Dream of Red Chamber and Its Author

 Yesterday, I played the music Frown in Vain, which was the theme song for Dream of the Red Chamber, on a xiao.

Dream of the Red Chamber is a great novel written by Cao Xueqin during the Qing dynasty. In the 20th century, some scholars argued that the last 40 chapters were written by someone else because the quality was not as good as the first 80 chapters. However, I cannot agree with them.

Just take a look at the title. "Dream of the Red Chamber" is much better than "The Story of a Stone," which was originally used. In addition, the poem at the end of the book matches the one at the start well, indicating that the writer of the ending must be at least as excellent as the writer of the beginning.

The scholars who said the last 40 chapters were written by another author also claimed that this second writer modified the end of the story, which had been set by the first writer. How ridiculous! For a great novel, the writer will not let readers know the ending just by reading the first few chapters, as they will try to attract them to keep reading.

The Beauty of Engineering

Recently, a Chinese mathematician, Hong Wang, was awarded the prestigious Fields Medal. Since then, an article entitled "The Beauty of Mathematics," which is said to have been written by her when she was sixteen, has become popular on the internet. This has driven me to write this article to express the beauty of engineering.

Engineering is how we solve practical problems, and thus engineers have to consider everything for the solution to be applied in the real world. It is strongly influenced by the developments of mathematics and natural science, but it has its own characteristics too. Any breakthrough in natural science can trigger significant changes in engineering, driving engineers to learn for life.  A typical example is that since the invention of optical fibre, theories and techniques in telecommunications engineering have been reshaped. 

Many engineering problems are complicated in scale. Engineers typically have to gain a broad knowledge to understand the whole system and its components. Since a lot of problems require repeatedly solving the same issue, reusability must be considered. In software engineering, this means separating functionalities into different functions, classes, or software components. Reusability is sometimes implemented by allowing configurations on a large component template. For example, C-YAWL, a component that I developed at QUT for the open-source YAWL project, provides a way to create simpler business process models through configurations of a large one.

Different from mathematics, where everything can be rigorously proved, an engineering problem can't be proved thoroughly, even though mathematics is often used as an approach to analyse it. 

Compressive sensing is a topic in signal processing which has strong mathematical foundations. Renowned mathematicians such as Terence Tao have made significant contributions. Theories have been proved that, under some conditions, an algorithm can be used to recover signals in a probability close to one, through random sensing. However, in practice it is still impossible to examine how closely the real signal sources fit the assumptions, while these assumptions will never be fully met. The result will be better if the input signals have characteristics closer to satisfying the conditions.

The approach to an engineering problem is very different from rigorous mathematical proofs. Sometimes we have to observe carefully and even use some imagination. I still remember that in a lecture on electronic circuits, the teacher presented his proof. In one step, the math function looked too complicated. Then he said, "It is impossible to solve this nonlinear function. But let me draw it." 

He then drew a curve on the blackboard, and said, "Just look at the curve of the function. If we only focus on this little region, the curve is smooth and we can approximate this part as a straight line. Thus, we can approximate it as a linear function like this, and then..." 

I am sure this type of approximation would never be allowed in pure maths but it is popular in every domain of engineering.

A engineering solution has to consider human behaviours too. For example, a software engineer has to keep in mind that there is some hacker wanting to break into the system they are developing.

Since not everything can be proved with maths or natural science laws, experimental evaluation is the only way to evaluate the performance of a method in engineering. 

I remember that one day I met a professor who was the director of a research group for speech, audio, image and video technologies. I told him that I had encountered a problem when training the Gaussian Mixture model. 

"The covariance matrix becomes singular after some iterations," I said. “Yes. This is a known issue for GMMs," he said. "Do you have an idea to solve it?"

I then explained what I wanted to do. "Do you think my method will work?" I asked. He smiled and said, "You can try and experiment. If it works, then you know it works. Otherwise, you will know it doesn’t.” 

