Christmas is not only the most expensive time of year, it's also the longest stretch between pay days most of us have, but if you're desperate to get your hands on a bit of extra cash fast — without getting into debt - here are seven top tips to give you some help!
1. Sell your old mobile phone
If you've got an old, unused mobile phone gathering dust at home, don't just leave it stuck in a drawer, trade it in for cash!
Selling old mobile phones is becoming big business and there are stacks of websites out there that will be more than happy to take your old mobile off your hands - such as Mazuma Mobile, Fonebank and Envirofone.
It's well worth shopping around before choosing which website to go with, however, simply because prices can vary considerably. To give you a helping hand with this, you can use comparison sites such as sellmymobile.com and mobilephonerecycling.co.uk. All you have to do is type in your phone make and model and see which website is offering the best deal.
Once you've chosen a deal, all you have to do is send off your phone in a freepost envelope (which the company will send to you) and wait for the cash! You can read more about this in Turn your old mobile phone into cash.
Alternatively, you could see if you get a better offer on eBay.
2. Refer a friend
Many companies now offer deals through which you can earn money if you refer a friend. For example, if you refer a friend to Sky TV, you and your friend will receive £50 worth of M&S vouchers. And if you refer a friend to First Direct, you'll receive £50 cash.
Of course, the only problem with this scenario is that you need to find a friend to refer in the first place - and one that might actually be interested in the deal. So if you think you're going to struggle, check out refermehappy.com which matches potential referrers and 'friends' who are interested in certain offers. You will need to register on the site, but registration is free.
The website lists a range of deals with different companies, so you'll be able to search for companies where you're already a customer. Then all you have to do is state which deal you'd like to refer someone for and wait for a match. Some companies will allow you to refer more than one friend, so you'll make even more money!
If you ask to be put forward for a refer-a-friend offer, your first and last name will be emailed to a referrer along with a refermehappy email address. So similarly, if someone wants to be referred to you, their details and a refermehappy email address will be emailed to you. No other details will be passed on.
3. Get a new current account
Fancy getting your hands on £100? Well, if you switch your current account to the First Direct 1st Account, that's exactly what you'll receive! What's more, you'll be given another £100 if you choose to leave after six months - although given that First Direct is renowned for its excellent customer service, this is pretty unlikely.
Just be aware that you will need to pay £1,500 into the account each month and you won't receive any interest on the money you keep in the account.
Compare bank accounts online and switch now
4. Sell your photos
If you're handy with a camera and enjoy taking photographs, why not sell them online?
There are several stock photography agencies which will pay you for your photos on a per-download basis. For example, it's worth looking at websites such as Alamy, where you'll get 60% of each sale, Fotolia and PictureNation.
5. Sell your junk
Why not make room for all your new presents and have a clear-out of all those items you no longer need? If you've got a wardrobe full of unworn clothes or shelves full of unwanted DVDs, read books or faddy gadgets why not sell them on eBay or Amazon Marketplace?
It's easy to do and can be a fabulous way to earn a bit of money on the side! You can read more about it in Why eBay is better than Amazon.
6. Get renting
Got a driveway, but no car? Why not rent it out and make some quick cash? Depending on where you live (sought-after areas are obviously worth more), you can earn as much as £315 a week, according to parkatmyhouse.co.uk.
And renting out doesn't just have to be limited to driveways or garages. If you have a spare room, you can earn up to an extra £4,250 a year by renting it out to a lodger!
Spareground.co.uk also allows you to rent out any unused land or storage space.
And don't worry if you don't have any spare space to rent out, because Rentnotbuy allows you to rent out anything from clothing, to kitchen gadgets, to bikes!
7. Sell your skills
If you've got some spare time on your hands, why not sell your skills? If you're a particularly good cook, you can't get enough of cleaning or you love babysitting, you can advertise your skills for free on jobsgrapevine.
Once you've done that, simply wait for someone to get in touch and you can then work out a rate between you. Easy!
2010年12月27日星期一
2010年12月26日星期日
Sentimental over pretty girls of Dream of Red Chamber
"In this busy, dusty world, having accomplished nothing, I suddenly recalled all the girls I had known, considering each in turn, and it dawned on me that all of them surpassed me in behaviour and understanding; that I, shameful to say, for all my masculine dignity, fell short of the gentler sex. I decided then to make known to all how I, though dressed in silks and delicately nurtured, thanks to the Imperial favour and my ancestors' virtue, had nevertheless ignore the kindly guidance of my elders, teachers and friends, with the result that I had wasted half my life and not acquired a single skill.
But no matter how unforgivable my crimes, I must not let all the lovely girls I have known, pass into oblivion.
Though my home is now a thatched hut with matting windows, earthen stove and rope bed, this shall not stop me from laying bare my heart. Indeed the morning breeze, the dew of night, the willows by my steps and the flowers in my courtyard inspire me to wield my brush."
-- Author Tsao Hsueh-chin on writing the novel
[translated by Yang Hsienyi & Gladys Yang]
Reading Dream of the Red Chamber
A sentimental girl sought to repay a "debt of tears" to a young man with a penchant for female companions in a complex web of family and social relationship.
This is the theme of China's fascinating and best-loved story, Dream of the Red Chamber (Hung Lou Meng), written by Tsao Hsueh-chin in the 18th Century.
The narrative revolves around Jia Pao-yi the hero and his relationship with his many pretty maids and female relatives and friends, in particular the sensitive and frail cousin-love Lin Tai-yi. The novel describes in minute details the day-to-day happenings inside the ducal mansion of the Jia clan with its endless number of kinsfolk and servants, organised into a rigid hierarchy controlled by a dictatorial but benign matriarch.
A surreal atmosphere infused the interaction of the main characters as they kept up appearances with lavish spendings while the family's financial and political fortune declined. Servants and relatives all dipped their hands into the river of silver flowing out of the mansion. The well-fed and idle masters and ladies went through their daily pampered routine without a thought. When the crash came, it was terrifying and tragic.
Dream of the Red Chamber has been the subject of endless reading and literary study by scholars and fishermen, politicians and woodcutters, disproving parents and romance-starved young girls.
The latest school of thought comes from Red China ("red" means different things to different Chinese -- for ordinary individuals it denotes luck; for rich merchants it refers to popular prostitutes and courtesans; for religious folk, it stands for the red dust of the material world, and for the Communist it is the signature colour of their ideology). In a comprehensive English translation published by the government-sponsored Foreign Language Press, the publishers wrote: "A Dream of Red Mansions (the translators' title) is a book about political struggle, a political-struggle novel." This is really crap but then in China, at least up until the late 1970s, all published works had to be framed in Marxist-Maoist mumbo-jumbo to make it politically correct and to avoid undue scrutiny by officials.
This translation, by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, came out in 1978 and is one of the best available in English. But, for crying out loud, it included three quotations by Mao Zedong in the Publisher's Note. Hopefully, future re-issues of Yang's translation would not have those disfiguring political comments.
What was Hung Lou Meng actually about?
Tsao Hsueh-chin wrote it as a remembrance of the days when his family was wealthy and well-known, and to portray poignantly the vanity of life. His grandfather, father and uncle held important government posts but after he was born, the family fell into Imperial disgrace and their estates confiscated. It was in this poverty-stricken situation Tsao wrote his long novel.
The narrative is written mostly from the perspective of young Pao-yi growing up, not studying hard and getting caned by his father, experiencing infatuation and wet dreams, fucking his maids, attending lavish parties and equally lavish funerals, writing poetry, dallying with gay (as in carefree and homosexual) actors and pretty cousins, drinking wine under a full moon, gossiping and quarrelling with friends and relatives, eating rice dumplings in the Fifth Month, visiting Buddhist temples, marrying someone he didn't love and sulking over it, and finally departing the world with some wandering monks.
