It is all about feelings

Both the kite runner and a thousand splendid suns written by Khaled Hosseini are seem to be touched stories, what actually hide behind is the homesick and the patriotic feeling. Khaled Hosseini used these two vivid stories to describe how long his people in Afghan have been struggled to triumph over the force of violence. His novels make people all over the world to pay attention to what happened in his country and how people there are tolerating because of the war. Though Khaled  moved to America and has lived here for a longtime, he still cares about what happens in his hometown. I think this is because of the patriotic feeling,which exists in the deep of everyone's heart. The place where you were born and have grown up, you can't help consider there as your home and you want to protect it, protecting the people there. Another example is the book  Bonesetter's Daughter written by Amy Tan that I read this year. The novel again talked about the women in early twentieth-century China, the deep differences between generations and between cultural gaps in immigrant families. Amy Tan recalls many stories heard from her mother in this book. This is a kind of memory to show her feeling, she still cares about those tradition in China because she has the Chinese descent.
Actually, when I first began to learn about those old poems in Chinese literature, I was told that poets would like to use theirs poems to express feelings inside: homesick, love and dreams. The same as all the book I have read for this year: It is all about feelings, the feelings that hide inside these writers' hearts' the feelings that can not be express orally; the feelings that are deep and great.

A thousand splendid suns

After finishing reading the kite runner by Khaled Hosseini, Ms. Healey recommended me another similar fiction written by him: a thousand splendid suns. I began to read the summary and the first few sections of this book, but it is so attractive, Khaled is so good at using simple words to describe great feelings. No words in his book is redundant. The novel centers around the friendship between Mariam and Laila, two afghan women who were told to endure as many other other afghan women have learned since they were young. Khaled Hosseini in the "a thousand splendid suns" shows how the Afghan women have to endure for all sorts of half a century.  These women have to endure hunger and sickness, they also have to be patient enough when they are endure all of them. Families have to endure the effects that the war refugees displaced from their home while the whole country has to endure the war of Soviet Union. This book is a history of Afghanistan's patience. Just like the kite runner, Khaled used normal story to describe extraordinary meanings.

A service of love

I am almost done with the short story collection of O'Henry, these short stories are compact and interesting. The story called"A service of love", relating to the poem about love by St.  Lucia Derek  Walcott. Authors, poets and singers all like use the theme of love because of its permanence and pure. When I first saw the title of this short story, I expected to see the responsibility and duty for each of the couple supposed to do.Then I realized that the service here meant "sacrament". An aspiring artist, Joe Larrabeen from the Midwest and Delia Caruthers, a young talented musician meet in New York in an atelier where a number of youthful artists have met to discuss composers and painter.  There they are attracted to each other; shortly thereafter, they marry. They have to give up their dreams of art to sustain their lives and earned money.  As O'Henry declared "This story shall draw a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing in logic, and a feat in story-telling somewhat older than the great wall of China". Actually, there is a famous legend about love relating to Great Wall in China, when emperor Qingshihuang announced to build the Great Wall, lots of men were caught by the official federals, a man named "meng"was one of them. However, it was really difficult and dangerous to do such a heavy work without machine or technique at that time, he finally dead because of exhaustion. After hearing about the death of her husband, Meng immediately arrived to Great Wall to find her husband but she could not even find his body, she suddenly turned around and jumped into nearby sea.

"When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard".

Chinese literature

We mainly discussed and learned about Chinese Literature for this quarter. It is difficult for many of my classmates to understand the meaning of that because there are so many differences between different countries, especially China and America, even with two different languages and totally different backgrounds. I actually enjoy learning about all these stuff because I could get a chance to see how our cultures are understood by other people. Three periods are introduced: early, middle period and Tang poetry. Confucius is the typical literature work for the early time, he acclaimed "wu'chang"and"li"to teach people become gentleman through their actions and minds. Poets in middle age like Tao yuanming talked about countryside life and advocated Taoism, getting a natural life without disturbing of money or addiction. Tang poetry are usually described with magnificent scenery because people were wealth at that time, having lives without worry or sadness. My favorite poet is Li‘po because he is brilliant. He is funny because he could write better poems with drinking. Alcohol brought him more inspiration. I appreciate his poem because they were written with fantastic imagery. There is a strong element of Taoism in his works, both in the sentiments they express and in their spontaneous tone, and "many of his poems deal with mountains, often descriptions of ascents that midway modulate into journeys of the imagination, passing from actual mountain scenery to visions of nature deities, immortals, and 'jade maidens' of Taoist lore. Also, his work was not sad as Dufu did. Lipo wanted to help the country and had social ambition but was shown that much in his work while Dufu's poems made me feel disappointed and desperate. The following poem is the most famous one written by Li'po, even children from kindergarten recite it. It is short but meaningful, talking about his nostalgia and reminds me to think about my home when I am here:

A Quiet Night Thought

Moonlight before my bed

Perhaps frost on the ground.

