TomBen’s Web Excursions

因为大学毕业后直接读了博士，博士毕业后就继续研究者的工作，说是说工作，但是和念书时也没啥太大区别，所以总感觉现在的自己和学生也没什么区别，哪怕教过许多的大学生，但我也不认为自己和他们有什么区别，只是比他们早学几年而已。不过区别肯定是在某些时刻发生了。在生活中也偶尔会冒出诧异的感觉，譬如在看剧时、或者在消费时，发现自己的收入已经比家长高很多了，虽然匮乏的记忆仍旧历历在目，但那些好像是发生在另一个人身上的事。再譬如看一些文艺作品，讲那些大姐姐和大哥哥，那些我想以之为生活目标的人，一看发现他们年纪比我还小。再譬如每天起来洗漱时，真真切切地感觉到自己的年岁在增长。

智识是增长了、但是我的情感能力却完全停留在学生时代。虽然读过许多激动人心的文学作品，但仍旧对讲青春期的故事着迷，到现在还在追相关的新番并为之感动。我怀疑自己还在青春期中，似乎就只是在象牙塔里空长了年岁。这十年我在干什么呢，我不理解。身边的人如何进入自己的生活，生活的洪流又是怎么吞噬一个个人的，我不理解。但是更令我难受的是，当我看到现在的中学生时，我也不理解。

我觉得人的经验中是有很多问题需要被解决的，我不知道别人是怎么解决这些问题的，但我不解决它们我就没法进入下一个阶段。当我搁置它们的时候，我就并没有在成长，物理时间、精神时间和情感时间完全错开了。我现在也很困惑自己是否也能和别人一样成为看起来很正常的大人，又或者是否有能力保卫住我现在这样能让自己胡思乱想的生活。每次想到这里我就感到难过。我没有勇气进入新的生活，就像一个因为执念而仍旧留存于世的幽灵一样。

一代人有一代人的方便面

https://archive.ph/Eyv3Y

中国不可企及，这令人更加向往

https://www.the-mayfly.com/p/911

这时候我决定做一件厉害的事情：学习中文。于是我和几个朋友花100美元买了一辆没有地板的别克车，开去加州，去斯坦福大学学习中文。但效果不好，没什么收获。

有些人生来天赋异禀，但这种人很少。你必须学会​​如何思考、写作、编辑，并坚持下去。同时，为读者写作于学术不同；学术写作基本上是没有读者的，甚至你的教授也不想读。

我无法亲身前往中国，但这让我对中国更加痴迷。我后来写了一本关于西藏的书。我去过几次西藏，西方人对西藏如此着迷的原因正是它的不可达性。

蒋介石是个怎样的人？他非常冷漠。他更加克制。他应该很感到屈辱，困在这个小岛上，跟像我这样的人一起梦想着去北京。

我当年在哈佛可以接触到许多在战争前就与中国有外交经历的人。 但如今学术圈追求终身教职，需要依靠研究福柯或德里达那些虚无缥缈的理论问题。你失去了许多通过现实经验、不靠学术体制来回答问题的人。在我看来，这是美国教育的一个重大悲剧。并不是说现在没有好文章或者有趣的教授，但如果你现在环顾四周，已经没有那种像太阳一样让行星环绕的人物。也许有人会认为这是一个老旧的模式，但我还是有点怀念它。

那个时代的中国知识分子为人确实可以很傲慢。我认为这触及了理解中国其领导人、毛泽东、习近平等的一个根本问题。

China’s Fragile Social Compact

The point that I have been working my way toward is that more than ever before, this trip left me with the impression of China as a deeply and increasingly bifurcated society, one in which inequality is high and seems to be growing, where people are living in increasingly separate worlds.

Brought up to date, a newer disposition might go something like this: If you’re rich, good for you; enjoy, indulge, and don’t make waves. If you’re not, though, well, you’re largely on your own.

