Ready, Set, Go!

It might seem a little crazy to start a blog at this time, when life’s overwhelmed with assignments, exams, and essays. But Mujun and Psyche inspired me to do so by their (formally, in the case of Psyche) frequently updated blogs.

Mujun’s doing a Sociology PhD in the states. She updates her blog almost daily, short but usually interesting and inspiring. Most articles touch the problems of Chinese society or intellectual life and a few of them lead to debates, which can be quite fierce sometimes. Her MPhil thesis is due at the end of this semester, so she’s been doing some over-night writing. But that doesn’t stop her updating the blog on a rather regular basis. Writing blog, I suppose, is a way to take life positively. As one sits down at the end of a day and spells out his thoughts, he contemplates on something other than his work and gains inner peace. This kind of regular practice of contemplation and expression gets life in a positive cycle, and I think this is what gives her an optimistic attitude, while going through a difficult period of life. Here, I suddenly think of Foucault, who encourages us to transform our existence into a kind of ‘permanent exercise’. And some take his writing of The History of Sexuality as this kind of exercise, which is akin to a Chinese concept: xiulian.

Psyche’s blog hasn’t really been updated for a while, probably because of her continuous health problems (the latest one being a painful wisdom tooth). And yet she showed me that writing a blog fulfils the need of expression and develops the ability to do it well. Psyche and I both belong to that kind of people who think too much and have too many weird ideas. But there’s a big gap between thinking and expressing – times and times again, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to express our thoughts clearly. The words burst out from your mouth might not really catch what’s in your mind or even go on to distort it. Tongue betrays brain. Also, expression is by no means trivial: inexpressible ideas are worthless, until they find appropriate ways to present themselves. Anything exists only in mind and can’t be spelled out is almost always problematic. On the other hand, only expressed ideas can get feedback from other people so as to test its viability. Even misunderstanding offers an idea of what’s going on in their mind and the world around us. I guess this kind of practice of expression and the engagement in ‘socialisation of expressions (with ideas behind them)’ are part of what Foucault would call ‘a permanent practice’.

Err… Just notice that I’ve written so much only to justify the motivation of opening this English blog. Anyway, hopefully I’m ready for the journey of xiulian, starting from now.