Halloween@Hollywood

Halloween@West Hollywood 2007

Halloween was a great festival. Hundreds of thousand of people from all around poured into West Hollywood, making Los Angeles' traffic more jammed. We talked about pumpkins, costumes and candies in the car, but my heart had flied to Hollywood.

We exited the freeway. As we got nearer, we began to see people dressing up in the street. We cannot help shouting out: "Look! Ghost" or "lovely rabbit!" or "hot girls!". Actually, everything was striking in the eyes of a new-comer to Halloween.

Especially when you walked in a miles-long boulevard , which was filled with 30,000+ persons dressing up.

(for more pictures, go to my album http://picasaweb.google.com/songkaiyuan/Halloween2007 )

Among such a bravo crowd, I regret I myself didn't dress up. Besides eyes, your ears were struck with high-volume music. You had a impulse to sing and dance. We all some times wish to forget work and study. Halloween is such a fun that you can behave innocently like an child, and you can fulfill the dream of being a star-in Hollywood.

References
my album http://picasaweb.google.com/songkaiyuan/Halloween2007
Jing's blog post http://witchejing123.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9735172B2B16AA57!371.entry
Jing's album http://witchejing123.spaces.live.com/photos/cns!9735172B2B16AA57!333/
Pei's album http://picasaweb.google.com/zhangpei511/2007_10_31HollywoodHalloween
Halloween in wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

Keeping Culture in the Warfire: Diary of Saad Eskander

I come to know Saad Eskander via the post Culture Under Siege: A Diary of Iraq's National Library by Max Magee. Saad Eskander, the director of the Iraq National Library and Archives, are rebuilding in very hard conditions the collection of the library, which has been looted during the early days of American invasion. Just image the endless violent events in Iraq, the perilous condition, the limited help of the authority and the difficulty in interacting various forces etc, the story of Saad and colleagues' sustaining the culture in the warfire is actually a heroic episode of intellectuals. If fortunately peace returns to Iraq someday in the future, we should thank them for keeping the culture from entirely disappearing.

It reminds my some Chinese heroes in Anti-Japan War and in the Culture Revolution. It is a tradition of Chinese intellectuals to protecting the Chinese culture most of because of an instinct. That is why China can have an continues of civilization history of over five thousand years.

And now I see the same instinct in Saad and his colleagues. I hope the Iraq war can damage the regime but not the culture, because the regime is of the politicians but the culture is the treasure of all Iraq people, or the human being as a whole.

Related Links:
1. Culture Under Siege: A Diary of Iraq's National Library
2. Online Diary of Saad Eskander at the British Library