In class, sang out (or belted out) in the Dylan lyrics:
How many roads must a man walk down
Before they call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
How many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
How many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+dylan/blowin+in+the+wind_20021159.html
Since many of us (e.g. my elementary school classmates and their generation) were born and raised in the midst of the civil rights movement and especially amongst the infighting to end the Vietnam War. We interpreted the text and tone as a lamentation for justice and the need to keep struggling to end not just that one war--but to end all wars..
Meanwhile, in 2011 only a few Taiwanese students saw the text as written as a protest song. Most students focused primarily on "the tiredness" conveyed in the message.
"How many roads must a man walk down?"
Confucius stated millennia ago, " "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
This long-term and somewhat optimistic approach to long-term effort by Confucius and generations of Chinese is somehow either lost in translation to English or is not fully incorporated as an optimistic thought (i.e. of eventually completing ones journey or the long term goal one is striving toward) in modern Chinese culture, especially in Taiwan.
In other words, most Taiwanese students responded to the question of "how many roads?" or "how many miles?" by falling back on interpreting the text of the song, "Blowin' in the Wind" with a traditional stoic attitude towards life and struggle--one which they have been being taught to carry on throughout their lives--and which has been imparted to them constantly by family, school, society, economy, and culture. In their training of many of these students, "the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" is not an optimistic one.
It is more a lament of a new and de-motivated military recruit, i.e. "I have thousand miles to go and I have only taken one step. Oh, Boy! I am going to be exhausted. Can I make it?"
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