Human nature is always interesting to read, and Tsao, with his remarkable understanding of it, can hold our attention on and on by his skilful sketching of human scenes, passion and sentiments. Sometimes we may fault him with giving a dose too much of sentimentality here and there, but it is more usual for us to return again and again after the first reading, to dip into random passages and let our minds be enthralled and our hearts refreshed.
Artistic Achievement,Progressive Versus Feudal Forces & The Patriarchal Clan System of Dream of Red Chamber
Tsao Hsueh-chin expounds his principles of literary creation in the very first chapter of the novel. He is opposed to novels that use "the-beauty-and-the-talented-single-scholar" pattern; instead he upholds a literary convention which is based on facts and social reality. By "reality," however, Tsao Hsueh-chin did not mean that one should mechanically copy events and characters from real life; instead, he treats them artistically, raising them to a "literary reality." As a matter of fact, it took Tsao Hsueh-chin ten years to select painstakingly his materials and then turn them into a literary creation.
Owing to his rich experiences, keen observations, inherent genius, and the originality of artistic creation,
With such a broad social scene as the novel's background, Tsao Hsueh-chin describes with great care and precision a great number of vivid and typical characters, both positive and negative, some primary and others secondary. Some characters, such as Pao-yu, Tai-yu, Hsi-feng , and Granny Liu have become popular characters for readers all over the world.
Tsao Hsueh-chin is very skillful in depicting characters who possess diverse individualities. For instance, Hsueh Pan and Hsueh Pao-chai are brother and sister, yet the former is a typical "stupid tyrant," while the latter is a standard feudal fair maiden. The author is also very successful in adopting various approaches to depict different characters according to their different social positions. The author makes a point of reinforcing the main facets of the characters through multiple plots and from different angles, such as Pao-yu's love for and sympathy for girls; Tai-yu's pride and aloofness, as well as her sentimental character; Pao-chai's hypocrisy, smoothness, and evasiveness; Wang Hsi-feng 's shrewdness, cunningness, and viciousness. All the features in their characters are described in impressive, conspicuous situations so as to leave unforgettable impressions on readers.
The author is also successful in his characterization because he places his characters in specific artistic atmospheres with suitable scenes for their settings. In this way, the characters' inner feelings can stand out, in contrast, and thereby affect the reader's feelings and sensibilities more profoundly. Few writers before Tsao Hsueh-chin gave much thought to describing their characters' inner emotions and psychological motivations. During his era, only Tsao Hsueh-chin achieved great success as a writer who recorded detailed descriptions of his characters' mental activities and secrets.
A Dream of Red Mansions
But in order to fully present the rich and complicated social life, meet the demands of the development of characterization, and serve the purpose of exposing the conflicts and struggles within the Chia family, Tsao Hsueh-chin's novel gives special attention to the plot of the love story between Pao-yu and Tai-yu and to the waning prosperity, as well as the moral decline, of the Chia family. All the other characters and all of the many intricate events hinge on, or are related to, these two main plot-lines.
In addition, all these characters and events are interwoven, influencing or controlling each other to form a grandiose artistic structure. And yet, within this huge literary structure, there is always a criss-cross network of independent but related passages; all of the details are arranged with such clarity, however, that readers can easily tell the primary characters and events from the secondary ones and react strongly to the characters and events described in the novel.
The language of the novel is mature and refined. Full of imagery, figurative speech, and folk tales,
A Dream of Red Mansions
Chin Pao-yu, the hero of the novel, represents the progressive forces. He is a rebel living in a typically feudal, aristocratic family. Immediately after he was born, the path to fortune and fame was seemingly paved for him. But Pao-yu was spoiled by his Chia grandmother (Lady Dowager) and he spent most of time with the maids and his girl cousins. His life has never really been touched by the dissolute lives of Chia Cheng and Chia Lien. Also, Pao-yu didn't receive the usual feudal education. Accordingly, Pao-yu, because of his innocence and his strict sense of justice, is tired of all the endless disputes and the tit-for-tat struggles among the family members; he wants no part of them; he is fed up with the decadence and rottenness of the authoritative family members. In contrast to the people (the men, in particular) whom he sees around him, Pao-yu extends great sympathy for the tragic destinies of the young girls (and their maids) who live in Grand View Garden. Imperceptibly influenced by what he constantly sees and hears from these oppressed girls in Grand View Garden, Pao-yu's rebellious character develops and grows stronger. His love for Lin Tai-yu quickens his step on the road of rebellion against his patriarchal clan oppressors.
Accordingly, one day, Chin Chen, afraid that Pao-yu's defiance of family rules will ruin the family's reputation, almost kills Pao-yu. However, even after being savagely beaten, Pao-yu does not give in to his feudal family's strict code of behavior. From then on, his love for Tai-yu becomes even stronger and more unshakable. However, because Pao-yu and Tai-yu live in a feudal, aristocratic family, are more or less influenced by the feudalistic way of thinking, and, to some extent, have to show some respect for their aristocratic elders, their rebellion never achieves enormous power.
However, the two young people continue to love one another very much, even though they are isolated individuals. They can expect no help from any of the authoritative aristocrats; Lady Dowager and Lady Wang have their own criteria concerning whom Pao-yu shall marry. They want to choose a girl who can help Pao-yu deal with the many-sided, crumbling Chia family household affairs. Pao-chai seems the perfect candidate for these requirements. To them, Pao-chai will be an ideal mate for Pao-yu; she is from a royal family and has been tremendously indoctrinated by her feudal education. She is both intelligent and competent, capable of getting along well with everybody and coping with all affairs and situations.
The Chia authorities hope that by marrying Pao-chai, Pao-yu can be reformed sufficiently so that he will begin paying attention to his own personal fame and official rank, and that, in time, Pao-yu will become a qualified successor to the old and distinguished Chia family.
There is another aspect of this arranged marriage. If Pao-chai marries Pao-yu, the Chia, Wang, and Hsueh families can support each other for every one's mutual benefit. In that era, marriage was
The Chin family disapproves of Lin Tai-yu as Pao-yu's wife for many reasons. In their opinion, Tai-yu is, first of all, in delicate health, although beautiful; second, Tai-yu's aristocratic parents died early so she is now living under the auspices of the Chin family; third, Tai-yu is a willful and arrogant person, too sharp-tongued and narrow-minded to suit the old Lady Dowager. As a matter of fact, Tai-yu often criticizes the Chias in sham language, so it is no wonder that her unbridled behavior and speech offend and irritate these authoritative, evil people.
Lin Tai-yu despises these people's vulgarity and the hypocrisy of feudal officialdom, as well. Her contempt for feudal decadence in the Chin family isolates her; she is able to find some Common ground only with the understanding, upright Chia Pao-yu. Therefore, their love relationship is based on honest attraction, Common interests, and a Common understanding of family affairs.
Tai-yu's deep and sincere love for Chia Pao-yu is the only spiritual support that she has to live for. It is no wonder that when she hears the news of Pao-yu's upcoming marriage to Pao-chai, she loses all hope. The beam of her only possible happiness in this world will soon be extinguished. The weak and helpless Taiyu can do nothing but choose death. The tragedy is a powerful condemnation of the tyrannical feudal society and the hateful patriarchal clan system.