Lift my head and see the moon

Lower my head and pine for home.

Love

Love after love written by St.  Lucia Derek  Walcott is a lovely short poem talking about love around us. Love yourself is as important as love others. Love means to share the snacks with my friends when I was young; Love means to follow the directions that teachers gave when I grew up in the school; Love means to chat with my parents every week online since I came to America. It is important to share your love with all those around you but you have to realize the importance of loving yourself first. How could a person love others in a right way if she or he even cannot love himself or herself? This poem reminds me the story"Magi's gift" by O'Henry and tales of twin cities by Charles Dickens that I read before. "Magi's gift" talks about a story between a couple.they give up the their favorite things to offer a better gift for the other. Love for them is giving up. Charles and Lucies love each other but cannot be together in the end for many reasons. Love for them means a pity.
Many kinds of love are existed in out life and it is love that makes our lives more colorful. Loving yourself is not that difficult, just shut your cellphone off, lay on the sofa and get away from all the troubles to relax.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a  film talks about Wuxia. The whole movie links with the sword called "Qing Dynasty". People who considered as "Xia"  preferring to a person whose sense of righteousness is so profound that it empowers them to sacrifice themselves and even break the law to help people.  Li Mu Bai is an typical example of this. The values that Wudan masters teach their puplis is in the similar way, to teach them use their fighting skills in a right way and help people. As a disciple of Wudan, Li Mu Bai is knows the value of fighting skills and feels responsible to help Shu Lien. She is talented, but she is too young and does not know what she should do. Li Mu Bai tries to lead her with Wudan rules. For the teaching of Buddhism, everything exists for its reason, nothing worth having. The things that having is depend on yourself, it worth having if you want to, otherwise it does not. There is not a criterion  to judge worth or not, you choose what to do and you are responsible for what you have done. All the fighting scenes makes the whole movie more exciting and push the plot to a climax.The final fight between Li Mu Bai and Jen takes place in a bamboo forest. That fighting is more like a lesson Li Mu Bai gives to Jen instead of a fighting. He teaches her to be a righteous person like the bamboo and uses her skills in a right way. In the end, Li Mu Bai dies to save Jen, Shu Lien does not kill Jen instead but asks her to be true to herself. Actually, Jen does that and chooses to oil herself because she knows that is the best way to get the redemption and get away from regret. The ending is ambiguous but I think it is a good ending because Jen finally knows the importance of responsibility.

O. Henry's ending

I have understood the term ”O’henry’s ending” after read the collection of his short story. It is usually surprising and unpredicted and it can usually pull the whole story to its climax and makes people to have endless thinking. This surprise usually occurs with sudden reversal or by making the hero fate appear unexpected results. But in a sense, it is not over and according with the practice of life. This surprise leads the unique artistic charm and can be identified as ”O’henry’s ending”.

For instance, the story “witches’ loaves” is a typical example for O’henry’s ending. It is a story happened in the United States: Miss Martha opened the bakery and she is very rich. There was a customer who went to her bakery twice a week to buy stale bread. On occasion, Miss Martha found that the customer's hands with a reddish brown stains and concluded that the customer is an poor artist so she put a big piece of butter on the bread the customer. Yet the customer is an architectural pattern designer and used stale bread to wipe the pencil print. As a result, the architectural figure became a waste because of the butter.

Life is just like that sometimes- kindness leads to the hate instead of gratitude. Martha put butter on the bread, is because of her sympathy and love, but misunderstood its usage. What I want to say even though your kindness is sometimes be understood or made something worse, never stop give your help and love to others because giving is always better than receiving.

The gift of the Magi

When I learned the “Boule De Suif" written by Maupassant in middle school. O.Henry was mentioned by my teacher at that time. They two are both great novelists. I have never got chance to read about him but recently I began to read the short story collection of O.Henry. The very first story attracts me with its Skillful arrangement and profound meaning.

The gift of the mainly tells the story of Christmas day, Della, who lived in the poor apartment with a impecunious life wanted to give her husband Jim a surprise. But she had only a dollar and seven cents. She then decided to sell the proud brown hair to buy a plain white gold watch chain, it can match on Jim's gold watch. At the same time, Jim sold the watch to buy Della a set of combs. So when both of them got the surprises, the gifts seemed not useful to them. However, what they got was the selfless love from each other. Although on the surface they gave up their own most precious things, I deeply feel that they love each other so much that encourage them to make these choices. It really warms my heart in such a frigid winter with a moved story like that. Just like I was told, love is understanding, love is forgiveness but love is mostly sacrifice. The two people in love would like to do anything for their lover even lose their lives. The love is not only the love between lovers make me touched, but also is defined as the love between all us by helping each other. I believe: as long as our hearts full of love, our world will be more beautiful tomorrow.