This red dress is forever.

Love

Kiss

Love their dresses and hats…that age of everyday elegance

More toxic Hugh Grant from 1988 movie: the Liar of the White Worm.

Written in 1719 by Daniel Defoe, this book about a castaway who lived in an inhabited island somewhere around South America is sometimes considered the first novel in English.

Despite being less sophisticated in form, the book brings us back to the age of ocean travels, of slave trade and pre-industrialization innocence. The book's depiction of a unbelievable 28 years of isolated living in a people-less island was so vivid that I think it is the cruelest punishment to any human beings. Living among cannibals is a thousand times better.

In the beginning of the book, Robinson's father advised him to settle for comfortable living near home and family. The old man's argument is precisely like the Chinese philosophy of "the middle way," or Zhong Yong.

My father…told me it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind.

He told me, I might judge of the happiness of this state by one thing, viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wish they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the just standard of true felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.

He bid me observe it, and I should always find, that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were, who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances, on one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean and insufficient diet, on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life

While in Cancun, I started reading this book, thinking I'm reading the life of the famous apple-inspired physicist, Isaac Newton. It was not until a hundred pages later that I realized this is a different Newton. Fortunately, the prologue made me feel vindicated (the author's friend questioned him how he's going to handle his subject's complicated math and theories).

But John Newton turns out to be a kind of parallel to Isaac Newton, achieving much on the spiritual side of human intelligence. As the subject of one of the most popular Christian conversion books, he was first a shameless slave trader, an evil person all around. During one of his ocean voyages, a terrible storm hit and almost sank the ship. He prayed and in the end survived the storm. From then on, he became a devote Christian and later contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery in England.

Citing a motto he had come to believe in, "Never deliberate," Newton slipped away from the shore party under his command while they were loading up the longboat.

With thirty thousand to forty thousand slaves a year being transported from Africa to the Americas, vast fortunes were amassed by slave traders, sea captains, and shipowners.

Medieval Europe by Henry William Carless Davis is not a book for someone with no knowledge of the period. It assumes the readers already know the characters, themes and the events of the middle ages. Davis does a wonderful job weaving everything together into an elegant treatise of the often misunderstood age.

If nothing else, one should walk away from the book conscious of the misconceptions. The term "the Dark Ages" is not more suitable for the Medieval times than it is for today.

Such a period were the Middle Ages–the centuries that separate the ancient from the modern world. They were something more than centuries of transition, though the genius of a Gibbon has represented them as a long night of ignorance and force, only redeemed from utter squalor by some lingering rays of ancient culture.

It is true that they began with an involuntary secession from the power which represented, in the fifth century, the wisdom of Greece and the majesty of Rome; and that they ended with a jubilant return to the Promised Land of ancient art and literature. But the interval had been no mere sojourning in Egypt. The scholars of the Renaissance destroyed as much as they created. They overthrew one civilisation to clear the ground for another.

We should not, however, judge an age by its crimes and scandals. We do not think of the Athenians solely or chiefly as the people who turned against Pericles, who tried to enslave Sicily, who executed Socrates. We appraise them rather by their most heroic exploits and their most enduring work. We must apply the same test to the medieval nations; we must judge of them by their philosophy and law, by their poetry and architecture, by the examples that they afford of statesmanship and saintship.

The highest medieval achievements are the fruit of deep reflection, of persevering and concentrated effort, of a self forgetting self in the service of humanity and God. In other words, they spring from the soil, and have ripened in the atmosphere, of a civilised society.

Modern life has travelled so far beyond medieval Christianity that it is only with an effort we retrace our steps to the intellectual position of a St. Bernard, a St. Francis, or the Imitatio Christi. Apart from the difficulties of an unfamiliar terminology, we have become estranged from ideas which then were commonplaces; beliefs once held to be self-evident and cardinal now hover on the outer verge of speculative thought, as bare possibilities, as unproved and unprovable guesses at truth.

Our own creeds, it may be, rest upon no sounder bottom of logical demonstration. But they have been framed to answer doubts, and to account for facts, which medieval theories ignored; and in framing them we have been constrained partly to revise, partly to destroy, the medieval conceptions of God and the Universe, of man and the moral law. This is not the place for a critique of medieval religion. But, unless we bear in mind some essential features of the Catholic system of thought, we miss the key to that ecclesiastical statesmanship which dominates the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

This is an interesting way of narrating Christian theology:

The first article in this theology is the existence of a personal God who, though all-pervading and all-powerful, does not reveal Himself immediately to the human beings whom He has created to be His worshippers, and does not so order the world that events shall always express His will and purpose.

