No doubts on your 40s

“Give me a child until he’s seven and I’ll give you the man. ” In 1964, BBC started the first documentary film as the beginning of “Up Series”. All the ten boys and four girls were interviewed every seven years afterwards, and one episode was made each time. In the 2005 film , those boys and girls are now 49 years old men and women.

It’s like some kind of horror movies which present the triple-fast-forward video of real life. The only comparison is the classmate reunion for celebration of twenty-years-graduation which I unfortunately participated last month ---- you were suddenly confronted by all those old buddies whose young images still vividly remained in your memory.

As one of the girls in the movie, Sue expressed her feelings when she saw their childhood images: “To be honest, when you look at the seven-year-old us, it’s difficult to believe it is us. I mean, it’s like it’s someone else you’re looking at, this little cute thing. I mean, I can’t remember being so cute. ” Oh, yes, I can’t believe that either :)

In spite of the ruthless inscription and ridiculous joke made by the time machine, we can still feel the warm texture of aging and mild breeze of the life being. Like a stone, after being polished by exhausting frictions years and years, turned out to be a silky-smooth and body-temperature jade.

Our inner part grow stronger and stronger when we getting older and older--that’s maybe the only consolation I can bring out to comfort myself. Actually what I really want is, I could go back to the seven-year-old myself, cuddle with him and say: “Don’t be afraid.”

-- Wish everyone has a fruitful 2013!

Beautiful Derbyshire & Chatsworth House

Derbyshire is probably the most famous and most beautiful inland counties in England for its natural and historical scenes.
The first national park in UK – Peak District – lying mainly in northern Derbyshire, attracts 10 million visitors per year. Despite its name, the landscape is generally characterized by rounded hills and grit stone cliffs. The highest point is 636 meters on Kinder Scout.
With the majority of area being in excess of 300 meters above sea level, and being situated to the west of the country with a latitude of 53 degrees, the Peak District experiences a relatively high amount of rainfall (>1000mm each year) compared to the rest of England. There are approximately 2,700 farms in the National Park with numerous sheep wandering around valleys and pastures.  

The Peak District provides opportunities for many types of outdoor activity such as hill walking, hiking, mountain cycling, horse riding, rock climbing, caving, sailing, fishing, paragliding, etc. Other visitors are attracted by resorts and historical buildings. Among those buildings, Chatsworth House which stands on the east bank of the River Derwent has always been the favorite country house in UK.

Chatsworth House was built by Duke of Devonshire as his family’s home since 1549. The house was rebuilt and estate was expanded continuously. In 1950, when the 10th Duke transferred the assets to his son, the inheritance tax was as high as ￡7 million (￡179 million as of 2012). They had to sell more than half of its land and even some major works of art from Chatsworth to pay the tax. Today, the Chatsworth Estate is about 140 square kilometers and it costs around ￡4 million a year to run the house.
In the 2005 film of Jane Austen’s , Chatsworth House appeared as Pemberly, Mr Darcy’s home.  In the film,  Jane Bennet cant believe her younger sister Elizabeth is falling in love with Mr Darcy  : "How long have you loved him?"  Elizabeth said :"It has been coming on so gradually that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." 

Back To 1942

In western countries, cannibal only appears in horror movies or
shipwrecks, but in China, it’s sort of nightmare which bestride the
whole 20th century. 
A drought in Henan happened in the war time ended up as over 3 million death catastrophe.  “Back to 1942” tried its best to make
itself looks like a documentary film—gray hue, dialect dialogue,
full-length shoot which keep reminding you it’s a true story—
sometimes tried too hard.
Civilians torn to pieces by aircraft bombing, refugees selling
daughter for one week’s food, indifferent state leaders and
unconcerned diplomats, news censorship and corrupted officials, by all those scenes director Fen Xiaogang is actually answering
questions he asked in trailers – why could this happen in 20th
century with modern communication and transportation?
Please keep this fact in mind when you try to blame the war or the Japanese or even the Nationalist Party—only 20 years later, under the governor of Communist Party and not any war at all, there
were over 15 million people starving to death in three years.
The only bright spot in the movie is the journalist played by
Adrien Brody -- I believe it’s a metaphor of the solution to famine: FREE SPEECH. In his famous work “Poverty and Famines”,
Amartya Sen made his conclusion, famines are not caused by lack of food, but the lack of democracy and free speech.


66注：英文习作，请大家多指出问题，先谢了。

西葫芦茄子

西葫芦去皮去馕，切薄片；茄子去头尾，切薄片。

蒜一瓣捣烂，下适量油，慢火，倒入西葫芦，然后茄子，慢慢翻一下，到微焦关火。
撒少许盐，淋一点苹果醋或酒醋－－这样吃起来没那么油。
如果油少吃口太干，起锅后补一点橄榄油也不错。
放五到十分钟再吃，风味更佳。