My Music

I am not fond of , and strong at expressing myself in more diverse ways. I don't know if it is solely developed when I was young. Later, when I grow older, I become passive to the emotional and sensational aspect of the life. Maybe, it is solely due to my immersion in the science study and partially, my so-called distinctive characters. (Right, everyone is distinctive.) It is rather complicated to express my own feeling towards the people.

How complicated is it? Before the expression, I can load further possibilities of the outcomes so as to form a decision to control my next step in the expression. To certain extent, no direct expression is present. Just like the normal form game, no one is eager to tell you any strategies. Decisions and outcomes are rather the cross section of my thought and your thought.
Nevertheless, I adopt the music to become the catalyst to express myself as much as possible. Just treasured the time in study, yet have squandered the time to experience life and emotion. Now that it is the rare break for my life, I should sweep away the dust adhering the CD cover, again, embracing the music.

Right, recently I revised those songs sung by Ken Hirai. He is famous for his excellent vocal expression in love song. The song Me wo tojite is the one that I first approached his style of singing. That is once the theme song of the famous Japanese Movie called Crying Out Love in the Center of the World. Emotion is not so easy to be expressed in my real life, while the song is an excellent carrier of such hidden emotion crying out for the recognition from everybody and the mere reminiscence of my past.

Today, I thoroughly cherish another famous song by Ken Hirai called Pop Star, as a mean to relieve myself from that entangled life. The song Pop Star is out of many people's expectation on Ken Hirai's song, as his song is usually expressed in softer and milder pace. All of a sudden, hearing this song during the work, I can hardly resist my pleasure brought from its vital melody. Instead, I would like to explore myself through this auspicious laugh and optimism.

Let me forget the option and future, the boom and bust of the stock market and life. Instead, I would like to foresee my destination to pave an elegant avenue to reach the stage for the Pop Star.

Economy of Song Dynasty II

Now that the vitality of market economy was highly developed in Song Dynasty, this could be a firm base to foster competitive environment for the direct investment in science and technology. New technology such as movable-type printing and wide application of gun powder became available at the time of Song Dynasty. As for the agriculture, the tools and the irrigation technology had been improved so that this enhanced the productivity and maintained stable supply of agricultural products. There was incentive to increase the population as a complementary mean to utilize the increased capacity of the capitals and technology.

Competitive market was directly fostered and facilitated by the government, which in turn boosted the amount of direct investment in machines and technology with the transparent measure of goods' prices. With regard to the human capital investment, the crucial factor is due to the overall stable environment. As described before, the Northern Song Dynasty aimed at the peaceful negotiation and implemented concessionary policies with the neighbors. After the peaceful agreements endorsed in early 1000s, these agreements ensured that the peaceful environment could reduce the recruitment of the soldiers. The life at that period seemed to be appreciated so that the people were eager to study more so as to become the civil administrative officers inside the government, or actively involved in business and trade. Specialization in business and trade enabled Song Dynasty to have the best period in economic growth.

One may criticize Song Dynasty damaging the reputation of the nation since the territory of China at that period was largely diminished. The government budget for the Song Dynasty was virtually poor. Moreover, the flooding of the civil administrative officers, who entered these positions by passing various stale and complex examinations, has squandered many resources to construct the country. We can assess these phenomena with the balance of cost and benefit.

Large size of the territory does mean that the countries have enough natural resources and land to support its economic growth. In addition, in the perspective of ancient people, it directly links to equality of the affluent country. However, one should also need to consider the management cost that can be disastrous amount to undermine the country's development in case the countries cannot devise comprehensive controlling systems. (I hereby assume the countries did its administration by centralization. Each county is lack of independence.)

In ancient government public finance, there exist different points of view to stabilize the economy. They usually collect sufficient amount of tax to expand the military power, as described before, it was a mean to boost its reputation. A responsible government also needs this tax to finance and alleviate the casualties in certain natural disasters such as drought and flooding.

Overall, the side of government spending is more prevalent. This involves the cumbersome public financial management, which heavily relies on the self-discipline of the emperors and the government officials. In the ideal case, the government is so rational to control the budget wisely that the people strongly support and heavily rely on the government policy, resulting in the tiger economy. On the other extreme situation, the emperors are so corrupted that the wealth of the nation is squandered by the government totally. The grievance and rebellion are easily spread out without control.

In consequence, this kind of policy is indeed the risk magnifier. Qin Dynasty is the best example to embody these two extreme conditions within 15 years. Ming Dynasty just reflects the worst side of this politics, which overthrew China's leadership in economy and technology in the ancient period and middle age. Han Dynasty enacted the powerful and prosperous image of China, yet the economy was not so mature as the industrial diversification is not well-developed such that this could not ensure that living standard can be improved vastly.

For the case of Song dynasty, government budget was maintained in the small scale. Free trade was encouraged by reduction of tax. The economic weakness was due to the gifts such as gold, silver and silks used for the maintenance of the harmonic relationship between Liao and Xixia. The revenue was no longer going to the warfare and military. Eventually, Song dynasty had to encounter poor government budget. Nevertheless, with the appropriate amount of investment, trade indeed enhanced the wealth and living standard of the people in Song Dynasty. In conclusion, the pros and cons of the public finance is not that easy to be assessed.

With regard to the over-supply of the mandarins and civil administrative officers, I concede that it can be a mistake to take some skeptical examinations that do not have practical purposes. However, to certain extent, the traditional Chinese knowledge was not overwhelmingly defeated by the modern business knowledge and technology. At least, the traditional knowledge concerns the filial piety and benevolent behavior, which can be a very vital concept to complement the bulky laws constituted by the western school of thought, to effectively control the country and in turn regulate the market. The problem for Song dynasty is, flooding of mandarins means redundancy exists.