Among many things,
The chapter introducing the Official Protective Charm is a key chapter to better understanding this concept. Here, we learn that local officials keep a secret list of the most powerful, wealthy, and high-ranking families in their provinces. Each province has such a list. If, unknowingly, a small county official offends one of these families, he might lose not only his post but his life as well. This situation is explained to Chia Yu-tsun, the new prefect of Yingtian, by an attendant. The four important families of Chin, Shih, Wang, and Hsueh are on the list. Therefore, the new prefect has to Protect these big families — even at the expense of the law and justice.
At one point in the novel, Hsueh Pan, the young master of the Hsueh family, knows that he has the power to ask his followers to beat Feng Yuan (the son of minor local gentry) to death in broad daylight — simply to possess a girl. Because of the Official Protective Charm, Hsueh Pan goes free — without being punished by the law.
Similar examples are found throughout the novel, proving that the four important families of Chin, Shih, Wang, and Hsueh are politically powerful and important landlords, businessmen, and bureaucrats. The officials have to flatter these families and protect their interests before they can expect to be promoted or make advances in their careers. Accordingly, knowing that they have protection from the courts, rich landlords and their family members know that they can do whatever they like; they can bully ordinary, weak people and satisfy their lusts and desires whenever they please.
A Dream of Red Mansions
The condemnation of deity power is also part of the condemnation of the feudal patriarchal clan system and ideology. Quite a number of monks and nuns are portrayed in the novel, but none of them is virtuous — except Miao-yu, living in Grand View Garden.
In a word, the successful exposure and pungent indictment of the feudal patriarchal system enhances the effectiveness of the author's condemnation of the whole feudal system because these powers make up the basic social structure of the feudal society. These powers represent, in a concentrated manner, the interests of the feudal rulers and the aristocratic landlords.
Significance of the Dream of Red Chamber
Above all,
The tragic love story of Pao-yu and Tai-yu is closely related and interwoven with the rise and fall of the feudal families of that era — the Chin family, in particular. The lovers' tragedy lays bare the conflicts and struggles between two opposing political forces — those defending feudal social order on the one hand and those fighting against the feudal forces on the other. The author's description of the four major families, their prosperity and their decline, is actually a miniature version of the declining Ching Dynasty itself.
The four major families do have their heyday, but that is recalled only through the characters' reminiscences. The author of this novel focuses, for the most part, on the
"A centipede dies but never falls down, as the old saying goes. Although they are not as prosperous as before, they are still a cut above ordinary official families. Their households are increasing and their commitments are growing all the time, while masters and servants alike are so used to lording it in luxury that not one of them thinks ahead. They squander money every day and are quite incapable of economizing. Outwardly, they may look as grand as ever, but their purses are nearly empty. That's not their worst trouble, though. Who would've thought that each new generation of this noble and scholarly clan would be inferior to the last."
This statement is worth special attention. It plays a key role in the artistic structure of the novel, and it can help the reader fully comprehend the author's intentions and objectives for his literary creation.
The fact that each generation of this noble and scholarly clan is inferior to the last indicates the probability that the current ruling group of the Chin family will not be able to generate enough prosperity for its successors. According to the author's descriptions in the novel, Chin Sheh is an amorous person, indulging in dissipation every day; Chin Cling doesn't lift a finger in the household affairs — except to pray all day and burn incense, hoping that he will go to heaven after death and become an immortal; Chin Chen fraudulently poses as a person of high morals, but, in reality, he is mediocre and incompetent; he can't be trusted to shoulder the responsibility of administering the household affairs.
Members of the later generation — such as Chin Cheng, Chin Lien, and so forth — are even worse than their elders. They yield to all of their desires; they freely indulge in parties, luxuries of all sorts, gambling, and whoring. They belong to the "beat generation" of the eighteenth-century declining landlord class. They are the real "spendthrifts" of the Chin family, and the detailed depiction of their decadence in the novel exposes the ugliness of these ducal aristocrats and young dandies.
The phrase "but their purses are nearly empty" is a vivid clue that there is a severe economic crisis in the Chin household. Later, the author uses a number of chapters in the novel to expose the family's excessive extravagances as clear indications that the Chin family will soon suffer an economic crisis. For example, the grandmother of the Chin family is extremely fond of enjoying a luxurious life. She and her favorites eat only delicacies from both the land and the sea; they wear silk and brocaded clothes; they use golden plates and jade cups; and they live in palaces and beautifully decorated buildings. What they eat during one meal could feed a peasant for one year, according to Granny Liu. Likewise, the description of Ching Ko-ching's funeral is a typical, illustrative example of the Chin family's extravagance and waste — not to mention the enormous budget for building and maintaining Grand View Garden. Even Hsi-feng , a very influential person who takes care of the family household affairs, is forced to admit, "The income of the family has been more reduced than the expense." All these details reveal convincingly the inevitability of the Chin family's economic decline.
In addition, there are other forces at work undermining the Chin family; for example, the endless disputes and struggles over the controlling power of the Chin family's domestic affairs and rights of inheritance among different factions of the family accelerate its decline and bankruptcy.
The Chin family's economic crisis is also due to the fact that the peasants cannot afford to pay their usual heavy levies to their landlords (the Chin family) any longer, nor can they bear the Chia family's cruel exploitation. The author presents a vivid scene of Bailiff Wu of Black Mountain Village, who comes to pay his land taxes and other levies. The long list of levies consists of many, many items — including pigs, chickens, fish, deer, rice, grain and charcoal. Here, we realize why no one can afford to pay the heavy taxes: The Chin family makes no allowances for natural disasters such as floods, droughts, heavy snows, or hail. The emphasis in this scene is clearly on Chin Chen's greed.
After Bailiff Wu rends the long list of levies, Chin Chen is dissatisfied and says to Wu, "I count on your bringing at least five thousand taels. We've only eight or nine manors left now; already two of them claim to have suffered from flood or drought; how are we to get through the New Year I'd like to know?" This statement clearly shows that the cruel exploitation by the landlord is due to his insatiable greed. His extravagant way of living relies mainly on his ruthless exploitation of the peasants' labor; his parasitic life is fed by the peasants' sweat and toil.
In addition to the exorbitant land taxes and levies, the peasants also have to suffer from the exploitation of commercial capital and high-interest loans. Recall that Hsueh Ko's fiancée, Hsiu-yen, pawns her padded clothes in a pawnshop, which turns out to be a pawnshop run by the Hsueh family. This shows that the Hsueh family earns a lot of money from the pawnshops in the city. Even Lin Tai-yu dislikes their way of exploiting the poor. She comments, "How clever people are at making money!" and asks whether other pawnshops make money in the same way. Her naiveté reveals the ruthlessness of the commercial world and its cruel exploitation of poor people.
In Grand View Garden, in order to gain more money or force maids to have sex with their masters, a lot of servants — especially girl servants — have been killed or have been driven to commit suicide. Tsao Hsueh-chin describes these events and tragedies with sympathy. There are more than four hundred characters described in the novel, but most of them are oppressed slaves. The ruling members number less than fifty. However, with all the power in their hands, this handful of people can keep the slaves under their control because the slaves can be criticized, beaten, or driven out of the family if they "violate" the rules of the Chia family. The cruelty of these aristocratic landlords and the courage of their slaves are vividly contrasted throughout the novel in order to condemn the evils of the feudal society and to eulogize the praiseworthy qualities of the peasants' longing for a happy life, as well as their heroic spirit of rebellion.
Another social struggle described in great detail concerns the budding democratic ideology, represented by Chia Pao-yu, and the old feudalistic ideology, represented by Chia Chen. Almost all the characters in the novel are part of this main thread of the story, and their attitudes towards this struggle are revealed in one way or another, directly or indirectly, in their actions or words.
