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Qinbin Li 李庆兵 go back to my research page.

UCLA Dept. of Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences, 7127 Math Sciences Bldg., Los Angeles, CA 90095-1565

Phone: (310) 206-2710

Fax: (310) 206-5219

Alex: I try to get some small items, such as toys or snacks (e.g., beef jerky) for the kids when I travel. The past summer I did quite a bit of traveling. When I got home, typically at night, Alex (4¾) knew he could count on receiving something from daddy. Lately I have been late getting home after work in order to avoid heavy traffic on I-405. The first few times, Alex asked with anticipation ‘did you bring us something, daddy?’ - he thought I just came back from a trip. Obviously he was disappointed when I told him I was not on travel and therefore did not get to bring anything for him and Chris. The last few times when Alex opened the door for me, again with palpable anticipation, he asked me with a shy smile, ‘you did not bring anything for us, right, daddy?’. He knew he was probably going to be disappointed but still would not let go of that slim hope for a surprise. I will pick up something for Alex and Chris on my way home this evening.

Alex: The other day, my wife said to the kids, ‘mommy is getting old’. That prompted Alex (4¾) to say ‘I do not want you to get old, mommy. If you get old, we would have to get a new mommy. That is a waste of mommy.’ He probably did not quite grasp what getting old means.

Chris: Every parent will tell you that every baby is different. Compared with babies who started walking at 9- or 10-month, my sons are good crawlers. Chris, my youngest son, started walking on his own at 14-month. His older brother, Alex, got up and started walking on the day he turned 13-month. Both started talking early, though. Chris, now 14½-month, is really a quick learner. He has built an amazing vocabulary already: ‘妈妈’, ’爸爸’, ‘哥哥’, ‘(外)婆’, ‘(外)公’, ‘大树’, ‘飞机’, ‘白云’, ‘(蓝)天’, ‘水’, ‘水果’, ‘看看’, ‘这个’, ‘(电)脑’, ‘球球’, ‘车车’, ‘(牛)奶奶’, ‘妈妈抱’, ‘草’, ‘花’, ‘鱼’, ‘睡觉’, ‘狗狗’... the list goes on. ‘大树’ and ‘appppple’ were among Alex’s favorite words when he was at Chris’ age.

‘跑风’, ‘走水’: Kids are energetic and always restless. It seems that they can just run around and chase each other all day. Alex, now 3½, is no exception. He is like a wild pony whenever we go outside, running and screaming with excitement. At his age, Alex is quite creative with language. Case in point: when running in the wind, Alex would say ‘我在跑风’ - literally means ‘I am running (in) the wind’. Another example: while walking in shallow water on the beach of Big Bear Lake, Alex said ‘我在走水’ - ‘I am walking (in) water’. He is also using more complex phrases such as ‘我发现’, ‘我觉得’, ‘因为...所以...’.

AOS2: I gave 40% of the students in the class a letter A grade. 60% of the student received B+ or above. Upon seeing their grades for AOS2, a few students emailed me stating that they were “shocked” that they did not get the grades they were hoping/expecting. One student came to my office complaining about her grade. It turned out that she never showed up for a single lecture nor did she go to any discussion sections. Her reason: “I was volunteering for a hospital.” And yet, she was “shocked” and had the courage to complain. Another student came in and complained non-stop. I will paraphrase what she said here: (1) “I do not have any interest in this class”; (2) “I think asking a bunch of questions in class is a waste of time and plain stupid” - she was referring to my encouraging of students to ask and answer questions in order to earn extra points. Can you imagine that is how someone would say to her professor to get a better grade? Amazing! In both cases, I just showed them all their grades on homework, midterm, final exam, and participation and how the final letter grades were assigned.

About my name: my grandfather named two of my elder cousins (堂兄) and me, his first three grandsons, 庆文, 庆武, and 庆斌, in the order we were born. The first character, 庆, means ‘to celebrate’. As you probably have guessed, the character 斌 in my name combines the two characters 文 and 武 in my cousins’ names. Individually 文 (as in 文学, literature) and 武 (as in 武术, martial arts) each has a broad range of meanings. Together, 文武, as in 文武双全, are used to describe someone who is both erudite and brave. Here 双全 means ‘possessing both’. I can only imagine how disappointed my grandfather, who passed away when I was a toddler, would be today. 斌 was too difficult to write for me entering grade school, so my Chinese teacher replaced it with 兵, a character that has the same pronunciation as 斌 in my local dialect but not in Standard Mandarin. The correct spelling of my first name in pinyin, a Romanization system for Standard Mandarin, is Qingbing. I was never good at pinyin and misspelled my name as Qinbin, which is how it is pronounced in my local dialect, when applying for a passport in 1998 and stuck with it ever since. I had no idea that my first name would be a nuisance for me in the U.S. People either flat-out do not know how to pronounce it (I always tell them apologetically, ‘it is a funny foreign name’) or pronounce it as Quinbin (‘q and u stick like glue’, as kids are taught here).

