The Ji Village News

季庄新闻–Haidong Ji’s Blog

Here is a slightly edited comment I made at my buddy Ben Ross’ blog.

The most common type of bread is called 煎饼 in my hometown. I’d say this bread is also popular in other part of Shandong, northern Jiangsu, and possibly part of Henan and Anhui province as well. Here is the original way of making it: First, grains were mixed in water. The grains can be just wheat, sorghum, soy beans, even dried sweet potato slices (地瓜干儿). When the mixture was ready, it would be processed by mill stones (磨) into paste. Mill stones are made out of two round stones stacked vertically, with the top stone being pushed in a circular fashion, by a donkey, mule or human. My two older brothers and I had plenty of that experience (推磨). A spoon or a small half-gourd was used to feed the grain and water mixture into the hole on the top stone as we pushed the top stone around. This process is called 打糊子 in the local slang.

The resulting paste was then gathered and put next to a big round cast iron (鏊子). The cast iron is about 110 centimeters in diameter, I’d say. It is positioned just slightly above the ground. My mom, a retired elementary school teacher (民办教师), usually squats or sits on the floor there, and burns corn stalks and wheat straws to heat it up. Then she scoops up a spoonful of the paste and spreads it around the iron. The result, a thin and round bread, is 煎饼. This bread can be put into a big basket, 煎饼筐子, and stored as is. It can also be folded into a smaller rectangle for easy storage. Kids in my region, grown up in the 80′s, when going to boarding middle and high schools, would carry a bag full of those rectangles (煎饼卷子) for weeks, or even full month’s bread supply. If I could have 辣椒炒肉丝 (pork with spicy green peppers) folded inside that bread during my childhood years, believe me, it was heaven on earth!

The method of making that bread changed quickly in the 80s, in that it is mostly done by machines. I don’t think anybody makes the paste the old-fashioned way now. Probably most of people, including villagers, buy that bread from the market nowadays.

Another wheat flour tortilla type bread is called 单饼 in my local version of Mandarin, which is not as common as 煎饼. Growing up in the 70s, it was considered a delicacy, as it is made out of soft wheat flour. 单饼 (flour tortilla) is made a little differently. The first part is very similar to making dumpling wrappers, only the size is bigger. Obviously it is made out of a dough (no yeast added and not paste), so one could bake and turn this on a smaller cast iron with hand. When we had guests during my childhood years, we sometimes made 单饼 as a treat for them. (Sometimes we even killed a chicken roaming the yard and made 辣子鸡 for guests. How else could one afford meat?)

Obviously pure wheat 煎饼 (no other type of grain added) was good and rare then. On the other hand, 煎饼 made out of dried sweet potato slices (瓜干儿煎饼) and sorghum (高梁煎饼) were considered of lower quality. 所谓瓜干儿煎饼老咸菜. Now with people richer than before, 瓜干儿煎饼 and 高梁煎饼 are considered delicacies now, go figure!

A famous thing in my childhood is 煎饼卷大葱, essentially one or two whole green onions folded inside a 煎饼. When one’s financial condition was looking up , one could put a few drops of sesame oil in it. I like 煎饼卷大葱 along with 老咸菜 (pickled vegetables). It is really delicious, an acquired taste out of necessity.

I’ve been really enjoying the Olympics. Too bad NBC is the only network that does the broadcast. I wish more than one network could broadcast the games, so we get to see different sports. I’ve been using TV Ants on my laptop to watch some CCTV programs from China, but the sports I want to watch is usually broadcast live in the early morning hours.

Last night I watched the 110 meter hurdle men’s qualifying match and saw Liu Xiang had to give up due to injuries. That’s too bad, I wish him good luck and speedy recoveries.

Saw women’s balance beam individual competition earlier, just fantastic. Also watched Bob Costas’ interview of Shawn Johnson and her China-born coach. Men’s individual high bar competition was also fantastic!

I am watching a ping pang match between US player Gao Jun, a transplanted Chinese, and Slovakia Eva Odorova player at the moment, but I don’t think I could stay long enough to watch Yao Ming and the Chinese men’s basketball team compete with Lithuania. Good luck China!

In the spirit of the Olympics, I’ve joined 海外兵团 and taken over the coaching position of US soccer team! The Chinese men’s soccer team sucks so much that I figured the only way for the team to have a chance is to bring down the level of opponents!

Anyway, I volunteered to assist my son’s soccer team, but the team is in need of a co-head coach, so here I am. I really don’t know much of coaching children’s soccer, so any advice will be appreciated. I went to the library for some books, but they’ve all been checked out.

