Cafe B-612
When I was little, I wanted to open a cafe, not for earning big money but for friends and cool people to have a place to hangout.
The other day, I started to think about what my cafe would look like if I am opening one. I would name it Cafe B-612. If you have read the little prince, B-612 is the asteroid where the little prince and his rose live. B-612 (46610 in hex) is also a real asteroid in the solar system discovered in 1993. Its diameter is 2 km. So it is both real and unreal 🙂
Then I think, ha, what things my cafe would do? I am always fond of intellectual groups that have real things to talk about like Café philosophique and the Junto. So my cafe needs to run talks, discussions, and do projects. It also needs festivity parties, board games, dances, and trips. So it is both serious and unserious 😉
Besides open to the public to attract excellent people, the cafe will be supported by a secret society of elite members. The members will design projects, topics, parties and trips. When I was at UVA, there were a few cool secret societies. One of them is called Seven. It consists of 7 members from the university community. Nobody knows who they are. They will leave the name Seven whenever they do good deeds in the community. When one member dies, the university rings the bell 7 times, and a new member then will be selected as a replacement.
Unfortunately, I moved a lot and traveled even more, and most of the best people I met in my life are not local. So I don’t have a secret society and cannot yet open a cafe of my kind. But everything should have a start point, let my blog be a start point 😀 To celebrate its birth, I share some cool video from a concert I went lately: Yeah, baby, I got you!
Life in East and West Villages: From Van Gogh to Joan Miró
This year I had been to Shanghai once and NYC twice so far. It almost like if I am not working, I am in the ultra large cities. My hairstylist at NYC probably think I live a few blocks away, lol. I like the cities that you cannot see the edges.
From Feb to June, MoMA was showing Joan Miró (1893-1983). It consists of a total of 60 pieces, including very large ones like the following. You can see that Miró’s work is strongly influenced by cubism and shares a flavor of Picasso’s work. In fact, they are both Spanish painters at a similar period.
I have some interesting connections with Miró . About 15 years ago, one friend heard that I like modern art and sent me a poster of Miró’s inverted person. I was like “really? it is not Van Gogh, come on” Apparently, back then, I was only interested in Van Gogh.
Met, MoMA, Guggenheim and DC Smithsonian all have collections of Van Gogh. Typically, his work is in the same room as other impressionists like Monet or Paul Cézanne. I have been liking Van Gogh for many years, but until I grew up I started understanding why. Compared to other impressionists, Van Gogh uses very strong colors, thick almost rich texture paints and swirling strokes. From his work, you can feel he is awkward, intense and genuine. His biographies and movie indeed show that he has fires in his heart. Interestingly, Met shows very different styles of Van Gogh’s paintings created in the same year side by side. You can see that in addition to the Van Gogh style, he was trying the “dotted” strokes that were popular at the period, shown by some other paintings in the same exhibition rooms.
Over the years, my taste goes to more and more abstract. Miró ‘s work is symbolic and has a spirit of the Ancient Chinese Character (xiang xing wen zi). It almost reaches the spectrum of surrealism. Here is how Miró represents men, women, and animals, can you see them?
If you are familiar with Picasso, you probably already see the cubism in Miró’s work. The idea is to extract more and more concrete details from a painting and see at what time, a viewer is still able to recognize the objects in a painting. It is almost like that the painters create a puzzle for a viewer to solve. One approach is to extract elements of different sides of an object and put them in the same surface. The other approach is to use simplified geometric forms to represent objects. See Picasso’s work below.
I like poems. Sometimes, I feel the music I know is influencing how I write the poems. Miró also likes poems. He said “I made no distinction between painting and poetry”. It almost sounds like crazy, but I understand what he was saying here. He told the French poet Michel Leiris “you and all my writer friends have given me much help and improved my understanding of many things”.
If you are going to Québec city anytime soon, don’t miss Miró’s another great show: https://www.mnbaq.org/en/exhibition/miro-in-mallorca-a-free-spirit-1269 (thanks Yun for the info)
How to eliminate invasive species?
6/30/19 I went to a “standup science” the other day. It is so exciting to see that many people come to ask interesting questions and want to participate discussions outside the university environment. Yes, science should be for everybody!
