His book on calligraphy is a scholarly book used as textbook by many. You can order the book from Amazon by clicking on "buy books" button in the homepage.

Mr. Chiang also wrote a series of travel books called "Silent Traveller", which are simply delightful to read. These are not the usual travel guide books, but are records of his experiences. Must read!
P.S. Chiang is his last name.

I have a Mac G3 powerbook loaded with Chinese Language Kit for bothtraditional and simplified characters. I have no great difficulty creatingdocuments in Chinese but I am as yet unable to access Chinese language sites.All I get is 'mojibake' except when it is a Jif site. How can I read theChinese data at your site? Sorry to bother you with such an elementaryquestion which I'm sure you have answered many times before. Many thanks,

Checking my sources one more time, I discovered two poems of Liu Fang-p'ing together with English translations. It's "A Moonlit Night" (　る) - Chinese text posted already - and "Grief in Spring" (Ch'un Yuen - 　). The source is "150 T'ang poems" 　玑癸酚钢　κき　, translations by Xu Yuan-zhong 　　　 (the transcription of the name is original, but might be erraneous).

A Moonlit Night

The moon has painted half the room at dead of night,
The slanting Plough and Southern Stars shed their dim light,
I can feel in the air the warm breath of new spring,
For through my window screen I hear the insects sing.

"The ground full of pear-blossoms..." (last line) might say: I'm left or separated from so many - i.e. the members of her own family. "pear" and "to leave" (li2=冰or瞒) are pronounced the same way in Chinese, so in Chinese poetry "pear blossom" often is used as a symbol for separation etc..

Hoping, the text is correct, as it was in GB in my source.

Alfred
http://www.muc.de/~tueting/

SUBJECT:RE: A Moonlight Night 　よキ - る　

COMMENT:There is no better way to ruin a good poem by dissecting its astronomical description.
 I'll try nevertheless...... The translation for the "Southern Dipper (　ゆ)" should be 
Sagittarius ( 　皑 　) rather than the Smaller Bear (  　) , Ursa Minor. The Southern 
Dipper conveys a sense of seasonallity. The constellation of Southern Dipper is the same 
as the handle of the Teapot. It is visible, at midnight, along the eastern horizon in early 
May. By early September, it disappears below the western horizon at midnight. Since the 
poem was written during the Tang Dynasty a thousand years ago, the rising and setting of 
stellar events would occur approximately 13 days earlier. This time difference is due to 
precession of the earth's axis (wobbling). It would advance the earliest midnight rising 
of the Southern Dipper to around April 22nd, and the setting at or about August 20th. 
The poet, Mr. Liu, would be a bit late to proclaim "It's finally Spring!" when Spring 
equinox took place a month ago on March 20th. In the poem, the key words "deliberately 
known (熬) " usher in the "newly penetrating (　　 )" sound of Fall insects. Mr. Liu 
might be lamenting on the breath of Spring air, in contrast to his acute awareness of 
the "fresh penetrating " sound of the approaching Autumn. He already set the stage for 
the Autumn Moon in his first verse! I offer my clumsy attempts in translating: 

る　 --- 　よキ 

　　る︹　　产, 
　ゆ榴　　ゆ弊; 
さ　熬　秽 
挛　　　厚怠　. 

The hollow strokes* of midnight blend with the shining moon light upon the fronting homes, 
The Northern Dipper points horizontal, like the veranda , 
the Southern Dipper lies slanted, 
Tonight I sense a deliberate warmth of the Spring air, 
Amidst the fresh penetrating sound 
of insects** beyond the green window silk. 

* hollow strokes: a time keeper would patrol the 
neighbourhood once every two hours to report the time by striking a hollow instrument, once 
at 8pm, twice at 10pm, 3 times at midnight, 4x at 2am, & 5x at 4 am. 

** insects: could be 
crickets or cicada . At the first chill of the Fall, the poet spends a sleepless night longing 
for the warmth of his distant love. His thoughts are hyperbolized through the green window 
silk via the fresh penetrating sound of insects. Hey, Mid Autumn is fast coming ! 

Perhaps others can help to come up with a polished translation based on the hypothesis of an 
early Fall evening? 

Rudy Chiang  厩 奖 　 纨 　 　 
FROM:Rudy Chiang canada - Saturday, September 12, 1998 at 08:00:45 (PD

　よキ - る　

　　る︹　　产
　ゆ榴　　ゆ弊
さ　熬　秽
挛　　　厚怠　

Best wishes

The poet in question is 　 よ キ . It all depends who is translating his name. For Cantonese like me, I would translate his name as Lau Fong-ping. Liu Fang-ping is correct as well.