Chia Pao-yu, the hero of the novel, is the young master of the Chia family and a favorite of Lady Dowager. All the future hopes of the feudal Chia family are pinned on him. Chia Pao-yu's behavior, however, runs counter to the volition of the Chin authorities.
First, Chia Pao-yu looks down on official ranks and riches and honors; second, he opposes the traditional attitude which holds women in contempt; third, he reveres people's individuality; fourth, he opposes the feudal ethical code, in general, and, in particular, he fights for the freedom to love Lin Tai-yu. All of these new ideas are obviously antithetical to feudal ethics and feudal morality.
Many oppressed servants and slaves in Grand View Garden express their sympathy for the young lovers and support their struggle in every possible (if limited) way. All of the new and brilliant ideas of Chia Pao-yu represent the characteristics of the rising capitalistic and democratic spirit of the time. Therefore, Chin Pao-yu's struggle against his father, Chia Chen, symbolically represents the larger struggle between anti-feudal ideology and conventional feudal ideology.
Tsao Hsueh-chin interweaves all these opposing, contradictory social forces, presenting ever more clearly the declining social reality of the feudal society. His narration is remarkably realistic and compelling.
As should be apparent by now, A Dream of Red Mansions is considered one of the greatest novels ever written, as well as the definitive classic Chinese novel. Nevertheless, it has its historical limitations.
It is true that Tsao Hsueh-chin loathes different kinds of decadence, and the crimes of the feudal aristocratic families had a profound effect on him, yet, in his descriptions and his exposure of their failings, he allows his aristocratic class to betray itself without, seemingly, being aware of the fact. On the one hand, he describes the scenes of a declining feudal Chia family and attacks their wrong-doings, but on the other hand, he expresses sorrow for the family's demise. His portrayal of the unfortunate people and the tragic events in the Chia family is full of sympathy, tinged with fatalism.
At the same time, he fails to comprehend or explain the significance of Chia Pao-yu's rebellious character. He simply looks upon Pao-yu as a "love idiot" or a "love seed," or as someone who is "too much in love." As a result, the delineation of some details is imbued with a kind of mysterious and sentimental atmosphere. Although the author clearly sympathizes with the rebels and unfortunate people and praises their just and right doings, he lacks definite ideals and is influenced by the concept of the "emptiness of everything." As a consequence, the theme of nihilism is reflected in the novel.
As to the love relationship between Chia Pao-yu and Lin Tai-yu, Tsao Hsueh-chi seems perhaps to put too much emphasis on romantic lovemaking, deliberately describing these scenes in a detailed and sentimental manner. Of course, these descriptions are consistent with the characters' behavior and had progressive significance at the time. However, the theme of "lovemaking above everything" might exert an unhealthy influence on readers — on young readers, in particular.
Dream of Red Chamber：（A Dream of Red Mansions ）
A Dream of Red Mansions was written in the latter half of the 18th century. It is not only a great Chinese novel but also a gem of world literature. The author is Cao Xueqin (1715-1763), also known as Cao zhan. He was born into a noble and powerful family, which was reduced from extreme prosperity to poverty. The life of luxury in his boyhood acquainted him with the ways of noble families and the ruling classes, while poverty in his old age enabled him to observe life more clearly and penetratingly. Based on his own understanding of life and with his progressive ideas, serious attitude and high craftsmanship, he was able to create A Dream of Red Mansion, a book regarded as the pinnacle of the Chinese classical novel. Of its 120 chapters, the first 80 were written by Cao Xueqin, while the last 40 chapters were thought to have been written by another writer, Gao E. Though certain difference can be discerned in Gao E's sequel, in respect to ideological content and artistic achievement, it still basically follows Cao's original plan and makes the novel and integral whole.
A Dream of Red Mansions describes the life and declining fortunes of a large feudal family. At the heart of the novel is a tragic love story between Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai. The author, instead of telling the love story superficially, tries to tap the social origins of the tragedy through probing deeply into the characters' minds and the complicated relationship among them, hence exposing the hypocrisy and cruelty of feudalism and the decadence of the ruling class. The novel goes far beyond the tragic love story, to depict a broad swath of society through describing a series of complicated conflicts and struggles, and ultimately predicting the domed fate of feudal society as a whole. The novel criticizes feudalism, its corrupted politics, marriage system and ethical relationships and passionately denounces its cruelty and inhumanity. In China, A Dream of Red Mansions is praised as an encyclopedia for analyzing feudal society.
A Dream of Red Mansions portrays a galaxy of unforgettable characters, including Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu, Xue Baochai, Wang Xifeng, Yuanyang, Qingwen, Jia Zheng, Jia She, Jia Zhen and Jia Lian. Jia Baoyu is a rebel of feudal noble class. His rebellion character is fully expressed in his attitude of indifference to the ways of aristocratic life. He holds in contempt the tiresome men and greatly sympathizes with the women, oppressed and trampled by the feudal system, demonstrating his distinct democratic thoughts. Lin Daiyu is also a rebellious figure of the novel, she represents, to a certain degree, women's unfortunate fate in feudal society, their resistance to its oppression and passionate pursuit for true love. But her weakness is in her restrained and fragile character, typical of noble girls. Baochai is portrayed as a conventional woman of feudal society, and she is also a tragic figure. The author also portrays a large number of servant girls such as Qingwen and Yuanyang, who are kind, pure and brave.
A Dream of Red Mansions made great artistic achievements. For instance, the novel provides a large number of detailed descriptions of everyday lives. Cao Xueqin attained flawlessness in language. A Dream of Red Mansions reflected high aesthetic quality in many aspects including poetry, drama, art, architecture, and gardens.
There is nothing in western literature that is quite like Dream of the Red Chamber. Once you get over the shock of reading the mid-18th century vernacular, the depth and charm of this romantic epic is one of the most compelling reasons to read it in the original Chinese. This is why we are proud to present the world's only word-by-word annotated copy of Dream of the Red Chamber.
To help you understand this novel, we have annotated the entire first chapter of the book with contextual mouseover popups. Simply hover your cursor over any word in the text for an instant popup containing a definition of the word in question along with a pronunciation guide and explanation of any hidden meanings. In this installment, which covers the first paragraph of the book, read on as author Cao Xueqin introduces his novel as a work of fiction in which the astute reader will find eternal truths. He admonishes us to pay close attention to the text and explicitly tells us it is laced with double meanings. We get our first reference to life itself as a dream, and hear of two members of the Zhen and Jia dynasties, the two families in the saga whose surnames are homophones for truth and falsehood itself.
Dream of the Red Chamber is tragic and funny and brilliant all in turn. So throw out your dictionary, grab a cup of coffee and read on as we bring you this tale of philosophy, romance and pathos.
Dream of the Red Chamber, or The Story of the Stone, is the greatest masterpiece of Chinese classical novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties with the most profound influence on later generations. The work is comprised of 120 chapters, the first 80 of which were written by Tsao Hsueh-chin and the remaining 40 by Kao Hgo.
Tsao Hsueh-chin, the author of Dream of the Red Chamber, lived between 1715 and 1763. His ancestral family once held great power. As such, he led a wealthy noble life in Nanjing as a child. When he was 13 or 14, the family was declining and moved to Beijing, where life took a turn for the worse. In his later years, he even led a poor life. Drawing on his own experience, Tsao Hsueh-chin put all his life experiences, poeticized feelings, exploratory spirit and creativity into the greatest work of all time - Dream of the Red Chamber. Drawing its materials from real life, the novel is full of the author’s personal feelings filled with blood and tears.
