Hemingway Stands in American Spirit

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it.
——Ernest Hemingway(July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961)

Ernest Hemingway comes to me immediately when I’m thinking of American literature. He is of great significant in American literature and world literature. His fame rose when people were suffering and depressed by the after-pain taking effects of World War I. His works curved the life of the Lost Generation, who have lost in the depression of war, forgotten their original dreams about life and given up hope. There’s a scene in Forest Gump that the veteran wanted to kill himself because he was disabled in his last battle. He yelled at Forest,” I had a destiny. I was supposed to die in the field with honor!” But he survived, he was saved by Forrest. And after that, the handsome Lieutenant Dan had gone, he got drunk all night, he spoke dirty words, he distrusted everything. He’s a good representative of Lost Generation. Hemingway didn’t do it purposely but he saved the lost angels souls. By recording their life, Hemingway provided us with an aimless and hopeless life. But underneath it, we can see the characters delicate emotion that encourages them to struggle, to fight with the fortune with their perseverance, to get back what they should get.
Take the Old Man and the Sea for instance, the sea is a vast, tender while untamable lady in the hero’s view. It is like the inner side of a person’s mind. It represents the veterans’ life also, with no friends, no excitement and with strong feelings. Santiago, the hero, is a lonely and unlucky fishman. He had great mercy and love on the boy who learned skills of fishing from Santiago. The boy is like the merging generation that dare to take adventures and learned from the Lost Generation. The Lost Generation was too old both physically and mentally to adapt the new life ahead. They were tired and bored. They were wasting time to wait for death. But look at the prime time when they were young, they had been the tomorrow of America. They had been energetic and their life was full of hope. They could still find that kind of strength from now and then, but the time had long passed. Santiago is a tragedy character because he got nothing left for the time-consuming hard work under the fierce sharks’ bite. But I can still see some positive point in him. He proved his power and faith again as an aged person. He struggled and he suffered from possession lost but his work wasn’t in vain that he gained admiration and respect again.
Considering his works, topics of wars can’t get rid of him. Wars influenced Hemingway a lot in a certain sense and depth, he recorded what he saw in mind and the world feed him back with a positive change in his novels.
There’re certain songs that make us remind of a nation. Hemingway is what I mark when thinking about American literature. He showed us a great nation that recovered itself with unbeatable strength. I’m inspired by his works. So I can say that though we speak different languages, risen up in different culture backgrounds, we have emotions of anger, sadness and love. So it makes Hemingway’s works universally well-known.

Where you can find the cartoon movie of The Old Man and the Sea:

PART 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1EbNvHDxbA
PART 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2_KszEnlq0&feature=related

Instrument Music in China

Chinese classical music is most attractive in China. There’re various kinds of classical music in China, from time to time, from east to west. The styles are quite different. People may know Peking Opera. It’s of charm that Singer’s dressing up and making great performance using both their voice and flexibility in the body on the stage.
Music played by instruments is one of the most beautiful and oldest genres and it’s my favorite. It’s usually slow and beautiful. The 1st song is played by Hulusi 葫蘆絲 - made of bamboo or another plant such as gourd, and played like a mouth organ, blown both in and out. Created by ethnic groups in the southwest of China, this kind of instrument seldom tells a sad story, nor shows a happy-go-lucky guy straight forward.

It sounds gentle, soft and emotional, just like an 18-year-old girl. She must be naughty sometimes, but she knows how to be a lady well. She might hide her feeling, waiting for someone to unpack the secret of hers.

The second song is played by a new classical music band in China. You can see a lot of musical instruments that are most common used in classical music. A kind of magnificence calls inside the audience mind.
The 3rd one, is mainly played by Guzheng 古箏 (or the Gu-Zheng, or the Zheng, or the Cheng). It tells a story about an ancient musician who felt only one of his friends could understand his music. This song was for his friend’s funeral. After that, the musician never played any more. Guzheng often builds an atmosphere of sadness and meditation.
Instrument music is like riddle that it doesn’t tell you what it is about by explicit words. You should always guess. It right fits the high-context character of Chinese and Chinese culture. People appreciate that understanding by certain indication. If you’re a foreigner to Chinese and you can understand instrument songs, you’ll surely be popular in China. I mean, songs convey certain cues of a culture. The song is another language of a nation. People create the song and they’ll go back to songs when they’re dominated by some kind of feeling, whether tired or happy. So music is a great topic if people start a casual conversation to know each other. Because music reveals characters of a society, a relaxed way to study cross-culture is to learn from its music and don’t forget to enjoy it!

A Pharos in China's Literature Field

There was a giant in Chinese literature before the World War I. His name is Lu Xun.
Literature attaches much to culture and history of his nationality and time. Before the World War I, China was in a reformation from feudalism to a democratic country. It was not an easy process, because China has experienced thousands years of feudalism when all emperors had highly control to the society. Hereditary System had existed for many years in the feudalist society, which presented in the intensive power control of the central government. The emperor was the emperor because he was born to be instead of being elected. Some people of common classes fought for establishing a new government, in result of a new intensive control government with hereditary system. It was a vicious circle and a maze. People in China had been trapped in the feudalism for a long time for thousands years. People seemed to be born with all the rules of feudalism and that China’s society was a pitch of backwater at that time, with civilians deadly dull, seldom knew what was going out of the outside world and with a motionless mind.
At that time, a class that consisted of some Chinese educated abroad raised, wanted to lead China to a modern and democratic country. They were too weak to fight against the feudalism, but offered China a new solution in the fast changing world and evoked more and more people in the new thought.
Lu was a great writer for the great revolution. Fight against the absolute authority would be dangerous in any time. Looking back in history, we can find Giordano Bruno in Italy who was burned to death, Galileo Galilei etc. Reformation costs lives, let alone China, which had been a highly centralization power for so long time. People died, and those who were alive would be killed by any moment. The reformation seemed to stagnate because some people’s hesitation. Lu wrote about common people’s life, with a calm style to tell people how their life suffered. People could see a Pedantic life in his novels and essays, without a word showing dissatisfaction. Lu’s works cover almost all topics in the society. They were indication of the reformation and also an encouragement to do so.
His works, telling stories about low class people, is a mark stone in China. His works is also a beginning of modern style in China. Sometimes I have comprehension problems when reading his works, because the time he lived is too far away from me. He is a recorder of that time, telling the latter generations how life was when feudalism met modernism in politics then all kinds of walks.