Reading

My very temporary contract job is down the street from Cupertino city library, so as soon as I settled on the job last week, I took a walk at lunch time to visit the Chinese books. I don't read Chinese very often, being very disconnected from the local Chinese community and not having any Chinese friends to share stuffs with. Mostly I listen to Chinese radio when I'm driving alone and that's only in the morning when the station runs Chinese program. When I didn't have a commute I lost that chance as well. Chinese books are hard to catalog, given it's a character language; every character needs to be spelled out. There are different spellings systems in mainland China, Taiwan, Hongkong, southeast Asia and America where many Chinese like myself decide to live. It's impossible to have a standardized spelling system that library could use to catalog all the Chinese language books in an English dominated online search engine. The libraries use all the spellings so as not to offend any Chinese arriving from any side of the coast, so the English catalog is pretty much useless cause you never know what they are trying to spell. When I want to read a Chinese book, I have to hit the bookstore or the library, and Cupertino has one of the largest selections of Chinese books in this area. The larger population and more money for the city, simple economy. I'm not picky with my Chinese reading these days, anything non-political non-violent is good. This time I picked up a small paper back with an English subtitle "Vignettes of Chinese lives in America", written by a Chinese guy from Taiwan, of his over 20 years living in southern California. Very easy to read short essays, some with comparison with life in Taiwan, some about new immigrants trying to make do on the new land. All that goes perfectly with my leftover Chinese lunch from home. I'm also diligently reading Kitchen Confidential at home. My brother used to be a professional chef, and I worked a grand total of 20 minutes in Chef Chu's in Los Altos. I got a lot to say on this subject!