The Moment of Dream Come True

Burning Paper Money

The burning of “ghost money,” the paper regarded as an offering to inhabitants of the netherworld, is a common practice in Chinese society for thousands of years.  People in Taiwan, most of whom are Buddhists and Taoists, believe that the more mock money they burn, the more good fortune they will have; as a result, they are used to placing tables laden with a variety of foods, fruits and beverages in front of their premises to worship their ancestors, gods, and ghosts during several important festivals, such as Tomb Sweeping Festival, Ghost Festival and Chinese Lunar New Year.  However, nowadays, an increasing number of the environmental protection authorities are calling on the public to avoid burning paper money due to the pollution it brings.  While many people argue that this long-hold tradition must be conserved, there is some evidence that the practice of burning paper money yields negative results. 

Opponents of breaking burning ghost money claim that burning paper money is a demonstration of sincerity, saying that if the ancestors receive sufficient financial support from their descendants, they will have a better life in the heaven or in the afterlife; consequently, the descendants will be blessed with good fortune, a happy marriage, a healthy body or a year of prosperity.  The more paper money they burn, the more blessing they will obtain.  However, this belief is a complete superstition.  What really matters is the sincerity of prayers; what they bear in mind is much more important than what they burn.  No matter how much paper money the worshippers burn, if they don’t possess benevolence or kindness in mind, they won’t be blessed by any god or ancestor.  Furthermore, putting one’s hands together with his most sincere heart in prayer is enough for his ancestors or gods.  “The gods will sense that,” said Huang Lu Ching-ju, a director of Taipei City Government’s Department of Civil Affairs.

The Exploration of the Documentary Daughter from Danang

A heartbreaking drama that greatly upsets people’s perspective on happily-ever-after, Daughter from Danang is a complex emotional documentary about longing, identity, expectations and the vast gulf between lifestyles.  Born in Danang, Vietnam in 1968 but reared in Tennessee in the U.S, Heidi Bub is the mixed-raced daughter of an American soldier and a Vietnamese woman.  Fearing for her daughter’s safety at the war’s end, Heidi’s mother sent her to the U.S. on “Operation Babylift” at the age of 6.  Although born in Vietnam, Heidi is an “all-American” girl.  Discovering that her birth mother had been searching for her just “like finding a needle at the bottom of the sea,” said Edward Guthmann, a Chronicle Staff Writer, she couldn’t wait to fly to see the person for whom she had also been longing for over 22 years.  While most stories have happy endings, Daughter from Danang ends in an extraordinary, unexpected, and tragic way.  The consequence that the mother and the daughter never saw each other in the aftermath of the reunion can be attributed to two reasons: false expectations and cultural differences.

To begin with, false expectations were the direct causes of conflicts between Heidi and her birth mother.  Initially, Heidi, with a cheerful, idealistic and clueless personality, didn’t think that the world would be any different after she met her birth mother.  Due to her innocence, and her unloving and abusive childhood, Heidi was merely eager for “healing” and an intimate, affective and unconditional love that had long been missing in her life.  She indeed enjoyed the lush affection and hospitality of her birth mother during her earlier days in Vietnam, but after the excitement and happiness faded, the tension gradually built between Heidi and her mother.  Heidi’s Vietnamese birth mother, however, scarred by war and living in poverty all her life, saw the reunion differently; she had hoped that Heidi would provide her with a better material life, support her, and take her home to the States to live comfortably for the rest of her life.  Sensing the real intention of her birth mother, Heidi became stressed and uptight since in the United States, the children are under no obligation to financially support their parents when they grow up and move out.  What is more, her half siblings and a number of relatives’ obvious and intense requests for money increased the tension between Heidi and her birth mother to a boiling point.

Understanding Earthquakes

The houses were shaking; the books on the shelves were falling out; pots and pans were going right down to the floor!  Everything was shaking.  Frightened, shocked, and screaming – people awoke from their sweet dreams and found it was an earthquake.  Forgetting all the safety rules taught in school, residents hurriedly escaped from their houses.  Finally, the houses stopped shaking; as a result, some people were relieved and started to go back into their houses.  A few minutes later, a fateful disaster occurred - the earthquake was back again!  Before the residents could respond, all of a sudden, the buildings collapsed, the bridges were destroyed, the roads split and thousands of people were buried under piles of bricks.  The whole island suffered blackouts at the moment.  This was the scene on September 21^st, 1999 in central Taiwan that is known as the 921 Earthquake.  This disaster renewed fears about the catastrophic power of earthquakes and made people in this land start to think about the importance of earthquakes preparedness.  To understand the 921 earthquake, it is necessary to comprehend how an earthquake occurs and develops.

