善守者，藏于九地之下，善攻者，动于九天之上，故能自保而全胜也。

Ugh… It was tougher than i had hoped…

anyway, i directly tried to translate the sentence, let’s see what i got:

善 (shàn) means well/kind or good,

守 (shǒu) is guard,

and 者 (zhě ?) is roughly that which is…

So we get 善守者: That which guards well,

 

藏 (cáng) to hide conceal

于 (yú) is a connector/ preposition

九 (jiǔ) nine

地 (dì): place/ location (I suppose here ground would be a good translation)

之 (zhī) connector see the last post

下 (xià) bottom, under, down.

Sooo… That which guards well hides under the 9 places. My french book who is very poetic says:

He who excels at defence, hides deep under the nine folds of the earth;

Qui excelle à la defensive se cache au plus profond des 9 replis de la terre.

 

善 (shàn)  kind/good

攻 (gōng) attack

者 (zhě ?) as before.

We get: he who attacks well,

动 (dòng) move or act

于 (yú) is a connector/ preposition

九 (jiǔ) nine

天 (tiān) sky

之 (zhī) connector see the last post

上 (shàng)  top/upper part

He who attacks well, move/act at the top of the 9 skies ?

 

故 (gù) ancient/old; reason or because 

能 (néng)  ability/ capable of, can

自 (zì) certainly

保 (bǎo) protect/keep/ensure/guaranties (quite a lot of choices uh)

而 (ér) connector: and /and then 

全 (quán) complete/whole/entirely

胜 (shèng) win

地 (dì): place/ location.

This time i’m at a loss. The begining is probably: This is the reason why… (very loosely translated) he can certainly protect… Because of the connector here, there is a “second” sentence here and he wins completely… the 地 here makes no sense to me, is it suppose to mean “in any place”? That would give us

This is the reason why he can certainly protect and can win completely in any location.

This would make sense. To make it clearer, i’d like to focus on the first two part:

善守者，藏于九地之下 and

善攻者，动于九天之上.

 

He who defends well, hides below the 9 grounds,  he who attacks well, moves above the 9 skies.

 

While i would love to hear about why there are 9 skies and grounds, ( i haven’t found any explanation for it till now), this is classicaly something that derails the european reader. Luckily there are comments by 曹 操; (Cáo Cāo) you can read about him on the wikipedia article, basically he was an important figure during the period of the three kingdom and his son created the empire of wei. He is also a commenter of 孫 子 (Sūn Zǐ)’s work. About the matters at hand he said: to profit from the peculiarities of the terrain, that is hiding under the nine ground; using the variations of the climate to your profit, that is moving above the nine skies. While Li Quan seems to disagree with him, and continue his comment focusing on divination; one station after the divine palast correspond to the nine skies; two station after the divine palast correspond to the nine grounds. The earth, peacefull, is a place of strong stability; the sky, affected by revolution, is a sign of movement. Here revolution has to be read in the original sense, of circular movement, or period. Anyway i would rather talk about 曹 操‘s version, since i think it harbours some interesting thoughts:

 

Basicaly what it said is that, if being attacked, we have the choice of the place or field where the confrontation will take place, on the other side if we attack, we can’t choose where, but we can choose the timel. This is a more general thought even. To choose the right place when something or someone come to us, and to choose the right time to go to someone or to do something, that is, to me, 善守者，藏于九地之下，善攻者，动于九天之。

It works again!

After a few hours of intense pondering about utf-8 and other types of codings, Masen and me corrected the site so that I can blog again from my iPhone 🙂

Funnily enough the Chinese article wasn’t the culprit, it was some Münster tag, with a badly coded “ü”

Masen jabban in his office

Once again

投之亡地然后存，陷之死地然后生。

Recently I stumbled upon this sentence. Since i was intrigued, i tried to quickly translate it through google language tools and babelfish. Since the translations made no sense whatsoever (try it by yourself, it’s rather funny), i tried harder to find out what it was. Googling for it send me to the baidu site, with some discussion on it that became my first lead, it seemed to be some citation from some chinese classic. After looking more into it, i got the impression that it was related to “the art of war” from Sun Zi. Luckily i got to talk with the person who had written the sentence and she confirmed that it was from the art of war, somewhere in chapter 11 (the one about the 9 types of location).