Personality Of Art

 There are many times that I have seen people commenting on bamboo flute performances, saying things like "the pitch is not accurate." My understanding is that the pitch does not need to be accurate. In a lot of cases, this inaccuracy is intended, depending on the music that one is playing. We have all known that when you press a key on a piano, the pitch is unique. You can adjust the way you press the key to get different sound characteristics, but you can't get another pitch. To some extent, this is the piano's limitation. For bamboo flutes, we can always get a different pitch by adjusting either our embouchure or fingering, so that a special characteristic can be achieved.

Any instrument has its own strengths and weaknesses, and thus we can't use a single standard to rate them. The same applies to any musician or artist.

A few days ago, I told my wife that I would be successful in the arts eventually. My wife asked, "How do you know?" I explained, "Because I have a very special personality, which allows me to see everything with a special viewpoint." I then continued, "For example, if you want to write an article, and your viewpoint fits the majority of people, and your structures and languages fit standard aesthetical criteria—yes, you can get a good mark in exams. But this can't be considered an artwork in literature. A form of art will die once a set of standard criteria has been set."

A CLUSTER OF FLOWERS

 Yesterday, I finished painting a watercolour picture titled "A Cluster of Flowers". It features a cluster of yellow flowers that I saw in the City Botanic Gardens of Brisbane.

I used watercolour pencils to draw the outlines and applied the colours inside using pan-based watercolour pigments. However, I soon regretted using an orange pencil to draw the petals. I thought I could make them much lighter by wiping them with a brush dipped in clean water. Unfortunately, the result is that the edges are still too dark. I should have used a yellow pencil instead.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with the flowers. The different layers of colours and green leaves are vivid. However, I am not happy with the background, meaning the soil on the ground and the bush in the far field. The light conditions of the background are also not well painted. I think in my next picture, I will try to apply just a single layer of very light, smooth colour for the background. A looser style will be better to make the foreground objects stand out.

Rest Yourself

 I was supervising my son practising the piano in the evening. He was playing a new song that he had just learned from his last lesson. At the beginning, he felt frustrated, but he continued to progress until he could play the whole song with few errors.

"Hooray!" I cheered with him.

He looked at me and asked, "Is it really good?"

I nodded my head. He then merrily rushed to the bedroom to tell his mum. His mum encouraged him to play it again.

However, he made some silly mistakes. Then he tried again, and then again and again. It was a pity that he couldn't play it as well as before.

"Why not take a rest?" I suggested. He then went to play with his toy cars for a little while.

"You've practised enough," I said to him. "Maybe you can try again tomorrow."

But he didn't listen to me and quickly sat on the piano bench. He tried to play the music, and it was even better than all his previous attempts. He then tried again, and it was almost perfect to my ears.

"Yeah, when you encounter a puzzle that you can't solve immediately, please take a rest and then try again. Resting is as important as practising. A good way to rest is to switch your focus to other activities," I told him.

About BUTTERFLY LOVERS

 Recently, the famous Chinese composer Chen Gang passed away. Chen Gang was mostly known as one of the two composers of the violin concerto "Butterfly Lovers", and thus yesterday I played this music on xiao to pay homage to him.

The story of the Butterfly Lovers is interesting, and it is even more interesting in modern society, where everything has to be labeled clearly. In the old days, only boys could be admitted to school. Therefore, a girl named Zhu Yingtai disguised herself as a boy to study in a college, where she built a good friendship with one of her classmates named Liang Shanbo. When Shanbo discovered Yingtai's true gender, he wanted to marry her, but Yingtai was already engaged to someone else through an arrangement by her parents. Eventually, both of them died for love and transformed into a pair of butterflies to live together.

This story, in modern society, can trigger a number of questions. Is Shanbo gay? When he studied together with Yingtai, Yingtai was dressed like a boy, but she was in fact a girl. This situation is somewhat similar to today's transgender people. Is this type of love classified as homosexual love? Is there any boundary between same-sex classmate friendship and the love of lovers? We can think about a lot of these aspects.

Then eventually, I believe most people will agree with the point that people in modern times consider too much. There is, in fact, little difference among different sentiments.

Sincerity and Hypocrisy (continued)

When July of 2008 came, I was thinking about whether to go to Shenzhen. Finally, I went there because I wanted to understand what would happen. I knew it was most likely that they would not keep their promise, but I was still keen to get a clear answer. 