    A sudden release of energy stored in the Earth’s crust creates earthquakes.  In general, an earthquake is caused by tectonic plates getting stuck and putting a strain on the ground, which is also called a tectonic earthquake.  The strain becomes so great that rocks succumb by breaking and sliding along fault planes.  When a failure at a fault plane results in violent displacement, the strain elastic energy is released and seismic waves are radiated, thus causing an earthquake.  According to the United States Geological Survey, this process of strain, stress, and failure is referred to as the Elastic-Rebound Theory.  “It is estimated that only 10 percent or less of an earthquake's total energy is radiated as seismic energy,” explains Spence William, a distinguished geologist.  Most of the earthquake's energy is utilized to power the growth of the earthquake fracture and converted into heat.

How did the devastating 921 Earthquake happen?  The quake, whose epicenter was in Jiji Township in Nantou County in central Taiwan, hit the island at 1:47 AM and measured 7.8 on the Richter scale.  It happened mainly because two huge fault lines – the Chelungpu Fault and the Damaopu Fault – extruded each other intensely, and Jiji Township lay directly on the intersection of those two fault lines.  The fault stretched along the foothills of the Central Mountains in Nantou and Taichung counties.  Some sections of land near the fault were raised as much as 7 meters (23 feet).  Near Dongshih, near the northern end of the fault, a 7-meter tall waterfall was created by the earthquake.  It is noticeable that the greatest devastation of destroyed buildings took place not in central Taiwan, but in Taipei city.  The collapse of the Tong-Hsing Building in Taipei caused the 87 deaths and the 138 severely wounded.  The reason that the biggest fatalities in one building happened far away from the epicenter was proven that since the Public Works Department of Taipei City Government didn't carry out the building code, allowing the construction company chances to use cheaper materials, human factors contributed hugely to the deadly and unexpected collapse of the Tong-Hsing Building.

The Advantages of Being a Woman

When asked, “Would you like to be a man or woman in your next life if your gender could be selected?” some may prefer to be a woman, while others may argue that being a man has more advantages because men enjoy more independence, have more courage, and need less concern for personal security, which means no curfew and more pleasure at night.  Although there are always pros and cons on either side, being a woman is more desirable than being a man in three areas: emotions, responsibilities, and freedom in dress.

First of all, a woman can express her emotions freely.  In general, since a man was young, he has often been taught to be strong and tough or to never cry in public. He needs to repress his sorrow, depression and despair in his heart, and never let the tears be shed, especially in front of others.  If the negative emotion continues, he might burden his heart with too much stress, just like an over-stretched rubber band, which could result in defeat in his lifetime.  However, a woman’s tears are usually considered to be a demonstration of sincerity, innocence, and cuteness.  She can laugh and scream whenever and wherever she wants.  For example, a woman, when seeing a touching movie, doesn’t worry about being laughed for having hot tears well up in her eyes.  In addition, a woman can not only hug her close friends without wondering if others think she is a lesbian, but also behave irrationally like a spoiled child, as her beloved one might find it cute.

Marriage? Another Name Called Gambling

Marriage is a big gamble.  It requires good preparation, a wonderful plan, and full confidence, and then one can make a decision to gamble for the rest of his life.  Even after long years of dating, observation and precise evaluation, no one can guarantee that the prince and the princess will have a happy life forever, just as no one can be certain that he will win at gambling.  Although marriage and gambling have some parallels, they exhibit many essential and intense differences.

In general, marriage and gambling are similar.  To begin with, they are both unpredictable actions.  No one can use a scientific calculation to project their rates of success.  Second, both actions are high risk decisions.  From the TV news or newspapers around the world, people can easily find thousands of tragedies everyday in which one commits suicide or kills others due to his inability to accept the lose of love or to pay off his debts.  Furthermore, in both win or lose, people need to take responsibility for the results because their decisions were made of their own free will.  No one is forced to marry someone or gamble, normally.

