That weirds me out. It weirded me out in 2008. When this blog was all China-all the time I felt weirded out a lot. Nothing is surface level with China. There is meaning layers and layers deep. If you don't check you'll miss something. I'm sure I just googled Yan Song for the hell of it in 2008, not even trying to research. China is a forbidden city of inquiry. Chinese are reluctant to talk, sometimes they lie or obfuscate when they do talk. I have never gotten a feeling that I really "know" a subject on China. "My mother, my sister:" It feels like the Jack Nicholson character in Chinatown (weird). He never imagined that. I never imagined the 16th century Yan Song. Others knew, they had to have known; they never told me. It spooks you about what you don't know.

Images: The 41st and 43rd Chief Grand Secretary of the Ming Dynasty, Yan Song; the first Chinese to get a Ph.D in geology from M.I.T., Yan Song, nee Song Binbin.