Dissecting the Nouveau Riche

鏈接中文版：細看暴發戶

More than 120 million Chinese travel overseas annually. Occasionally, one or two unruly tourists would make headlines, triggering another round of nouveau riche caricature and soul searching. What exactly are the nouveau riche? My on-line dictionary defines the slightly pompous French term as “people who have recently acquired wealth, typically those perceived as ostentatious or lacking in good taste.” At least four subjective terms in this definition —  recent, wealth, ostentatious, and good taste — need further clarification.

細看暴發戶

Link to English Version: Dissection the Nouveau Riche

中國去年出口一億兩千多萬遊客。偶爾幾個在國外或飛機上撒野出洋相，便會被大做文章。國人也會積極搖頭，埋冤暴發戶風氣熾熱難當。究竟何謂「暴發戶」呢？根據我的字典，暴發戶是近期發了財的人，喜歡炫耀，品味低俗云云。英文通常借用有幾分造作的法語名詞 Nouveau Riche — 「新發財」 之謂也。不過細想之下，「近期」，「發財」，「炫耀」，「品味」 等概念都值得進一步探討。

Imminent Liberation of Taiwan？

連接到中文版：短期內解放台灣？

Predicting Brexit and Trump’s presidency had once brought my contrarian sanity into question. Fortunately, the ‘surprising’ outcomes showed that insanity is indeed a dominant force, and my unhealthy appreciation of lunacy has been useful in comprehending 21st century reality. However, some crazy visions are still based on rationality, at least for the time being. One of them is China’s reunification with Taiwan, which I think will happen much sooner than most people believe. The likelihood of concluding the currently suspended Chinese Civil War in the near future, say the coming year or two, is very high — higher than ever. Many of my learned friends roll their eyes at this prediction.

短期內解放台灣？

 

 LINK to English: Imminent Liberation of Taiwan？

我在2016年寫博文 ‘撐’ 特朗普， 又預測英國脫歐，有些朋友擔心我神經錯亂。兩項選舉結果最終如我所料，其實不足以證明我看法的合理性，只不過反映了精神病患者已成大多數，具有民主優勢而已。思維正常的人唯有讓開一旁，自言自語牢騷世風日下。

趁大家對精神病人的社會地位猶豫之際，我想把解放台灣的分析加入病歷，立此存照。