Update: Gao Jun won. Now I am watching the ping pong match between Sweden’s Jorgen Persson and a Serbian player. Very exciting to watch! Man, Persson has been around for ever. Believe it or not, Persson and Jan-Ove Waldner were almost household names in late 80s and early 90s in China. They are definitely more famous in China than their native Sweden! I think Waldner (老瓦) owns a restaurant/bar or something like that in China. Of course I am rooting for Sweden, my wife’s homeland!

Update: Persson won. Got to go to bed now.

我在这里说过，从小学到大学，每次升学考试，我都名落孙山，屡试不爽。厦门大学是我复读一年后考上的。复读后弄了个文科总分全市第三，数学第一，英语口语第一。但到大学后，我比大部分同学都大一两岁。当时的感觉，可能现在也是如此，就是越小越聪明，越小越可爱，搞得我这个全市的探花稍微有点老油条（不油滑，超龄一点），很没面子。虽没去装嫩，但总是吞吞吐吐，躲躲闪闪，不好意思。现在当然明白了，大几岁，曾经失败过，跌倒了就爬起来，有什么大不了的？！当然这不是说年纪小的同学就不可爱。

不管怎么说，因为复读的那一年是在三中，不是我原来的八中，所以我高中同学不少。三中的同学好像从没联系过。这次回来后，一些八中的老同学就来到一起，聚餐两次。

1989年分手以后，我们很多高中同学就基本上没见过面。虽不是”访旧半为鬼”，但”惊呼热衷肠”。岁月的痕迹，都写到了我们这帮三十五六岁人的脸上。不少同学，如在大街上擦肩而过，我可能认不出他们。定睛看看，会有似曾相逢的感觉。不好意思，不少人的名字我已记不清了。

同学们的情况大都不错，教育、企业、销售、银行及政府部门等的工作人员都有。很遗憾地是，有一个同班老友，我们曾住在一间大宿舍里，一起调侃、打篮球。同学告诉我，他后来练那个破轮子功，走火入魔，将老婆砍死后自尽。

在座的有一位在八中工作的同学。我问了一下八中高三时我们班失火案的结果。那是1989年高考前（我的第一次）三四个月的一天夜晚，我们教室里的桌椅和书籍被烧个精光。关于起因，当时有很多猜疑，不外乎故意纵火和不小心失火。以我个人的观点，故意纵火的可能性更大一些。不可否认，这个事件对我们的高考成绩有负面影响。该案件的结局最后不了了之，到底是否人为，原因如何，我不太清楚，或许有的同学知道的更多一些。无论如何，我们不少同学当时都还算不上成年人。我们现在法制社会的建设，相比近二十年前，有了不少进步。但如何保证民众的知情权，提高办事的透明度，不搞炒作和耸人听闻的举动，实事求是，还有很长的路要走。

我们第一次聚餐时正是阴历七夕。令我稍感吃惊的是，随着商家的促销宣传，七夕的中国情人节味道甚浓。1995年我出国前，哪有这回事儿！席间一男同学接到了老婆的抱怨电话，嫌他没陪她。抱歉了，孙同学！

这儿是两张照片。

虽然这篇博客的题目是”一壶浊酒喜相逢”，但同学们弄的档次不低，到副厅级肯定没问题！吃家乡菜，喝家乡酒，相逢一笑，听一听、讲一讲”那过去的事情”，聊一聊我们这十几年来走过的风景，以及体会过的甘苦和辛酸，很过瘾。

如许巍的《曾经的你》所唱：

让我们干了这杯酒
好男儿胸怀象大海
经历了人生百态世间的冷暖
这笑容温暖纯真

再次拜谢同学们的盛情款待！

下面是许巍的《曾经的你》，分享一下，献给过去、现在、和将来的朋友！

Wow, what can I say, the opening ceremony is really spectacular! I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I watched it live via TV Ants, since the show was not broadcast live on any networks here in the US. Really dumb decision, if you ask me. The downside with TV Ants is that the image quality was not that good, but at least I got to watch it from start to finish.

I then watched NBC edited edition TV earlier, with better image quality. It was nothing short of amazing! That’s the one for history books!

Sometimes you want to know how much space Sql Server databases on an instance are taking from a system. This should be the sum of all data files and log files. Note this is different from how much space actual data is taking.

Here is one way to do it. Note it uses sysaltfiles, a system table that might be deprecated in future releases. For Sql Server 2005, it is recommended that you use sys.master_file:

select sum(size)*8/1024 as 'TotalSizeInMeg', sum(size)*8/1024/1024 as 'TotalSizeInGig' from sysaltfiles

Another way to get that is to use sp_helpdb. Executing sp_helpdb without any parameters will give you total size for each database in megabytes. Adding them up will give you total databases size.

