West Lake

         Come to the city of Hangzhou. Stand by the West Lake in spring; see how poetic and beautiful it is, like a Chinese brush painting, like an ancient beauty, as Su Shi, a great poet, said in a poem hundreds years ago. Walk along the lake with visitors all over the world. Feel puffs of soft wind blowing the skinny branches of willows with jade green leaves growing on it. Listen to grasshoppers singing. They tell you how lost they are in such a beautiful place. Travel through gardens near it. Enjoy the bamboos around you, growing up with power of life that seems infinite. Climb up hills with joy. See clouds reflected on the lake moving with waves. See the blackish green hills appearing indistinctly in the distance, overlapping each other and expanding to the very far away. Roam in the ancient wooden temples on the hill. Admire how holy the Da Xiong Bao Dian in Linyin temple is. Smell the sweet incense and pray with your heart. Go to the downtown. You will find the whole city is downtown. See the skyscrapers in different shapes with shiny windows. See the busy Yan’an AVE where urban malls and hotels are built along. See how prosperous the city is, the city of Hangzhou.

The Giver Essay

In this current world, there are wars and conflicts everyday. They are between nations, people or between people and their governments. Many people are trying hard to make the world peaceful. If there is a world that is safe, orderly and peaceful, but people in it have to sacrifice their freedom, emotions, differences between individuals and so on, what would happen? Would there be happiness? The book The Giver, written by Lois Lowry, explores these questions. The community that book describes values sameness, which is reflected in people’s lives that they have same family unit, clothes, bikes and so on. Although The Giver demonstrates that Sameness benefits the community by promoting peace and order, it shows that in the end, Sameness cannot work, because it makes people lose their emotions and takes away the meaning of life.

In The Giver, the community has rules to keep the whole community unified in order to make it orderly and secure. A main way this society does is controlling knowledge. First, they limit books. When Jonas first came in the Annex room, Jonas was amazed with books in The Giver’s dwelling. “Jonas stared at them. He couldn’t imagine what the thousands of pages contained. Could there be rules beyond the rules that governed the community? Could there be more descriptions of offices and factories and committees?” (94) It shows that limitation of books efficiently keeps people in the community from knowledge of outside and past. In the book, Jonas was also surprised that he only has three books. “In his own dwelling, there were the necessary reference volumes that each household contained: a dictionary, and the thick community volume which contained descriptions of every office, factory, building, and committee. And the Book of Rules, of course.” (94) It shows that the three books that the community allows are all about the community itself and the ‘precision of language’ that it values. As a result, people’s minds are only effected in a way that the community wants, so that they would obey the rules. They also would be willing to stay and be unified, because the community is the only civilized place they know and is considered as their only home. Second, because The Receiver holds the memory, people are not effected by memory so that they can focus on now and the community and make community run well. At last, no trips to outside and wrong knowledge taught in school also help the community run well. In these ways, the community keeps its people willing to live, work and obey the rules in it and make itself safe. Thus, Sameness if effective for creating safe and convenient lives.

Though safe, rules in The Giver’s community cause people to become emotionless. First, people who have had Stirrings in the community are required to take pills every morning in order to eliminate desires. Second, the community asks people to be precise about language. When Jonas asked his parents if they love him. His parents’ response was to chastise his misbehaviors of not being precise with language. “‘Your Father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it’s become almost obsolete,’ his mother explained carefully.” (159)It shows the ‘precision of language’ is actually a ban on the use of most words that express feelings. As a result of these two rules above, people are fooled mentally and modified physically to lose deep feelings and think describing them is a shame. Third, the community also keeps people separate. Family units are composed with people who are not bonded with blood, and parenting is like a job, because parents are forced to leave their children at a certain age. So is friendship in the community, friends from childhood are also forced to leave each other when they receive their assignment. Thus, the community keeps its people from communicating with deep emotions and having emotions with each other. With these rules, people lose their emotions and the abilities of deep communicating and having all kinds of relationship with each other.

       To create a safe, peaceful and orderly community, rules are passed to control people’s freedom and free well, but meanings in people’s lives are also taken. The main meaning of life taken by the community is to make progresses. First, having no memories takes away a part of this meaning. When Jonas asked if The Giver advises the committee often, The Giver said, “Rarely. Only when they are faced with something that they have not experienced before. Then they call upon me to use the memories and advise them.” (130) It shows that the ability to choose right comes from the wisdom from memories. As a result, in the community, people don’t have ability to choose right and their choices have to be made by committee in order to have efficient lives. Therefore, people constantly live in a same way and make no progress. Second, having no connection with nature also takes away a part. The community controls climate and bans its people going out of its border.

As a result, people know nothing about all kinds of climate phenomena and most living things. However, it is a fact that most scientific progress comes from nature. For example, all the known elements are found from nature. So it’s hard for people in the community to have new scientific progresses. Therefore, if Jonas didn’t escape to force the community to change, it would maintain its way for a very long time and leave a long period in human’s evolution with no progress which is against the meaning of human lives.

I Missed It in Dreams

           Studying in the United State for more than 2 months now, excitement of having a new life in a foreign country has already gone with the coming of homesick. I don’t quite often miss my hometown though, because Seattle has the similar weather as my hometown does. Even when sometimes friends or others mention it, I still talk about it with proud, not with feelings of missing. But in the night, while I’m sleeping, I have to admit that I miss it because I dreamed about it all the time. Once it was a feeling of happiness and excitement that I realized I could have a bowl of delicious noodles in my favorite restaurant there. Once I was only on a strange street but I was with happiness for I could tell I was in my hometown. I had many different dreams like that, but they all have something in common which is the nothingness I always feel when I wake up from them, with sadness, with frustration, but also with happiness. I dreamed about riding home most. What is interesting is that was always disliked when I was there. Cars rushed by with honks. People broke the rule that they walked on the riding road. Street was stuffy that I had to get of my bike very often. However, all the annoying parts of the street are disappeared in my dreams. Street lamps shine through the leaves of sycamore trees along the busy street. Stores by the sides of the street look welcoming and gorgeous. Everything is in silence except my bike is making a noise of rolling forward, which is to my home. I know these dreams are telling me to remember where I belong to no matter how settled I am now. I also know that these reminders from dreams are useless because I’m never going to forget.