Rest in Peace

My homeroom teacher in grade 4 loved to dive, she used to tell us exciting experience of seeing sharks or almost running out of oxygen all the time. October 1st 2002, I remember that it was a public holiday. That night her name was on the news: she was said to be missing after an accident happened while she was deep down in the ocean. The next day back in school, when the news about her unfortunate death was announced, everyone in my class started sobbing, some crying out loud. That was my first time dealing with death.

Last summer, I learned that my Mandarin tutor passed away after a long fight with cancer. Although we hadn't been in touch for almost six years, my sister and I still went to her funeral to show our respect. I was surprised how emotional I got when I was there because we were quite distanced by then.

I guess this is the thing about death. We dread it, we avoid it, we wonder, and we fight. It is the one thing that is inevitable to absolutely everyone, even the proud and the mighty must one day lie beneath the earth like everybody else. A sad but true line in Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” points out that “The paths of glory lead but to the grave” (36) and we’ve been walking that path since the day we were born. Even though we are all well aware that death will approach us and our loved ones sooner or later, losing someone we know (they don't even need to be really close to us) is still heart wrenching because there is too many uncertainties about what happens after death. Even if there really is an afterworld where everything is perfect and worry-free, it doesn’t change the fact that there is one less of us in the world we know.

忽必烈

Yes, these are Chinese characters.

My eyes opened wider as we read the introduction of the poem “Kubla Khan” not only because it has something to do with ancient China, but also because I had no idea who Kubla Khan was. So I googled it right after class, and it turned out that I did know him (phew!) only by a different name. (Because he was a Mongol king; Mongol people and Han people, who are the majority of Chinese, have totally different languages and cultures. But that's a story for another time)

I find the little in-class activity “Imagination and Connotation” quite interesting. I put bath tub for lifeless ocean; cream for milk of Paradise; red riding hood for ancient forest; and dead body in the sea for flashing eyes and floating hair. To further show that I didn’t link up my knowledge of Chinese history with their names in English, I actually wrote mythical God as the connotation for Xanadu. It’s funny how they mean so differently in the poem from what I first thought of.

Rise and Shine

Wordsworth wrote “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” on his way to France with his sister Dorothy. In simpler words, Dorothy also wrote about the beautiful scene in her journal:

"It was a beautiful morning. The city, St. Paul's, with the river, and a multitude of little boats, made a most beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge. The houses were not overhung by their cloud of smoke, and they were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a fierce light; that there was something like the purity of one of nature's own grand spectacles."

It must have been a magnificent view for even Wordsworth, who is known for his love for nature to think of it as “A sight so touching in its majesty” (3). The peacefulness of dawn, when the sun – the only part of nature in the city – is the first to awake while all the other man-made parts “seem asleep” (13), is the main reason why Wordsworth was so enchanted by the view. He finds this rare moment of the city that is lack of human activities and flooded with sunbeam even more beautiful than sunrises he has seen over “valley, rock, or hill” (10).

I’ve seen sunrises a few times, but only twice on purpose, both on a mountain top. The closest experience I got with Wordsworth’s was when I stayed up all night studying or working at home, and I would go out to my balcony at dawn to watch the sun rises from the sea. It was nice to be the only one around wide awake, there’s a sense of calmness and privacy. Then more buses and cars started to go on the road, and the silence of the night is broken. Men started to emerge everywhere, school buses started coming around, newspapers started to be delivered, and alarm clocks started ringing. Then it all just fell back to an ordinary day.

The Ladies

Lady Mary Chudleigh

For centuries the society had considered women’s role only in the household, their ultimate goal in life was to get married, and their duty was to just stay that way. It is no surprise that married women were supposed to be inferior to their husbands, in “To the Ladies”, Lady Mary Chudleigh even saw the relationship the same as that of a master and a servant. Marriage in her eyes was nothing but a “fatal knot” (3) and a “nuptial contract” (12), under which the wives had no freedom “to look, to laugh, or speak” (11). We are lucky enough to live in today’s society where women’s rights and sexual equality have come a long way since Chudleigh’s time. However, I think that there is still an underlying belief that marriage is absolutely essential to a satisfying life. I recently read an article about how being single is still such a big deal in society’s eyes and I think it is very thought-provoking.

Sex and the Single Girl: Why American culture is still so scared by single people

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

In Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s “An Answer to a Love-Letter in Verse”, the speaker is refusing the pursuit of a married man and chastising the man for being so vile and unfaithful with love and marriage. Marriage back then were often not based on love, and as suggested in “To the Ladies,” men were superior to their wives who could not ask for a divorce, therefore wooing another woman was not a big deal for married men. The speaker condemns the man for not being “bound by vows, and unrestrained by shame” (15) when he decides to write her a love letter not because of her charm but because she is “new” (6). She then insinuates that the man will soon be moving on and wooing other women – soon some other nymph inflict the pain” (31), further stressing on men’s fickleness. 

Hannah More

Hannah More’s “Slavery, a Poem” is a poem about banning slave trade in the British colonies and outlawing slavery itself. More criticized the British for feeling so superior over people with “casual colour of the skin” (6) and having a double standard due to this prejudice. She said that the same feeling of national pride was “In Afric scourged, in Rome deified” (24). Why should the British be glorified as hero for conquering the “sabled race” (2), taking away their freedoms and possessions, killing the ones who didn’t obey? More made a firm accusation of the British being “White Savage” (25) who sugar-coated their immoral and illiberal enforcement of slavery – “Conquest is pillage with a nobler name” (40). 

Lit is everywhere!

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, my iTunes was on shuffle and songs that I haven't listened to for years kept coming up. There was an interesting one that I didn't quite remember, so I looked up its lyrics and the first two stanzas were....

Anne Boleyn she kept a tin,

Which all her hopes and dreams were in,
She plans to run away with him, forever (never to be seen again)
Leaves a note and starts to choke,
Can feel the lump that's in her throat,
It's raining and she leaves her coat in silence.

We're sorry but we disagree
The boy is vermin, can't you see?
We'll drown his sins and misery
And rip him out of history

(Transylvania   -by McFly)

From the music video

Though I didn't know who exactly the man in this song is, but having read "Whoso List to Hunt," I somehow fantasized that he is Wyatt. At that moment I felt like I was "behind the scene" knowing all the secrets and details behind the song - so cool!

Dear Diary, it's me again

“A Journal of the Plague Year” is a fictional diary written by Daniel Defoe. Writing diary is about recording keeping track of one’s encounter of events and his feelings and opinions towards them, therefore faking one must be a tough task. Defoe did a great deal of extensive research and interviewed survivors from the plague in order to portray the tragic event as realistically as possible. Through the perspective of the narrator H.F., Defoe was able to incorporate many details of the happenings at the time including the escape of the Royals and the rich, the locking up of an entire family because one person was infected, and the public measures taken by the Magistrates.

If I were to write about a plague, I would probably choose to write about SARS. Like Defoe, I experienced the incident but only at a young age, so I would need to do a lot researches. I was nine years old during the outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong which traumatized the entire city. I remember seeing the number of cases and deaths going up every day, then very soon all the schools were closed and I was thrilled for a short moment until teachers started emailing us homework. My mom made me and my sister carry hand sanitizers everywhere we went, and masks became part of everyday life, magazines started teaching people how to make masks into a fashionable item. The streets were quiet, cinemas were empty, door handles and elevator buttons were covered in plastics that were changed hourly. People never fully walked out of the shadow of this pandemic. In 2009, when a swine flu case was reported in a tourist, the fear of another plague like SARS led the government to quarantine the entire hotel for a week.