He has endowed man with a sinful nature, and has permitted His universe to be invaded by evil intelligences of superhuman power and malignancy, who tempt man to destruction and are bent upon subverting the Divine order of which they form a part. He is supremely benevolent, and yet He only manifests the full measure of this quality when His help is invoked by prayer; His goodwill often finds expression in miracles–that is, in the suspending or reversing of the general laws which He has Himself laid down for the regulation of the universe and human destinies.

He is inscrutable and incomprehensible; yet to be deceived as to the nature of His being is the greatest of all sins against His majesty. The goal of the religious life is personal communion with Him, the intuitive apprehension and spontaneous acceptance of His will, the Beatific Vision of His excellencies.

But this state of blessedness cannot be reached by mere self-discipline; the prayers, the meditations, the good works of the isolated and uninstructed individual, can only serve to condone a state of irremediable ignorance. The avenue to knowledge of Him lies through faith; and faith means the unquestioning acceptance of the twofold revelation of Himself which He has given in the Scriptures and in the tradition of the Church.

The two revelations are in effect reduced to one by the statement that only the Church is competent to give an authoritative exposition of the sacred writings. Upon the Church hangs the welfare of the individual and the world. Without participation in her sacraments the individual would be eternally cut off from God; without her prayers the tide of evil forces would no longer be held in check by recurring acts of miraculous intervention, but would rise irresistibly and submerge the human race.

Grant played a very itchy husband who's married for seven years to an elegant English woman. Aboard a ship to India for a holiday with his wife, Grant took fancy of a sensual large-sized French woman.

The French woman's American writer husband, strangely enough, urged Grant to advance on his dangerous adventure. The American writer knew all too well the weary marriage life beneath the English couple's polite exchanges and symbolic kisses, and had no trouble telling Grant to "crawl back to your matrimonial tomb."

In recounting his love story with his wife – a one-time dancer, the American writer reveals love's mysterious metamorphosis. From describing his first sight of her as "a glimpse of heaven" to "we are headed for sexual bankruptcy" to "I would pressed my lips onto hers like you would crush a cigarette butt in an ashtray" to finally making her life "hell so hot even she wants to get out."

The story is an anti-thesis to the Romeo and Juliet type. We all know that people die for love because they cannot be together. This film tells you that love kills when you have too much of each other.

Lastly, the beauty of this movie is that you genuinely don't know what's going to happens next or in the end. The finish is surprising but sort of perfect.

I've watched TWENTY Hugh Grant movies that it is getting sickening. Look at this long list:

Did You Hear About the Morgans (2010)

Music and Lyrics (2007)

American Dreamz (2006)

Bridget Jones Dairy: the Edge of Reason (2004)

Love Actually (2003)

About A Boy (2002)

Bridget Jones Dairy (2001)

Small Time Crooks (2000)

Notting Hill (1999)

Mickey Blue Eyes (1999)

Extreme Measures (1996)

Sense and Sensibility (1995)

An Awfully Big Adventure (1995)

Nine Month (1995)

An Englishman Who Went Up A Hill, And Come Down On A Mountain (1995)

Four Weddings and A Funeral (1994)

Sirens (1994)

The Remains of the Day (1993)

Train To Hell (1993)

Bitter Moon (1992)

Impromptu (1991)

The Lady and the Highwayman (1989)

Champagne Charlie (1989)

The Bengali Night (1988)

The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

Maurice (1987)

This famous book was once as hard to find as Marco Polo's travel in medieval Europe. But it all changed when Kindle arrived. With just a simple click of a button, it was downloaded to my e-reader, and subsequently consumed on the subway to work over the past couple of weeks.
Written in late thirteenth century, the book naturally has heavy religious inclination. The ill-will between Christians and Muslims is nothing new. My favorite passage is this one:
In fact, if you were to take all those five (princes) together, they would not be so powerful as he is. Nay, I will say yet more; for if you were to put together all the Christians in the world, with their Emperors and their Kings, the whole of these Christians,–aye, and throw in the Saracens to boot,–would not have such power, or be able to do so much as this Cublay, who is the Lord of all the Tartars in the world, those of the Levant and of the Ponent included; for these are all his liegemen and subjects.
There are many tales like this one below that shows the righteousness of Christians:

It is not a great while ago that SIGATAY, own brother to the Great Kaan, who was Lord of this country and of many an one besides, became a Christian. The Christians rejoiced greatly at this, and they built a great church in the city, in honour of John the Baptist; and by his name the church was called. And they took a very fine stone which belonged to the Saracens, and placed it as the pedestal of a column in the middle of the church, supporting the roof.

