By Zhu Xiao-Mei
Title:The mystery Piano: From Mao's exertions Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations
Author:Zhu Xiao-Mei
Translator:Ellen Hinsey
Zhu Xiao-Mei was once born to middle-class mom and dad in post-war China, and her musical talent turned transparent at an early age. Taught to play the piano through her mom, she built fast right into a prodigy, immersing herself within the paintings of classical masters like Bach and Brahms. She was once simply ten years outdated whilst she begun a rigorous process learn on the Beijing Conservatory, laying the basis for what was once guaranteed to be a unprecedented profession. yet in 1966, while Xiao-Mei used to be seventeen, the Cultural Revolution all started, and lifestyles as she knew it replaced perpetually. one after the other, her relations have been scattered, sentenced to legal or hard work camps. by means of 1969, the artwork colleges had closed, and Xiao-Mei used to be on her solution to a piece camp in Mongolia, the place she may spend the subsequent 5 years. existence within the camp used to be approximately insufferable, because of terrible residing stipulations and extensive brainwashing campaigns. but via all of it Xiao-Mei clung to her ardour for tune and her humorousness. And while the Revolution ended, it used to be the piano that helped her to heal. Heartbreaking and heartwarming, the key Piano is the fabulous actual tale of 1 woman’s survival within the face of unimaginable odds—and in pursuit of a robust dream.
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Example text
X. ” So Ma would go to the man in the Comprehensive Department, who would say to him, “I’m telling you, this is very complex. ” Complexity in China often has to do with government regulations and de facto social prohibitions. The complexities were multilayered and would have smothered anyone less determined to slice through red tape. In February 1996, for example, the State Council promulgated Interim Regulations on Management of Computer Information Networks—International Connections. These required that all users, individuals and organizations, strictly follow the State Secrecy System.
Ma put out $3,500 (RMB 30,000) to host thirty journalists and editors at a dinner at the club associated with the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economics (MOFTEC, also known in reorganized form as MOFERT, Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade). He had prepared two computers with information on their hard disks. The slow speed of transmission in Beijing at the time made direct access to the Internet impossible, so he had copied two Web pages onto these hard disks. The experience proved to be an exhilarating success.
Of the twenty-four, twenty-three said it was too early to get into this business. “It won’t work,” they told him. “I spoke for two hours,” Ma said later, “and they didn’t get it. I myself didn’t know what I was talking about. One person said he would take a chance, but if it didn’t work he would turn tail right away. So I thought about it for one night. The next morning, I decided to do it. ” One factor in his decision was a sense of giving it a try. Ma has always felt that one does not measure success just by the results; instead, he feels that the experience of doing something is in itself a kind of success.