Tao 61

Welcome Water Dragon

2012-01-22T19:51:00.001-10:00

The second new year festival of the year, a yin start-over, and I fail as usual to cleanse the house of evil spirits, barely taking out the trash, let alone scrubbing floors and getting rid of chipped china. (I may however eat jai and gau tomorrow.) Today I finish reading a highly entertaining and useful book about China travel and language and watch Mao's Last Dancer and Kung Fu Panda 2, stories that have a lot more in common than you might at first think..

I'd read the biography that Mao's Last Dancer is based on when it came out, and forgot about it until a couple years ago when the film was showing locally in theaters with enthusiastic reviews. But I rarely go to theaters, so it wasn't until I saw the DVD in that evil purveyor of Chinese goods, Wal-Mart, at Christmas, that I picked it up. Good story about defection and courage and dedication to craft (although the fact that it was filmed in part in China with a Chinese cast and crew suggests that defection isn't what it used to be), and the film features a stunning dancer, Chi Cao, from China via Britain, in the lead role.

Ballet, martial arts, whatever...levitation is levitation.

On to Kung Fu Panda 2, in which a group of animated stuffed animals skilled in wu shu, voiced by greats like Gary Oldman (the evil character) and James Hong, the panda's adoptive goose father, manage to save China. With typical, classic wuxia themes of lost orphans, buddies, revenge, and lust for power (why did that White Peacock want to run China...I forget), it was cute and even brought me to tears (well, so did Mao's Last Dancer, maybe I'm just feeling soft these days). And it ends with Po the Panda's real panda dad discovering "My son is alive," thus guaranteeing Kung Fu Panda 3. But it lacked one element I watch kick flicks for: hot martial artists with sultry expressions and swords and kick ass kicking. No Vincent Zhao or Song-il Guk here. CGI pandas just don't do it for me.

At least the ballet scenes in MLD were gorgeous and featured real men, and especially the one wherein Li Cuixin's peasant father sees his son perform on stage for the first time, quite lasciviously, compared to Madame Mao's requirements, in Rite of Spring. How strange it must have been for a peasant fresh from Shandong who probably hadn't even seen Peking opera. Dad hasn't seen his son for some ten years and asks after the finale, "But why aren't you wearing any clothes?" He doesn't need to worry about that, really. Li Cuixin has since left the dance and become a stockbroker.

But I did get a little satisfaction from The Sorcerer and the White Snake, yet another retelling, with CGI, of the white snake legend, which I have enjoyed on stage in Chinese and English and in Zhang Yimou's Disney-esque light show fantasy in Hangzhou. Not from Jet Li, though, but the singer/actor who plays the doomed love interest of the White Snake, Raymond Lam, familiar to me from a few Hong Kong TV series.

OK, back of Ray's head, but Eva Huang is lovely as the love interest too.

Still nothing compares to Vincent Zhao (Chiu Man-cheuk) in Green Snake, where he plays the evil monk causing trouble for everyone. He could cause trouble for me any time.

Does he look evil to you?

New Year's Eve

2011-12-31T21:34:00.000-10:00

While the illegal smoky noisy New Year's fireworks slowly begin, like a thunderstorm building off in the distance, scaring the catshit out of The Yellow Emperor, I watch a Netflix-acquired DVD, Mysterious China: Holy Mountain, a spiritual travelogue I stumbled across in my recent queue update, about Wudangshan and Taoism. It's like watching Hawaii 5-0. (I guess; I never do that, really.) But Wudang... Hey, I know that temple, I've been on that peak, up those stairs.That's the tea shop...the medicine shop! I've hugged that hermit, and he's hugged me. (I broke his chair and he gave me dates.) The video convinces me that the one Taoist art I really would like to acquire is Tai Chi sword. You see women doing that a lot. Why might that be?

Peppered with a lot of elegant Wudang Taoist qigong and kungfu performances in exquisite settings, the video ends with an astonishing display of contortion by an attractive guy who looks just like Nicholas Tse doing things with his joints and feet that seem impossible and un-Taoist-ly unnatural, but suggesting that Chinese acrobatics started on Wudang Mountain. Forget that head-butting brick-breaking karate-style stuff the Shaolin guys do; can you put your right foot behind your left ear while balancing on your index fingers?

