Tomorrow, we are going to see the opera Turandot. I asked Andrei. What do you like about this opera? André said that the opera is of course the song in it.

Yes, even people who are not used to listening to opera should know the shocking song "Nobody Sleeps Tonight".

What I was thinking about was why they wrote a love story about a Chinese princess like Turandot?

To be honest, the story of the distant China imagined by the famous Italian composer Giacomo Puccini seems to be too far from what I think in the mind of a Chinese. I wonder if Puccini has ever been to China?

Turandot's beauty is as dangerous and bewildering as her heart. This is also the West's conjecture of Eastern women similar to "dragon girls".

Chinese stories don't imagine that a Tatar prince fell in love with Turandot as a beautiful thing. They don't understand that the Chinese have the word "red face and troubled water". It is the weakness of the king of the kingdom who is obsessed with beauty, and the reckless behavior of the Tatar prince will be seen as irresponsible and imprudent, and will not be praised.

Do Italians think that only love is the salvation of human nature?

But in the minds of Chinese, how heavy is the weight of love?

Compared with the supremacy of love in the West, we may feel that love and family affection are sometimes more indistinguishable.

At the very least, there is no image of a man who goes to the soup for love in traditional Chinese stories, right? In China, it seems that this is never declared. I really didn't know that the Chinese prince had saved the princess. There are female images of Zhu Yingtai, Seven Fairies, and White Lady who dedicate themselves to love. Unlike Western love myths such as "Swan Lake," it is often women who make sacrifices in Chinese stories.

It is our education that makes Chinese men worry about pursuing love. Or is it that our culture is born that way? I don't know.

It could be a cultural difference.

Some Westerners feel that Orientals can even be contemptuous of love, so they feel that Orientals are cold-blooded. Turandot's Oriental identity seems to be the author's desire to emphasize her cold side.

Orientals, on the other hand, think that some Westerners have a weak sense of family and are estranged from each other. There is no sense of responsibility, even ruthless and unrighteous, selfish and willful.

In the absence of a unified standard, it is really difficult to unify the understanding.

It's like the difference between me and Andre about our sexual relationship. André felt that he was defending his own rights and interests, and I felt that I was abiding by my principles, and that I was the defender of the truth. That's a really hard thing to do!

Even if people from two unified races inevitably share the same values.

For example, Xiaoxing and Yang Wei and me, I feel that the difference in values between me and them is only bigger than that between me and Andre.

Just like the same Andre is different in the eyes of me and Simone, maybe in the eyes of Li Bailing and Xiaoxing, Andre is different.

Luckily, Andrey and I eventually came to a reunification. We don't have much conflict when it comes to eating, we tend to be the same in hobbies and aesthetics, and even in values.