阿姆斯特丹

阿姆斯特丹

我想粗谈阿姆斯特丹，因为我刚从那里回来。

Hyson和我从巴黎出发，一起到了阿姆斯特丹。

那是一个美丽，性感的城市。人们在桥头叫卖粉红色羽毛的手铐，鲜花编织的鞭子，鸽子在旁边咕咕求偶，乐此不疲。

Hyson漂亮华丽的朋友们来迎接了。

Hyson稀里哗啦的荷兰语迸射在她们脸上。阳光下的河里，绿头鸭们在围攻海鸥，泛起闪闪的银光。

法式魅力果然很大，即使是法式的荷兰语，法式的荷兰吻。

金发小妞们像一串银铃般，边响边随风扑飞上来。因为这些朋友穿得比较多，以至于与橱窗里的姑娘很不同，不是用顺时针扭和逆时针扭那么简单的词儿就能形容。

“Hello, I am a new bee in Amsterdam.” 我麻木地凑近其中一位的脸。

“Hi! Glad to meet you. I love your French English though.” 耳边有很腻的香水味和伦敦味。

我微惊，“你丫扯淡。” 又低下头，微笑着看着地图。

罪过。如果我的微笑真的是会心一笑，那么就像某些巴黎人和伦敦人，或者北京人和上海人那样自然本能地对视而笑。这种真诚的微笑，比起一个热情的吻，当然是没有文化得多。

我们去喝了美酒，看了可爱的甲虫。



遇见“25块，开发票！”这样的流利的中文，我就说了一句“pauvre con（可怜的蠢货）”。 非常奇妙，这句话和法国总统刚好同时说出，我希望他的话不会被人注意，而我的话会引起很大轰动。

可惜，在现阶段的世界，结果是相反的。

这天早晨，我精神比较低落，睡得很昏沉，据说鼾声很大。

我不能继续作梦，我该离开这里。

我关上了门，衣衫不整地走了出来，从阿姆斯特丹走了出来。

我的耳朵被自己强行人工灌制了准备好的一首歌，« Dans le port d’Amsterdam, y’a des marins qui boivent… »

（在阿姆斯特丹港口，有一群水手在喝酒，他们喝啊喝，喝啊喝…….）

再见，阿姆斯特丹。

Letter to my tutors in China Netcom

Dear Mis Jiang and Mis Huang,

I have been in France for more than a year by now. And during one year I have engaged myself to the endless classes at school, to be a good student.

Forgive me for this late hello that I now bring you. Being a student in France who is suffering from extremely advanced mathematics and automatics studies, I feel almost separated from the telecom industry. This is the reason why I hesitate to write a letter to you to discuss with you, as well as any other experts in our industry.

However, my strong feeling of identity as a telecom person has never diminished. That’s why I always think of you, my dear teachers, and the wonderful time we spent together in China Netcom.

To tell the truth, it was in China Netcom that I began to focus my real career interest to the industry. It is the telecom industry. And working in a telecom operator gave me the broadest vision to look at this industry, even to manipulate it!

The meetings and conferences that I participated in were, in particular, a fruitful experience. This is the best part of my internship in China Netcom because I am a conference person and I did speak a lot for China Netcom during the conferences in “Friendship Hotel” (especially with Doctor ZHANG Zhen). :-)

To tell more truth, I did not completely focus myself in the work in China Netcom because I was busy preparing for my application for France. That is why you could notice I had so many days if absence for doing many affaires out of work. For this, I now sincerely apologize to you, hoping you can understand me.

I always ask ZHANG Xi about the current situation of you two teachers and I heard that he is becoming such a busy expert. I am so proud of him. I think you are also willing to be informed about my studies and life a little bit. What’s more, I promised you, Mis. Huang, to tell you more about France to prepare a better future for your son!

I am now studying in a top engineering school. There are two types of engineering school in France. The one that is specialized in a certain industry, and the one that is training very well-rounded people, which means you have to learn everything in the engineering world. The second type is better than the first type in France and students are trained to be the future directors and managers. My school is the second type. So I have to learn automatics, information system, telecom, energy…

Because my school is one of the best engineering schools, every subject here is much more difficult than other schools and every subject is more deeply studied even than the schools which are specialized in one domain.

Every student in my school is very well-educated and they study very hard (much more hard-working than BUPT students).

Life here is busy and peaceful. I have no time to travel around but I can always enjoy the beautiful sunshine at the place where I live. We can learn a lot in such a quiet environment.

Now I am working in the second largest mobile operator in France called “SFR”, which is the member of “Vodafone” in France. It owns the largest 3G network and the biggest number of subscribers in France. This is an internship during one year (from this month to August 2008). And after this internship I still have half a year’s study at school.

Everyday I discuss with all the manufacturers of mobile phones (Nokia, Huawei, Alcatel, Samsung, ZTE, Sony-Ericsson, LG…) in the conferences to decide the technical characteristics of new mobile phones coming to the market and I develop information solutions for marketing and strategy.

Working in the best CBD in Europe, I can enjoy the beautiful city of Paris by looking out of my window. I feel content of life.

