Monday, September 15, 2008

New Beginning


"Dances With Wolves" is one of my favorite movies. When I decided to chose a personal name for my blog title, the movie just came into my head. I think, "OK, I am a little lonely now, and it sounds cool." I add "Again" to the name to remind myself of the need to control my emotions and focus more on my liabilities, which is very much the attitude of Confucius. Yeah, I believe in Confucianism. Since I was born and raised in Shandong Province which is the domain of Confucianism in China, it's very natural to me.

In China, historians are supposed to be highly restrained people, and I was questioned a lot about my intention to be a historian as a result of my vigorous and dynamic personalities. It does not mean that Chinese historians are museum pieces,but it is a very serious thing for us to do historical research. So sometimes it's not that weird that they will judge you just from your appearances. I once was called to my instructor's office to explain why my hair was red. That was a funny thing and I don't dye my hair into different colors now. But it is not the consequence of the long and boring talk between my instructor and me. The fact is it really costs me a lot of money and time to hurt my hair.

Study in Canada is a new beginning for me, and I seem to like to define a variety of beginnings for myself. Nothing special, but sounds more chances to me. So generally I don't like to look back at my old experiences, no matter it was good or bad. The contradiction I need to deal with is it is my business to look back constantly and regularly, because I try to become a qualified historian. And in China, there is a very famous saying that if you don't clean up your own house first, how would you be able to clean the outside world? meaning that I need to consider the reflection on my former behaviors as a good habit, but sometimes I just don't do it well.

Everything here is very funny to me. Before I come to Canada, I always wondered the actual looks of the wild weeds here. Yeah, I am a weird person. I never doubt that there are huge differences of people, culture, architecture, policy, etc between Canada and China, but focus on some tiny little things. And now I know that Canadian people have the same wild weeds with Chinese people, which surprised me a little bit.

I would like to make an end now, because it really took me a lot of time to write this blog, and I need some time to do more readings. I don't want to sit in the classroom quietly all the time, wondering :"what are you guys really talking about? "