la déchéance financière de son père qui doit payer les funérailles de sa mère et pour cela hypothéquer la maison familiale. Un jour, le fils doit se rendre a Nanjing et le père décide de l'accompagner. S'ensuit une scène poignante durant laquelle le père du narrateur décide d'acheter des fruits pour que son fiston ait de quoi grignoter pendant le trajet. Le narrateur verse alors de chaudes larmes en évoquant la silhouette grassouillette de son père qui doit descendre un parapet pour aller acheter les fruits. Le texte s'achève ensuite sur la décrépitude du père qui devient acariâtre a la fin de sa vie et passe son temps à accabler de reproches son entourage.

Mon chinois n'est peut-être pas assez bon pour saisir toutes les subtilités littéraires du texte (il me faut en effet faire un effort d'imagination assez considérable pour percevoir l'aspect dramatique et poignant de la situation), mais je crois que je peux ressentir ce que tente de décrire le narrateur quand je me réfère à mon expérience personnelle : dire au-revoir a quelqu'un et avoir l'impression que c'est la dernière fois que l'on voit sa silhouette s'éloigner de dos. Ne dit-on pas en français que "partir, c'est mourir un peu"?...

Love taught me not to love

Bob’s new editorial (Falling In and Out of Love) is about love, or, better, about how to control one’s feeling… French literature gives us famous examples of thwarted loves due to State reasons (Berenice by Racine) or moral necessities (The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette). In each case, love does not triumph at the end but has to be sacrificed in the name of what must transcend the only selfish and individual desire or feeling… They all tell stories of renouncement; fewer are the stories that describe the pain felt after breaking up.
Why is it so difficult to let go a lost love and especially a love that one knows full well it is not suitable? Proust gives his own explanation of that phenomenon: “Talking about love, it is easier to renounce a feeling than to give up a habit” (La Prisonniere). Indeed, the narrator in the book, despite thinking for a long time about breaking up with his lover, once she’s gone before his call, just feels a great emptiness and the irresistible desire to go after her…
In The Dangerous Liaisons, Madame de Tourvel just dies after receiving the famous letter sent by Valmont but dictated by la Marquise de Merteuil, “Angel, this is not my fault…” Indeed, when a relationship ends, whose fault should it be? Who should bear the responsibility? At least one should know that people are not just here to do their bidding.
The end of a love relationship is like a small death. In French, we are used to saying “to do the mourning of a relationship” to describe the fact that someone has to come to terms with having split up. Indeed, it is not only the loss of the loved one that makes the situation so painful but also the loss of the comfort, the reassuring sensation of not being alone to face and discover the world…

Bendu, the Pied Piper...

Here I would like to introduce our mysterious guest: Bendu… Bendu is an unseizable being, a poet of modern ages who wanders on eRenlai, swarming his words and his colors... Unlike the pied piper of Hamelin, his melodies are not followed by rats but by pictures, poems or paintings: Here are his inks, colors explosions or lines guided by the blow of the spirit… Inks painting by Bendu.

And an oceanic poem for those who haven’t seen the sea for a long time…

Taking the pulse

Bob

I am sure you have already heard about Bob, our English editor but most of all the most prolific contributor of the website.
Bob is handicapped, he has been struck twice by bad luck: a polio and a tragic car accident. It is very interesting to hear him talk about his own experience and what lead him to set up the Operation Deshandicap.

Beyond the hospital, there are also needs, the rehabilitation is a very important step to make one accept and live with one’s handicap, one’s difference. As Bob says in his interview, as a Jesuit priest, he didn’t really need to think about his rehabilitation and he had all along the support of the Company of Jesus. The “Operation Deshandicap” was then set up in order to enable others to get the same chances of rehabilitation.

Bob also stresses out in his article Handicaps and Rehabilitation the differences between a “handicap” and an “impairment” : “The truth is that in every society there are great numbers of “handicapped” people, not necessarily those afflicted with “physical or mental disabilities”, but also all those who are the victims of “financial, educational, environmental or cultural impairments” which prevent them from entering into the mainstreams of society and separate them from admission to the ranks of those entitled to enjoy the full benefits of belonging to “proper” society. “

When time has stopped on the island.

Have you ever watched TV in Taiwan? It is very hard to find international news. There must be at least a dozen TV news channels which broadcast all the same stuff at the same time. Whenever I ask some Taiwanese about this phenomenon, most of them say that local people are just not interested in what is going on abroad. But what is the real cause? Are the Taiwanese TV networks not reporting about news abroad because there is no audience? Or are the Taiwanese not interested in watching international news because TV does not report it?

But maybe the main question does not even lay there or we risk falling into the unsolvable problem of the egg and the hen. As for myself, I think that it comes from the “island” mentality, predominent in such a small country. Thus, Taiwan besides being physically isolated, also seems to live in an abstract isolation. Taiwan is its own whole world.

Recently I read a Taiwanese short story called “The Clock”. It was written by Zhang Xiaofeng (張曉風) as part of her collection of short stories published in 1968, entitled Wailing Wall (哭牆). The story is about clocks and time: in a remote village of Taiwan, people start to be confused and disoriented when they realize that no clock gives the same hour. All the everyday life becomes a mess, teachers arrive 30-minutes late to class and a rivalry begins between the eastern and the western part of the village since each side relies on a different clock. The narrator is a disenchanted junior high school teacher, who goes to see a friend, a former teacher, who lives a misanthropic life, raising goats. They discuss the situation. The narrator says that, since nobody can decide which is the right time from the two main clocks of the village, why not look for a third source to decide a reliable time, for example a radio. But his friend just makes a violent diatribe against the necessity of having a radio. They don’t need a radio because they are used to living happily without knowing anything from the outside world. They know nothing about hunger in India. They are happy because they are not conscious of misery elsewhere in the world.

Is this one of the particularities of a “living-on-a-island” way of thinking? The island by its natural limits is also a castle which can protect from outside calamities, but what if the worm is already inside? In fact, the narrator is far from being happy: he seems to regret the time he lived in Kaoshiung (the biggest city in the South of Taiwan); he misses his girlfriend of that time; he was sent to the countryside after being at odds with the Head of his former school; he was punished for not conforming to the rules or local norms. A clock and the time it gives have to be normalized in order to be useful. If not, as in this story, dissensions may arise. Is it also because when we live in society, we need some norms, some rules to cling to or to bypass.

At the end of the story, the narrator lends his watch to his wife who goes to find out the right time. For the first time in a long time, he feels weird and then free without the watch he is used to wearing on his wrist. But as night descends on the village, the clouds of his dull life shadow once again his emergent hopes.

Today’s favorites
Every man lives on an island by Bob
Medias in Taiwan by Kailing Wang