Dream of the Red Chamber is a novel with great cultural richness. It depicts a multi-layered yet inter-fusing tragic human world through the eye of a talentless stone the Goddess used for sky mending. Jia Baoyu, the incarnation of the stone, witnessed the tragic lives of “the Twelve Beauties of Nanjing”, experienced the great changes from flourishing to decline of a noble family and thus gained unique perception of life and the mortal world. Revolving around Jia Baoyu and focusing on the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai against the backdrop of the Great View Garden, the novel portrays a tragedy in which love, youth and life are ruined as well as exposes and profoundly reflects the root of the tragedy – the feudal system and culture.
The great literature success of Dream of the Red Chamber is remarkably reflected by the creation of characters with distinctive personality and profound social culture, mirroring people in real life. The success also lies in the breakthrough and innovation of traditional writing styles, completely breaking the mode of story-telling popular novels and greatly enriching the narrative art of novels, thus causing a far-reaching impact on the development of Chinese novels.
The influence of Dream of the Red Chamber in the history of Chinese literature is so profound that it has spawned a large batch of works after its style. At the same time, numerous plays and dramas based on the novel have been released. In recent years, movies and TV series have brought the great work to tens of thousands of households, sweeping the whole Chinese-speaking world.
The exceptionally superb creation of artistic characters and the richness of the thoughts in the novel of Dream of the Red Chamber have generated great interest in its reviews and research, forming a special subject dedicated solely to the research of the novel – Redology (the study on the novel Dream of the Red Chamber).
Translations
The Story of the Stone (first eighty chapters by David Hawkes and last forty by John Minford), Penguin Classics or Bloomington: Indiana University Press, five volumes, 1973–1980. ISBN 0-14-044293-6, ISBN 0-14-044326-6, ISBN 0-14-044370-3; ISBN 0-14-044371-1, ISBN 0-14-044372-X.
The Dream of the Red Chamber (David Hawkes), New York: Penguin Group 1996. ISBN 0146001761.
A Dream of Red Mansions (Gladys Yang and Yang Hsien-yi) Beijing: Foreign Language Press, three volumes, 1978–1980.
Dream of the Red Chamber (Wang Chi-Chen), abridged, largely translated in 1929, then augmented for publication in 1958. ISBN 0385093799.
Hung Lou Meng (H. Bencraft Joly), from the Gutenberg Project, Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, 1892–1893, paper published edition is also available. Wildside Press, ISBN 0809592681; and Hard Press, November 3, 2006, ISBN 1406940798.
Red Chamber Dream (Dr. B.S. Bonsall), Unpublished typescript. Available on the web.
The Dream of the Red Chamber (Florence and Isabel McHugh), abridged, which follows the German translation of Franz Kuhn. 1958, ISBN 0837181135.
Dream of the Red Chamber, or The Story of the Stone, is the greatest masterpiece of Chinese classical novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties with the most profound influence on later generations. The work is comprised of 120 chapters, the first 80 of which were written by Tsao Hsueh-chin and the remaining 40 by Kao Hgo.
Tsao Hsueh-chin, the author of Dream of the Red Chamber, lived between 1715 and 1763. His ancestral family once held great power. As such, he led a wealthy noble life in Nanjing as a child. When he was 13 or 14, the family was declining and moved to Beijing, where life took a turn for the worse. In his later years, he even led a poor life. Drawing on his own experience, Tsao Hsueh-chin put all his life experiences, poeticized feelings, exploratory spirit and creativity into the greatest work of all time - Dream of the Red Chamber. Drawing its materials from real life, the novel is full of the author’s personal feelings filled with blood and tears.
Dream of the Red Chamber is a novel with great cultural richness. It depicts a multi-layered yet inter-fusing tragic human world through the eye of a talentless stone the Goddess used for sky mending. Jia Baoyu, the incarnation of the stone, witnessed the tragic lives of “the Twelve Beauties of Nanjing”, experienced the great changes from flourishing to decline of a noble family and thus gained unique perception of life and the mortal world. Revolving around Jia Baoyu and focusing on the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai against the backdrop of the Great View Garden, the novel portrays a tragedy in which love, youth and life are ruined as well as exposes and profoundly reflects the root of the tragedy – the feudal system and culture.
The great literature success of Dream of the Red Chamber is remarkably reflected by the creation of characters with distinctive personality and profound social culture, mirroring people in real life. The success also lies in the breakthrough and innovation of traditional writing styles, completely breaking the mode of story-telling popular novels and greatly enriching the narrative art of novels, thus causing a far-reaching impact on the development of Chinese novels.
The influence of Dream of the Red Chamber in the history of Chinese literature is so profound that it has spawned a large batch of works after its style. At the same time, numerous plays and dramas based on the novel have been released. In recent years, movies and TV series have brought the great work to tens of thousands of households, sweeping the whole Chinese-speaking world.
The exceptionally superb creation of artistic characters and the richness of the thoughts in the novel of Dream of the Red Chamber have generated great interest in its reviews and research, forming a special subject dedicated solely to the research of the novel – Redology (the study on the novel Dream of the Red Chamber).
Translations
The Story of the Stone (first eighty chapters by David Hawkes and last forty by John Minford), Penguin Classics or Bloomington: Indiana University Press, five volumes, 1973–1980. ISBN 0-14-044293-6, ISBN 0-14-044326-6, ISBN 0-14-044370-3; ISBN 0-14-044371-1, ISBN 0-14-044372-X.
The Dream of the Red Chamber (David Hawkes), New York: Penguin Group 1996. ISBN 0146001761.
A Dream of Red Mansions (Gladys Yang and Yang Hsien-yi) Beijing: Foreign Language Press, three volumes, 1978–1980.
Dream of the Red Chamber (Wang Chi-Chen), abridged, largely translated in 1929, then augmented for publication in 1958. ISBN 0385093799.
Hung Lou Meng (H. Bencraft Joly), from the Gutenberg Project, Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, 1892–1893, paper published edition is also available. Wildside Press, ISBN 0809592681; and Hard Press, November 3, 2006, ISBN 1406940798.
Red Chamber Dream (Dr. B.S. Bonsall), Unpublished typescript. Available on the web.
The Dream of the Red Chamber (Florence and Isabel McHugh), abridged, which follows the German translation of Franz Kuhn. 1958, ISBN 0837181135.
The UK inflation genie is out of the bottle
As 2010 draws to a close, it's becoming ever clearer that the UK's economic prognosis is not good.
I'm a natural optimist and don't wish to upset anyone's Boxing Day celebrations. Any commentator worth their salt, though, at times like this, should ignore such sensitivities. It would be wrong reckless, in fact, given the slew of recent bad data to fail to point to the worrying mix of economic issues the UK now faces.
During 2011, the British economy will suffer from rising inflation and sluggish (in some quarters, possibly negative) growth. This grim combination will be set against a budgetary situation that can only be described as ghastly.
George Osborne was recently in New York (Xetra: A0DKRK) , soaking up plaudits for boldly leading Britain into fiscal austerity at a time when, apparently in contrast, America's feckless political elite has allowed the national debt to balloon. The problem is that UK austerity, so far at least, is a myth.
November (Berlin: NBXB.BE) 's national accounts, released last week, were shocking. Government spending last month was sharply up on the same month in 2009 yes, up! British state borrowing is still escalating, with the national debt rising very quickly.
