Carving stamps

The seal cutting (Carving) is an art like mini construction, it has the long history. Different typefaces can make different cutting style. It's not easy to be a marvin of the seal cutting. One example is that WuCangShuo(吴昌硕, 1844-1927), who is a great master of the poet, calligraphy, drawing, seal cutting art, he learnt the poet fist, then learn calligraphy, then drawing, seal cutting, from this we can know the difficult of the seal cutting. Here are some of his products:


The calligraphy web site has more seal cutting art products.

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

The calligraphy is also mentioned in the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University.
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

Games played in Chinese childhood - fold and fly the paper plane

A paper plane, paper aeroplane, or paper airplane (Chinese:纸飞机/紙飛機;Deutsch:Papierflieger;Japanese:kamihikōki/紙飛行機) is popular worldwide, since it is one of the easiest types of origami for a novice to master.


How far or how long can you make it fly? I can only make it fly from one side of the room to another side.

The world record for a paper-plane flight is held by Ken Blackburn, a US aerospace engineer. Visit his site which share what he knows about paper airplanes, it looks very engineering, many formulas there, some curve figures also comes up to describe the Pressure distribution. Blackburn's first entry into the Guinness Book of Records was in 1983(16.89 seconds), resetting it in 1987 (17.2 sec), 1994 (18.8 sec) lost the record in 1996 and set the current record of 27.6 seconds on 10/8/98 in the Georgia Dome. Amazing. Blackburn combined his job and life, professionality and hobbie so well.

There're many sites guiding how to fold. See a list of Paper airplane video. Also There's a book available on Amazon, Norman Schmidt’s book, Best Ever Paper Airplanes. There's guide to folds in life and health guardian, with 12 different folding types. Some universites also set the paperplane folding and flying as a undergraduate program of engineering, see Building and flying the Stealth in Norwich university, with the steps very detail and easy to follow (from Norman Schmidt’s book).

Finally, I want to introduce a song "Paper plane" by my favorite star Sandy Lam. View a beautiful mv in youtube.

Paper Plane - Sandy Lam Composer: Sandy Lam, Eric Ng Lyricist: Xiaohan Arrangement: Eric Ng The prince rided on the white horse The moon hidden And the kitty often chased its tail so stupid Memories in childhood are so invaluable Children plays Two foots is full of sands The laughter recall me the summer holiday in Childhood The boy who teach me how to make the paper plane What's going on with him the way to make the paper plane laying in the memories along with our growth fly, fly, paper plane not dificult to be happy #Not matter how will it change in the future we keep the thinking of the fairtale which belongs to us# the way to make the paper plane happiness will never be forgotten fly, fly, paper plane, throw (捨てる) the trouble away, it will be released by itself. Repeat #

纸飞机 - 林忆莲 作词：小寒 作曲：林忆莲 黄韵仁 编曲：黄韵仁 王子骑白马 月亮不见了 还有猫咪总是追着尾巴 有多傻 小时候的记忆好无价 孩子们玩耍 双脚全是沙 笑声让我想起童年暑假 那个他 教我折飞机的他好吗 纸飞机的折法 藏在回忆陪我们长大 纸飞机快飞吧 快乐方法并不复杂 不管未来怎样多变化 #保留着牵挂 属于我们的童话# 纸飞机的折法 快乐是永不忘的呀 纸飞机快飞吧 抛开烦恼自有解答 重复#

I'm not good at translating Lyricist. just to help understanding it.

emm, quote a long paragraph of Who is Sandy Lam? I'm a fan of her all the time.

In the Chinese pop music scene in Asia, especially to those who used to listening to radio from mid-80s and on in Hong Kong, SANDY LAM is a name equivalent to transformation, perfection, hard working, feminine, and talent.

Her career began as a part-time DJ at Commercial Radio Hong Kong in 1982, in which she got an unique nick name 611 (6+1+1=8, in Cantonese ‘8′ means being talkative and always questioning about gossips and other topics). Sandy joined SONY in 1983 and her debut in her Chinese name Lam Yik Lin was released in 1984. She rapidly became the most popular up-and-raising star. Yik Lin, her third album released in 1987, reached double platinum and that when her music career truly kicked off.

With heavy influences from Western music, Sandy’s music style started from cheesy Japanese teen pop to Light Jazz; and from there to R&B, Soul, or even Fusion. In fact, she is considered the only Hong Kong female singer with the best ad-libs. She has 27 full studio albums in Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Japanese, and adding other EPs, live recordings, compilations and co-operations, there is more than 80 or more on the list.