But I shouldn't be so callous. I am inspired to return to Wudang. As the video concludes, "Once you have been exposed the magic of Wudang Mountain and immersed yourself in The Way, the spirit of Taoism will stay in your heart forever."

In the meantime, I return to episode 39 of 51 of Emperor of the Sea and fantasize about a little sword play with Song Il-guk as Yum Moon (at this point in the drama named Yum Jang...but still Yummy). Not a bad way to spend New Year's Eve.

Yum Whoever

The Yellow Emperor's Christmas

2011-12-26T16:39:00.001-10:00

Lao Hu's Tree

Christmas Eve 2011

2011-12-24T16:49:00.000-10:00

I should be wrapping presents, but I've gotten lost in updating of my Netflix queue. Despite the furor over the DVD/streaming cost differentials and changes, it's still a pretty cool service. I never had Netflix until I got my iPad, which came preloaded with the App. I didn't find a lot to add to my queue among the new releases, but the Chinese region offerings are overwhelming, both DVD and streaming.

I put a Wudangshan documentary in the queue, then I realized I'd gone over the edge when this screamed "Queue me, queue me!":

Star Appeal...Chinese filmmaker Cui Zien directs this gay-themed sci-fi drama about Xiao Bo, a bisexual man who discovers a stranger by the roadside, naked and claiming to be from Mars. In Mandarin.

It's only got a 1.7 member rating, about as low as I've seen, but really, how can I pass it up? I've never seen a Chinese gay-themed sci-fi movie. I think I have to move this one up to No. 1.

Christmas Spirit?

2011-12-20T07:33:00.001-10:00

I think I'm beginning to get it!

Kim Jong-il

I always thought white was the color for funereal things in Asia, but I guess the North Koreans see it more like a wedding? Oh wait...it's that Communist Red.

Looks like a sleeping Santa!

Fried Fast Food on a Full Moon

2011-12-11T08:54:00.001-10:00

Not a good idea! I should know better -- I do know better -- but something about the holiday season makes judgement fly out the window like a lot of reindeer on a mission, driven by a rotund guy in a funny hat shouldering a big bag of Jack in the Box...and I don't mean the archaic toys. My digestion last night was eclipsed even more profoundly than the actual eclipse of the night before, of which I did manage to catch the waning portion at 4:30 a.m. It can't be that cold if I can stand naked on the lanai in the moonlight without shivering, although I didn't linger that long.

Last night I should have left my warm bed to sit upright while contemplating the full moon, trying a Moon Cream Meditation that was demonstrated last spring in Wudang, but I was tormented restless with excess stomach acid and vivid dreams, if I really was asleep, of Dickensian England and medieval Korea. I'd just finished the 8th and final episode of Bleak House, Dickens's tale of an interminable lawsuit which pretty much consumes all the plaintiffs up to the point where the final will is discovered. Simultaneously discovered is that the lawyers have consumed the estate, so there's nothing left to distribute anyway. The adaptation does have a positive, if not completely happy, ending (and reminds me that there is one last element in my father's estate, latent over five years, which could possibly pay for a trip to China...Resolution for Year of Dragon: must call lawyer.) I don't think I could have endured actually reading Bleak House; the screenplay with the marvelous late Denholm Elliot and Diana Rigg, was compelling and sufficient, though I could tell there was probably a lot left out in the 8-hour 1985 BBC rendering: quantity, if not quality. (Dickens was a paid-by-the-word writer...where do I get a gig like that?)

I thought I might try another piece from the BBC collection, but The Pickwick Papers failed to grab me; I succumbed to revisiting a favorite Korean drama, Emperor of the Sea. I needed a Song Il-guk fix and though he doesn't appear until the fourth Korean hour of the 51-episode drama, when he does, it's worth it. Just as savvy as Johnny Depp's Capt. Jack Sparrow, but more sinister, and less Keith Richards grubby, not BBC but KBS, the Pirate of the Yellow Sea may see me through the holidays, even though a new Korean Drama, a birthday present, waits to be opened up.


