This video was taken during our trip to Dalian by Chris Amico and the team at DalianDalian.com. We tried to give an idea of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how it will help other people. Lonnie says I’m either signing or I learned how to speak English from the Italians. And of course, when friends have watched, they are always quick to comment, “So…Professor Lonnie really likes to talk, doesn’t he?”
All of this was shot at a Korean restaurant in Dalian, set with a background of local northern Chinese music. Enjoy.
The China Dreamblogue will begin featuring daily cartoons from Googlm, a collection of talented cartoonists here in China. This week’s cartoons come from Leng Mu 冷牧, who recently won the World Cartoon Festival in Kosova.
Keep checking our China Cartoons to see original, daily cartoons from talented artists in China. And keep sending us your dreams!
This is the last photo in our series on Ken Leaf. This photo was taken in Sichuan Province in the city of Guangyuan 广远.
Look for our interview with Ken later this week on the Dreamblogue. To see your photos featured here, send your photos to [*photos@blogofdreams.com*] or [*dawei@blogofdreams.com*]. And keep sending us your dreams! Read on »
One of the most useful pieces of advice I ever received from a professor was during my sophomore year, in a class called Abstract Algebra. The math was so abstract, in fact, that it is still hard for me to imagine how I made it through that class in one piece. This Professor, however, was able to inspire me, no matter how difficult the assignment, to continue solving problems deep into the night. And his main advice was always this: “Mathematicians spend most of their time being wrong.” And what he meant was that anyone involved in taking risks–mathematicians trying to solve mathematical problems, writers crafting stories, and anyone trying to make their dreams come true–is going to spend much of their time banging their head against a wall, struggling with problems that seem beyond one’s ability to handle. And what I find I need, as I bang my own head against writing this blog, are stories and thoughts from people who have the courage to take risks and dream.
Meet Randy Pausch. I’m not sure exactly how he found his way into my electronic stumbling, but once Yanzhi and I found him, we were hooked. I watched diligently for the first two minutes, but when he said, “The inspiration and permission to dream is huge,” I knew I had found something real. As I watched his story, I knew that his message was something that needed to be on this blog.
Though there were many different and valuable parts to his lesson a lot of different parts to his message, a few pieces really stood out for me. In particular, Professor Pausch struck a cord when he spoke about walls. In China, I find so often that my students, my colleagues, and everyone here eventually comes up against the Great Walls of China. They are walls of silence, walls of insecurity and distrust, or walls of insurmountable difficulty, but they exist for each of us, in real, personal ways. I have watched Coffee, Ms. Yue, Yanzhi, our interns, and myself struggle against these different walls, and each day I am impressed with the courage of other people to stand against walls so much deeper, higher, and more entrenched than my own. Despite all this, standing against walls is only standing, and for me, we need ways around the wall–this is where Randy Pausch came in.
What I found in Professor Pausch’s lecture is not a way around the wall: I do think that only individuals can walk around or break through their own walls, though they can certainly receive help from others. And that offer to help is what people need most. What Professor Pausch’s lecture offers is an invitation to transform these walls into bridges. As he says, “The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t it badly enough.” I hope that each of our readers can watch these videos and find in his story, like I did, an imaginative and lively story about finding your dreams and making them come true.
We’ll continue to post these lectures as a feature on our blog. Professor, thank you for telling stories about people striving and achieving their dreams.
The China Dreamblogue will begin featuring daily cartoons from Googlm, a collection of talented cartoonists here in China. This week’s cartoons come from Leng Mu 冷牧, who recently won the World Cartoon Festival in Kosova.