Unlike many other singers in Hong Kong, audience recognizes Sandy as a true musician/performer, rather then an entertainer. You don’t find shocking make-up or extreme outfits from her; it is her pure voice which captured everyone’s heart. She rather spends her time work producing an album instead of attending meaningless shows. Her fans admire her as who she is and the willingness to improve herself vocally, and such improvement is well-known in the industry like a miracle. In recent years, she is transforming herself, not only a singer, but singer songwriter. To put it in a simple way, Sandy is serious about music, it is her life.

2005 marks the 20th Anniversary of her music career. Being able to survive this long in Hong Kong entertainment scene is not an easy task, because of the high competition and people are being so forgetful. Looking back, it shouldn’t be a surprise after all, Sandy is the very first singer to blend in Jazz & R&B elements into Chinese music; she is one of the pioneers who marches into the Japanese music scene and the first singer to have two Chinese songs entering the Japan J-Wave Tokio Hot 100 music chart.

Moreover, she was the most successful Hong Kong singer to make it big in Taiwan by her first Mandarin release selling a record of 600,000 copies; she also participated in Asia’s first 47 days sold out Chinese musical Snow Wolf Lake; she was hand picked by Andrew Lloyd Webber to perform in The Music Of Andrew Lloyd Webber with Elaine Paige in Shanghai in 2001, and she was also picked to sing the Chinese version of Les Miserables’s theme song On My Own. A new kind of flower in Singapore is named after her name called Dendrobium Sandy.

Related posting:
Games played in Chinese childhood - rolling the iron hoop
Games played in Chinese childhood - Blowing Soap Bubble
Games played in Chinese childhood - Playing with mud

Paper-cut - folks traditional art

When tourists visit China, they often bought some art crafts as gifts back. I'd like to introduce some web site about traditional art product here.

The paper-cut is one of the folks traditional decorative art which China popularizes the most. Probably because its so easy that, cost cheap, result stand and see, meet surface wide and welcome generally material; Because it suit rural produce leisure by woman, it acts as practibility can beautify life also most. They can be put up on the wall, or on the window (named as window flower).

Most of the paper are red papers, red are the greeting color in China, so originally it's created for festivals, celebrations.

They can be simple, also can be very elegant and beautiful. It describes scenes or stories from book, also describes the living pages around.

For more, please go to The paper-cut site. Scroll down, you can see some art products are being sold there.
The page language is mainly in Chinese, but there's a button at the right of it's navigation bar which can translate it into English through third party site, as always you can use google's translation site to read it in English.

Spain [f.] We, the cities

Yesterday when I passed by the People square, I saw an poster of "Spain [f.] We, the cities", it said "One hundred women present Spanish cities and contemporary architechture." so I enterred the exhibition hall and had a tour.

Unexpectedly, there's no architechture showing around, all can I see is ladies standing and talking, seems the background is cut off, and language is in Spanish, Spanish is beautiful language to listen:) but I can't understand one word. So, I only spend less 2 hours there. There're several things impressed,
1. Isabel from google is also one of them, standing near the exit, and the wall before the exit, several LCD is showing google earth, all are very small.
2. not only artechture designer, processor presetning their opinion, but also people from other industry, like firewoman,judge, people who lost of eyesight, nurse, a nurse said, the way with no obstacle will reduce a lot of their workload, otherwise they have to go to the patients' home.
3. an old lady who won the 2004 architecture award said, if woman wants to get real freedom, not depends on man or marriage, she needs to be independent on economic.

I took a visit to other exhibitions as well, and took some pictures by mobile phone. Some of them I never came in before, there're a lot of great exhibitions.

following are some exhibition place in Shanghai, most of them are for trade shows.
A site Allshows.org is now collecting infomation of Trade, Cultral, Art shows in Shanghai.