It came to pass, however, that Sigatay died. Now the Saracens were full of rancour about that stone that had been theirs, and which had been set up in the church of the Christians; and when they saw that the Prince was dead, they said one to another that now was the time to get back their stone, by fair means or by foul. And that they might well do, for they were ten times as many as the Christians. So they gat together and went to the church and said that the stone they must and would have.

The Christians acknowledged that it was theirs indeed, but offered to pay a large sum of money and so be quit. Howbeit, the others replied that they never would give up the stone for anything in the world. And words ran so high that the Prince heard thereof, and ordered the Christians either to arrange to satisfy the Saracens, if it might be, with money, or to give up the stone. And he allowed them three days to do either the one thing or the other.

What shall I tell you? Well, the Saracens would on no account agree to leave the stone where it was, and this out of pure despite to the Christians, for they knew well enough that if the stone were stirred the church would come down by the run. So the Christians were in great trouble and wist not what to do. But they did do the best thing possible; they besought Jesus Christ that he would consider their case, so that the holy church should not come to destruction, nor the name of its Patron Saint, John the Baptist, be tarnished by its ruin.

And so when the day fixed by the Prince came round, they went to the church betimes in the morning, and lo, they found the stone removed from under the column; the foot of the column was without support, and yet it bore the load as stoutly as before! Between the foot of the column and the ground there was a space of three palms. So the Saracens had away their stone, and mighty little joy withal. It was a glorious miracle, nay, it is so, for the column still so standeth, and will stand as long as God pleaseth.
Marco Polo had this to say about Indian men and women:

In this direction you can proceed further till you come to the Sea of India. The men are brown and lean, but the women, taking them as brunettes, are very beautiful.
And some strange customs of the day and place:
And it is the truth that if a foreigner comes to the house of one of these people to lodge, the host is delighted, and desires his wife to put herself entirely at the guest's disposal, whilst he himself gets out of the way, and comes back no more until the stranger shall have taken his departure. The guest may stay and enjoy the wife's society as long as he lists, whilst the husband has no shame in the matter, but indeed considers it an honour. And all the men of this province are made wittols of by their wives in this way.[NOTE 3] The women themselves are fair and wanton.
The Great Khan's view on religion is, what should we say, quiet liberal:

(the Great Khan) said: 'There are Four Prophets worshipped and revered by all the world. The Christians say their God is Jesus Christ; the Saracens, Mahommet; the Jews, Moses; the Idolaters, Sogomon Borcan [Sakya-Muni Burkhan or Buddha], who was the first god among the idols; and I worship and pay respect to all four, and pray that he among them who is greatest in heaven in very truth may aid me.'

At least to Marco Polo, the Pope is the one to blame for the Great Khan's not turning to Christ for salvation:

But the Great Khan let it be seen well enough that he held the Christian Faith to be the truest and best–for, as he says, it commands nothing that is not perfectly good and holy. But he will not allow the Christians to carry the Cross before them, because on it was chiefs shall be baptised also, and their followers shall do the like, and thus in the end there will be more Christians here than exist in your part of the world!' "

And if the Pope, as was said in the beginning of this book, had sent men fit to preach our religion, the Grand Kaan would have turned Christian; for it is an undoubted fact that he greatly desired to do so."

And what did the Great Khan think, really, about becoming a Christian? Obviously, it's because of something else – not for a lack of interests, as you guessed it:

He said: 'How would you have me to become a Christian? You see that the Christians of these parts are so ignorant that they achieve nothing and can achieve nothing, whilst you see the Idolaters can do anything they please, insomuch that when I sit at table the cups from the middle of the hall come to me full of wine or other liquor without being touched by anybody, and I drink from them. They control storms, causing them to pass in whatever direction they please, and do many other marvels; whilst, as you know, their idols speak, and give them predictions on whatever subjects they choose.

But if I were to turn to the faith of Christ and become a Christian, then my barons and others who are not converted would say: "What has moved you to be baptised and to take up the faith of Christ? What powers or miracles have you witnessed on His part?" (You know the Idolaters here say that their wonders are performed by the sanctity and power of their idols.)

