I am experimenting again. This time with High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging. The photo of my home’s back deck above is my first attempt. For those unfamiliar with the process, here is how it works (from Wikipedia):

High dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to represent more accurately the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight.

The two main sources of HDR imagery are computer renderings and merging of multiple photographs, which in turn are known as low dynamic range (LDR) or standard dynamic range (SDR) images. Tone mapping techniques, which reduce overall contrast to facilitate display of HDR images on devices with lower dynamic range, can be applied to produce images with preserved or exaggerated local contrast for artistic effect.

To produce the photo above, using a tripod I took three shots with my cheapo camera (Canon PowerShot A570IS, 7.1 megapixels) and varied the exposure compression by –2 and +2.  Then with the Photomatix (or get the free Qtpfsgui 1.9.3) program, I combined the three shots into a single HDR image, and then tone mapped it, saved it as a JPEG, and here it is.  To compare this image to the same photo with normal standard dynamic range, see below.  Any perceivable difference?  hehehe.  Amazing, right?  When the rain stops, I will try to find more interesting subjects under better lighting conditions and continue my fun. So stay tuned.

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

~Pablo Neruda

By C.H. Tung
Saturday, October 31, 2009

Chinese people around the globe passionately celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China this month. Maybe this is hard for others to understand. But for the Chinese people, such emotions are rooted in memories of a vastly different China, one whose destiny was not always as promising as it is today.

When the republic was founded on Oct. 1, 1949, political institutions were just starting to be formed. People were hungry. The average life expectancy was 35 years. Infant mortality reached a high of 20 percent. The overall illiteracy rate was 80 percent. There was little organized education, no health care and no means of social security. The national treasury was empty, the economy bankrupt. There was no industry to speak of and little basic infrastructure. Indeed, the Chinese people had endured a century of government mismanagement, political instability, constant civil war and warfare imposed by other countries.

In the six decades since the republic was formed, China's economy has become the world's third-largest. Life expectancy has reached 73 years; infant mortality is down to 1.5 percent. The illiteracy rate has fallen to 5 percent. A nine-year education has become available to all children. Health care and social security are improving. Modern industries are being developed. Roads, railways, airports and ports blanket the country. In the areas of democracy, the rule of law and human rights -- including the rights of 55 minorities -- China has made enormous progress. At no other point in history has so much improvement been made for so many people in such a short period.

How did this happen?

A chief factor was a strong determination to find our own way forward. Even before the downfall of the Qing Dynasty a century ago, China has searched for a way forward. We have tried to learn from the Japanese, the Germans, the Americans and even the Soviet Union, but none of these development models was right. China was too chaotic and too poverty-stricken; it had too large a population and insufficient natural resources. Our nation was too weak to respond to foreign interference. China's challenges required a development model consistent with its culture, history and stage of development.

In China's long history, prosperous times were always associated with a strong and enlightened central government, which has led the Chinese people generally to believe in strong government. Today we have such a government, with clear vision and enlightened policies. While ideological and principled, the government in Beijing has also proved pragmatic and flexible when necessary. Rather than pursuing short-term politics, Beijing has been able to formulate sound long-term and holistic macroeconomic and geopolitical policies.

China's emergence is also the result of putting people at the center of governance. The government believes that eradicating poverty is fundamental and is the first priority of all development policies. Accordingly, 1.3 billion people have been moved from abject poverty to a much-improved livelihood.

China strongly promotes harmony in diversity as a way forward by emphasizing commonality among different interests to defuse social tension associated with reform and development. China also recognizes the need to better share the fruits of success between the rich and the poor, and among its 56 ethnicities.

As China has opened up to the outside world, its people have realized how increasingly intertwined their destiny is with the rest of the world. China shares the anxiety posed by challenges such as combating global warming, protecting the environment, creating energy security, achieving global financial stability, countering terrorism, preventing nuclear weapons proliferation and stopping the spread of infectious diseases.

Some worry that as China's economic development continues, it will become a hegemonic power. It is noteworthy that at the height of China's economic power some 500 years ago, when it controlled about 30 percent of the world's economy, instead of expanding its might overseas, China sent missions to neighboring countries only for trade and good will. China's tradition of yiheweigui, peace and harmony above all, will ensure that its development objective is for its interest and in the interest of the world.

Also noteworthy is that government efforts have received enormous support from the Chinese people, as demonstrated by the 86 percent satisfaction rating on the direction the country is heading, in the 2008 Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes survey.

China's historic journey continues to shape its future. It is a developing nation of 1.3 billion people, nearly 60 percent of whom live in vast rural areas. It will take decades for China to realize comprehensive modernization. But our 60 years of progress should give the Chinese people confidence in the next 60 years and assure other nations that China will become a greater force for a better world.

The writer, a former chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is chairman of the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to fostering dialogue and openness.