After i went home, i looked it up, but didn’t manage to find the exact sentence in my french version. Giving up on the “meta search” approach, i translated every part of the sentence. I’m still not sure if i got everything right (probably not) but:
投 (tóu) means throw, or to put oneself in (a situation…)
之 (zhī) is a connector similar to 的
亡地 (wáng dì) translate to “places of death”
然 (rán)
后 (hòu) after ? really not sure about that
存 (cún) means survive

Edit: 后 can also be written: 後 (traditional version?), then 然後 is actually something i had to learn back in the days and means afterward (danach oder anschließend, après)

Roughly: After being thrown into places of death, they survive …

陷 (xiàn) trap (-ped)
之 see above
死地 (sǐ dì) places of death (again, not sure about the difference between 死 and 亡, the translations i have seem to translate 亡地 into dangerous places, or situation périlleuse)
然後 (rán hòu) afterwards, after
生 (shēng) to live

Roughly: after being trapped in a place of death, they live (or try to?)

Let’s elaborate on the terrain types:

疾战则存，不疾战则亡者，为死地。
“An area in which one can only survive through fearless fighting and will definitely perish if one does not is called a death ground.”
” En terre d’anéantissement, une armée doit se battre avec l’énergie du desespoir ou périr.”

亡地 is not formally one of the 9 described battlegrounds. It might refer to the same type, but could also be 围地 (surrounded place) or 圮地 (treacherous ground?), which are also pretty desperate types.

I have hoping to find some interesting comments from other classics, but it looks like the content is too obvious to have drawn a lot of comment. Sun Zi elaborates in Question from the king of Wou: in case of being encircled, burn your chariots and supplies, shave(?) your heads, eat the cows to show that you don’t have anything else in mind but to defend yourself till death. Once ready attack the enemy from both side (doesn’t make sense, sucky translation :S ) etc
Then the king of Wu asked what he should do in case he is encircling the enemy. Sun Zi answer that in that case, you should use a lot of ruse. Don’t let him be aware that he is encircled, make some place an apparent escape route, hide your archers in good positions in range of the escape route. It is important to not fight an enemy who is in a 死地 since it is there where his combative spirit is at the highest.

Thanks to Tingting for this opportunity to learn a little bit of chinese, and to think again about writings of Sun Zi. I may continue this kind of entry, i’m thinking about talking on my personal favorite: 善守者，藏于九地之下，善攻者，动于九天之上，故能自保而全胜也。

Amsterdam Aug. ’08

The last destination of our trip was Amsterdam. Again we didn’t found someone in couchsurfing to host us, but it didn’t matter since Daisuke had kindly agreed to host us if we didn’t find anybody. We arrived Friday in the early evening after a little bit of trouble (i was an hour late because of a missed train, Seisa somehow managed to take a train in the wrong direction and came half an hour after me). Daisuke’s place was not only nice, it was utterly central! The only thing that gave us some bad feeling was that he slept on the ground, so that we could share his bed. We went to some nice indonesian restaurant he knew where we had a great menu, with a lot of different thing to share. Afterwards we went for a small tour, starting from Amsterdam Centraal to Rembrandt plein, through the Damrak.

Later on we went together (! Daisuke surprised me on this one) to Panama, a club who was supposed to have a good “electronic music” party. I was still in a “berlin” kind of mode… which made me believe we were really early there (1:00 am), but Amsterdam actually has more civilized hours, party’s “start” around 22:00 and usually stop around 4:00 or 6:00, a real treat! Anyway du to me not being in a great shape, and Seisa having only sandals, which aren’t that great when the floor is full of broken glass, we left the place a little bit early, even though the party was really nice and the ambience really great.

