BEGGING FOR CHARISMA

It should be no surprise to anyone reading this blog that I have an active appreciation for attractive Asian men, mostly confining my obsession to actors (like Zhao Wen Zhuo and Song Il-guk) and politicians (for example, the sprightly Ho Chi Minh, the dashing Zhou Enlai, and perhaps Gary Locke, our new Chinese ambassador). Not that streets and offices in Honolulu aren't overflowing with yang pulchritude.

In my defense, I note that I am not the only femme du certain age of the white persuasion who shares this predilection.

So a little escapade in a Hangzhou stationery store shouldn't be so hard to understand. I was browsing an offering of cute Chinese-style-bound notebooks (like at right) and picked a handsome red one that featured a silhouette of Zhou Enlai on the cover with a few photographs of the late Chinese statesman interspersed among the rice paper pages. I could use this for Mandarin class notes, I thought to myself.

On the next shelf was another little notebook featuring a photo of a dramatic young contemporary guy, looking like a Chinese James Dean or Marlboro Man. "Who is this, what movie is this from?" I wondered. Later I asked our guide/interpreter.

"He's not an actor," she declared. "He's a famous beggar! Everyone in China knows him." I had succumbed to the same phenomenon that millions of Chinese did, wanting to find this guy, take him home, give him a job, or at least just contemplate his visage and carriage. I imagined telling the Wizard, "Honey, I'm bringing home a beggar, he can live on the lanai, he can learn foot massage and clean the house." (Never mind that there are also an old hermit, a middle-aged shifu and a skilled young cupping therapist who I also would like to sponsor for U.S. work visas.) Unfortunately, like many of our own homeless (beggar and bum being not quite politically correct terms any longer), Brother Sharp, as he is known, is apparently mentally unbalanced and probably smells bad. He lives on scrounged cigarette butts and garbage, albeit with a lot of style and attitude. And it appears that the Takeshi Kaneshiro of the street has been rescued.

Can you name one famous homeless person in the U.S.? One with the charisma of Brother Sharp? Our guide/interpreter was puzzled by the concept of homeless (as opposed to outright beggars and street people.) "Why don't they work," she asked. It was a hard situation to explain. I think I'll leave that one to Gary Locke, who certainly understands commerce and the economy and is expected to communicate such issues well to the Chinese.

In any event, both Brother Sharp and Ambassador Locke look pretty good in leather!

Brother Sharp

Gary Locke