According to wiki, ” An invasive species is a species that is not native to a specific location (an introduced species), and that has a tendency to spread to a degree believed to cause damage to the environment, human economy or human health. ”
One approach under research is called the Trojan-Y Chromosome strategy (TYC). The idea is to introduce a genetically-modified group of organisms into an ecosystem. They are super males that carry YY chromosome (normally, females carry XX and males carry XY). Once they are released to the environment, mating with YY super males will only lead to XY males. As a result, XX female populations will dramatically reduce and cause the invasive species to extinct. In 1950s and 60s, YY supermale fishes were produced by (abnormal) XY females and XY males. The experiments showed that all the off-springs are males when females mate only with supermales.
Scary power, isn’t it?!
(Acknowledgment: Dr. Rana Parshad)
What’s special about the human brain?
Human brain is not bigger than, e.g., the elephant’s brain, but we are smarter than elephants because the proportion of brain/body matters. Chimpanzees and humans have a similar size body and brain. But according to wiki, human beings have 86 billions of neurons and chimps have 28 billions of neurons. Running a brain consumes much energy, chewing raw food entire day cannot supply enough energy for human brain. It is the fire that makes cooking possible so we can more effectively absorb nutrition and keep our brain running.
(Acknowledgment: Neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel, just realized that I used a very close title as her talk’s title, lol)
A non-starving day
5/19/19 It is cool to grow in dimensions, from a circle to a ball, from a triangle to a pyramid, and from a square to a cubic … You then have a much better view of the world.
Recently, I think it will be fun to put together all of my homemade food pictures and reorganizing them into daily eats, hmm maybe called “a non-starving day”?!
Breakfast: Homemade soy-milk + stick rice ball + orange and avocado
You will just need a Joyoung soymilk making machine and some dried soybeans. It takes less than half an hour. The rice ball is filled with eggs and seaweed and YouTiao — some fried dough. You can boil some white rice mixed with stick rice. Remember to keep them as dry as possible. When it is done, you roll them with the ingredients see below.
Behind the scene 
Behind the scene
Lunch: Miso noodle
(1) Precook noodle in the boiling water (if you feel like to, rinse it in the cold water)
(2) boil some savory broth with a spoon of miso and some soy source
(3) when the broth starts boiling, add tofu, mushroom and noodles, add a hard-boil egg
Dinner: GanGuo cauliflower + mixed grain rice
(1) soak up the cauliflower in the salt water for 15-30 minutes
(2) heat up some oil in the wok with some pepper and garlic (some people add bacon or potato too)
(3) turn on the fire, add the cauliflower, stir-fry
(4) add some oyster source and water
(5) close the lid of the wok for half minute or a minute (turn down the fire a bit). Then it’s done.
More healthy eats and drinks tips attached:
No. 1: I found that the bottled drinks in the super markets are mostly sugar water and sometimes with soda. The tasty breads also can contain large amount of sugar and butter. Even the healthy food *yogurt* sold in the market has so much sugar in it unless it is marked as “plain yogurt”.
No. 2: when I am very busy at work, I typically keep a giant bag of baby carrots in fridge. When I don’t have time to cook vegetables, I eat a bowl of carrots; when I am hungry and I do some carrot snacking instead of chips and cookies. It is sweet, fresh and contains high vitamin A and fiber.
No. 3: This is what I learned from the hotel lobbies 🙂 I make icy fruit water and keep it in the fridge. It is easy, just chop up bunches of fruits, like lemon, oranges, strawberries, and put them in a water pitch and then fill the water. You can also add some honey of your choice. After one day in fridge, the water is flavorful and colorful. I like to drink it after I finish my what-so-ever-yeah-kill-me outdoor workout. Imagine: drink that thing, chill on the porch, and watch the thunderstorms clouds coming in …. Not bad ha 🙂
Hainan Island @ China (7) – Sanya the city
5/12/19 good conversations are precious.
friend: “I miss somebody, but when we met in person, I didn’t know what to say and I even felt bored, maybe because the reality is noisy and not as pure and beautiful as what you were thinking”
me: “so, meet or not meet, which one is better?”
friend: “ both are good, it is just what you see and what you think often are not the same”
me: “it sounds sad. I would rather believe that the purity and beauty do exist?!?!”
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The semester is over! Even the Monday deadline cannot block my mood of going out kayaking and seeing some lame Iowa cliffs this morning 🙂 Looking at my summer playing agenda, I probably should catch up my Christmas trip blogs, lol
The Sanya city is a crowd, messy (construction cites here and there), chaotic and loud (many people and scooters) city, but I found some interesting spots in the city that worth broadcasting. This reminds me of our life, it is complex and imperfect, and sometimes it makes me feel like a moron, BUT there are still good sparks that can cheer us up.
