TJ Gong

In most developed countries people are provided with new TVs and stereos to satisfy their visual and auditory needs, with new means of transportation such as bullet trains or planes to meet their spatial needs; and with new medicines to treat new diseases to keep them live longer and healthier. It seems that science and technology are always doing people a favor of helping…

When we are young, we try new things which sometimes can be bad but we go for them anyway. As we are getting older, we opt for stability but hate mobility. The word “change” seems to be the product of young generations, but it may not be so. As we read the story of Moses, we discover…

The other night I took  my daughter to a local clinic where she received medication in her right heel. While sitting in the waiting room, I opened a newspaper and scanned it iinattentively. But then I found out the news reported in the paper such as local politics, economy, and education were optimistic and praising…

What kind of trial can you endure? How long can you endure trials? How do you endure trials? Some people display anxiety and distress while they are going through adversity. Other people complain about why bad things are happening to them? How can we endure affliction and prevail? Jesus had endured temptation by the Devil before he started his ministry. In…

Aristotle in his Poetics gives the definition of what “tragedy” is; he says, “Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and possessing magnitude . . . and effecting through pity and fear.” Despite the guidelines set up for dealing with tragedy, they can be applied to other literary genres in general.…

I heard about a story of two primary kids. One lived in a demanding family where his parents required him to be superb in his studies. In any of his school subjects he would be punished for every point he missed  if he didn’t received a score of 100 points.  The other child lived an…

This week as I continued to talk about the rhetorical type “caparison and contrast” in my writing class, my students and I read two articles, “Playing House” and “Mr. and Mrs. K”. The former essay differentiates “cohabiting couples” and “married couples”; the latter distinguishes between “courtship” and “commitment”. Both essays maintain a successful marriage derives…

The former president’s corruption case has been the target of intense media attention in our society for the past several months. Dubbed “Son of Taiwan”, former president Chen has always been an influential as well as a controversial figure in Taiwan’s political area since he came to power as the city mayor and president . Now…

The word “vision” has become a buzzword in most large corporations. Based on the vision each company delineates its own mission statement and executing strategy. So the vision statement is the basic and primary guideline a company should and must follow and make sure its operation is in line with it. Being a Christian we also have a vision…

The other day my elder daughter said that one of her classmates tried to find out errors even a Chinese character stroke from another classmate’s exam paper as the student got a score of 100 points on that social studies exam. “The student who attempted to  pick out errors did it out of jealousy, not out of  caution, because…