Chenyin Pan's Blog (8)

A yellow cog plead to the Machinist,

“Please, I wanna out of that rusty one, it is dying.

Just put me in the Machine Spic ‘n’ Span.”

“Surely I can do that,” the machinist…

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Leaving the bunch hustled to get on the tricycle, I was plodding along as my head was turning a little dazzle. Breathing had become more difficulty and each puff had taken longer time. I wasn’t so sure whether it was the load I was humping or it was the impact of the altitude that start to get into me. Humping, yes, that’s the word for it, with the North Face backpack full load on my back and an HP 16 inch laptop in front, though the load wasn’t as heavy as the ones Tim…

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“Which train you were on?” The young guy in baseball cap, sit aside of me, asked.

“The one from Shanghai,” I mumbled, “that damned 48 hours ride.”

“How come they arrived early today?” He grinned with sincerity, since I really can’t detect any mischief in his sunburned face.

“Guess Buddha sensed my piety to this pilgrimage to Lhasa, so he pushed the train a bit.” Tried my best to be funny under the circumstance, I was satisfied as he giggled…

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“That’s the problem of servitude: when you domesticate a member of our species, you lower his productivity, and however little you give him, a barnyard ends up costing more than his worth. For this reason the colonists are forced to stop breaking him in halfway. The result: Neither man nor beast, but the ‘native.’ Beaten, underfed, sick and frightened, but only up to a certain point, yellow, black, or white he always has the same character traits-lazy, sly, and thieving, who lives on…

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As Martin Luther King Day is 2 days away, I’m sitting here in the corner of the Starbucks Café, watching the flow of the passengers and cars outside in the cold. My thoughts have lost in my trip up north to Northeastern during the Thanksgiving last year. It was a trip that supposed to trace back Malcolm X’s life.



I went to the Roxbury out of the belief that the historically predominant black neighborhood still immersed in the Jazz, in all the accounts described by Alex Haley, and… Continue

Just a premature thought that haunting in my mind, about the class struggle. As you may know that I'm currently reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, through author's narrative about the US history from the perspective of Native Indians, black slaves instead of European settlers, white indenture servants instead of rich plantationers, ordinary citizens instead of politician superstars, factory workers instead of business tycons, I gained a new insight in interpreting… Continue

July 6th, 2009 in Shanghai, I and my American colleague were having dinner at a uighur restaurant close to office after work. The owner and the waiters greeted us with their usual hospitality. The young Muslim gave us the innocent smile as he took away our orders. It was quiet in the restaurant. We were the only customers there, waiters were had nothing to do but gathered in front of the TV set watching China's central television channel's report on the riot in Xinjiang just about 24 hours ago.… Continue

If Rodger & Me still can only brought the slightest compassion and concern from audiences in America, let alone an outsider like me from China, then Michael Moore did a great job in The Big One made in 1998 which really drove home many issues regarding corporations, capitalism and even city dynamics. "Save our jobs!" was only the outcry from some hill-billy Ozarks when Wall Street was bullish. Globalization was the buzzword at the time and who the hell care about how those rednecks doing in… Continue