一代女皇
A musical connection formed in 1985 continues through a new generation of Chinese and American students_我的网站
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On the evening of August 12 at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the Yale Whiffenpoofs finished their scheduled program before returning to the stage for an encore featuring three Chinese songs: the traditional folk tune "Jasmine Flower," the popular hit "The Brightest Star in the Night Sky" and "Let the World Be Filled with Love."
The singers' carefully rehearsed Chinese was soon joined by voices from the auditorium, turning the encore into a chorus shared across the hall.
The moment brought a longer journey into focus. More than four decades after the Whiffenpoofs first toured China in 1985, the current ensemble spent 15 days traveling to nine destinations across the country in March and April before returning to Beijing in August.
Founded in 1909, the Whiffenpoofs are the oldest collegiate a cappella group in the US. Each year, 14 Yale students are selected for the student-run ensemble, which performs more than 200 concerts across six continents.
Over its 117-year history, the group has counted among its members songwriter and composer Cole Porter, former US senator Prescott Bush and actor Ron Livingston.
Most of the current members are not music majors. They study subjects ranging from history and global affairs to chemistry, biomedical engineering, neuroscience and economics, but set aside a year to place music at the center of their lives.
Across concert halls, university campuses and villages, the young singers encountered people and places that could not be reduced to distant headlines or images on a screen.
Their journey was not simply about mastering unfamiliar lyrics. It was also about what could begin once the singing stopped and conversation began.
For Zhang Yixiao, a 22-year-old Beijing native and the group's assistant musical director, one of those melodies carried a particularly personal memory.
Long before he left for Yale University, Zhang sang with the renowned Beijing Philharmonic Choir, founded by conductor Yang Hongnian. He also performed on the same stage during the annual August Chorus Festival.
"The Brightest Star in the Night Sky" was also a song he had grown up with - one that used to play over the loudspeakers while he and his classmates ran laps in middle school. Years later, he taught it to his American teammates and listened as a Beijing audience sang it back to them.
During the China tour, Zhang, who studies global affairs and economics at Yale, also helped his fellow singers cross a less familiar musical boundary. He selected the Chinese songs, explained their meanings and helped the group with pronunciation. The pieces were arranged by members of the ensemble.
He chose songs from different ends of China's musical landscape: "The Brightest Star in the Night Sky" represented a contemporary memory shared by many young Chinese people; "Jasmine Flower" introduced the group to one of the country's most recognizable traditional melodies.
The work was shared by Eunice Oh, the first woman to serve as musical director in the Whiffenpoofs' history. Together, Oh and Zhang led the group through the process of learning the Chinese repertoire.
Hearing the Beijing audience join in gave that work an immediate payoff. "I really loved being able to sing with the audience," Oh told the Global Times. "It was very heartwarming."
Getting there required some work. "I think it's a little bit difficult, just because it's so different from the sounds we make in English," Oh said. Zhang taught the group not only how to pronounce the words but also what the lyrics meant. The process was nevertheless enjoyable, and "definitely worth the effort we put in," she said.
The response was often immediate. At performances across China, those in the audience who knew the words sang along.
"That was when we could feel the power of music transcending language divides," Zhang said. "No matter where we come from, or whether an ocean lies between us, we share a love of music and a love of life."
Other songs opened different conversations. After the group performed "Midnight Train to Georgia," a few people in the audience approached the singers to ask about a dance sequence in the number. The answer led to discussions of Hollywood and American popular culture. Chinese students, in turn, introduced Peking Opera and traditional instruments including the pipa, suona and guzheng.
The songs gave the two groups something concrete to ask each other about.
Echoes across time
The Whiffenpoofs' China tour this year was built around a piece of the group's own history.
In 1985, at the invitation of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, the Whiffenpoofs made their first trip to China, performing in Beijing, Nanjing and Guangzhou. Parts of the journey were later preserved in the short documentary Perfect Harmony: The Whiffenpoofs in China.
They arrived in a country still in the early years of reform and opening-up, when even Coca-Cola was a novelty for many Chinese people, and so was the sight of a group of young American visitors.