Sometimes I take a walk by the river Seine, while my heart is totally peaceful. This feels great. But I am not a person who can stop fighting and enjoy the tranquil life. I still need some passion to prove that I can change a grand network; I can change billions of people’s life, like in China Netcom.

I really miss you, my dear teachers. My passion for telecom has started again in my new internship in Paris, and never ends.

I wish you all the best. May happiness always accompany with you, your family, and every friend of yours.


Your student ever,

Yan ZHANG



DSP - Marketing/Stratégie Terminaux
SFR

1 Place Carpeaux - Tour Séquoia

92915 Paris La Défense Cedex

http://www.sfr.fr/

收拾电脑深处的文件夹时总会被déjà-vu搞得心动， 因为这些久违的文件实在太经典了。 这些温馨的， 深邃的， 动人的， 杀气冲天的déjà-vu总是贯穿于我暗伏杀机的平淡生活中，起到了张晓龙的问候般的效果。 我很满意。

忽略其导致癫痫病的副作用之后，这就是现在和未来的力量之源。 用鲁迅的口吻来讲，这就是现在和未来的力量之源罢 ！

然而在天天叫喊”No more déjà-vu, please!”的Stanley同学那里，情况就大相径庭了。最近他开始质疑自己的一句有些年岁的口头禅：”When we jump out of the circle, we can see the bigger picture. ” 并不留情面地对这句话作出鉴定： 纯属SB。

然而正是一句对今天没有指导意义的废话，惊现在我多年前稚嫩的演讲稿里，并作为déjà-vu的主要来源正在激励着我背上的汗毛。Stanley其实早就在2003年慈祥地提醒过我，这只是一种手段，在危难时刻创造一种机会，可以让别人陶醉于文化的déjà-vu中而自己能够挤入智者群中暂时躲避两秒钟，皆大欢喜。

附上新鲜出土的21世纪初的21世纪杯稿子及音频以纪念刚刚另一种灵感的诞生。

Download: Well-rounded Education
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, April 2004
Zhang Yan

Ladies and gentlemen,
I’m truly honored by the opportunity to stand before you on this special day, a day when I as an engineering student can express my special thoughts to all of you audience from a diversity of backgrounds.
Last October I participated in the Model United Nations Conference hosted by Chinese Foreign Ministry. I still remember vividly the scene when the reporter of Phoenix TV interviewed me after the conference. She asked: “As a student of telecommunications, why do you spend so much time and energy preparing for this political event?” I said: “To give myself an all-round education!” And the next morning, that reply became the headline of Beijing Daily, if not China Daily. It was entitled: “Science and engineering students seeking to be well-rounded.”
Yes, we want to be well-rounded because we are challenged. We engineering students take it for granted that technology is changing incredibly fast. We are thinking nervously and seriously whether our colleges are failing to provide a foundation in the skills currently needed in industry. Take my major telecommunications for example. Scientists say that 21st century is a biomedical time, not an electrical time. So the interdisciplinary exploitation serves as the critical part for our electric and electronics world to find new way of being.
Therefore, throughout the history of our university, researchers, educators, and students have been increasing connections among disciplines. We are proud of our REU program—Research Experiences for Undergraduates, which was established by the student union of our telecommunications school. We members are now doing a Cochlear Implants Project. In order to provide deaf people a hearing, we are trying to produce a bionic ear for these disabled. This artificial device incorporates electrical and electronics engineering, biomedical engineering, psychoacoustics and cognition science together. Through this project, we came to understand each other, we started to appreciate what we did not know, we managed to overcome differences, and we were motivated to travel in unexplored territory seeking new understandings of our world. In a word, we had witnessed the great power of knowledge collaboration. Students from different fields had regained their future opportunities because they know for sure that the interdisciplinary education is always there providing us with a broad stage to reach our full potential.
But the power of knowledge collaboration is not restricted to science and engineering. It is in the full community of learning. Walking around campus I absorbed a reality that there is a seamless web between students from different professional backgrounds. The engineering students are discussing animatedly in a philosophy lecture, speaking passionately in the public speaking club, and looking for sparkling ideas from learning history and arts. How wonderful that is! That, ladies and gentleman, is just a significant step forward to be well-rounded because once we jump out of the circle we can see the bigger picture.
Still in the Model United Nations, on the issue of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the agenda passed a motion to urge the UNESCO to spread a new kind of education called Science and Engineering Ethics to universities around the world, which is a 1-year’s course first developed by our REU program last year. From the birth of atomic bomb to the cloning of humans, from the increasingly popular campus suicide to the immergence of new and more harmful computer viruses that are made by our university students. By illustrating and analyzing these cases, the course will strike every scientist and engineer’s heart that we can never be well-rounded talents unless we are engaged in healthy psychology and high moral principle.
Still, after participating in various political and humanitarian activities, it is still my greatest pleasure to find inspiration in the lives of scientists and engineers, as they have insight that can be generalized to any area of life. Let me end my speech with the Nobel Prize winner Li Zhengdao’s words: “The realization of the perfect combination of science and engineering, science and arts, technology and humanity, is the greatest symbol of a university’s success.”