Moment in Peking is a historical novel originally written in English by the Chinese American author Lin Yutang. The novel covers the turbulent events in China from 1900 to 1938, including the Boxer Rebellion, the Republican Revolution of 1911, the Warlord Era, the rise of nationalism and communism, and the origins of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945.

The author tries not to be overly judgmental of the characters because he recognizes that too many issues were involved in the chaotic years of the early twentieth century China. There was no absolutely right or wrong character. Each character held a piece of truth and reality and a piece of irrationalism. In the preface, Lin writes that,this novel is merely a story of how certain habits of living and ways of thinking are formed and how, above all, men and women adjust themselves to the circumstances in this earthly life where men strive but gods rule.

Lin Yutang was nominated the Nobel Prize for Literature with this book in 1975.

Lin Yutang had originally wanted romantic poet Yu Dafu to do the translation to Chinese, but he had only completed the first section when he was killed in the Japanese invasion. His son Yu Fei finished the translation in 1991, but his version, while capturing the flavor of old Beijing, is not too widely read.

The novel has been adapted twice into television dramas, including the most recent version in 2004, starring Vicki Zhao Wei.

Moment in Peking is quite a rarity – it is a novel about Chinese social-history by a well-known Chinese author, but written originally in English and published first in 1939 in the US (where it sold over 50,000 copies in less than 6 months). Soon after, the book was released in China (in Chinese translation) where it was received with just as much interest.

Why is this book so popular in and outside of China? It is gives a comprehensive insight into an interesting period of 20th century Chinese history and social change. The novel spans almost 40 years – from the Boxer Uprising in the 1900s to the Second Sino-Japanese War in the late 1930s. The story is seen largely through the eyes of Mulan Yao, the daughter of a prosperous upper-middle class family who lose their wealth as a result of the wars.

But can this account for its success in the US? One (tenuous) reason could be that when it was published, Moment in Peking was billed by some American critics as a “Chinese Gone with the wind” – which had been released just few years earlier and was eagerly awaiting its transformation to the big screen. Could this popular hook be a reason why people bought this book in droves?   --Wenjun Shi

There’s something special about having a little sister. But when we are lucky enough to have two little sisters, the good fortune is multiplied many times over. I am one of the lucky guys… I have two sisters, and I was happy to have had the chance to be with them a couple of weeks ago in South Carolina. The magic of sitting with family and just talking into the night is really precious. So strange… no matter how many miles or years separate us, we can return to the same wavelength immediately.  Anyway, my two little sisters are here on the left, in a very old photo I managed to find recently.  I love you both, Debbie and Penny, and I am sure you know that.

I finally finished reading this fascinating book outlining the history of the Taiping Rebellion and its very strange leader, Hong Xiuquan. I learned a lot about this unusual decade-long bump along China’s 19th Century road of unfolding dynastic events, but more importantly, the book put China into some new perspectives that had never even occurred to me before.  Actually, it was a quirk of nature that finally did the Taipings in… as they planned their final assault on Shanghai, the region was hit with a massive 76 cm. snowfall followed by weeks of bitter cold, it proved to be much more than the Taipings could tolerate, and their movement came to a rapid end not long after this abortive military campaign was stopped cold.

I received this book a couple weeks back from my sister-in-law.  It was in my brother’s library when he passed away, and she thought I might enjoy it. The book is by Jonathan Spence, an ex-student of one of my brother’s Asian history professorial colleagues at Cornell.  The colleague is Sherman Cochran, who is Cornell University’s Hu Shih Professor of Chinese History.  The Taiping Rebellion had its 1850s roots in Canton (Guangzhou), and its final chapters in Nanjing, the two Chinese cities where I have spent most of my time teaching English during the past six years. In upcoming visits to both those cities, I will try to see as many historical remnants concerning this movement that might be available or on display.

Jonathan D. Spence, the Yale University historian, has with his rapidly accumulating books emerged as the preeminent Western literary historian of China. . . . His new book, in which he recreates the spiritual world that nurtured one of China's most remarkable megalomaniacs, continues and enlarges on this wonderful body of work. Hong Xiuquan was the founder of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the rebel movement that seized a power base in southern China in the mid-1850s and provoked the ruling Qing Dynasty into a terrible, decade-long struggle. . . . The Taiping Rebellion, as Mr. Spence puts it, was an event "as strange as any to be found in Chinese history"--or, for that matter, in global history--and God's Chinese Son is to a great extent about that strangeness. . . . Mr. Spence's account . . . is not merely about an odd moment in history, a strange man and a strange movement.  -- The New York Times Book Review, Richard Bernstein

Next book on the pile…

CCTV's broadcast of the new Moment in Peking adaptation starring Vicki Zhao has put Lin Yutang's original novel at #2 some 65 years after it was first published. Lin wrote in English for a US audience; he didn't particularly care for the first Chinese translation done in 1941. The current translation was done in 1977 by Zhang Zhenyu, a translator from Taiwan, but it did not come out on the mainland until a sanitized version was published in 1987 by a publisher in Jilin. Today's political climate has allowed Shaanxi Normal University Press to issue Zhang's full translation of Lin's original text.