Well, I should not know what answer to make; so they would only be confirmed in their errors, and the Idolaters, who are adepts in such surprising arts, would easily compass my death. But now you shall go to your Pope, and pray him on my part to send hither an hundred men skilled in your law, who shall be capable of rebuking the practices of the Idolaters to their faces, and of telling them that they too know how to do such things but will not, because they are done by the help of the devil and other evil spirits, and shall so control the Idolaters that these shall have no power to perform such things in their presence. When we shall witness this we will denounce the Idolaters and their religion, and then I will receive baptism.

On the interesting topic of women, Marco Polo had this delicate detail about how the Great Khan chose concubines:

And these old ladies make the girls sleep with them, in order to ascertain if they have sweet breath [and do not snore], and are sound in all their limbs. Then such of them as are of approved beauty, and are good and sound in all respects, are appointed to attend on the Emperor by turns.

On the centuries-old profession of prostitution:

Moreover, no public woman resides inside the city, but all such abide outside in the suburbs. And 'tis wonderful what a vast number of these there are for the foreigners; it is a certain fact that there are more than 20,000 of them living by prostitution. And that so many can live in this way will show you how vast is the population.

One of the less brilliant Hugh Grant movies (of which there are numerous), featuring memorable dialogues such as the following:

Woman: Your skin is so white. I want to be white too. But it's not possible, is it?

Hugh Grant: Maybe with some powder?

The character, an English engineer trapped in India, is possibly the least suitable role for the posh Hugh Grant. He is brilliant as Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility, Clive Durham in Maurice, William Thacker in Notting Hill and even Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones' Diary.

English nobleman and licentious skirt-chaser bring the best out of Hugh Grant. He should never appear in dirty basketball shirt out of city slums, nor inelegantly walking on a dirt road with pants obviously too short for him.

Equally discrepant is the plot. There is a crazy journalist character, and many times you are left clueless as to what a particular scene is trying to convey. In all, it is only for the sake of HG do one endure such a disastrous movie.

Can't-miss funny video of HG's earlier endeavors.

But Maurice is the complete opposite. Only 27 years old (though he looked as if he's 20), Hugh Grant plays a rich student at Cambridge in the early 1910s. Candle lite dinners, canoeing on river while talking about "the whole Western culture is based on the law of Christ, not Plato" and beautifully lying on green grass with his lover are the scenes that naturally bring home the charm of the Hugh Grant.

A minor note: like a blossoming flower, Hugh Grant's features transitioned from the dark hair and dark eyes in Maurice while in his late twenties to the sandy hair and blue eyes in Notting Hill in his late thirties (when his charm peaked).

Music and Lyrics (2007), Love Actually (2003), About a Boy (2002), Bridget Jone's Diary (2001), Extreme Measures (1996 – stay away from action movies, Hugh), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) are…ah, your regular romantic comedy, with varying degrees of mediocrity.

But the thing is, Hugh Grant himself was never buried beneath whatever role he's playing. We see a little, or maybe a lot, of Hugh Grant in the characters he plays. The juror's verdict is: the reluctant actor should retire to writing. Did You Hear About the Morgans should be his last movie. Otherwise, he risks the danger he so fears himself: becoming worse and worse by each film and fade out with no dignity.

An Englishman's Travels in America: his observations of life and manners in the free and slave states was written by John Benwell in 1857, four years before the civil war.

I always find it critical to know a book's author in order to understand his writing. But there is hardly any information on the Internet about John Benwell, an obscure writer, it seems.

It was riveting reading nevertheless. Mr. Benwell, being this perfect English gentleman, examined the people, cities and towns of America along his travels from New York down to Florida and South Carolina with an almost indiscernible supremacy. Especially in New York City, Mr. Benwell frequently made comparisons to his home country, or America's "mother country," on either the qualities of hotels or the appearances of the ladies.

But down South to the slave states, the author's observations became much less lighthearted. Mr. Benwell was first forced to leave a theater box belonging to a colored friend who married a white woman (the woman being ostracized). He witnessed the constant whipping and torturing of slaves, which made him indignant. In Florida, there's open war between the settlers and the Indians. One of his friends was cruelly murdered by Indians. The South described by Mr. Benwell is certainly a different world from that of Ms. Scarlett O'Hara.