The next day we slept in again, and left quite late to go to the Kalverstraat, a shopping area of Amsterdam. Even though Seisa didn’t found anything for her (again ^^!), i cracked, the continuous exposure of shops made me buy 3 new pants, which where quite needed (no complains here). After being treated to dinner by Daisuke (we had Miso soup!), we took the train to Den Haag, where we met Qinqin and Tingting (no kidding), Qinqin is a fellow Ph.D. student of Daisuke, Tingting a friend of her. We went to the beach to see some fireworks, who were rumored to take place from 22:00 to 24:00. The fireworks actually stopped at 22:15 and we were underwhelmed to say the least. Anyway we had some good time sitting at the beach and discussing all kinds of topics. We decided to go back to Amsterdam and to put the rest of time in good use by going to some club. We went to Rembrandt plein, where you have a plethora of choices, funnily we had a lot of trouble to find the one we had set our eyes upon: Studio 80, a small door, well hidden between two large venues. A great evening with music from a DJ from Hamburg.

On Sunday, Seisa and I moved out to see a little bit more of the city, we walked to Anne Frank Huis, but the line there was so long that i didn’t wan’t to bother with it. We continued our way south along the canal, stopping somewhere for a coffee. We then hit Leidseplein, went back north from there, saw the flower market, continued till this small bridge on the Amster which name i can’t remember right now. Later in the evening we went with Daisuke to a traditional dutch cuisine restaurant, which was full of japanese, (are they all using the very same guide?). We went back home early, everyone was already focusing on the next part of the trip, going back home for me and going to rome for Seisa. We left Daisuke’s place monday morning at 5:00 for Schipol. At 11:00 i was in Muenster and at 12:00 in my office…

Hamburg Aug. ’08

On monday 08.11 we took the road to hamburg. I hadn’t found any couchsurfer willing to host us in Hamburg, as a matter of fact, finding hosts for two people seems relatively complicated, we where in a pinch. Luckily Jakob had proposed to host us and i must say, we had really divine conditions in Hamburg.

Jakob was staying at his mothers place, a two room flat, for the duration of Esley (?) a logic workshop he was attending to. His mother had agreed to move for the duration of our stay to her boyfriends place, so that we could use her room. They lived in a quite lively area of Hamburg not to far from the center. The first evening we ate with jakob at a persian restaurant nearby, Seisa discovered Humus, a long time favorite of mine 🙂

The next day, since we where still quite tired from the first part of our trip, we didn’t leave the house before 12. We then went straight to the harbour, took some ferry to see some part of it. After a small walk along the docks, we took the S-Bahn to Hauptbahnhof, in order to walk through the Mönckebergstrasse, the main shopping area of Hamburg. At the end of it is the Rathaus, a nice old townhall.

On the Rathausmarkt, the place in front of it, was a fair dedicated to products of south germany, we used the opportunity and ate some traditional south german dishes. We moved up north, saw the Alster and the colonnaden, which is a really nice street, a little bit like Arras. Finally we walked through the Planten un Blomen park and stopped at the Reeperbahn.

Sybille, Jakobs mother, was cooking in the evening. She did some great indian dishes, especially the bean dish was great. Niklas, one of Jakobs best friend was also there and we had a, a least for me, quite typical “politics” discussion, emphasizing on the differences of the french and german system, till early in the morning.

The next Seisa had to fly to geneva and soon after, i left for Muenster.

Berlin Aug. ’08

It’s almost too late to talk about it, but better late than never!

I was in Berlin from Wednesday 08.06 to Sunday 08.10. I had a great first evening with Katja, a good friend of mine from San Francisco who was going to Munich the next day. We ate italian on Simon-Dach-straße a very nice neighborhood of Berlin, with lots of cafee’s and restaurant, funny people walking on the streets. It was great to catch up with “San Francisco” even though it hurts as well. After that i went to some park to meet Alexis, Eric and two friends of them. We had a great time even though, since we discussed a little bit to much (i think we came back around 2 am) it messed up my plans for the morning. Originally i had planned to attend to a zazen sesion at the Fuku Gen sadly, i didn’t manage to go to any of the sesions. I spend the afternoon walking between Wedding and Prenslauer Berg, around the Gesundbrunnen. At 6:00 pm i pick up Seisa at the Tegel Airport. We had a nice evening with Matthias, and old school college of mine. This Week-End pretty much confronted me for the first time with my past. But for Alexis (4 years ago…) I hadn’t have any real contact with people I knew from highschool.