Let’s first see some buildings in the city. Most of the time, this city looks like this:
But, in a good day, you see something like this. The architect is brilliant, a concrete forest in a concrete city 🙂
As a competition, there are also buildings that look like sailboats, not bad eh? Only rich people can live inside though
Poor people live life like this.
I am not sure if it is easily to see this in the above picture: there are five characters mounted on the yellow building, called “fat women seafood, located at 1F”. Sounds irresistible 🙂
Animals in this city also have different lives:
chilling in the market 
dead
These fishes are raised to eat off people’s dead skin of the feet 
amusing people in the airport
Plants?! They are civilized here.
At night, the city still has fun things to do.
this picture I taken from the bus, it is not a picture but a memo for me to remember there is a giant underground shopping here, GUCCI, COACH … you name it.
The last picture is a repertoire of my beginning short story
Return of the warrior
The situation is: my Chinese peers all over the world indeed are working 996.icu, and even the 2nd tier conference in my area started to see 10% accept rate. SHIT, IT’S THE TIME TO COME BACK ON TRACK 😀
p.s. I found this sketch along with my research notes. Since then, I have done a few prettier and cleaner ones on top of this draft, but those are never able to capture the madness of that moment 😀 Also, I was thinking of Julius Caesar when I sketch this. So this one is the best, xixi
Hainan Island @ China (6) – Sanya South Mountain
4/28/19 An insane week is always the best week 🙂 😀
From the city center of Sanya, you took 30+ stops on a city bus (cost about 2 dollars and 1-2 hours), you will arrive at this place called “South Mountain”（南山）. It is the home of the famous “South Mountain temple” and “Guanyin on the sea” (a 108 meter monument with elevators and Buddhism temples inside). I always enjoy visiting Buddhism temples when I go back to China. It is my Philosophers’ Walk where I feel I reconnect my Chinese roots. Some temples preserve historical caves, carvings, towers, buildings, books dating back as far as 2000 years ago. There are poems, calligraphy, stories and historical people I learned in schools in China as well as the good memories that my family took me there when I was little. Of course, it is always pleasant to conclude your visit with a tasty vegetarian meal offered here.
The south mountain park is huge. I remembered that I walked the entire day. It is so scenic that every breath is a picture like this:
The first must-go is the “Guanyin on the sea”. This is an incredible engineering project. People built an island in the ocean and there is a one-mile bridge that connects the land and the island. The statue has three faces, each of which carved the same Guanyin but with different instruments: one represents health, one represents money and career, and the third one represents harmonic relations in life.
From the top of the statue
The “south mountain temple” is located in the same park but a few miles away from the statue. It is built on the mountain and faces the oceans. There are beaches and boulders where people hang out and take pictures. The park has golf cart types of transportation that can take you there.
There has been research that studies how religion impacts humanity. The conclusions are religion in general has a negative impact on humanity. Hmm, I hope it at least has brought people peace when they are in the fear. This is a tree called “make a wish tree”. People wrote their wishes on the red cloths and hang them on the tree. The colorful flags are typically seen in Tibet. Each color represents a different Buddha with different powers.
The park has a forest of “Buddha Trees”, whose technical names are called “Ficus religiosa”. This is a type of a tree under which “Siddhārtha Gautama” (释迦摩尼）sat and became a Buddha? There are many interesting and philosophical stories and poems in Buddhism, e.g., “菩提本无树，明镜亦非台，本来无一物，何处惹尘埃”. They are very hard to translate though. I can quite feel what they might mean but not able to understand them enough to articulate the meanings.
The park also has this instrument, consisting of different sizes of bells. When the wind comes, the bells ring with different sounds, very poetic.
J. S. Bach, Prelude in d, BWV 926
4/21/19 Watched “free solo” and “meru”?! Rock climbers are just cool. These movies indeed changed some of my views about work and life.
This prelude looks simple from the music sheet. But it is very difficult to play. Sometimes I spent long time in front of piano. I still found different ways to play it. If you take individual notes from this piece, they are nothing special, but when putting them together, they are so…o musical. It’s like a good writer who uses non-fancy sentences, but it’s just intriguing to read a sentence followed by another sentence to explore the entire story.
Rachmaninoff has composed many emotional pieces. I very much enjoy these pieces because I feel resonance of his emotion. Bach is quite different from me. He is German, he is cool and he is logic. But I found him so interesting. You never know where he takes you. He is a master who invisibly leads you around and then gives you a chuckle behind the curtain. I feel he has this aspect of intelligence that my brain never can reach. Once a pianist told me that “Bach is so deep. When his music starts, you feel the entire room is lid up”.