My dad: my dad is 73 and lives with my younger brother in Luoshan, my hometown. Growing up I didn’t talk to him that much for various reasons. In the last few years, we started chatting more and more over the phone. I slowly came to the realization that my dad had so much to say to me - how much alike we are, how proud he is of me, his appreciation of what I have done for him and the family, his eagerness to see my sons and how the grandchildren make his life so much brighter, his and my grand- and great-grandparents’ lives, etc. I will take my sons to visit their grandparents this summer.

Germans, Americans, Chinese: a colleague of mine is from Germany. He once said that Germans are not afraid of shouting ‘you are dead wrong ...’ to each other when engaged in ‘heated’ (scientific or otherwise) discussions and then enjoy a beer together two hours later. Americans on the other hand are a lot more diplomatic - they try to make you realize that you are wrong on your own. According to the same colleague, the Chinese just keep it to themselves - they don’t say anything (maybe that is saying a lot!). I am not sure that is an accurate characterization. It is true to a degree that we Chinese tend to be more concerned with ‘saving/losing’ face and avoid being confrontational at all cost. At the same time, however, we are not shy when it comes to asking others’ test scores or salaries (at least in China), things that are considered absolutely private in the west.

My brother: my brother is 4 years younger than me. Interestingly we didn’t fight that much growing up, partly because I was away in school. When we were little, like all the Chinese families, we didn’t having anything in the 70’s. My brother would always share his apple (or whatever fruit or food) with me after I ate mine. That I will never forget. My brother was a sweet little boy. One day dad asked me and my brother to weed out weeds in a wheat field - we were probably 12 and 8? So I started weeding while my brother tried to catch fishes in a nearby creek. He got tired after a while and wanted to go play with other kids. He knew I was not happy with him (me working, him playing, of course!:). ‘I dare you say ‘滚走’ to me’, said my brother. 滚走, literally means ‘roll away’ - a more proper translation is ‘get lost’. I was ‘furious’ and shouted just that. My brother was happy to ‘obligate’ - he lied down, rolled a few yards, got up, and left - I was caught by surprise and bursted in to laugh.

CDO, CDS: amid the mess on Wall Street and the global economic crises, a lot of financial jargons are flying around. Examples: derivatives, CDO, Synthetic CDO, CDS, SPV, and the list goes on. An excellent explanation of CDO can be found here. The more you learn, the more you realize how the W. Street bankers have been screwing us all along, greatly facilitated by the Fed thanks to the mumbling A.G. Many say that nobody anticipated the derivatives blowup - well, that is just a lie. To me, the folks on W. Street are nothing more than a bunch of looters who knew exactly what they were doing and got rewarded at every turn.

PKU: 北京大学, Beijing University or Peking University? The official name, according to the university website, is Peking University. It is my impression, however, that foreigners, at least the ones I met, use Beijing University instead. PKU vs. BJU, anyone?

Favorite American comedians: Chris Rock for his relentless, and seemingly outrageous, attack on social and economic injustice - he couldn’t care less about being politically correct. Check out how he explains affirmative action and the war on terror. George Carlin for his brilliant mastery of the English language - he is truly a magician with words. His “7 words’ and ‘All my stuff’ are classics. Check out the first few minutes of Life is worth losing to see how he plays with words.

Dilbert: My Ph.D. advisor, Daniel Jacob, gives presents to his Ph.D. students upon their graduations. When I graduated from Harvard in 2003, I received from Daniel a book titled ‘The Dilbert Principle’ by Scott Adams. I had never heard of Dilbert nor Scott Adams. My guess is that, Daniel was subtly reminding me that I need to lighten up. I have to admit that sometimes I take myself too seriously.

Chris: unlike his elder brother Alex who started crawling when he was 7-month old, my younger son Chris, now 10-month old, is in no hurry to crawl. That is not exactly true. He actually crawls, albeit in reverse mode.

Alex: one of my resolutions long before my sons were born is to teach them Chinese, speaking, reading, and writing. When my son Alex entered pre-school at 2, he quickly picked up English. Naturally, he started mixing Chinese and English. Here are a couple examples from when he was two and a half: ‘Daddy, I am 爬ing’ - Daddy, I am crawling (the chinese character 爬 means ‘to crawl’); ‘one more 口’ - one more bite (the chinese character 口, mouth, here means ‘bite’ (noun), as in 咬一口, ‘have a bite’).

Henan (河南): I sometimes get the question: ‘what part of China are you from?’ I always tell people that, the continental China map looks like a rooster, and that my home province, Henan is its stomach (can you locate it in the map below?). My hometown, Luoshan (罗山) is at the southern tip of Henan.