According to some, this is not the best Chinese translation. Lin had originally wanted romantic poet Yu Dafu to do the translation, but he had only completed the first section when he was killed in the Japanese invasion. His son Yu Fei finished the translation in 1991, but his version, while capturing the flavor of old Beijing, is not too widely read.

I, of course, will read Lin’s original English version, which I purchased a few years ago but never got around to reading.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/05/well-liked-countries-lifestyle-real-estate-tourism-america_slide_2.html?thisspeed=25000

Kodachrome is the trademarked brand name of a type of color reversal film that was manufactured by Eastman Kodak from 1935 to 2009. Kodachrome was the first successfully mass-marketed color still film using a subtractive method, in contrast to earlier additive "screenplate" methods such as Autochrome and Dufaycolor, and remained the oldest brand of color film.

As digital photography progressively reduced the demand for film in the first decade of the 21st century, Kodachrome sales steadily declined. On June 22, 2009 Eastman Kodak Co. announced the end of Kodachrome production, citing declining demand. Many Kodak and independent laboratories once processed Kodachrome, but only one Kodak certified facility remains: Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas.

The final sentence is what totally blows my mind!!!!
(The chart above is not from Lindsay's article. I found it elsewhere.)

The Chinese languages have undergone a lot of reclassification lately (Mair 1991), from one Chinese language a couple of decades ago up to 14 Chinese languages today according to the latest Ethnologue.

However, Jerry Norman, one of the world’s top experts on Chinese, says that based on mutual intelligibility, there are 350-400 separate languages within Chinese alone (Mair 1991). According to Gong Xun, a Sichuan Mandarin speaker in Deyang, China, by my criteria of distinguishing between language and dialect, there would be 300-400 separate languages in Fujian alone.

So far, 2,500 dialects of the Chinese language have been identified, and a number of them are separate languages.

I have been doing research on this issue recently. Based on the criteria of mutual intelligibility, I have expanded the 14 Chinese languages into 339 separate languages.

There are different ways of doing mutual intelligibility. I decided to put it at 90%, with >90% being dialect and <90% being a separate language. Experts in Chinese linguistics concurred that this seems to be a reasonable way to divide dialect from language (Mair 2009). This is based on what appears to be Ethnologue’s criteria for establishing the line between a dialect and a language.

In the cases below where I had intelligibility data available, a number of Chinese languages had no more than 65% intelligibility between them (Cheng 1991).

Intelligibility is hard to determine. I am not interested in typological studies of lects involving either lexicon, phonology or tones, unless this can be quantified in terms of intelligibility in a scientific way (see Cheng 1991). For the most part, what I am interested in is, “Can they understand each other?”

The data below is best regarded as a pilot study.

Reasonable, fair-minded and professional comments, additions, criticisms, elaborations, presentations of evidence, etc. are highly encouraged, as long as politics and emotions are left out of it. The purpose of the classification below is more to stimulate academic interest and sprout new thinking and theory. It is not intended to be an end-all or be-all statement on the subject, in fact, it is quite the opposite.

Interested scholars, observers or speakers of Chinese languages are encouraged to contribute any knowledge that they may have to add to or criticize this data below. So far as I know, this is the first real attempt to split Chinese beyond the 14 languages elucidated by Ethnologue.

There are lapses in the data below. I mean to present this data in outline form to make it more readable.

There are also problems with the data below. In many cases, “separate language” just means that the lect is not intelligible with Putonghua. Unfortunately, I currently lack intelligibility data within the major language groups such as Gan, Xiang, Wu and the branches of Mandarin. There is probably quite a bit of lumping still to be done below. Where lects are mutually intelligible below, I have tried to lump them into one language with various dialects.

It is reasonable to ask what background and expertise I have to write such a post. I have a Masters Degree in Linguistics and have been employed as a salaried linguist for a US Indian tribe.

Once again, this reworking of Chinese dialectology divides Chinese from 14 separate languages into 339 separate languages.

For the remainder of this fascinating study, click here or here.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's second-largest city, and my home for 13 years, has just been announced as the host for the 2016 Olympic Games.

It has been a heated race over the last few days, with four top contenders -- Tokyo, Chicago, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro -- all battling to show why they deserve to host the 2016 Olympics.

So it's official: the 2016 Olympic Games will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from August 5 to August 21. It is the first games EVER to be hosted in South America.

As soon as the announcement was made, Rio went completely nuts.