Shanghai Listed Company Expo city
Shanghai International Agricultural Exhibition Cen
Shanghai East Asia Exhibition Hall
Shanghai Multimedia life square Conference & Exhibition Center
Shanghai Everbright Convention & Exhibition Center
Shanghai International Convention Center (SICEC)
Shang World Trade Center
Shanghai International Agricultural Exhibition Centre
INTEX Shanghai
Shanghai Multimedia life square Conference & Exhibition Center
Shanghai Science and Technology Museum
Shanghai Science Hall
Shanghai Art Museum
Shanghai International Agricultural Exhibition Centre
Shanghai Automobile Exhibition Centre (SAEC)
Shanghai Century Park
Shanghai Mart
Shanghai gym Palace
Shanghai New International Expo Centre
Shanghai Exhibition Center (SEC)
Shanghai Nature Museum
Le Royal Meridien Shanghai
Millennium Hongqiao Hotel(Millennium Hotel)
Pudong Shangri-La
Sofitel Hyland Shanghai
The Regent Shanghai

Classical music or pop song

Recently I move my pop song CDs to the store box and only leave the Classical music CDs on the shelf.
Some of them are all Piano, I find this can help one raise peace and easily focus on the things working on.
Old songs can bring people to memories easily, there's a very famous show called "Same song" (同一首歌)， started by CCTV on Jan.27, 2000, played all over the country and also been to USA, Korea, Japan, Canadal.... Many music stars from China mainland, HongKong, TaiWan, and other areas will play the pop songs in the perfomance. Most audiences became very excited when they heard the old songs, some of them are 70s ladies and gentlemen, emigrant many years ago.
Friends or family can sing the song together, so the song is easy to be with the old time; while listen to Classical music, people are usually silent, so that's not easy to keep in touch with old friends or time, it's not historically.

Games played in Chinese childhood - Blowing Soap Bubble

The set of blowing soap bubble is often sold near the gate of the garden. Walking in the sunshine, blowing bubbles, watching their beautiful dancing movement (ひらひらと舞う姿) and colors, it's a good time. And some of us may have experience playing so at mother's washing time.


Can you blow one in another? I can't. I saw little girl can do so very easily.

Told from the oil painting on canvas of Jean-baptiste-simeon Chardin (1699 - 1779), Soap bubble is also a type of game in western life.

In these scenes, although other figures can be visible in the background, the first impression is of a single figure, on which the eye concentrates even while this figure concentrates on a task. Such concentration is typical of Chardin; even when the subject is a boy idly building a card house, or blowing bubbles, there is an intentness that lifts the trivial pastime into an occupation. Unlike Greuze, Chardin never allows his people to ogle the spectator, to act the housemaid or village girl; they are absorbed, absorbed almost literally in the wonderful paint surface which seems to express integrity by the very oil medium.

There're some scientists also writing some research papers about soap bubble, very interesting, they study the wave, force through soap bubble. And, there's a book avaialbe on Amazon called "The Science of Soap Films and Soap Bubbles (Paperback)
" by Cyril Isenberg. It takes 220 pages to say about the soap bubble:

Superb presentation of the molecular and macroscopic properties of soap films and bubbles, including many demonstrations that can be readily performed with simple household materials. Emphasis on application of soap films to solution of physical problems, e.g. the motorway and minimum area problems. Over 120 black-and-white illus., 41 color photographs.

Did you think of cource the bubble has a short life? ah, we often heard "economic bubbles", not cheerful words, yes, bubbles are easy to break, but if you take special care of it, it can also live long. AEngland physical scientist who is famous for his study on liquid air kept the bubble in a special bottle, away from dusties, dryness, and the shaking of the air, then the bubble can live more than one month. Move amazing, some people can keep it for years. I just know it when do some research for this posting, can't imagine it.

Related Link:
Games played in Chinese childhood - rolling the iron hoop

Paper work

Not a pleasing title? Hah, yes, I know. Sometime the QA people in the company are being hated, many market, project, design people don't like the long list of paper work.

So, have some fun after your lunch time for another kind of paper work. This beautiful chair is made of one paper cup. Genius, who thought out this. Another kind of recycling. Many years ago I made some craft artficials from the cocacola bottle, also very beautiful.

The original interpretation below was in Chinese, if the picture did not talk itself clearly, and you want to make one, please let me know, I'd glad to show one by one.

Chinese animation

Chinese animation 1942-1999
All voice and screen text in Chinese. But music and art are understanble world wide:)

I only watched a small part of them. Some of them are black and white. and created by Chinese ink art. Most of them are manually made. Some reader said that these movie make them recall the childhood, even the one in his last life.

http://www.tudou.com/playlist/guochandh1/
http://www.tudou.com/playlist/guochandh2/
http://www.tudou.com/playlist/guochandh3/
http://www.tudou.com/playlist/guochandh4/
http://www.tudou.com/playlist/guochandh5/

Enjoy.