The "Whiffs" climbed the Great Wall, spoke with Chinese university students, stopped to watch elderly residents practice tai chi, and sang in the open air at the Temple of Heaven.
"Just as they had sung at the Temple of Heaven, we sang the same song again in the same place," Zhang said.
The reprise linked the two tours, while the rest of the itinerary showed how much more geographically varied the 2026 journey had become.
The new route extended well beyond major cities. In Zhaoxing Dong Village, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, the group performed with local choirs and listened to the Grand song of the Dong ethnic group, a polyphonic tradition performed without a conductor or instrumental accompaniment. The encounter brought together two distinct a cappella traditions.
Passed down orally within Dong communities, the tradition includes imitative songs that reproduce sounds from the natural world, particularly animal calls. It was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.
Zhang said stops such as Zhaoxing and Zhangjiajie gave his fellow singers a view of "a more diverse and different China."
The contrast between major cities and smaller villages became one of Oh's strongest impressions. "Being able to see the diversity that China has to offer, from these big cities to smaller villages, was incredible," Oh said. "I think it is a place unlike any other place I've been in my life and in my travels," she said.
Beyond the stage
Exchanges with Chinese students ran through both visits. During the March tour and the group's return to Beijing in August, the Whiffenpoofs visited universities, performed with student choirs and talked with peers close to their own age.
"Although we grew up in very different countries, the fact that we can all stand together and sing a song really brought us together," Oh said. "Music is a way to connect people."
Yet the connection did not end with the performance. Conversations with Chinese students gave the visitors access to the ordinary details of lives that rarely appear in international headlines.
"It's a very cool way to understand how people similar to our age have been experiencing their lives, and to share that with one another, and just learn about their culture and traditions and background in a way that is very different from just looking on social media or looking in a history textbook," Oh said.
Chinese students described the exchange in similarly concrete terms. Pan Lutong, a Nankai University student who performed with the Whiffenpoofs, said it was her first opportunity to work closely with a choir from an overseas university.
Outside rehearsals, the students also visited Tianjin's Ancient Culture Street together.
"This kind of exchange between students gave us a valuable friendship," Pan said.