Keep checking our China cartoons to see original, daily cartoons from talented artists in China. And keep sending us your dreams! Read on »
Today’s photo is day 5 in this week’s feature on Ken Leaf. This photo was taken in Shanghai and features a different side of life from the stunning skycrapers and rapid devleopment we so often see in photos of one of China’s premier cities:
To more of these photos from Ken, continue coming back to this week’s China photos and tune in for Ken’s interview later this week. To see your photos here, send them to [*dawei@blogofdreams.com *] or [*photos@blogofdreams.com *]. And keep dreaming! Read on »
Christine Lu of The China Business Network calls me Professor Gump because synchronicity invariably spirits me into wonderfully surreal places when I travel. On my business journey last week to Beijing I found myself in a mall in the Wangfujiang district of Beijing not far from the forbidden City. An eye-blink later and I was in the bar called Ganglamedo listening to the sacred and romantic music of Tibet.
My “working day” began at breakfast with the generous hearts and handsome ideas of Sweden’s Niclas Ihren and Gustav Astrom and their elegant administrative assistant/translator/organizer “Janet”. Niclas is the COO of Globe Forum and Gustav is the China Partner behind an imaginative initiative for Small and Medium Size Businesses looking to grow and prosper beyond their own borders. Globe Forum is a valuable event for corporate and government decision makers: More than a thousand attendees join contemporaries at these conferences, and make valuable contacts in order to create new business ventures in the most dynamic emerging markets of China, India and Eastern Europe–brilliant minds working in concert. We said goodbye and promised to work together–I will help new businesses navigate the Internet marketing Cyber-Curents in China– hoping to make this comings year’s conference a success.
In typical fashion I decided, with my spare time, to explore the area near the meeting while waiting for my next “scheduled meeting” with the China Charity Federation (CCF). On the lower level of a nearby mall I passed a half-dozen colorfully clad Tibetans standing in the lobby of a movie theater, and was quickly called back by one of them. I fast discovered that I had just wandered past the Beijing premiere of Ganglamedo. The moviewas only minutes from beginning and the Tibetans were native cast members from the show, so I took pictures and autographs from the likes of CCTV director Dai Wei. She looks a lot more like a movie star than a director. Her gorgeous film is soon on its way to California along with Tokyo Trial and a handful of other powerful new films from mainland China.
Ganglamedo is a full of mystery, romance, passion, and grand photography of the most dreamed-of destination in the world. It is a movie that will embrace and enchant you during a visually sacred journey to Tibet.
After the film I drifted though time past Tiananmen Square toward my next “scheduled” meeting. Once there I was greeted at CCF by “Diana” an assistant to the Director of Foreign Affairs. Diana’s beauty and energy is in such abundance that it positively alters anyone or anything in its path. She and director Ma Guilin welcomed the efforts of the Dreamblogue and we found common enough ground to begin drafting a memorandum of agreement whereby and Dawei I will donate the proceeds of any of our speaking engagements to the CCF–specifically to aid leukemia victims, Chinese rural education initiatives and handicapped Chinese citizens lacking adequate financial assets for care.
In the next two days I experienced the poetic soul of Huilan Wang, gabbed with a Gaelic brother of blogging blarney, Brendan O’Kane, and suspended time in a warm literary communion over coffee with gentle soul Charlie Shifflett from China Daily’s 21st Century. I need more “business” trips like his to nourish my wandering expat heart.
On the flight back I chatted up two other coach travelers. The long-time sports loyalists, Tom Carleo and Matt Crean, are senior managers for Saucony shoes. It has taken me a week to recover from the pinched nerve in my neck caused by craning back to laugh, learn and reminisce about China, athletics, Olympic dreams and common friends; and it will take me months to sort through the hundreds of gentle memories they returned to me.
Lennon was right: Life is what happens while you are making other plans. May it always be like this…..
Run professor, run!
**The fantastic photo comes via Facebook Friend, and great shutterbug, Lydia Kong
Today’s photo is Day 4 in the Ken Leaf feature here on the Dreamblogue. Today’s photo features some of the skyscrapers in Shanghai, which have gone up in record time and are in part fueled by the 150 or so multinational companies that currently have their Asian headquarters located in Shanghai.
To more of these photos from Ken, continue coming back to this week’s China photos and tune in for Ken’s interview later this week. To see your photos here, send them to [*dawei@blogofdreams.com *] or [*photos@blogofdreams.com *]. And keep dreaming!
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