First, a photo from a fabulous series from Hong Kong-based creative duo graphicairlines on NeochaEDGE. I like seeing how art and everyday life overlap:
Second, a brilliant comment on creativity from Caitie Whelan, Co-Founder of The Merasi School:
The best ideas are like taffy: they should only be consumed after rigorous pulling, stretching and challenging. The ideas behind social movements rarely emerge fully baked and ready for publication — rather, they are born from countless, often painful hours of sculpting and re-sculpting. When I first started forming some thoughts about education in India into a more coherent idea of a school for a community of lower-caste musicians, I became convinced that I was sitting on a goldmine, largely because my intentions were so good. [more]
Third, a thought-provoking response to our discussion about creativity in Chinese legal work, from Doug, writing on China Law Blog.
The most interesting bits of law are the ones where creativity is needed since these are the ones that are not settled. In China, I would think there would be plenty of situations where the law is not settled and plenty of cases where the law is vague enough that a good (and creative) legal argument could be made on both sides.
The capability for creativity and the wisdom to know when not to use it is what a good lawyer needs. In negotiations, for example, a creative interpretation that has a slim chance of sticking might be good negotiating leverage. Most routine cases, e.g. contract law involve putting together a very clear agreement that covers all eventualities with cases that have tested all the language – this is not very creative nor should it be. When a client wants to take some legal risk (or has already taken some and is in a tight spot) then trying to figure out untested legal avenues and creative solutions within the law might be just what is needed – anything on appeal almost always includes this as appeal courts deal with non-routine applications of law (well, and dumb errors by lower courts).
-Leslie
Here’s a great article by Didi Kirsten Tatlow, from the International Herald Tribune. I’ve recently been obsessed with creativity in China, and I think this adds a fascinating perspective:
“Our education system is like ancient Sparta. Not physically, but mentally,” she said over coffee in a Beijing mall, where white marble sparkled under powerful lights. “Our children learn to calculate fast, play the piano, to do everything well. They have a lot of skills. But when they grow up they are lost, because no one ever asked them to think about what they want.”
The agoge of Sparta took 7-year-old boys and molded them into an elite corps of disciplined warriors loyal to the state. At Chinese school a powerful blend of Communist and Confucian ideologies demands obedience to hierarchy, bone-hard study and uncritical thinking.
Starting at 6, children are buried under an avalanche of studies until they graduate from high school. Twelve-hour days (less on weekends, but no days off) are common among first-graders. For his first Chinese New Year semester break, my 6-year-old son was given 42 pages of math and 42 pages of Chinese homework to complete in four weeks. The goal? Entrance to an elite college like Peking or Tsinghua University. [more]
Hat tip to China Digital Times.
-Leslie
A European employee of one of the companies we’ve worked with just asked me for some English writing advice. He’s working on several personal writing projects, along with his work for this company. Here’s what I sent him:
(1) Write to Generate Ideas. Edit. Edit more.
Essayist, programmer, and programming language designer Paul Graham shares this eloquent piece, “Writing, Briefly.”
I think it’s far more important to write well than most people realize. Writing doesn’t just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you’re bad at writing and don’t like to do it, you’ll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated.
As for how to write well, here’s the short version: Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over…[more]
(2) Leap.
I’ve already shared my admiration for the work of Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She contributed this elegant piece of advice to Seth Godin’s recent eBook What Matters Now.
image credit: What Matters Now.
(3) Revise your sentences.
When I teach writing classes, Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab helps me tremendously. I like this list of suggestions for improving sentence clarity.
First of all, thank you China Law Blog!
Dan Harris reacted here to my post about creativity in Chinese legal work. He pointed to an article he’d written about working with Chinese and Korean lawyers, and suggested that lawyers’ creativity could be correlated with the distinction between common law and civil law countries. It’s great to see this newborn blog inspiring comments from the China-focused blogging community.
Update: More Thoughts on Chinese Lawyers and Creativity
Today I spoke with a different attorney from the same firm, and asked, “Do you think you are creative?” His response? “Definitely.” He often deals with lawsuits, and he needs to analyze information from many sources and assemble it in a way that will help meet his clients’ goals. He’s also constantly dealing with people from other countries and needs to be creative to communicate in a way that resonates with them. And he mentioned the need to be creative in motivating his staff.
I mention this because I want to avoid presenting a single story of Chinese lawyers and creativity.
My personal blog is called “Beyond China’s Single Story.” The title comes from Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s brilliant TED Talk about the importance of recognizing many stories about a given place.
I first learned of this TED Talk and how it relates to China from this excellent post from All Roads Lead to China.
-Leslie
I just had a fascinating conversation with one of my students, an attorney at a leading intellectual property law firm. We read “Fright Bulb: How to Crush Your Last Shard of Creativity,” the editor’s letter from the December 2009 issue of Psychology Today. [The article doesn't appear to be online. I teach him and his colleagues advanced, industry-specific, one-on-one English lessons.]
This note from editor Kaja Perina (yes, that’s her picture, from Psychology Today) begins:
For some people, there is no greater buzzkill than the chirpy imperative, “Be creative!” These words are especially irksome when accompanied by the clicking of a stopwatch or the knowledge that the speaker himself cannot solve the problem in question. The idea of creativity on demand can intimidate — or at least irritate — an otherwise innovative brain.
My student found this paragraph tricky for several reasons. He first noticed the unfamiliar colloquiallisms in the first few lines: “buzzkill,” “chirpy,” “irksome.” Once we tackled this vocabulary, the underlying sentiment surprised him more.
He kept saying, “I’m not creative.” In his work, it is rare for anyone to make “Be creative” a chirpy imperative. Legal work depends on both established procedures and clients’ expectations, and it would be quite odd for a manager to insist on explicitly creative output.
Also, he mentioned that a Chinese manager would lose face if he admitted that he “himself cannot solve the problem in question.” In the rare circumstance that he would communicate such a thing, he would do so in a roundabout way that would both maintain his dignity and imply the desire for assistance.
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