Since I am digging Perl, below is the Perl script to do that. You might notice the numbers you get from sysaltfiles and sp_helpdb are different, that’s due to rounding.

use strict;
use Win32::SqlServer;
# Get server name from the command line
my $ServerName = shift or die "Please enter server name as the first only parameter needed";
# Create object and login in one step with
# integrated security.
my $sqlsrv = sql_init($ServerName, undef, undef, 'master');
# Our SQL statement. In this case, this is a system stored procedure.
my $stmnt = < <SQLEND;
sp_helpdb
SQLEND
# Run query. The return value is a reference to an array.
my $result = $sqlsrv->sql_sp($stmnt);
my $TotalSize = 0;
# Print results. Each array entry is a hash reference.
foreach my $row (@$result) {
   print "$$row{name}: $$row{db_size}  \n";
   if ($$row{db_size} =~ /(\d+\.\d+)/ix) {
	$TotalSize = $TotalSize + $1;
   }
}
print "Total databases size is $TotalSize meg";

我虽是无神论者，但坚决拥护信仰自由。信不信教，信什么教，都是很个人的事情。每个人都需要爱、关心、宽容和解脱。宗教，用好了，会提供这种解脱的功能。我的不少朋友和家人是基督徒和佛教徒。他们一起搞一些有点宗教意味的野餐，我会参加。参观庙宇，我也点个香，拜一拜，放松一下，挺好的。我也不介意别人拉我入教，只是婉言拒绝而已。实际上，我对香港来的邀请我去“福音”营的传教夫妻心存感激，因为我感觉他们是一片好心。去年一个印尼人也曾劝我入教，我在这儿写过。我也不是在这里说我很高尚无私，搞价值判断，摆高姿态，一副众人皆醉而我独醒的样子，因为我们有太多的不明白。

这里插一段趣事。可能我的名字的汉语拼音拼、听起来像韩国人，我曾好几次在周末接到过韩裔人的电话，拉我入教。前两个月，我在一家中餐馆吃饭，竟碰到一个会说点汉语的摩门教徒。我跟他说汉语，当然要好好鼓励一下他的努力，并推荐他要吃辛辣的菜。他顺水推舟，进而给我宣讲摩门教的教义拉我入教，被我拒绝。他很知趣地打住了。

但支持信仰自由并不等于支持以它为旗号的所有活动。美国的邪教例子就不多说了。我们中国的一个很好的例子是那个破轮子。我对他们国内的做法不很了解，但对其在国外的表演是深恶痛绝。先声明一下，本人不是愤青，但看到破轮子的那些装出来的穷酸的熊样，并且办报纸、电视极尽造谣污蔑之能事，真得很恶心。举个例子，轮子说中国人有几千万人签名退共产党；中国大使馆参与、组织贩卖犯人的器官等等。三年前他们在芝加哥办春节晚会，居然给我写电邮让我在本人的博客上给其做宣传。我上次回国，知道一个高中同学信后走火入魔，将妻子砍死后自尽。另外，我去过美国的不少城市，每个大地方，都有轮子出版印刷的英文《大妓院时报》，还有什么唐人电视NTD TV：我在美国首都华盛顿的旅馆里看到过他们的电视节目。每年春节，还搞春节联欢晚会。说实话，个人感觉这一帮人很可怜、可悲、但同时又可憎。有时我会想，他们干这么多龌龊的事情，经费从哪里来？

回到题目上的《波耳波经》上来。这本书对西方世界的影响极大。以个人的观点，书里有很多糟粕，但也有精华。有时间的话，我很想读一读我们的易经，道德经，以及外来的佛经和可兰经等。以我的揣测，它们都是好坏杂陈的东西。

这里举一个《波耳波经》里的精华的例子。这是我较喜欢的对爱的描述：

爱是恒久忍耐，又有恩慈。爱是不嫉妒 。爱是不自夸 。不张狂。不作害羞的事。不求自己的益处。不轻易发怒。不计算人的恶。不喜欢不义。只喜欢真理。凡事包容。凡事相信。凡事盼望。凡事忍耐。爱是永不止息。
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

糟粕的东西当然也很多。像上帝在《出埃及记》里几次想杀摩西；用要亚伯拉罕的儿子的头的方式来考验亚伯拉罕的忠诚，等等等等，就不多说了。

另外，感觉我们大多数国人对宗教真得很无知，很有碍于和别人的沟通。个人以为在初高中里的社会科学课程里普及一些宗教的基本知识很重要：主要宗教的起源，教义，和典故等。有这样的基本知识对于促进对不同文化、种族、国家的人的理解和沟通很有帮助。

《波耳波经》系列到此为止。