(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

I visited the museum toward the end of last year. The experience hit me so hard that I kept putting off writing about it. Today I went through the photos again, along with some of the articles and videos I had seen before, and finally put some thoughts together. It is still a very heavy feeling.

On September 11, 2001, the attacks happened on a Tuesday morning in the U.S., while it was already nighttime in China. I think it was the next day at school when a classmate told me that the World Trade Center in the U.S. had been bombed. I remember saying, “No way?” I can’t remember whether it was at school or at home when I saw the towers burning on the news.

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

Following up on the previous post, this time we begin with the first category of Bach’s works: sacred cantatas (YouTube Music playlist).

I will go through Bach’s masterpieces roughly in BWV order. A disclaimer first: this is simply a hobbyist’s personal sharing, written in the spirit of “sharing joy makes it greater.” There are certainly subjective opinions and places where my understanding may not be academically rigorous.

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

I recently learned a new Chinese idiom from one of Li Tianhao’s videos: 曲突徙薪 (qū tū xǐ xīn).

Here’s what it means.

Literally, 曲 means “bend,” 突 means “chimney,” 徙 means “move,” and 薪 means “firewood.” The idiom describes bending a straight chimney and moving the firewood away from the stove. Figuratively, it means eliminating the causes of a disaster before it happens—taking preventive action rather than dealing with the consequences.

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT. The Chinese version also contains the OCR English label texts for exibition objects.)

Why I Went

Earlier this year, I started seeing promotional material from the Met about a major Raphael exhibition, which started in late March. I finally decided to go on Sunday, May 3rd. That gave me about a week to cram for it, so I spent my evenings reading articles and watching videos¹ about Raphael and the Renaissance.

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

Why This Book

My surname is Feng—a pretty rare one. Outside of relatives, I don’t think I’ve ever met another Feng in real life¹.

A few days ago I was watching a video that mentioned a Tang dynasty miscellany called Fengshi Wenjian Ji (“What the Feng Clan Saw and Heard”). That immediately caught my attention. Not only does it share my surname, it also sounds exactly like something I’d name this site.

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was the great synthesizer of Baroque music and a perennial candidate for the GOAT of classical composers. His works span an enormous range of genres and are remarkable both in quantity and quality.

My earliest impressions of Bach came from two places. First was the video game Civilization IV: when your civilization advances from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, the background music suddenly evolves from slow Gregorian-style chant into rich Baroque music—it feels fantastic. When I looked it up, I discovered that most of those tracks were written by Bach. The second was Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (GEB).