The author expected the population changes, in that blacks would outnumber their masters in some states, could lead to a resolution of the conflict. Of course, it was the civil war that took care of slavery. By that time, our honest observer was probably in England, recovering from a rough journey in a country that cost his health, and almost his life. Here are some excerpts:

Their habits at table also often fill one with disgust, and the want of good-breeding I witnessed on more than one occasion would have been resented in England. This is the more remarkable, as the Americans entertain high notions of refinement, and yet, paradoxical as it may appear, seem to glory in their contempt of good manners. I do not, however, include the ladies in this remark;

(men chewing tobacco)..incessantly, and, to the great annoyance of those who do not practise the vandalism, eject the impregnated saliva over everything under foot. The deck of the vessel was much defaced by the noxious stains; and even in converse with ladies the unmannerly fellows expectorated without sense of decency.

…..determined opposition to intermixed marriages, were known in the place as "anti-amalgamists." On this occasion poor P—- nearly lost his life, and, but for running, would, no doubt, have done so; as it was, he was much burnt about the head and neck, the ruffians in the scuffle having set fire to his frock-coat, which was of linen.

Their healthy look under such circumstances completely shook my faith in the Brahminical vegetarian theory, and goes far, I think, to prove that man was intended by his Maker to be a carnivorous animal.

for so jealous are the citizens of men entertaining hostility to the pro-slavery cause, that spies are often sent on board newly-arrived boats, to ascertain if missionaries are amongst the passengers. These spies, with Jesuitical art, introduce themselves by making apparently casual inquiries on leading topics of those they suspect, and if their end is subserved, basely betray them, or, what is more usual, keep them under strict surveillance, with a view to their being detected in disseminating abolition doctrines amongst the slaves, when they are immediately made amenable to the laws, and are fined or

(in describing Florida) This country is, for the most part, a howling wilderness, and is never likely to become thickly populated. The dreary pine-barrens and sand-hills are slightly undulating, and are here and there thickly matted with palmetto.

every one of which swarmed with alligators. This, although not a very pleasant reflection, did not trouble me much, as I had by this time become acquainted with the propensities of these creatures, and knew that they were not given to attacking white men, unless provoked or wounded, although a negro or a dog is never safe within their reach. They are, however, repulsive-looking creatures, and it is not easy to divest the mind of apprehension when in their vicinity.

At the top of King-street, facing you as you advance, is a large Protestant episcopal church. I went there to worship on the following Sunday, but was obliged to leave the building, there being, it was stated by the apparitor, no accommodation for strangers, a piece of illiberality that I considered very much in keeping with the slave-holding opinions of the worshippers who attend it.

This want of politeness I was not, however, surprised at, for it is notorious, as has been before observed by an able writer, that, excepting the Church of Rome, "the members of the unestablished Church of England–the Protestant Episcopalian, are the most bigotted, sectarian, and illiberal, in the United States of America. Being fully persuaded," to follow the same writer, "that prelatical ordination and the three orders are indispensable to their profession, they are, like too many of their fellow professors in the mother country, deeply dyed with Laudean principles, or that love of formula in religion and grasping for power which has so conspicuously shown itself among the Oxford tractarians, and which, it is to be feared, is gradually undermining Protestant conformity, by gnawing at its very heart, in the colleges of Great Britain."

So heinous in a negro, is the crime of lifting his hand in opposition to a white man in South Carolina, that the law adjudges that the offending member shall be forfeited. This is, or was, quite as inexorable as the one I have before spoken of, and when in Charleston, I frequently, amongst the flocks of negroes passing and repassing, saw individuals with one hand only. Like the administration of miscalled justice on negroes in all slave-holding states in America, the process was summary; the offender was arrested, brought before the bench of sitting magistrates, and on the ex parte[A] statement of his accuser, condemned to mutilation, being at once marched out to the rear of the building and the hand lopped off on a block fixed there for the purpose. I noticed a block and axe myself in the yard of a building near the town-hall, and on looking at them closely, saw they were stained almost black, with what I have little hesitation in saying was human blood.