Song Dynasty might be a disgrace in that period of time. Actually it does not dismiss the Chinese culture. The traditional ancient countries strengthened their economies by targeting on the conquest and areas of the countries. On the contrary, Song Dynasty explored alternative system to facilitate economy despite the original intention of the government caring about the threat of the military junta. This was an unintentional initiative producing a perfect ground for the natural experiment in economics and politics. When we were in the secondary school, the nation's strength and weakness is largely focused on the military power and the emperors' records in the history. Let's appreciate the history in both the national strength and the economic growth!

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* Reference from Wikipedia, labor economics and other economics texts.

Economy of Song Dynasty I

It is not a surprising fact that Han and Tang Dynasties have gained strong reputation owing to its territory expansion policy through massive foreign affairs and war. In most of the common perception of the Chinese people, the enlightened emperors should mostly appear in these two dynasties. Nevertheless, one may not notice that China had climbed up to the plateau of economy since Song Dynasty, which is regarded as a notorious dynasty due to its coward policy, strengthening the power of mandarin, and confiscating the power of the soldiers and general.

Intuitively speaking, economic growth can be attributed to four different senses, including the trading (market), population of resources and factors, technology, and a factor which is hardly imagined nowadays - conquest. The former traditional representative dynasties mainly used the method of trade and conquest to achieve its soaring status, while Song Dynasty (especially for Northern Song Dynasty) concentrated on the trading, population and technology in order to enhance its economy.

The result of this development is controversial, as it once greatly improved the living standard of the Chinese people in 150 years. If we adopt the real GDP per capita to measure the level of income at that period time, we will find that their real GDP per capita could be even higher than that of the modern China!

Indeed, Song Dynasty adopted the strictest policy to eliminate the power of the generals because of the former misery of Tang Dynasty and the five dynasties, which could not control the generals to comply with the order of the emperors, resulting in frequent overthrows of the emperors. The nation eventually maintained its weak status in its warfare, and proposed a lot of concessionary policies when the country of Liao (Khitan, an ancient ethnic group living in northern part of China from ninth century to twelfth century.) wanted to invade Song.

Despite the presence of this policy, this does not mean that the concessionary policies devastated the nation's economy. Instead, the peaceful 100 years in Northern Song dynasty provided the best environment to nurture the other elements of economic growth.

Regarding the trading environment in Song dynasty, the tax rate was low that this is predominant to induce vast amounts of turnover in business. The open economy was encouraged by the government so that apart from the political trading areas between Liao and Xixia (Western Xia, a country located in north-western part of China, which includes the Gansu and Ningxia province), most of the sea trade routes between southeast Asia could be founded extensively.

At the period of Song Dynasty, China was the first country in the world to implement the monetary policy with a view to boosting the economy, although the idea may not be expansionary or contractionary means. Actually the increase in liquidity in the money market sufficed to boost the economy at that time. The paper money called Huizi, the earliest fiat money in the world, is one of the cleverest enactment to elicit the frequency of exchange by increase the money supply (Of course, it requires the self-regulated discipline in order to operate this healthily. In the war period, money supply is usually out of control...)

When it comes to the government, the other regulations, including the immigration policy and household register, were relatively loose so that it largely reduced the cost of trading. In addition, perhaps one may not notice this controversy, that the political status in Song Dynasty was significantly stable when we compare this with the other dynasties. Nowadays, political stability through the action of the royal family and their servants is not as popular as the time that the emperors acquire the absolute power. Yet, the reliability of this huge nepotic organization becomes a crux to control the life of a dynasty.

We can hardly find licentious and absolute emperors in Song Dynasty. Perhaps, Emperor Huizong is the only one in Northern Song Dynasty. Comparing with the emperors in Ming Dynasty, his wrong-doing and poor administration was actually mild. Moreover, the eunuch's hazard in Song Dynasty is not as rampant as those in Ming Dynasty and Tang Dynasty. A prestigious dynasty like Tang Dynasty could fall completely and miserably for nearly 150 years owing to the internal conflict among the eunuchs, royal family, and mandarins. Song Dynasty, in most of the circumstances, lacked the eunuchs dictatorshps and the conflict among the family members. Although the so-called hypocritic ministers existed in the last few decades of Song Dynasty, the overall impact and the period of political turmoil is not as profound as those in Ming Dynasty.

(Continue.)

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* Reference from wikipedia, chinese history textbooks, etc.

Recent Renaissance of Science Sense

Oops, I haven't logged in here for such a long time. Right, I was really busy in the second semester, since I have to study six subjects with certain amount of job interviews and written test. Finally, I also count on my part-time job to ease the tension of my wallet. Thaz the life of the final year.

Indeed, I am feeling directionless in the final year since I cannot dig out my will on either further study or work. After thorough thought, perhaps I am the one who prefers, and be suitable to pursue further study. To make this decision is not as easy as what you thought. Even though I should be the one familiar to myself, uncertainty is the greatest component to control my decision.

I am still a guy who pursues the highest honor of lovely science instead of complicated business. What I did from the start is just based on philosophical and scientific means. I am really scared by the business application, although once I pretended myself to be confident in this career. After certain years of experiments, with frequent failures and coincident success, I got the message that it's not really a good deal to continue to work in the business field.

Therefore, I am now devising the plan to re-utilize my science technique for the rapid changing business environment, at least both my sense of science and some pieces of business reminiscence can be re-applied complementarily. Even if I have approached to the business-related things, I used the scientific method to research if the process and the system are viable and how the ultimate analytical result can be determined. I decide to switch myelf into the economics science, and re-discover the mathematics, trying my best to re-install this techniqie for adaptation of the business environment. It is somewhat complicated that the final destiny has to join these science means with the business world, out of my original track.

When I see my brother's works in computer science, it is really worth admiring...