The encounters continued in Beijing. On August 10, shortly after arriving in the city, the Whiffenpoofs rehearsed "The Brightest Star in the Night Sky" with the Beijing Wuzi University Riparian Choir.
"Through music, students from China and the US formed friendships and gained new cultural perspectives and musical experiences," a representative of the Riparian Choir told the Global Times.
The August 12 concert was the final performance of the group's year together. Two weeks later, Zhang said, the members would return to Yale, resume their studies and leave the road to another generation of Whiffenpoofs.
That work may continue after the tour. "This experience has shown me the importance and meaning of cultural exchange and face-to-face interaction," Zhang said. "I hope to continue working in this field in the future."
。 财联社7月21日讯（编辑 潇湘）目前，一环套一环的巨额长期合同，已成为维系人工智能热潮的商业纽带。然而，眼下一个可能鲜有人思考过的问题是：如果这股热潮消退，这些合同还能紧密生效吗？ 为AI提供算力的合同，已成为当前这股热潮中不可或缺的一部分，整个行业都正围绕这些合同进行重构布局。AI供应商表示，这些协议使他们能够前所未有地清晰预见未来收入，从而通过承诺未来将实现创纪录的销售额和利润来打动投资者。 而存储芯片行业或许是其中最极致的缩影。近几个月来，存储厂商与其下游客户正频繁签订期限更长的供货协议。这一现象源于自主AI智能体的爆发式增长——这类应用对内存需求极高。这似乎正将历史上一个价格竞争激烈、周期性波动且竞争白热化的行业，转变为一个前景更加稳定的行业。
B | 全球大型内存芯片制造商——韩国的三星电子和SK海力士，以及美国的美光科技——近期均创下了创纪录的利润，并宣称供应短缺预计将持续至2028年。SK海力士的一位高管在4月与分析师的电话会议中表示，长期协议有望改善市场对内存业务整体的看法。 美光在达成此类协议方面尤为积极。
C | 其“战略客户协议”通常为期五年，且采用“照付不议”条款——这意味着无论买家是否实际接收内存产品，都必须支付货款。上个月，美光首席执行官Sanjay Mehrotra在财报电话会议上表示，未来几年这些协议将贡献公司超过一半的营收。
D | 这对存储股的投资者来说似乎是个利好消息，而且今年以来这些股票的表现确实令人刮目相看——美光股价今年已上涨约三倍，SK海力士涨幅几乎与之相当，三星股价则翻了一番左右。
E | 长期协议在萧条期未必会执行？ 然而，尽管长期合同正在推动市场上涨，但人们眼下其实依然有理由质疑：在市场低迷时，这些合同能否提供任何确定性？ 事实上，如果内存需求在供应合同到期前出现下滑，这些看似得到保障的合同，很可能会被重新谈判或推延。 因为强行发货的后果，不过是让芯片在客户的仓库里积灰，直到需求重新回暖。而届时，客户势必会优先消化库存而非采购新芯片，这反而会大幅拉长芯片厂商的业绩复苏周期。 此外，芯片供应商可能也不愿将产品强加给不想要的客户——尤其是当竞争对手表现得更加灵活时。将无人问津的存储芯片推入供应链，可能会损害长期的客户关系。 无需深入探究科技史，就能找到证据表明——在行业低迷时期，供应商往往会表现出对修改合同更为包容的态度。 在疫情期间的那场全球“芯片荒”中，类似的长期协议潮也曾上演。当时，芯片厂商借由这些长期合同筹集产能扩张资金，并以此作为分配紧缺产能的依据。 专注于汽车及电子设备核心部件微控制器(MCU)的Microchip Technology，早在2021年就推出了“优选供应商计划”。然而几年后，当芯片供给从缺口演变为过剩时，该计划便被迅速废除，客户纷纷获得履约豁免，“灵活变通”成为了行业的主基调，大量合同被顺延数年，客户也无需再硬着头皮兑现疫情期间许下的庞大采购承诺。 正如该公司董事长Steve Sanghi在去年11月直截了当地表态：“我们绝不会强迫客户购买任何他们不需要的东西。” AI生态链被忽视的风险 可以预见到的是，如果AI狂热出现降温，极其相似的一幕大概率会再度上演。 然而，问题在于，眼下整个AI供应链的命运，却正深刻地绑定在这些因各家企业争相抢位而越签越大、越签越长的合同之上。
F | 这种现象其实早已蔓延至存储市场之外。诸如OpenAI、Anthropic这样的顶尖AI开发者与甲骨文、CoreWeave等算力云巨头绑定；这些云厂商转头又签订了采购AI计算设备的巨额订单。而作为设备核心的AI芯片供应商，则与台积电等代工厂签有专属制造协议；台积电的上游，又连结着与荷兰阿斯麦等设备巨头绑定的长期设备采购合同。 层层套娃下，涉及的金额往往极为庞大。 例如，甲骨文去年与OpenAI签署了一项巨额云计算协议，截至上一财季末，其所谓的“剩余履约义务”(RPO)——实质上是该公司尚未履行的合同已高达6380亿美元。甲骨文首席财务官Hilary Maxson上月向分析师表示，这一数字“为我们的未来营收增长提供了非凡的可见性，且全部由客户的长期合同承诺所支撑。” 在过去一年里，整个行业对这种长期合同的依赖呈指数级上升。自2025年年中以来，四大AI支出巨头——谷歌母公司Alphabet、微软、亚马逊及甲骨文——的营收积压总额合计增长了一倍多，增加了逾1万亿美元。 然而，所有这些所谓的“业绩能见度”，随时都可能在一夜之间变得混沌不清；而这些庞大的长期合同，甚至可能成为加剧AI泡沫破裂的催化剂。
G | 国际清算银行在本月早些时候发布的年度经济报告中警示，整个AI供应链的阶段性短缺正在放大过度投资的风险——企业试图通过长期合同锁定未来产能，这反而让他们在面对任何不及预期的需求波动时，承担了更高的风险敞口。 换言之，那些基于这些长期合同就将真金白银押注给相关企业的借贷方与投资者们，恐怕随时会面临一场不设防的现实重击。 （财联社 潇湘）。
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