deathmtn

Captain Lu quickly returned the bow and replied, “To see you is to know that you are even better than that which I have heard of you. As to that Instructor Wang whom you seek, is not he the one who offended the Commander Kao Ch’iu at the eastern capital?”

Shih Chin said, “It is even he.”

Lu Ta said, “I have heard of his name. That elder brother is not here. I have heard people say he is in Yien An Fu working in the border protection camp under the old general there. This Wei Chou of ours is guarded by the younger general, and that man is not here. If you are that big fellow, Shih Chin, I have heard of your great fame.
Now come on to the street with me and have a cup of wine.”

And Lu Ta took Shih Chin’s hand and they went out of the teashop and Lu Ta turned his head and said, “This money for the tea I will give you later!”

The serving man made reply, “Sir Captain, drink and it does not matter. Pray go without troubling yourself about it.”

Lu Ta and Shih Chin, still holding each other’s arms, came out from this teashop and went on the street and when they had gone some thirty to fifty paces they saw a crowd of people encircling a piece of empty ground.

In July 1951, Strachey had a chance to visit Manchester and discuss his checkers program with Turing in person. Suitably impressed, Turing suggested that, as a first step, he write a program that would enable the Ferranti Mark I to simulate itself. A simulator would allow programmers to see, step by step, how the computer would execute a program. Such a ‘trace’ program would highlight places where the program caused bottlenecks or ran inefficiently. At a time when both computer memory and processor cycles cost a fortune, this was an important aspect of programming.

This lack of compelling cultural creations matters for many reasons. One of them is that people who’ve never been able to make a visit cannot really visualize the life of an ordinary Chinese person, only the dystopia that has become the way that most foreigners think about the country. The propaganda department has not only failed to directly create globally-appealing culture, it has regulated private creative efforts out of existence. For all of Xi’s hopes to “tell China’s story well,” the Chinese regime seems congenitally incapable of allowing good stories about itself to be told, because of its obsession with exercising total control.

Beijing’s imperial cuisine is the only Chinese cuisine that I consider to be dumb. It wasn’t until I moved to Beijing that I realized how many of the unfortunate facts of Chinese cooking are the creation of local traditions: the dreadful “brown sauce,” the excessive use of starch, and the compulsive need to fry. Peking duck is fine every once in a while, but it’s far too much fuss and expense for something of medium tastiness. There are so few redeeming dishes in imperial cuisine that I wonder if it has been yet another cruel trick pulled by the eunuchs to hoodwink the emperor, depriving him of culinary pleasures for sport.