Original link: https://elizen.me/newsletter/2022/08/newsletter-037/

Three ten weeks: No.37

In order to decompress myself, and I personally agree that completion is more important than perfection (of course, this is only the first step, if you only pursue completion, you are probably drawing circles). After all, the value of communication is up to you to decide. I wrote it to empty my mind and contribute to going further afield.

So, decided to drop the initial nonsense about subscriber numbers in the newsletter, and maybe more excerpts and comments and less personal gibberish in the newsletter. As for the content, I try to only involve reading and thinking within a week, and I hope we can still see each other.

Of course, you don’t have to worry, the principle will not change, the most fundamental problem of communication is to share some topics about happiness and choice.

---

educate

excerpt:

• On July 24, 2021, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued the “Opinions on Further Reducing Students’ Homework Burdens and Off-campus Training Burdens in Compulsory Education”, known as the “double reduction” policy.

• On July 30, 1980, during the period of military Chun Doo-hwan’s administration, South Korea issued the “7.30 Education Reform Policy”, which completely banned extra-curricular tutoring. Teachers who provided tutoring or parents who hired teachers would be punished. The government even set up “extra-curricular tutoring suppression teams” to shock teachers and students. In order to avoid the “extra-curricular tutoring suppression team”, teachers and parents have come up with all kinds of strange methods, such as: asking teachers to come to the house late at night for tutoring, asking teachers to dress up as relatives or domestic workers, and hide in the suburbs or even give tutoring in the car.

• The situation of the dual-track education system has not changed, because the content of the examinations has not changed, the society values ​​diplomas, and the occupational status and income gap evaluation system that values ​​mental strength over physical strength have not changed. The “double reduction” policy that seems to promote educational equity may backfire.

• In August last year, a pair of twins in Shenyang were facing the middle school and high school exams. The parents asked a physics teacher to make up the class. The twins finally got into the key high schools as they wished. As a result, the teacher refunded all the tuition fees. The Education Bureau said that the punishment depends on the attitude of the parents. The teacher paid another 2,000 yuan and wanted to have private affairs with the parents. As a result, the parents broke their promise after receiving the money, and asked the teacher to do so. Go to the Education Bureau to write account materials. With such parents, the teacher is out of luck.

Under the condition that the system has not changed, any policy first brings more problems than solutions. The university still recruits so many students, it is still the method of the college entrance examination. No matter how many policies, it can aggravate the differentiation.

At the same time, I also see some signs of the loosening of the foundation of education. The current competition has gradually shifted from the college entrance examination to the senior high school entrance examination. In the senior high school entrance examination, forced diversion is a bad thing. Policies require sacrifice, and what we sacrifice is the generation of children in the process of policy adaptation. They are innocent, they deserve the best education, they deserve to live their lives.

But sorry, in “The Road to Serfdom,” Hayek says that history is the process by which rulers create inflation. Either crash and rebuild, or we can only find our own way.

Red Special Pacesetter Liu Shikun

In the latest issue of “2203” in the library, there is an article “Piano Legend”, which is an oral history of pianist Liu Shikun. Liu Shikun, born in 1939, grew up in a very wealthy family and began to learn the piano before the age of three. He himself stated in the article:

One of the important reasons why I became a pianist later was that I grew up in Tianjin when I was a child. At that time, the city was the center of China’s industry, commerce, foreign trade and shipping, second only to Shanghai. There were many children from wealthy families who learned to play the piano, and there were pianos to play in social situations. There were many people who liked Western classical music.
…
In China at that time, if you didn’t grow up in a suitable city, you didn’t have a wealthy family background, or your parents didn’t understand music, you couldn’t learn the piano. I was very lucky that all these conditions were met. At that time, only children from five cities, Shanghai, Tianjin, Harbin, Qingdao and Xiamen, were most likely to come into contact with the piano, because these five cities were deeply influenced by Western culture. In Peking City (now Beijing), except for a small number of piano students in the Music Department of Yenching University, pianos are hardly seen.
…
My father’s name is Liu Xiaodong, also known as Liu Haigao. He was born on September 19, 1911 in a traditional big family in Beijing. My grandfather, great-grandfather and great-grandfather all took the imperial examinations for three generations, and my great-grandfather was still a Hanlin. His father has six siblings, but he is the only one who is more foreign. From the late 1920s to the early 1930s, he first studied English at Shandong University in Qingdao, and then went to Shanghai National Music College (the predecessor of today’s Shanghai Conservatory of Music) to major in vocal music, specializing in vocal music. Bass in bel canto. …Father taught vocal music in his spare time in his early years, and later vocal music educator Professor Shen Xiang all received his vocal music guidance.