The poem is titled る 　 and for the benefit of the Chinese readers, I quote this down in Chinese

　 　 る 　 　 　 产

　 ゆ 榴 　 　 ゆ 弊

さ 　 熬  　  秽

︿ 　 　 　 厚 怠 

http://www.asiawind.com/art/caigentan/caigentan.htm

There is software program called Any Speed by PY Softwarethat can measure the raw tranfer speed between yourcomputer and any website(s) you specify. It is verygood. You can download a free demo copy from and use it for 30 days.30 days is plenty.

The software gives you a plot showing the transfer speedof several websites of your choice. So Alfred can findout if the Asian sites are really slower compared tothe U.S. sites for example.

This does not make it faster, but sometimes it makesyou feel better, when you see that your favorite sitesare as slow (fast) and any other

Without graphics, the Discussion Page is as fast as itis possible to make a page.

I am shocked that Alfred gets only 6 bps in Germary.With 56k modem, I get around 15 kbps in the U.S., andproportionly faster and slower with ISDN and 14.4 modems.I would be interested in knowing what your speeds areas measured by AnySpeed.

The work by you and Ms Fu is great. I had occasion tomeet her two years ago in New York, but did not knowabout recent trip this time.

May I suggest that you publish these as an Art Calendar -either for 12 months or 52 weeks. This may be a moreprofitable commercially than a book. It is too late for1999, but if you hurry, you can make year 2000!

Dear Siu-Leung, please receive my congratulations: Your new art gallery is fantastic, the works created and exhibited together with Ms. Fu are really great - that's what I am highly appreciating in Chinese art: this fluent and "light-handed"combination of grisaille-style painting and calligraphy. It would be fine, if the book once in the future could be available, perhaps in a loose-leaf edition (with the texts in a supplementary English translation). Thank you!

I don't know, how slow surfing the Net actually is for a citizen of the Republic of China, but viceversa it is really boring trying to access a Chinese web page here from Germany. I also can imagine, how frustrating and expensive it might be for John to wait for the loading of e.g. 'China the Beautiful'. Most of the websurfers in the U.S. don't have to pay for their phone connection, so they can continuously hold the line and on top of it have their download in no time. Also in Germany, the web traffic has slowed down remarkably with rates of sometimes about 15(!) b/sec and less due to the encreasing number of people going online (and all the commercial sites now discovering the net).

I've been getting requests too for tatoo design with Chinese characters, being in the same situation mentioned by Dr. Lee. It's not at all too bad an idea to have a Chinese character tattoo - if in the first place one really wants to have one. For it's quite more easy to drop a high-flown and silly first name given to you by your parents, than to remove an annoying tattoo, unmasking your (false and embarassing?) feelings you once have had. (I know what I'm talking of, as I - when a boy - ran through the phone book of my hometown in order to find a tattoo shop ... Fortunately I didn't live in Hamburg or somewhere else in a seaport, so I couldn't find any in those days!)
I can understand young people wanting to decorate their bodies in order to improve their appearences or just to express their feelings or show their convictions. But those very often are just ephemeral - whereas the tattoos will remain for a while, just passing away together with their bodies. Meant to last for a "whole lifetime", those pictures begin to decay with their bearer: I'm accustomed to see their poor, dead bodies every day; no matter, if they had died young or old: their tattoos (all those "Love forever", "Destroyer", dragons, tigers, strength etc.) are sad and silly pictures, all the more, if they're huge, expensive or real works of art.
I think, the human skin is not a good canvas (except maybe for the Chinese character "yong3" ッ eternal, if meant sarcastically, or some other signs worn by monks as reminders in the sense of 'vita brevis').

Danielle, I think Julian hit the right character. I immediately also thought of ren3 (jen) г with the meaning of 'to bear, endure, tolerate, the strength of suffering and patience, but also to be hard-hearted and unfeeling'.

I put a gif-file of the character right here:

The word strength is commonly translated as 　 or 　 　 in Chinese.

i was wondering if you could help me...i would like to know how to write STRENGTH in chinese(reason)....i am going to get a tattoo...of it and i want to make sure the tattoo shop has it right and its not just something they have made up..so if u can send me a file or somethingto show me of how it is i would be very appreciative....Thanks....

I can't think of a Chinese character that fits all your description. I would like to make a wild guess. The word I can think of is:

г

but then this word is not often used by the poets.

I will try to resend my email to you again tomorrow when I go back to my office as I saved that email in my office computer. Also I like to introduce myself.

Please send me email.

I am glad to hear about your free seminars. Feel freeto use the materials as visual aids.

Emperor Chin has received a great deal of good publicityin the West recently, largely due to the excavationof his tomb. He accomplished remarkable amount ofachivements in his short reign. But he also burneda lot of books.