Not only are people seeking to leave via emigration, but Chinese also seem to be expressing their feelings and confidence about the future in another, even more telling way: their decisions about when or whether to get married and have children.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/20/china-society-economy-migration-demographics

这 3 本书都值得阅读，推荐

Hessler, Peter. 2024. Other Rivers: A Chinese Education. New York: Penguin Press.
Wong, Edward. 2024. At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China. New York: Viking.
Ash, Alec. 2024. The Mountains Are High: A Year of Escape and Discovery in Rural China. Melbourne: Scribble.

在坏系统里做好老师：聊聊何伟的新书 Other Rivers

https://busangpodcast.com/episodes/liao-liao-he-wei-de-xin-shu-other-rivers-f2fee67a

Stopping the Next China Shock: A Collective Strategy for Countering Beijing’s Mercantilism

It is a mistake to presume that Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) think about the Chinese economy the same way Western economists do. The key to understanding Xi’s economic policies is to recognize that they are principally about power, not prosperity.

He will almost certainly forge ahead toward concentrating the world’s industrial power within China, even at the risk of provoking a cataclysmic trade conflict with other countries.

Only by banding together in a trade defense coalition—an idea I developed with an economist in Asia—can countries with market-based economies protect themselves against China’s predatory practices.

Xi and his colleagues are not concerned primarily with the pursuit of efficiency or the enhancement of aggregate national welfare for its own sake. Neither market-loving capitalists nor true-believing Marxists, they can best be understood as mercantilist Leninists whose top priority is to acquire and exercise political power.

Their economic policies are designed to preserve the CCP’s dominance and control at home while boosting the country’s industrial and technological capacities to transform China into the world’s most productive, innovative, and powerful state.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/stopping-next-china-shock-friedberg

Environment in Asia Series Discussion: Stevan Harrell’s “An Ecological History of Modern China”

05:07 The first thing is we have to remember that China is a repressive regime and is putting innocent people in prison for life sentences. I’m gonna say a lot of good things about China in this talk, but I don’t want people to forget that, especially during the sad time.

一本关于 Ecology 的书将 Natural 加上删除线，真是很妙的用法。

Harrell, Stevan. 2023. An Ecological History of Modern China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295751696/an-ecological-history-of-modern-china.

二零二三行香港记

在香港访学时，我认识了一位很可敬的老师，她听到小胡的案子，问我，你明知道没有结果还要撞墙吗？我对她说，因为我觉得我能提供程序价值；因为我觉得有些事，在更远的未来，会开花结果。

https://telegra.ph/%E4%BA%8C%E9%9B%B6%E4%BA%8C%E4%B8%89%E8%A1%8C%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E8%AE%B0-05-30

35 years ago today, June 4, 1989, Poles ousted the communist party in the first partly free elections since WW2. The election set off a chain of events that led to the opening of the Berlin wall. The USSR's European empire had collapsed by the end of the year.

Also on June 4, 1989, the Chinese army fired on Tianamen Square protesters, ending any hope of political change. The massacre helped inspire the Chinese communist party to create the total surveillance state they are completing today.

https://journa.host/@anneapplebaum/112556790042181586

These were the critical final years when the Cold War was drawing to a close, and there were nearly simultaneous democracy movements in several other parts of the world. “People power” successfully brought down the Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, student demonstrations in South Korea led to a democratic presidential election in 1987, and in that same year Taiwan repealed martial law and legalized the formation of opposition parties, becoming a genuine multiparty democracy. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, beginning the unraveling of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations in China ended very differently.

How to Walk and Talk: Everything We Know
https://kk.org/thetechnium/files/2023/12/howtowalkandtalk.pdf

https://frostming.com/2024/meet-with-paul/

How China’s New Left Embraced the State

China’s New Left thinkers shifted towards embracing the state, seeing China’s success as a model of advanced socialism. They advocate for the superiority of the Chinese system and engage with Western socialist ideas to rejuvenate Chinese socialism. Despite internal challenges, they align with Xi Jinping’s push for socialism with Chinese characteristics.

https://chinabooksreview.com/2024/05/16/how-chinas-new-left-embraced-the-state

姜超. 上海中苏友好宣传教育运动研究（1949–1965）. 华东师范大学, 2015.