by Li Wei (立委)
Roaming the World
In my personal semantic dictionary and knowledge graph, "wandering" (liulang) is a major node, with "drifting" and "waves" as its hypernyms. Its hyponyms branch out in lush profusion: sent-down youth, overseas re-settlement, leaping through the Dragon Gate — and leaping again — northward drift, plunging into the sea of commerce, westward drift, southward migration, and southward yet again. This is an honest map of my professional life. Behind these words and concepts lie surges of excitement and oceans of toil that perhaps only a visualization graph could hardly capture.
A life of undulating drift has been my constant companion. In 1976, I graduated high school just in time for the Cultural Revolution's final wave of shangshan xiaxiang — the "up to the mountains, down to the villages" campaign — and was sent to a mountain village in southern Anhui to be re-educated by "poor and lower-middle peasants". That was the starting point of my lifelong wandering. Looking back, it wasn't a bad beginning — a sixteen-year-old could feel more pride than sorrow. At the end of 1977, I caught the first nationwide college entrance exam in ten years and, against all odds, leapt through the Dragon Gate, becoming one of the historically celebrated Class of '77 (though we actually enrolled in February 1978). After graduation, I taught for a year, then leapt again — into graduate school in Beijing. That was an exhilarating northward drift, my joy on par with the crazy histry figure Fan Jin passing the imperial examinations. It was 1983, and I had the extraordinary fortune of studying under the founding fathers of Chinese NLP/MT, Professors Liu Yongquan and Liu Zhuo, pursuing a master's in machine translation — thus began my career.
In the four or five years after graduate school, I moonlighted in Zhongguancun, China's Silicon Valley, plunging into the sea of business high tech development. Though I could count myself among the earliest wave of xiahai entrepreneurs, I was only part-time and bore none of the risks full-timers faced. By then, the fever of going overseas — "foreign re-settlement," we called it — was raging. I couldn't resist the tide and caught the last train to Great Britain. But the early 1990s found the British Empire in decline: streets teeming with stray dogs, muggings rampant. One does not dwell in a dangerous state, so I drifted westward to the immigrant's Mecca — Canada, the land of maple leaves, flowers, and milk. A PhD, a daughter, a change of status, a job search — it was all wonderfully busy. Beautiful though Canada was, its job market was small. So southward I went, and collided headlong with America's dot-com boom. The United States truly is a wanderer's paradise: vast skies, boundless possibilities — the entrepreneurial journey began. As the grand entrepreneurial vision faded with the bursting bubble, I drifted south once more, finally sinking into the promised land of IT workers, unable to extricate myself — a place called Silicon Valley.
My career has roughly tracked the rhythm of NLP's gradual penetration into industry. The overarching theme: wandering, wandering, still wandering. Yet wherever I wandered, my heart for technological entrepreneurship never wavered. In my dictionary of wandering, something is missing, sensed only dimly. Tao Yuanming's "The Return" echoes in my ears from time to time: "My fields and gardens will run to waste — why not return?" To let leaves fall back to their roots, to start anew — perhaps that is the true destination of all wandering.
Written on March 23, 2013
Homesickness Is an Invisible Net (Part I)
At the end of 2005, our nine-year-old daughter Tiantian was deeply upset by a discussion about leaving Buffalo. I tried to console her: "You know, when American newspapers rank the most livable cities, Buffalo is always in the bottom ten. Cities like San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Washington D.C., and San Diego — aren't they better than Buffalo?" It was true: Buffalo has long, brutal winters — they call it "Snow Capital" — leaving residents vulnerable to cold and illness. The water quality is poor and viruses are rampant. More importantly, there's no real industry, the economy is stagnant, the population shrinks year by year, and young people mostly head "south" at the first opportunity. But Tiantian wasn't buying it. With tears streaming, she said: "Who cares about this stupid rating. I have been living here for eight years and all my friends are here. Plus, I like snow."
Tiantian had lived here for as long as she could remember; Buffalo was, in her mind, the one and only irreplaceable hometown. I recall when she was five, we took her to Beijing for the first time to visit family. That first night at her grandmother's, everything was alien — no American cartoons on TV as she was used to. She cried and fussed, begging to go home — meaning, of course, her home in Buffalo. I told her this was home, her mother's home, but she simply couldn't accept it.
To prove Buffalo's virtues, Tiantian drew upon her limited knowledge to invent her own balance theory: Buffalo's famous lake-effect snow, she argued, counteracts the terrible greenhouse effect causing global warming. With an air of self-satisfied cleverness, she declared: "You see, the two effects balance each other. Nowhere else can balance the global warming as effectively as in Buffalo!" She could list a thousand reasons Buffalo was superior: "You got to admit, Buffalo is not bad. We have no earthquake like in San Francisco. No hurricane like in Florida. Our Christmas is always white."
Buffalo does have many acknowledged virtues, chief among them Niagara Falls — the so-called "Seventh Wonder of the World." The natural ecology around Buffalo is beautifully preserved: drive along the Niagara River from the falls and you pass through a gallery of fairy-tale scenery — one state park after another, ancient towering trees, rolling meadows. Yet aside from the Falls, these vast parks sit empty even on weekends; one can't help but feel the waste of such resources. Buffalo's downtown may be dilapidated and chaotic, but the suburban townships where most white-collar people actually live are like something out of a storybook — simple, honest folk, clean and safe streets, garden-like beauty. Buffalo's housing market is the least expensive in America: back then, just over a hundred thousand dollars could buy you a house with front and back yards (what in China they'd call a "villa"), the absolute price lower than in China's coastal cities! Two hundred thousand got you a luxury home, spacious to the point of embarrassment — a sum that wouldn't buy a corner of a house in New York or San Francisco. Life was cheap and convenient, with top-tier public schools, and extracurricular lessons — piano, sports — at half the coastal price. Not to mention a warm Chinese community and a bustling weekend Chinese school.