In addition to giving Liu Shikun a wealthy family, Father Liu also has tens of thousands of records in his home, and also gave him a wealthy music environment and professional skills. In my opinion, this is the most important point besides his talent. Ma Shifang, who was born in Taiwan, also grew up in a similar environment to become an excellent music critic.

Liu Shikun showed his musical talent at a very young age and strengthened his father’s confidence in letting him learn the piano. Then it is the story of a gifted child who grows up to be a pianist. But in 1958, Liu Shikun participated in the Tchaikovsky piano competition in the Soviet Union and won the second place. During the preparation for the competition and the experience of touring in the Soviet Union after the competition, Liu Shikun described:

The trip to the Soviet Union was a very beautiful, very happy moment in my life, when I was just nineteen years old. The April and May after winning the award are the bright and prosperous season of the Soviet Union, and my mood is like spring.

He also befriended Van Cliburn, the first American in the race. After the game, the article has this description:

After Van Cliburn returned home after winning the award, he toured the United States and around the world, earning sky-high performance fees. When I returned to Beijing from Moscow in June 1958, the whole country was in the period of the vigorous “Great Leap Forward”, and there was a scene of fiery excitement everywhere, shrouded in an atmosphere of overheating and even fanaticism.

When I returned to China, I was in a completely different situation than Van Cliburn. Instead of performing all over the place, I didn’t have a concert. The first thing the Ministry of Culture arranged for me to do was to immediately go to the construction site of the Ming Tombs Reservoir, which is being built on the outskirts of Beijing, to participate in the heavy physical labor of building the reservoir. According to the thinking at the time, this was not to punish or belittle me, but to elevate me, because the state was vigorously propagating that “Intellectuals, literary and artistic people should be combined with workers, peasants and soldiers, and mental work should be combined with manual work. This is the first important thing. And the most glorious”, according to this logic, no matter how I perform after winning the award, it is not as important and more honorable as participating in manual labor.

The construction of the Ming Tombs Reservoir is a typical example of the “Great Leap Forward” movement, and state leaders have taken the lead in working on the reservoir construction site. I stayed in the Ming Tombs Reservoir for nearly two months in total. I lived in a big tent with some other literary and artistic people and slept on the ground on a bunk. My labor tasks were mainly to dig soil with a shovel and pick up soil and stones with a pole. At that time, I was young and strong, and I did not feel too hard and tired to do such heavy work. Brilliant, but also feel very interesting, very fresh, very fun.

…Because musicians who receive the award of workers, peasants and soldiers are only eligible to receive the highest award in the world, because the whole world belongs to the workers, peasants and soldiers.

I returned from Beijing to the Central Conservatory of Music, which was still in Tianjin at the time—I was still a piano student at that school. After entering the school, I found that the school was almost empty. I learned about people’s whereabouts from a janitor, and I immediately walked out of the school gate to look for someone. Sure enough, I saw a crowd of people on a nearby road, where the whole school was digging street drainage ditches.

When everyone saw that I had come back in a hurry, they all gathered around and greeted me, but I didn’t mention the well-known thing about winning the competition. I grabbed a shovel and started working with everyone… my positive performance. The leaders of the Central Conservatory of Music praised me that although I won the award, I was not complacent or arrogant, and based on my performance after returning to school, after reporting to the Ministry of Culture, I was established as a “red and professional” “Red Professional Model”.

In order for me to have more “red and professional” performances, the Central Conservatory of Music made the following arrangements for me:

Several times the piano was moved to some factory workshops or army barracks, and let me perform directly to the workers or soldiers, which meant integrating the workers, peasants, and soldiers.

Let me take part in the “Big Steel Making” campaign, making steel in a “small earth furnace” dug out of the soil to do this kind of heavy manual labor.

…

I was also sent to a village on the outskirts of Beijing, where I lived for half a month, where I ate, lived and worked with farmers.

All of the above are the political training for me to be “red and professional”. In 1959, in the craze of the “Great Leap Forward”, I joined the Chinese Communist Party.

In this way, the great piano genius had a very interesting episode in his life. On huge macro issues, we don’t have many choices, but we must first practice our skills well, so that when the opportunity comes, we won’t be stunned. Don’t expect others, see yourself.

---

If you have any questions, please send me an email, or forward it to your friends.

Newsletter Subscription Address: 31 Weeks

Tabloid subscription address: Sanshi Weekly Tabloid (paid product, which can be understood as Sanshi Weekly’s extras, or purely for my support)

Email address: [email protected]

See you next time ?

This article is reprinted from: https://elizen.me/newsletter/2022/08/newsletter-037/
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.