Anyone who takes an intelligent interest in current affairs could be forgiven for inferring from the political rhetoric that the UK's fiscal squeeze is not only well under way but that the worst is actually behind us. If this was indeed your impression, you may want to pour yourself a large Yuletide sherry and possibly take refuge in another bowl of trifle. For the grim reality, as the latest figures show, is that Britain's fiscal squeeze hasn't even begun.
I'd hoped to end what has been a nerve-jangling year for the UK economy on an upbeat note. A couple of weeks ago, though, new figures showed that CPI (CPI.AT) inflation was 3.3pc higher in November than the same month the year before. Inflation has now been above the Bank of England's 2pc target for 40 of the past 49 months.
Some of us have been warning this would happen. Since late 2008, this column has asserted that the UK faces inflationary dangers and that talk of British "deflation" was deeply disingenuous, an intellectual conceit to justify massive virtual "money printing" and the extension of endless soft credits to banks that should, in fact, be allowed to fail.
Such a position has been seen as heresy not least because "quantitative easing" has friends in high places. QE, for now, has helped politically connected bankers to dodge the implications of their own hubris and incompetence. It has allowed successive British governments to stick their fingers in their ears and avoid tackling root-and-branch banking reform.
To argue that QE is dangerous and that, as a corollary, the UK faces high inflation has been to be treated by the UK's policy-making elite as some kind of economic Herod. I might as well have been suggesting we slay the first born. In recent weeks, though, the mood has changed. Reality has thankfully broken through.
"Top economists" are now finally allowing themselves to state what is both historically and technically obvious, that money-printing is counter-productive. The same professional "trend-spotters" are now also concluding that high UK inflation isn't a "blip" or a "one-off". What took them so long?
As recently as February, the Bank was forecasting CPI (Berlin: CEJ.BE) inflation of 1.5pc by the end of 2010. That estimate has proved to be woefully wrong. But it was clear a long time ago that would be the case.
Every single month this year, inflation has been either on, or above, the "upper acceptable limit" of 3pc. Measured by the far more accurate RPI measure, inflation has spent several recent months at 5pc or more.
The November inflation number was driven by the high price of food and clothing. What's even more important than the specifics is that, with the Bank's monetary policy committee having down-played repeated inflation over-shoots, the UK's inflation-fighting credibility is now being widely questioned.
Survey evidence shows inflation expectations just surged to their highest level for more than two years, a sign that above-target price increases could become embedded in the minds of consumers.
People questioned during November expect CPI inflation of 3.9pc in 2011, sharply up on previous estimates. And that was before oil prices jumped another $8 a barrel this month a rise that will soon feed through into motorists' petrol costs, hiking inflation concerns even more.
It is imperative such expectations don't spark the "second-round" effects that generate a "wage-price spiral" and a serious inflation problem. That's why serious people at the Bank are now saying serious things.
In mid-December, Charlie Bean, the highly respected Deputy Governor, admitted there is less "spare capacity" in the economy than previously assumed, meaning inflationary pressures are rising.
And in a bombshell interview with The Daily Telegraph last week, Paul Fisher, the Bank's executive director of markets, said base rates will soon rise from their current historic low of 0.5pc, eventually "normalising" close to 5pc.
So the UK now faces early rate rises, even though the economic recovery is far from secure. British households are shouldering £1,200bn of mortgage debt and two-thirds of borrowers are on variable rates. UK consumption, and growth in general, is extremely vulnerable to higher borrowing costs and yet rate rises will surely happen sooner rather than later.
Perhaps that's why Fisher now also warns that the UK economy could face another slump during 2011. "It's not impossible we could see a quarter of negative growth," he said.
New figures show that GDP growth during the third quarter of this year was just 0.7pc hardly a buoyant recovery. Industrial (ST2000.MX) output rose by just 0.5pc, helping to explain why the current account deficit hit £9.6bn, almost double that of the second quarter, as imports rose. A weaker pound sparks inflation but should also boost UK exports. The trouble is that the latter isn't happening.
We could, then, see UK stagflation in 2011 the dreaded combination of high inflation and a lack of economic growth.
Having said that, the more immediate danger is fiscal. During November, the Government borrowed an astonishing £23.3bn the highest total for a single month since records began. While tax receipts were 3.1pc up on November 2009, government spending was no less than 10.9pc higher. And you thought we were in the middle of a fiscal squeeze!
These November figures are no one-off. UK borrowing this year has been higher than during 2009-10 in three of the past four months. With inflation stubbornly high, and policy-makers now being forced to admit the inflationary problem is real, concerns about price pressure could spread to the gilts market, making it more difficult for the UK to sell the swathes of non-indexed sterling instruments it uses to finance its burgeoning public sector debt.
Writing this brings me no pleasure, not least given that it's the festive season. Yet the MPC (050540.KQ) , caught between rising UK inflation on the one hand and a looming domestic slump on the other, faces some extremely serious dilemmas. That's before we consider a possible commodity price spike and whisper it eurozone "contagion".
My over-riding concern is that in recent years, the UK's policy debate has been almost surreal, failing to recognise the obvious, pretending major issues don't exist. This cannot be right. We need a government, and senior economic policy-makers, who are honest with UK citizens and tell us what is going on. That would be a worthwhile Christmas present to the British public and would serve us well, into the New Year and beyond.
2010年12月25日星期六
Colonel Sanders：the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken
Colonel Sanders otherwise known as Harland Sanders, was the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken and it’s famous seasoned chicken. Although he was always a cook, Harland, later known as the Colonel, didn’t harness his talent for commercial use until he was over 40 years of age.
Harland Sanders was born on September 9, 1890 in Henryville, Indiana to a butcher, Wilbert Sanders, and a homemaker, Margaret Ann Dunleavy. At the age of six, Sanders lost his father and was forced to help his mother care for his younger siblings. Even at his young age, Sanders helped cook and quickly mastered regional recipes to the delight of his family.
A few years later, when Sanders was in the seventh grade, he dropped out of school to further care for his family. Although he worked at nearby farm for a while, his mother remarried in order to support the family and Sanders was forced to relocate to suburban Indianapolis. Sanders did not get along with his new stepfather and moved to Clark County, Indiana soon thereafter.
He worked as a farmer, then a streetcar driver, and eventually enlisted in the Army to spend a year in Cuba. He married Josephine King in 1908 with whom he had three children. Their marriage ended in 1947.
When he moved back to Indiana, Sanders worked as a steamboat driver and eventually helped on the railroad. During his time with the railroad, Sanders began taking a correspondence course with Southern University in order to earn his law degree. With the help of local officials, Sanders was able to complete his studies and practice law from 1915 into the 1920s in Little Rock, Arkansas. His law career ended when he physically fought a client in the courtroom so Sanders decided to move to Corbin, Kentucky and open a service station.
After interacting with hungry customers, Sanders decided to begin serving meals to travelers who stopped at his place for gas. Since there was no formal restaurant or eating area at the station, Sanders served food from a table at the station’s living quarters. Serving families and travelers gave Sanders the idea of creating meals that people could take with them; entire Sunday dinners that were ready to eat and easy to carry.
As his popularity grew and people got word of his cooking, and especially his chicken, Sanders moved his operation to a nearby motel that could seat 142 people. Sanders worked as a chef in his own kitchen and began perfecting this fried chicken recipe. In 1935, after his cooking had become very well known around the state, Governor Ruby Laffoon granted him the title of Kentucky Colonel. As a result of this title, Sanders began dressing like a “southern gentleman” and calling himself the Colonel as a matter of self-promotion.