Song Il-guk as the delectable Yum Moon

How ironic to recall on this morning after serious lunar events and indigestion that SIG's character is named Yum Moon!

They Say It's Your Birthday

2011-12-05T12:12:00.001-10:00

And it came and went, with a little help from my friends. Although that's probably the wrong song. This is the right one. This is the first birthday I have experienced where I have not prematurely rounded up my age to get used to it, to exploit it, in the coming year. No, this one was a little more hesitant, the year of rabbit can continue a little longer for me before the dragon arrives; then I will acknowledge reality. I celebrated less than I contemplated the aging process. Birthdays are milestones, but meaningless really, except in that they give an opportunity to review one's progress and destiny. Are we older AND wiser? If the Taoist is actually returning to childlike innocence, immortal fetuses and all that, I only hope I can achieve it while maintaining control of bladder and bowels.

I spent my day in a fog, really, getting ready for acquisition of the Christmas tree -- my actual birthday present. As I predicted, this year we scored a perfectly satisficing one in less than three minutes at the lot at Ala Moana Shopping Center. These are not decisions that should require agonizing dithering. The next decision was equally easy: an party-of-two afternoon in both of our downtown Irish pubs, literally across the street from one another.

The day after the day, I tested my new all-region DVD player which failed to play my gift from my friendly Chinatown DVD vendor, Andy Lau's Future X-Cops, (what was she thinking?) which seems to coded be for a region beyond the Milky Way. Perhaps just as well: I was bleary-eyed after finally completing Jewel in the Palace, a popular Korean drama about cooking and medicine, with some restrained romantic and political intrigue with an uncharacteristically happy ending. My own trusty laptop has suffered--I hope sustained--a logic board failure, so I was using the Wizard's older one to access Dramafever.com. His Mac drops signals and has some display issues, but I finally can say I have enjoyed this 54-episode classic of K-D. (That's 54 Korean hours, which are just about 60 minutes, more or less.) Since starting it some months ago, I see by my own reckoning, I have watched at least 40 other films and several Chinese series. Why can't I speak fluent Mandarin yet? But the DVD player did let me enjoy a strange double feature: The Magic Blade, a 1976 Shaw Brothers classic, and Chen Kaige's Together. Still I can't get the haunting theme from Jewel in the Palace out of my mind. Here is the same theme, in the "sad" mode.

I don't know why anyone would waste time with reality TV or the sitcom trash available on your standard cable lineup, when you could enjoy this:

Handsome and beautiful characters, engaging plots, scenery, costumes and soundtracks. And that's just the historical stuff!

March on Washington

2011-11-22T14:42:00.001-10:00

Despite a very full schedule of conference presentations in Washington, I did manage to see some sights, some of which will never be seen again.

It was nearly a full moon my first evening in town.

Yeah, that little white speck in the middle right. It was crisp and cool, with the smell and color of autumn leaves, something I hadn't experienced for a long time. My cheeks were rosy and tingly. And dry. Still, a nice evening for a walkabout.

I strolled down to K Street, which was under occupation.

It all looked like any homeless campout in Hawaii, except for the creative take on the D.C. license plate (which actually reads "Taxation Without Representation." I didn't know that.) It all would have seemed utterly ordinary except for the police on watch.

I wanted to get close enough to photograph the really interesting thing, a police horse with a really huge head, patiently waiting in his van to be useful. My friend R noted, "You wouldn't want THAT charging at you." (Later, back at my hotel, I watched an episode of Frasier, in which he and Niles buy their Dad's beloved but pastured police mount as a birthday gift. It's sad. They're both too old to do much of anything.)

Just below K street was the Treasury Department:

And the White House:

Everything was very benign. It seemed like there should have been...news.

There could have been. But even the newspaper office was dark and quiet. There in the outdoor atrium, another monument to the obsolete: a Merganthaler Linotype that had been used to set most of the important hot-lead stories of the past.

I fingered the Linotype's "etaoin shrdlu" keyboard, which summoned a security guard out of the inner lobby. "Oh sorry, sorry," I said, "but this is SO cool." "What is it?" she asked. I wound up giving a little lecture on the history of printing and journalism, there in the outer lobby of the Washington Post, inspiring her to be even more protective of the artifact. Oddly, when I emailed the photo of it back home to my husband, he told me he and our son had just an hour before been having a discussion about Linotypes. The synchronicities of this trip were beginning to weird me out.