Nevertheless, even if I stayed there for only a day, ZTE would have to pay me. As a fresh graduate, I could also stay in the company’s temporary accommodation for three weeks.

On the first day that I arrived at the office, I met Mr. Wang, who was the head of the department. For fresh graduates like me, there was training soon. Each graduate would be assigned a mentor. 

I clearly remember that when Mr. Wang led me to my mentor, he said, "This graduate had a very excellent academic performance at school. Please pay more attention to his training."

The department arranged lectures for us. Senior Engineers from ZTE Corporation were the lecturers. Each graduate received training materials, such as books, paper documents, and software installed on computers. 

The lecturers illustrated to us topics about wireless network planning and optimization. After each lecture, there would be time for us to read materials and practice on the simulation software platforms. 

Every day my mentor would ask me some questions. "Do you understand what the lectures are about?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, and explained my understanding.

"Can you tell me about the direction of antennas?" He asked me one day.

"Yes. There are two types of antennas," I said. "One of them is called omnidirectional antennas, and the other is directional antennas." 

Then I continued, "Omnidirectional antennas transmit power equally in all directions, while a directional antenna transmits signals with different power in different directions. But for analysis, we can view a directional antenna as an array of omnidirectional antennas, with certain configurations such as phase shifts and geometric allocations."

He smiled and asked another question, "How do you choose different types of antennas for network planning? Can you explain with examples?"

"For a straight road with few residential buildings on both sides, we can choose a single-direction antenna to focus more on the road, whereas for a village, we can put an omnidirectional antenna on top of a hill so that it can easily cover the whole area," I replied. He nodded his head while listening.

I also had discussions with peers in the graduate program. We shared our understanding of the techniques with each other and built friendships. When I had questions, I would ask my mentor. "Are the convolutional codes for CDMA fully orthogonal?" I asked my mentor one day.

"Not fully," he said.

Every morning the company arranged a shuttle bus to carry us to the office, and in the evening we arrived at the temporary accommodation by shuttle bus. I was living with three master’s graduates: one in the HR department, one in a software R&D position, and one in a hardware R&D position. We had majored in different fields, so we shared our knowledge and discussed a lot every evening. 

They were startled when they saw me reading books as thick as pillows, which I had borrowed from the ZTE library. 

"How can you read English books as fast as Chinese ones?" they asked. 

"Because I spent more than half of my effort learning English during my undergraduate course," I replied.

No one thought I would quit the job. I was afraid that I would lose the opportunity for training if I told any of them. At the end of the training program, I called Mr. Wang to say that I wanted to resign.

"What? How could you stay for just a few weeks? Which university did you graduate from?" he said angrily.

"We graduated from the same university," I told him. "Could you please help me? I am innocent..."

"Have you encountered something unhappy here?" He softened his voice and said, "When did you start wanting to leave?"

"I'm grateful that everyone has been nice to me. We've built friendships and I have really learned a lot. But I've wanted to break the contract for more than half a year..."

After I told my roommates, they were all shocked. They were concerned about me. They recommended me to the R&D department where they were working. They contacted their former classmates to see if they could help me, which touched me.

I left Shenzhen at the same time when the Beijing Olympics started. Before I left, two of my best friends from university had arrived in Shenzhen and we had dinner together. Last year when we signed contracts with ZTE together, we agreed with each other that if in the future any of us was appreciated by the boss, Mr. Hou, he should raise the salaries of the others after being promoted. They looked sad at dinner.

I told them I had got three weeks' salary and would like to pay for dinner. They refused and worried about my future.

Some years later, when I was in Brisbane, one of them settled in Hangzhou, and the other in Xi'an. In 2016, I visited Hangzhou and met my former colleague, together with two university friends.

At that time in my mind, they were three of my best friends at university. But they all said they had never believed I was their close friend. I was hurt. 

Almost at the same time, I met a university roommate in Shanghai. He said he had hoped that one day everyone from our dormitory could gather together again in Xi'an.

I dared not visit Xi'an again, because Xi'an was related to memories of the happiest past days and best friends. I know that Xi'an nowadays is very different from the city I once lived, and so are my best friends. Never visiting there again means I can keep those good memories forever in my mind.