Over the next twenty years he perfected his fried chicken recipe of 11 herbs and spices and made use of pressure frying the chicken in order to speed service. By 1956, however, Sanders was broke. The government has built a new highway that bypassed his Corbin store, causing the sale price to plummet. Sanders, living off of Social Security, took his cooker and his spices and traveled to restaurants to convince them to pay him to use his recipe. Smaller restaurants were willing to pay him a small fee for every chicken sold and, by 1960, Sanders had over 400 “franchises”.
Sanders sold his brand in 1964 but continued to work as the spokesman for Kentucky Fried Chicken. During his retirement he gave much of his profit away to charities and even adopted 78 foreign orphans. He passed away from leukemia on December 16, 1980 in Kentucky. A museum was erected in his name at the KFC headquarters in Louisville.
This Colonel Sanders biography may not be reproduced online.
Copyright © Woopidoo.com (ek)
I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.
There’s no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can’t do any business from there.
Colonel Sanders Biography
Colonel Sanders (1890-1980) created the Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food chain at the age of 66. Pride in his product, high standards, and brilliant marketing help to establish him as an innovator in the fast food industry.
Harland David Sanders was born on a farm in Henryville, Indiana on September 9, 1890. His parents, Wilbert Sanders, a butcher, and Margaret Ann Dunleavy, a homemaker, also had two younger children. Sanders’ father died when he was five, so his mother took a job peeling tomatoes in a canning factory and earned extra money by sewing at night. Sanders had to take care of his siblings, learning how to cook so he could feed them. He held his first job at the age of ten, working on a nearby farm. Because the family was so poor, Sanders left school after sixth grade so he could work full time. His mother, desperate to improve the financial situation of her family, married a produce farmer and moved the family to suburban Indianapolis when Sanders was 12. Sanders fought often with his new stepfather. Within a year, his mother sent him back to Clark county, Indiana.
Sanders worked as a farmhand for $15 a month, plus room and board, until he was 15 years old. He was then able to get a job as a streetcar conductor in New Albany, Indiana. In 1906, while still under age, Sanders enlisted in the U.S. Army and spent a year as a soldier in Cuba. After completing his military service, Sanders married Josephine King in Jasper, Alabama. The couple had three children. During the early years of their marriage, Sanders and his family moved to Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and finally back to Indiana. They divorced in 1947.
Launched First Company
Sanders held a variety of jobs. He sold insurance in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Then he started a steamboat ferry company that operated on the Ohio River between Jeffersonville and Louisville, Kentucky. Eventually, Sanders took a job as secretary of the Columbus chamber of commerce. There he met an inventor who discovered how to operate natural gas lamps on a gas derived from carbide. Sanders bought the patent rights and launched a manufacturing company. Unfortunately, a rural electrification program made his company’s product obsolete.
While working as a railroad man for the Illinois Central Railroad, Sanders took a correspondence course that allowed him to earn a law degree from Southern University. A local judge permitted him to use his law library and local lawyers helped his studies by explaining law terminology. When he lost his job with the railroad, Sanders began practicing law. He had some success in the legal field from about 1915 to the early 1920s, working in the Justice of the Peace courts in Little Rock, Arkansas. Sanders ruined his legal career, however, by getting into a brawl with a client in the courtroom. Although found innocent of assault and battery, Sanders’ legal practice was through.
Became an Honorary Colonel
In 1929, Sanders moved to Corbin, Kentucky, a small town at the edge of the Appalachian Mountains, and opened a gas station along U.S. Route 25. When tourists and traveling salespeople asked Sanders where they could get something to eat nearby, he got the idea of opening a small restaurant next to the gas station. The restaurant had one table and six chairs and specialized in Southern cooking such as pan fried chicken, ham, vegetables, and biscuits. Sanders moved his establishment across the street to a bigger location, with room for 142 seats, a motel and a service station. He took an eight-week course in restaurant and hotel management from Cornell University to learn more about the business. Sanders’ cafe had a homey atmosphere, with no menu, but good food. But when restaurant critic, Duncan Hines, listed Sanders’ place in Adventures in Good Eatingin the 1930s, its popularity increased.
In 1935, the popular cafe so impressed Governor Ruby Laffoon that he made Sanders an honorary Kentucky colonel for his contribution to state cuisine. In 1937, Sanders tried to start a restaurant chain in Kentucky, but his attempt failed. Two years later, he opened another motel and restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina, but this too failed.
Sanders continued to alter his chicken recipe to get the seasonings just right. In 1939, he devised a method to cook chicken quickly because customers would not wait 45 minutes for a batch to be fried up in an iron pan. Sanders used a pressure cooker, a new invention at the time, to cook chicken in nine minutes. He found that chicken cooked in this manner turned out to be moist and flavorful. Sanders’ method is still being used today.
In 1949, Sanders was once again honored with the title of Kentucky colonel, this time by Lieutenant Governor Lawrence Weatherby. Sanders began using the title of “Colonel” and dressing in a white suit, white shirt, black string tie, black shoes, white mustache and goatee, and a cane–giving himself the appearance of a gentleman from the Old South. In 1949, Sanders arried Claudia Ledington, an employee.
During World War II, gas rationing meant less travel, so Sanders had to shut down his motel. It reopened when the war ended. By 1953, his café was worth $165,000. In the early 1950s, Sanders signed up a few restaurant owners in an early form of franchise. He would ship them his seasoning, made from a secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices, if they agreed to pay him five cents for every chicken cooked with it. Pete Harman, a Utah restaurant owner who had met Sanders in Chicago at a seminar for restaurateurs, was his first franchisee. Harman, already a successful businessman, is credited with creating the marketing strategies that made Sanders’ business a success. Harman is also responsible for inventing the name “Kentucky Fried Chicken,” introducing the takeout bucket, and creating the slogan, “finger lickin’ good.”
In 1956, the federal government made plans to build a new highway, bypassing Corbin. The value of Sanders’ site plummeted, and he auctioned off the property for $75,000 to pay his debts. At the age of 66 he was almost broke, living off a monthly Social Security check of $105 and some savings. Sanders then moved to Shelbyville, Kentucky.
A Secret Recipe Spelled Success
With nothing to lose, Sanders took his spices and pressure cooker and traveled throughout the U.S. in his 1946 Ford. He visited restaurants, trying to convince the owners to use his recipe. Sanders had no luck with the better restaurants, said John Neal, a franchisee. “They all threw him out of their places. He found a lot of wonderful hard-working men and women who operated various and sundry restaurants who took his methods and paid him a nickel a head. The Colonel shipped them the seasoning. That’s literally how he got started.”
By 1960, Sanders had 400 franchisees, and his image was being used to sell chicken throughout the country. By 1963, he made $300,000 a year in profits, before taxes. In 1996, the number of franchises had grown to over 5,000 units in the U.S. and 4,500 overseas. Sanders carefully guarded his secret recipe of herbs and spices, hiring two different suppliers to mix up batches, which he would then combine himself and mail to franchisees.
Sanders was a perfectionist. He often burst into a restaurant’s kitchen to scold an employee for not cooking his gravy correctly. Sanders would then show him how to cook it right. “The thing I remember about the Colonel is that he was very particular about doing things right,” said Jackie Trujillo, chairman of Harman Management. “He used to visit us often,” she said. “Service, quality and cleanliness was No. 1. He never backed down from that.”