Whether Anna Anderson was Anastasia

That Anna Anderson was not Anastasia can be proved because of the languages they spoke, the recognition of the royal family, the accuracy of her descriptions, and the DNA tests.  First of all, Anna Anderson and Anastasia had spoken different languages.  Anastasia had been able to speak English and French, both of which Anna could not speak.  There have been no studies so far showing that one would lose his mother language because of amnesia.  In addition, with regard to recognition, members of the Russian royal family did not recognize Anna, and Anna didn’t recognize people who had been very close to Anastasia.  Because Anna had been able to recognize something accurately, she must not have had amnesia.  Also, if one does not have amnesia, it is not possible to forget people who she had been very close to.  Moreover, when Anna would describe the interior of palaces and other places that Anastasia would have known, her descriptions were often inaccurate.  Finally, DNA tests reconfirmed that Anna and Anastasia were not a same person.  DNA specialists took blood samples from both a very sick Anna in the hospital and the corpse of Duke of Edinburgh, the nephew of Empress Alexandra, in the forest grave.  The DNA specialist, Dr. Peter Gill, stated, “If one accepts that this sample is from Anna Anderson, then it is almost impossible that she could have been Anastasia.”  To conclude, based on the spoken languages, the family recognitions, precision in descriptions and the scientific DNA tests, Anna Anderson was not Anastasia. 

Americans Preferred Boys over Girls

According to the latest Gallup poll on baby gender preferences in the United States, people prefer to have a boy over a girl if limited to one child.  When asked, “Suppose you could only have one child. Would you prefer that it be a boy or a girl?” 37% of those polled preferred to have a boy and 28% preferred a girl.  However, a high percentage of those polled, 26%, answered, “It doesn’t matter [if it’s a boy or a girl],” although this was not an option.  This showed that a group of people, to some extent, still thought a baby’s gender was not important at all.  Among those who favored boys, the top three reasons were that men can relate to males better, boys can carry on the family name and boys are easier to raise.  On the other hand, among those who favored girls, the main reasons were that mothers can have a closer relationship with daughters, they already have girls and girls are easier to raise.  If we take a deeper look into the demographics of those polled, twice as many men preferred boys than preferred girls.  Comparatively, women didn’t show such a significant gender preference; their preference for boys and girls is relatively similar.  That people in the United States would response this way is really surprising.  Since America is a country that has always supported equal rights, Americans are famous for their open-mindedness, democracy and liberty.  A number of advocates demanded equality for women in jobs, salary and housework, striving for ultimate fairness and rejecting all forms of gender oppression and stereotypes.  Therefore, that male supremacy exists in the United States, just as it does in other countries, was an astounding discovery.

Outlines – SARS and the Black Plague

Brief Outlines

1.          Similarities: SARS and the Black Plague have several similarities.

2.          Causes: The first is that the causes of the disease are from animals, and then transmitted to human.

Median Earnings and Tax Payments by Level of Education, 2003

According to Sandy Baum and Kathleen Payea, one’s level of education determines one’s pay and taxes.  Respondents, full-time year-round workers age 25 and older, were asked to provide their 2003 total earnings and tax payments.  The research showed that respondents with professional degrees obtained the highest salary US$95,700 and paid the highest taxes compared to those of other educational levels.  The earnings of those with Doctorate degrees reached US$79,400 per year.  Drastically lower-around US$20,000-than those with Doctorate degrees, people with Master’s degrees earned the third highest salary US$50,500.  The fourth highest salary, US$49,900, was earned by respondents with Bachelor’s degrees.  With regard to those with Associate degrees, college degrees, and high school diplomas, their salaries were relatively close; they were US$37,000, US$35,700 and US$30,800 respectively.  The lowest salary was US$21,600, earned by those with less than high school diplomas; meanwhile, they paid the lowest taxes accordingly. 

The Dependence of Humans on Mobile Phones

Due to remarkable advances in consumer electronics, people are relying heavily on mobile phones.  According to the latest report in the newspaper Gazeta Mercantil, around 40% of respondents kept their mobile phones switched on during socially sensitive occasions.  The survey, conducted by Brazilian consultant Ibope, indicated that 42% of those polled kept their phones switched on during business meetings, 40% kept them on in churches and 39% did so at movie theaters.  The survey found that people were dependent on their cell phones and couldn’t risk missing any call, even at inconvenient moments.  That people in this hectic society would respond this way is not surprising.  Their responses can be attributed to two factors. The first is that the world’s pace is changing too fast.  Due to the rapid technological development of the Internet, online instant messenger software such as MSN, AOL and Skype, and the maturity of the wireless environment, people access the latest information hassle-free.  The second factor is that a growing number of people are anxious about getting information, a condition called “Information Anxiety.”  That makes people always keep their cell phones on for fear of getting behind and out of the information loop.  Because of these two factors, human’s dependence on mobile phones is unlikely to decrease anytime soon.