PRESSURE

One of my reader-commenters has observed that "it's time for a new post" which makes me feel something I haven't ever felt while writing these blogs: the pressure to deliver. I'm a one-time newspaper journalist, and now I manage valuable time-sensitive proposals, so I know about deadlines and time crunches and how to budget my time to get those things done. But I never have had that sense with the TAO 61s...until just now.

I never imagined that my ramblings about Spam and White Rabbit candy and hot Chinese martial artists and Korean swordsmen would result in anyone waiting for a next installment. So where are my ideas, my inspirations now? All awash in current events and global disasters, the heat and humidity of August dog days; writing, painting, working, cooking, all subsumed in a desire to just meditate.

So where do I find a topic? While other people are quaking and furious over everything China does (like preparing to launch a refurbished 30-year-old Ukrainian aircraft carrier or downgrading our credit or wrecking a train or harassing bloggers and artists), I look to China to find a good laugh. Here's one:

Tu and Mao

Perusing a reference book called Things Chinese, in the section that includes discussion of the elegant arts of landscape painting and calligraphy, inside-painted snuff bottles and thangkas (maybe not really a Chinese thing), I find a description of something I thought was just weird when I saw them for sale in Hangzhou: pyrographic renderings of Thumper (for Year of Rabbit/Tu) and Mao and other classic Chinese images like tigers and flying goddesses. I thought they were tacky and they reminded me of my cousin's woodburning set, which I coveted when I was 10 but was not allowed to have because I might do something pyrographic to the house. (Though I did have a small electric stove with which I could actually scramble eggs and bake cakes and burn myself.) These scorched pictures are called "poker work" (huobihua), a technique that Things Chinese says dates to the 17th century. The Chinese invented woodburning sets!

If that isn't amusing enough, I've been watching a lot of old Chinese movies in between marathon sessions with a 30-hour-long series, The Handsome Siblings, typical wuxia with orphaned and estranged (and attractive) twins and their goofy sidekicks (who knew Mr. Evil, Elvis Tsui, could be so FUNNY). It features the ethereal Nicholas Tse and the plucky Dicky Cheung (of Monkey King fame) in a romp through the Song Dynasty which, inexplicably, occasionally includes musical interludes of breakdancing and rock riffs on a guitar. Tse is a character named Flawless Flower, as delicate as a 13-year-old girl (who has formidable martial arts skill), the not-identical twin of Cheung, Little Fish, who sports the most unusual hairdo I've ever seen. I don't know what kind of hair-gel they would have used in the Song to maintain his fishy forelock.

The Handsome Siblings (and some miscellaneous pretty girls)

No matter how zany these plots are, I always learn something useful: in this case, how to bring a truly dangerous power-seeking eunuch to his knees. (You never know.)

You kidnap his "thing"...that is, you truly get him by the balls and then some. For those not quite in the know, and for those who never saw The Last Emperor (where one learned that eunuchs get to take their long-detached private parts to their grave to be buried as whole men), I refer them to the Last Emperor's Last Eunuch's story.

Although the Last Emperor's Last Eunuch was not so lucky:

In one corner of the outer square of the palace, a granite block still marks the spot where some of Mr. Sun's fellow eunuchs were said to have lost their "three precious," as the organs were called in court parlance of the day. Traditionally, a eunuch preserved his genitals in a jar to insure that they would eventually be buried with him, in the belief that this would guarantee his reincarnation as a "full" man.

Yet Mr. Sun was not so fortunate. During the Cultural Revolution, a decade of intense political and social upheaval that began In 1966 - coincidentally the year that the former Emperor Pu Yi died - Mr. Sun's family destroyed his jar. They were afraid of being punished by marauding Red Guards if such a symbol of China's feudal past were discovered.

"He used to joke about it," said Mr. Jia, who recorded Mr. Sun's story in a book titled, "The Secrets of the Last Eunuch."

In a scene not quite what I would have expected for prime time TV, the clever Dicky Cheung threatens the evil Eunuch Liu with an unusual sort of blackmail. (Like the Red Guards.) If he doesn't cause trouble for him, Dicky (really) will return the precious parts to Eunuch Liu; this deal takes place in a lovely palace room which is decorated with dozens of sausage-shaped red silk bags hanging from the ceiling. One would think that after the initial procedure, it wouldn't much matter where the parts went...unless you are the sort who worries that some black magic practitioner will do something with your hair and nail clippings.

And I thought a blog post was pressure! Next topic...footbinding!

Speaking of feet, I realize that Nicholas Tse has the same ethereal charisma as a massage therapist I had in Beijing.

Nicholas Tse: Flawless Flower

A Feel for Feet

If you're ever tired and need a little attention, I highly recommend a Chinese foot massage by a nice looking, strong-handed guy...who probably isn't a eunuch. Although I can understand why the old emperor preferred the eunuchs to look after their concubines' bubbling well points.