2003年，车行在多伦多的乡间马路上，我聆听着一位加拿大朋友对人种的看法。我们刚刚路过一片印第安人保留地。“黑人印第安人就是低等人种，要不是白人给他们带来了文明，他们到现在还只会吃野果，打猎为生。”

2006年，从哥伦比亚小镇到堪萨斯城的路上，我与同学探讨同一个话题：在全球化之前，世界文明为什么会有不同程度的发展？为什么有的地方出现了高度文明的社会，而有的却似乎永远处于原始阶段？他说，你应该看一本书：Guns, Germs, and Steel。会给你答案。

当这本书不经意的出现在我手边的时候，我其实已经归纳出了一个解答。美国社会等级分化与种族的关联似乎表示，即使不同种族的人们拥有相似的环境和机会，总体上，白人系统性的取得超出黑人的成就。这意味着有的种族－－从基因上－－是优于其他人种的。

当然，我只是偷偷的持批判态度的这么想。说出这样的话是要引起公愤的。有一次，与朋友交谈时我试探的表示这是否是一种可能的解释。她低声说，我是这么认为的，但别告诉别人！

这本书让我的想法发生了彻底的改变。观察周围的人们，把原因归结到基因上是一个太容易犯的错误。曾有报道称社会学家们做过试验，将黑人和白人小孩放置在相似家庭和社会环境下，若干年后白人小孩在学习成绩等指标上均超过黑人小孩。许多人觉得黑人就是那种擅长体育音乐而智力低下的人。人们说非洲的黑人即使有钱也不赚，永远的懒惰，不求上进。

但这只是一种肤浅的分析，而忽略了根本的原因。这本书其实可以用一句话概括：与人们常常误解的人种优劣决定文明程度的解释相反，文明程度从根本上是由环境所定。在哥伦布之前，北美，澳大利亚，新西兰等大陆或海岛无法与外界接触。在某些大陆内部也被沙漠高山等分割成块，相互无法接触，使得文明无法在碰撞中升华。另外，有的地区因气候地理植被等原因，如部分澳大利亚洲，不适合人们发展农耕，固定居所，再而形成城市，产生复杂的社会结构。这些地区的人们有史以来就不得不一直过游猎生活。因此没有机会发展语言等。

而欧亚大陆具有得天独厚的优势。不但板块最大，而且基本可以由陆路水路到达许多不同的区域。由于气候好，适合农耕，因此形成人口聚集的点，这样便促使语言，商业的发展。因为社会结构复杂，因而又催生了法律，政府，文学，音乐等等。在历史的长河中，几大文明中心在碰撞，竞争和融合中更加推进了社会的进步。

其实，这本书的意思也可以用一句老话概括：一方水土养一方人。这个“方”字用的好，小至一山一河，大至五大洲，都是水土决定了居住在那里的人们的性格和文明。你看，穷山恶水出刁民，多么简洁。Jared Diamond的一本大书包含的道理正和我们老祖宗的结论遥相呼应啊。

那一点头，那一伸手，那圆舞曲，那如孔雀般的礼服，怎么能不让人着迷呢？看罢让人恨不得立刻乘时间隧道回到那个年代。可是，一个中国人？那毕竟不是我们的文化，我们的过去。就算回去了，岂不是要去西部修铁路？

于是想到红楼梦：那是我们先辈贵族们的生活。看看中国贵族的生活，87版红楼梦。

反差是多么的巨大。那Anglo Saxon Christian white 和 Chinese Confucianism red。中国贵族一家人讲究热热闹闹在一起，就算先正经作个揖，马上大家又团在一起，推推搡搡说笑。没有西方那样很cool的一抬帽檐，很cool的一点头；小姐们于是高傲的抬起自己美丽的脸盘，将手搭在男士已经伸出在半空的手上，然后两人开始优美的旋转。

社交，特别是男女青年社交，在传统中国从来没有产生过。中国贵族小姐与少爷的婚姻都是家长做主。常说：男女授授不亲吗。还社什么交。但西方不知为什么，产生了社交这个重要的现象，并衍生了一系列社交的迷人礼仪。social life. 在中国来讲，也许只存在family life吧。

然后20世纪初西方来了，东方因此再也不同了。格格服变成了旗袍，中国男女也跳起交谊舞了。一个世纪后，交谊舞成了退休老人在公园里穿着睡裤做的运动了。你看，人是多么善于变化啊。

Despite its name and subject, the movie does not delve into the topic of religion. In Balian's speech before the defense of Jerusalem, he resorted back to "fight for freedom." Alas, one would hope a little authenticity in spirit to accompany the realistic costumes and stage set. It is almost as if the story is chosen for its opportunity to create impressive scenes. To conclude: a beautiful movie with a mundane soul. Score: 80.