Nimes

Nimes is big enough for me. I mean there are lots of arcades, supermarkets and stuff in the uptown. Cars crowd everywhere in this old damp southern city of France.

Further more, there are lots of weirdoes and zombies in these southern regions who have been living during thousands of years since Chinese emperor tackled Turkish harassment for the 248th time. These inhabitants are called Nimois.

When you're in this moldy uptown, it's like this genre of life cannot excite you before it fulfils your exotic curiosity. I get pretty far out, even in the spring sunshine.

Apparently I ain't acquaintanted with the routes. I've got the mark somewhere but I won't tell you where it is because these folks are promenading too slowly and you can stare at their movements so conscientiously to figure out each of their destinations.

These zombies are folks who have just been hit with the fallout, probably from Uzbekistan or pretty much earlier from the ancient times.

Plus some 1000 years' brain damage from Greece and Italy, a lot of the toxins and germ warfare…

Oh boy, my neurotic mentality!

So the plague also, I can smell it but I cannot precise the location because it is fluid thus everywhere. I don't really know what is going erroneous. I just see these French residents I don't comprehend. Maybe it's like they have been genetically malformed or something. It's almost like they've all got some kind of weird disease.

Four euros' business could make them run around and go insane. Plus they don't speak properly they just slur like those Marseilais, but way less fasionable.

Alas! It's bizarre. It's twisted. And these creatures are surreal. I don't know what to call them in a scientific manner, but Nimois are very dangerous. Zombies are just a superstitious term for them. They are not actually whom you know from the culture propoganda. Dead people are walking around but Nimois may as well be exactly sorted in this category.

Anyway they are a threat when you're inside Europe. I mean spiritually, it's like you are going across the wastelands it's nothing but void, or empty dunes with desert, with burned out highways, whatever. And you hear the requiem even when you digest a kebab. Ironically the tourists do have the illusion that the Nimois are happy and everything is peaceful and dynamic. They just can't see the drifting devils because the spring sunshine is too bright; they just can't hear the roaring beasts because it is too noisy in the cafés; they just can't smell the rancide sludge and filth because it is the season of enormous land of lanvender flowers in Provence nearby.

I mean it is not their fault, after all.

And you can tell from the old street lights that you'd be getting close to somewhere different: you'll see this shabby kebab restaurant.

"I'm gonna offer you this plastic bag because you are his wife, hahahahaha!" the man laughed licentiously to my girl.

Wow man! This is hilarious: Now you are talking! His exotic logic makes me excited.

I am caught, I'd say, for the first time in Nimes. But this is a Turkish man, not a French, nor a Nimois. As a far-easterner, should I be proud or sorry before you? Gee, this person understands nothing about his turpitude nor his innocence. He runs a restaurant and he is a virgin of philosophy. That's all.

This city, I mean, this town is too old to be true.


Anyway I'd been humping for a couple of days in Nimes before I retrieved the reality. I mean I started to embrace the spring sunshine elsewhere.

You and me

   On bosse chaque jour pour un nouveau progrès, et chaque jour la vie nous donne plein de peine. On est curieux de savoir la destination finale vers laquelle on marchera quand on deviendra vieux, La vieillesse nous permet d’explorer plus profondément la relation entre nos propres expériences et notre but de vie. La fin de vie, est-ce que ce serait un succès touchant ou alors ce serait une terminaison de progrès? C’est un choix de notre propre mentalité. C’est-à-dire que la vie n’a aucune signification lors de l’arrêt de pensée, y compris la mort et toutes les têtes non cultivées.

    ---- Yan

 

Il s’agit d'un film You and me, de Ma Liwen. Née à Jiangxi en 1971, la réalisatrice s’inspire de son propre vécu et démontre qu’il n’est pas nécessaire de recourir à des effets spéciaux pour donner naissance à un bon film. Xiao Ma, une étudiante provinciale débarque à Pékin en plein hiver et loue à bon marché une chambre à une grand-mère avide, âgée de 90 ans. Située dans la cour de la maison traditionnelle de la vielle, la chambre se trouve dans un piteux état, sans gaz, sans électricité ni eau courante.

 

Pour la rendre habitable, Xiao Ma, débrouillarde, effectue des va-et-vient sous l’œil attentif de la grand-mère. La caméra suit les allers et retours de la jeune fille. Ses déplacements rapides donnent du rythme au film et apportent un peu de vie extérieure et de chaleur humaine à la cour intérieure de cette modeste maison où tout semble figé depuis des décennies. La vieille femme vit seule. Au départ, elle considère Xiao Ma comme une nuisance. Mais elle se voit obligée de la tolérer car elle représente une source de revenus. Avec l’arrivée du printemps, leurs relations changent. De caractère opposé, les deux femmes se rapprochent et s’apprécient mutuellement au gré des saisons. Film intimiste, You and me étudie les relations entre des femmes de générations différentes et met en lumière la solitude des personnes âgées dans un monde en mutation rapide.