朝华午拾 · 浪迹天涯与乡愁（上）
浪迹天涯
在属于我个人的语义词典和知识图谱里，"流浪"是一个很大的节点，它的上位是漂流和波浪。流浪的下位谓词枝繁叶盛，包括：插队，洋插队，跳龙门，再跳龙门，北漂，下海，西漂，南下，再南下。这也正是我职业生涯的真实写照。在这些语词概念的背后蕴含几多激动几多辛苦，也许只有可视化图谱知道。
多起伏的漂流生活伴随着我的一生。1976年高中毕业即赶上了文革最后一届上山下乡，插队皖南山区接受贫下中农的再教育，这是我一生流浪生活的起点。这个起点回想起来并不坏，16岁的孩子当时能感到的是自豪多于悲凉。1977年底赶上了文革10年后第一届大学生招考，居然跳了龙门，成为史上著名的77级生（其实是78年2月入学）。大学毕业后任教一年，再跳龙门考研成功，北上京城。这是一次欣快的北漂，当年的兴奋喜悦堪比范进中举。那是1983年，有幸师从中国NLP的开山鼻祖刘涌泉刘倬老师，主攻机器翻译硕士，这才入行。研究生毕业后四五年间，中关村兼职下海。虽然可算头几拨下海人士，因是兼职，并无其他下海人的风险。其时洋插队之风正甚，终于没有顶住潮流，赶了末班车来到大英帝国。90年代初正值大英没落，乱态丛生，路多野狗，抢劫之风甚行。危邦不居，因辗转由欧西漂，来到一代移民的"麦加"，满是鲜花与牛奶的枫叶之国加拿大。攻博添女，换身份，找工作，不亦忙乎。加国虽美，工作市场却不大。于是南下，竟一头撞上了美国网络大跃进。美利坚果然是流浪者的天堂，广阔天地，大有可为，开启创业之路。轰轰烈烈的创业宏图随着泡沫的破灭渐趋平淡，遂复南下，终于踏入IT民工的圣地不能自拔，人称硅谷。
我的生涯与NLP在工业界逐渐渗透的节奏是基本上一致的。整个一个主题就是，流浪，流浪，还在流浪。但无论流浪何方，技术创业之心不变。在我流浪的词典里，冥冥中似有所缺。陶渊明的《归去来辞》不时在耳边萦回，"田园将芜胡不归"。叶落归根，初创再搏，或为流浪的真正归宿。
记于2013年三月23日
乡愁是一张无形的网（上）
2005年底，因为讨论离开水牛城搬家的事，九岁的女儿甜甜非常伤感。我宽慰她说："你知道么？美国报纸排名最受欢迎的居住城市，水牛城是倒数的十个城市之一呀（最受欢迎的十大城市包括旧金山，波士顿，西雅图，华盛顿和圣地亚哥等），哪里不比水牛城强呀？" 确实，水牛城冬季漫长，人称"雪都"，极易受风寒侵袭。水质低劣，病毒流行。更主要的是，没有像样的工业，经济发展落后，人口逐年下降，年轻人一有机会大多"南下"寻求发展。可是，甜甜不以为然，流着眼泪说："Who cares about this stupid rating. I have been living here for eight years and all my friends are here. Plus, I like snow."
甜甜自记事起，就住在这里，水牛城自然是她心目中不可替代的唯一故乡。记得她五岁那年第一次带她回北京探亲，第一天晚上住在姥姥家，一切对她是那么陌生，没有她已经习惯的美国卡通电视，她满脸委屈地吵着闹着要回家——当然是回水牛城的家。我告诉她这就是家呀，是妈妈的家，她怎么也无法认同。
为了列举水牛城的好处，甜甜根据她有限的知识，自己独创了一种平衡理论：水牛城有著名的湖区效应，所以多雪，而地球正面临可怕的温室效应，导致全球变暖，她自作聪明地说，"You see, the two effects balance each other. Nowhere else can balance the global warming as effectively as in Buffalo!"。她还能举出一千条水牛城优越的理由："You got to admit, Buffalo is not bad. We have no earthquake like in San Francisco. No hurricane like in Florida. Our Christmas is always white."
水牛城确实有很多公认的好处，最著名的是拥有号称"世界第七大奇迹"的尼亚拉加大瀑布。水牛城周围原始生态保护很好：郊外从大瀑布开始，沿尼亚拉加河车行，宛如驶进仙境画廊，州立公园一个接一个，参天古树，连绵草地。不过，这里除大瀑布外，空旷的公园即便周末亦无人问津，让人真觉得可惜了这些资源。水牛城市中心虽然日渐衰落杂乱，人们聚居的郊区乡镇却有如童话世界，民风淳朴，整洁安全，环境优美如花园。水牛城房市全美最便宜，当年十万美元出头就可以买到前庭后院的 house（国内叫"别墅"），绝对价格低于国内沿海城市！二十万就是豪华大屋，宽敞奢侈得让人发愁，这个价钱在纽约、旧金山不够买一个房角。生活便宜也方便，有一流的公立学校，课外教育（学琴，学球等）的学费只是沿海城市的一半价钱。更不用说，还有温暖的华人社区和热闹的周末中文学校。