The next day turned put to be the tourist day of the week-end. We went out quite early with Seisa and we visited quite a lot of things: Hackescher Markt, Museums Insel, Unter den Linden, Brandenburger Tor, Mahnmal, Topographie des Terrors, Postdamer Platz, Bundestag, Hauptbahnhof, KDW and finally Kurfuerstendam. The evening was sadly less then stellar. We had a really nice beginning, with friends of Alexis, Marla and Philipp (the 2 housemates of Alexis) coming over, had some nice talk with them. Around 2 o’clock we decided to move out to go to some club… After a short (25 min?) line at Panorama Bar, we didn’t get in… This pretty much started the begining of a night full of frustration. We tried to go to maria am Ostbahnhof, which was closed, then took a taxi to Watergate. At Watergate we got refused again, as well as at the club next door (it was a half assed try, nobody really wanted anymore). All of this took sadly quite some time. Seeing that it was already around 5:00 we decided to leave it be and went back to bed.




Not only didn’t we got the fun we hoped for, but the late coming back home made us sleep in. To be honest, we didn’t wake up before 16:00… Which didn’t leave a lot of time to tour around the city. We managed to see a little bit of the Alexander Platz, and then had a really nice walk around Treptower Park, which i like a lot, especially the silly communist monument. In the evening, i cooked, Eric had cooked for us the last few days (it was delicious!), and i wanted to contribute my share. I stayed with the basics and did some mushrooms, chicken and rice with a sauce bechamel. Finaly we went out again, first to pick up Eric at Matthieu’s place. Matthieu was again a really strange event for me. he used to be my neighbor when i was 15-18. I hadn’t seen him since then. We finally made it at Berghain(again). The line up was (partly): Modeselektor, Ellen alllien and Sascha Funke, all from Bpitch Control, who i really wanted to see. Sadly i wasn’t the only one and a humongus line awaited us at the club. We had to wait for 2 hours before coming in (this time they let us in, i don’t want to know how frustrated i would have been if they hadn’t let us in). Basically we missed Modeselektor while in the line. Sasha Funke was playing from 4 to 8 am, so we heard quite a lot from him, even though we spend quite some time in the Berghain hall (he was playing in Panorama Bar). I was waiting for Ellen Allien, who was supposed to play at 8 (till 12). At 8:30 she still hadn’t begin, and my back as well as all the other art of my body couldn’t bear it anymore… I wasn’t the only one, Seisa and Eric agreed happily to go home as i asked them. On sunday we had barely enough time to pack before taking a ride share to Muenster.

We stayed roughly a day in Muenster, on Monday we walked around the city after having lunch with dennis, a friend of mine. It turned out that you can show the city in about 4 hours… In the early evening we left for Hamburg… but this is another story

Canoe trip

I know I’m kinda late on this one, better late than never!

Last Sunday, I organized a canoe trip on the Werse. In the end, two people showed up, Christian, with whom i swim every sunday and Daan, a couchsurfer from Enschede. After some complication we made it to the river at about 11 am. Since Daan had his own two place kayak, we only rented a kayak, which i used, since christian had no kayaking experience. Us three being pretty ambitious, we row like mad. After one and half hour we were already pretty exhausted and decided to have lunch. The Werse is a really beautiful river. There are no roads who boards it , so both side of the river are either crowded with trees, which gives it a slightly “savage” feel, or with private houses. The  problem with this situation is that it was really hard to find a place to stop. There are no strands, and most of the places where it’s easy to stop and get to land are privately owned… After a solid lunch and some sun bathing, we went on, sadly after roughly an hour the landscape suddenly changed, and we were surrounded by Corn fields, who aren’t particularly beautiful. Since it was already a good distance, we decided to turn back. On our way bak, we stopped at a bar on the river for a fresh beer ^^;

 

We came back around 6pm, completely wasted, but happy. It’s definitively a beautiful trip and i hope to do it again later this august. Here some pick’s of it. Since I’m pretty scared of destroying my equipment, i couldn’t take some on the water, who would have been much more beautiful.