Jun 04 2008
Wine drinkers would no doubt knew the name Mondavi. There are average table wines and there’s Opus One, his joint venture with Baron Philippe de Rothschild.
Matthew Garrahan credited Mondavi (1913-2008)for not only putting California’s Napa Valley on the map, but changing US attitudes to wine: America in his youth was a beer and whiskey-drinking nation. Wine was [...]
Apr 09 2008
What distigushes ’religion’ from ’sect’? (Wikipedia has a good one) Wider audience considers a religion? Number of followers determine the status? Great salesmanship?
I don’t know how Lin Yun began his sect, but I came to know him whom my aunt warmly greets as Erge 二哥, the second older brother (he’s the second son) in 1986, when I [...]
Feb 27 2008
Liu Yingfang’s my godmother. She and her hubby were Malaysia born Chinese. She’s fm a wealthy rubber baron family and he a working class. They met in London while she was finishing up her piano at the Royal School of Music and he was working for a newspaper. The romance was highly unsymmetrical, so they [...]
Feb 27 2008
1954-11-14 1984-05-01, Fu’s younger daughter Yuan and husband
Aunt Fu was one of my mom’s best friends. I was pretty close with her younger daughter Yuan. The older sis is, well too old for me, :). Whenever our family got together, which was often, Yuan would play with me. Either the sister are older or they lived in the [...]
Feb 25 2008
Yang was the concert master of CNSO now living in Texas. After he came out of jail during the Cultural Revolution, his wife Wu Yili, a pianist who divorced him when he was sent to jail, moved back in with him again. As a gentleman, he couldn’t say no, but made it known that he’d rather live [...]
Feb 25 2008
Beethoven’s 9th symphony .. he’s well known for that ..
Actually his given name Kun is double fang 方方 on top and tu 土 on the bottom, but unfortunately my Chinese word processor doesn’t have this character. He was Auntie Jennie’s colleague and his daughter Yan Di was my classmate, we all lived in the same building. Our [...]
Feb 09 2008
My family had few very interesting tenants over the years in Beijing. The most talked about was Liu Youyu 刘友鱼 family. Liu was 冯玉祥 Feng Yuxiang’s young general, among 4 (or so) who sent to Germany to study. He came home with a German wife in toe. The marriage produced five gorgeous children: Linda, Meidi, Lulu, Misha and [...]
Jan 21 2008
Coincidence or timed right, the day after Fischer died, FT ran an interview with the current champ, an Indian, Viswanathan Anand. He replaced Kasparov but competes with ‘young Russian boys’, :). Looking at his Poppy’s arms, perhaps the trend is changing, that being physically fit is important element for brain fit?
Years back, there was a Chinese [...]
Jan 18 2008
Heard Boywonder Fischer’s death on the radio while driving. Oh lord .. I found his defeat of Boris Spassky in 1972 was romantic: the Russian champ had a huge team - the all powerful chess machine of the old USSR - attending to him while Boywonder was just about all by himself ..very much like Van Cliburn who shocked the [...]
Jan 06 2008
Putin is the Person of the Year. The pic on the Time cover more like an assassin than a statesman. When questioned about his past as a KGB agent, he compared himself to Bush the elder, “.. look .. where he’s from ..” referring to the 41st the CIA era during his career. But the older Bush rediants culture and humanity where [...]
Oct 17 2007
Dr. Cohen is disciple of prolific author Jonathan Spence of Yale, who’s one of the biggest Chinese historians in the West. His books are more for the general public. Cohen agreed to meet me, because she knew one of my families well, thru her studies of course. She still lives in New Haven, teaches few days in NYU, so [...]
Oct 04 2007
Frank and Dyane visited us last December for his big 6-0. Frank is the kid bro of Renate whom I lived with in Frankfurt back in the 80s. They grew up in Kassel (the bros Grimm), their mom, a sweet lovely lady had passed away and their dad, an extremely handsome banker with silver hair is [...]
Sep 22 2007
Stern (1920 - 2001) is the world renowned Russian-born American violinist. He made his New York debut in 1937 at age 17, Carnegie Hall in 1943. When he visited Beijing, his rehearses were always packed to the outside of the doors!! His warm personality radiant us, electrifying, vs Seiji and Karaja who looked very aristocrat, cold and [...]
Sep 09 2007
Larry and David Prince (on the right) are colleagues of K L Chow, whom I met last December in San Francisco. Larry was the one I initially went to see. He came late for the meeting, walking briskly with a sweat. Once he sat down on the bench, he talked about Chow at length, with affection. On our [...]