Sold Company to Investors
In 1964, Sanders sold out to a group of investors, including John Y. Brown, Jr. and Jack Massey, for $2 million. He had been concerned about selling the business because he feared that the new owners might not maintain a high quality product. Friends and family finally persuaded the 74-year-old to part with his company. On January 6, 1964, he closed the deal. Besides the $2 million, he received a lifetime salary of $40,000 a year (later raised to $75,000). Sanders served as the company spokesman, making personal appearances and television commercials. He held on to his Canadian rights in the company and established a foundation in Canada, turning over his profits to charities, such as churches, hospitals, the Boy Scouts, and the Salvation Army. He also adopted 78 foreign orphans.
Kentucky Fried Chicken went public in 1969, and was acquired by Heublein Inc. two years later. In 1974, Sanders sued the company because he did not like changes they had made to the product. The suit was settled out of court for over a million dollars. R.J. Reynolds Industries acquired Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1982. It then passed to PepsiCo in 1986 for $840 million.
Honored with Museum and Landmark
In 1974, Sanders published his autobiography, Life As I Have Known It Has Been Finger Lickin’ Good. His daughter, Margaret Sanders, published Eleven Herbs and a Spicy Daughter: Col. Sanders’ Secret of Success, in 1994.
Though he is said to have had a bad temper, Sanders inspired many in the restaurant industry by helping his franchisees, introducing a love for his product, and maintaining high standards. He has had a lasting impact on fast food, something he helped create. Industry leaders credit Sanders with being a stellar marketer. His innovations included selling busy people buckets of chicken to take home and using a character, himself, to sell a product.
Sanders died in Shelbyville, Kentucky on December 16, 1980, after a seven-month battle with leukemia. The Colonel Sanders Museum at Kentucky Fried Chicken headquarters in Louisville contains a life-sized statue of Sanders in a small theater, his office–exactly as he left it, his white linen suit, cane, shirt and tie, one of his wife’s dresses, and his original pressure cooker. In 1972, his first restaurant was named a Kentucky historical landmark.
After many years of serving his secret fried chicken recipe in his local restaurant, Colonel Harland Sanders found himself in need of a new career. At the age of 65, he began to collect his social security check of about $100 as he wondered how he was going to survive financially.
Colonel Sanders Background
Growing up in Indiana, household responsibilities were often left to him while his mother worked to support the family after his father’s early death. This is how he developed his keen cooking skills as he helped his mother take care of the other children in his family.
Several different jobs later, Sanders began his entrepreneurial career running a service station in Kentucky while serving his special chicken in a dining area within. As business grew, he relocated to a restaurant close by in order to make his original recipe with its blend of eleven herbs and spices accessible to even more customers. He also added a motel to the business.
In 1935, at forty-five years old, Sanders was dubbed a Kentucky Colonel by the Governor, in recognition of his fabulous cooking skills. Subsequently, in 1940 Sanders created his well-known “Original Recipe.”
Colonel Sanders’ New Cooking Technique
Sanders originally prepared his chicken in an iron skillet but soon realized that was not efficient in a restaurant setting. In order to decrease the wait time for his customers, Sanders modified his cooking procedure by making use of a pressure fryer.
Colonel Sanders’ Entrepreneurial Drive
The Sanders Court & Café catered mainly to travelers on their way to Florida through the town of Corbin, Kentucky. However, in the early 1950′s, a new interstate was in the works that would cause a great loss in business, forcing Sanders to retire and sell his restaurant.
However, the government check was small and Sanders wasn’t willing to just sit still and try to make due. He believed there was an opportunity to market his chicken to restaurant owners across the U.S.
In his travels, he was rejected on many occasions, laughed at about his attire of his starched white shirt and white pants. However, Sanders persevered, and after a little over 1,000 visits, he finally persuaded Pete Harman in South Salt Lake, Utah to partner with him. They launched the first “Kentucky Fried Chicken” site in 1952.
In the early 1960′s there were over 600 franchised locations in the U.S. and Canada selling the delectable chicken. Subsequently, in 1964 Sanders sold the franchising operation for $2 million. The franchise has been sold three other times since then and continues to be a well-known successful business.
Colonel Harland David Sanders (September 9, 1890 – December 16, 1980), better known as Colonel Sanders, was the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). His picture appears on their boxes to this day, and a stylized graphic of his face is atrademark of the corporation.
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Sanders was born in Henryville, Indiana. His father died when he was six years old, and since his mother worked, he was forced to cook for his family. During his teen years, Sanders worked many jobs, including firefighter, steamboat driver, insurance salesman and a private in Cuba.
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At the age of 40, Sanders made chicken for people who passed by his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. He didn’t have a restaurant then, but served the diners in his living quarters in the service station. Eventually, his local popularity grew, and Harland moved to a motel and restaurant that seated 142 people and began working as the chef. Over the next nine years, he perfected his method of cooking chicken that used the same eleven herbs and spices that are used today at KFC. He also made use of a pressure cooker that enhanced the flavor and allowed the chicken to be cooked much faster than pan-frying. He was given the honorary title “Kentucky colonel” in 1935 by Governor Ruby Laffoon. Unlike most people who receive this title, Sanders chose to call himself “Colonel” and to dress in a stereotypical “southern gentleman” costume as a way of self-promotion.
Related Topics:
Service station - Corbin, Kentucky - Motel -Chef - Herb - Spice - Pressure cooker -Kentucky colonel - 1935 - Ruby Laffoon
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Sanders was forced to sell his property in order to make way for Interstate 75. He lived off of his Social Security checks, and based his entire career on his ability to cook. Confident of the quality of his fried chicken, the Colonel devoted himself to the chicken franchising business that he started in 1952, the first franchise being setup on 4100 South State Street in Salt Lake City. He traveled across the country by car from restaurant to restaurant, cooking batches of chicken for restaurant owners and their employees. If the reaction was favorable, he entered into a handshake agreement on a deal that stipulated a payment to him of a nickel for each chicken the restaurant sold. His devoted work turned his small business, Kentucky Fried Chicken, into one of the largest fast food chains in existence. He himself became one of the most recognizable people in the world.
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Sanders moved the headquarters of his business to a new location nearShelbyville, Kentucky and in 1964, sold it to a group of investors headed by futureKentucky Governor John Y. Brown, Jr. Sanders, after retiring as a cook, worked as its company spokesman for most of the rest of his life. He appeared in many of his company’s television commercials between the 1950s and 1970s, and remained outspoken about the quality of the KFC product, often so with a lively vocabulary.
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He also retained ownership of the headquarters building and soon opened a new restaurant in it. KFC’s new owners owned the name Colonel Sanders as it pertained to the restaurant business, so Sanders decided to name his new restaurant Claudia Sanders’ Dinner House after his wife. As of 2005, this restaurant is still operating and is decorated with many photographs and memorabilia from the Sanders family.
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Sanders died at the age of 90 of leukemia. He was buried in his characteristic white suit and black bow tie in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. A later cartoon version of Colonel Sanders (voiced by actor Randy Quaid) has appeared in more recent KFC commercials, and he has an almost-identical impersonator, the latter to the considerable consternation of many in the Sanders family.
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To this day, the Colonel’s secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices remains one of the best-kept trade secrets in business. The original, handwritten recipe is locked securely in a vault in Louisville, with partial copies stored elsewhere as backup. The two suppliers of the seasonings each only provide parts of the recipe, and do not know each other’s identity. Not even the company’s president knows the ingredient list, and the few people who do are subject to a strictconfidentiality agreement. Several people have contacted KFC, claiming to have found copies of the recipe, but none have ever been correct. A couple who purchased the Colonel’s original home found another handwritten recipe in the basement, and, although it was written by Sanders, it was determined to be nothing like the original.
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