John Gordon’s English Weblog

I’ve spent much of this year on the road, and one of my favorite parts of the day has been waking up in the morning and typing www.pandora.com into my browser window (I know, I should make a bookmark, but with auto-complete I usually end up just typing “pa”). Pandora is an internet radio service that creates custom radio stations based on the criteria you give it. So, for instance, I could tell it that I like the song “Levon”, by Elton John, and Pandora would create a custom station with songs similar to “Levon”. Apparently, it bases its criteria for choosing songs on a variety of factors including instruments, tempo, etc. Also, you can give it feedback by giving the songs “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”, and I believe it takes into account feedback from listeners of similar custom stations. In any case, the system did a great job of choosing songs, and I was exposed to a lot of new music that I liked.

So I was disappointed when I received an email from Pandora a few weeks ago announcing that they would be forced to block their service from users outside of the US. It seems there were licensing issues.

I suppose it’s only a matter of time (probably measured in years, though) before this sort of issue gets resolved, but as a consumer I find this sort of situation very frustrating. I can’t listen to Pandora, I can’t use DVDs I buy in Europe in the US, I can’t purchase from the iTunes Music Store from China without using a US billing address, I can’t even order a computer from the US and have it delivered to Beijing. We live in a globalizing world, but we haven’t figured out how to remove many of the barriers.

I just finished reading The Book and the Sword (書劍恩仇錄) by Jin Yong (or Louis Cha). For better or worse, I’ve become somewhat addicted to Jin Yong’s novels.

Wikipedia never ceases to amaze me. The article on Jin Yong links to an article on The Book and the Sword, which–in addition to having a fairly complete plot summary–links to the official site of a recently published English translation (complete with the complete text of the first chapter), and even an English-language “Wuxiapedia” article that details changes made in the third edition of the book (”wuxia” 武侠 means something like “martial arts heroes”). The changes listed in the wuxiapedia are actually pretty major: a major character runs off instead of committing suicide, one of the main antagonists shows a sign of a heart before dying, and an extra chapter is added at the end. I must have read the second edition!

This book is based on the folk legend that Emperor Qianlong was actually a Han Chinese, a story that I’ve heard from numerous taxi drivers in Beijing, but that probably isn’t true. Famous historical characters often play key roles in Jin Yong’s novels–Ghengis Khan plays a major role in The Legend of the Condor Heroes 射雕英雄传, and Kublai Khan shows up in The Return of the Condor Heroes 神雕侠侣 (both of which I’ve only seen TV versions of). My favorite so far, though, is Kangxi in The Deer and the Cauldron 鹿鼎记.

Hmmm… the English names of these books sound so ridiculous! The Return of the Condor Heroes! I’d like to write a bit more about what is so appealing to me about Jin Yong’s books… They’re more than just a good read.