Not QWERTY, but ETAOIN SHRDLU

In its bizarre and complicated mechanical presence, I was thinking of the Linotype and the real freedom and power it represented in its time before offset printing, desktop publishing, email, blogs and Twitter. I once composed headlines on a Ludlow, its little letterpress cousin; I still have raw lead blocks and type I set from those days; I use them as paperweights to hold my Chinese painting paper in place on the table.

The Linotype was still on my mind the next day when I stumbled into the Laogai Museum, a little monument to the lack of a free press and expression, a sort of Chinese Holocaust Memorial. (I've never been to that place, having grown up in a time all too aware of the Holocaust. I don't need to see all the photos and shoes and eyeglasses to remember the horror.) But the Laogai...I hope my Visa statement for a book I bought there doesn't hinder my visa application for my next China trip. I probably should have paid cash.)

It took me two Harps to sober up at my new local on Dupont Circle where I also enjoyed some French onion soup and shepherd's pie.

If you get bored in Washington, there's something wrong with you.

Marching Out of Atlanta

2011-11-16T20:18:00.001-10:00

Three days of torture by Powerpoint in Atlanta was sufficient that I began to relate to General Sherman.

Burn This City...Now!

I don't know what he would have thought of ATL's big ants, but they certainly convinced me to march out of my hotel early, to get to the airport to make sure I didn't miss a delayed flight.

Sherman's Army Ants

Alas, no Red Carpet Club in Delta's hub. But I did find a nice R&B & fried chicken bar, albeit a little ersatz, owned by Budweiser, decorated with fascinating memorabilia of the early days of R&B and soul music. Sort of Hard Rock Cafe, but small and black and in an airport concourse. No ants, just record albums and flyers of Dinah Washington and Etta James performances and photos of blind Delta blues men. I was enchanted by the photo of a disc jockey who seemed to be watching me as I fortified myself with some meaty wings and brew for my pending foodless flight to D.C. (indirectly via Chicago).

Alley Pat

I thought the DJ might have been the bartender in earlier days; the bartender told me if it was him he'd own the place, not work there, and he told me the DJ's name which I promptly forgot. It's Alley Pat. I've learned a great deal of interesting stuff while tracking it down. Now pushing 90, he was one of the originals for WERD, the first African-American-owned and operated radio station in the country.

The bartender was friendly and talkative, and posed under Alley's picture for me.

Not Alley Pat

I arrived in D.C. very late with some of the leftover Atlanta wings for a snack, and then went to the hotel bar for a nightcap. The bartender got me my G&T and then said, "Didn't you used to work at XYZ Corp. in Hawaii?" Why, yes...it was R, a great guy I worked with at XYZ more than 20 years ago. Not someone I think about frequently, but remember fondly. Curiously, I actually had been thinking of him just a few days before I left on this trip. "Wonder what ever happened to R, where did he go?" And there he was.

My friend R

My G&T was on the house, and after R's shift ended, we went to the hotel bar next door and did serious damage to a couple bottles of fine chardonnay. This answered my question, "What do bartenders do after they leave the bar?" They go out for drinks.

And at least I was out of Atlanta and in the company of a friend.

Hail Atlanta!**

2011-11-14T17:43:00.001-10:00

Recently home from an exhausting business (with some pleasure) trip to the Mainland. It started out very mapped, laid out, itineraries through no less than seven major cities between Honolulu and Atlanta, but despite effortless packing and wrapping up of last minute details, I still felt as if on a treadmill, a little too lockstep for fun. Still, it was a beautiful flight east, with no seat mates, not even row mates. Flying away from the sunset, I caught the last glint of the day's sunlight on the port wing. I should mention it was Halloween.

Then the trick or treating began. A departure delay due to "mechanical problems" put us in late at LAX, missing a connecting flight to Atlanta via Cleveland. (The flight attendants wondered why I wasn't on the Houston to Atlanta run. "You should do that," they said. From now on, I will book my flights through the cabin crew not based in Mumbai. ) A midnight to 5 a.m. hotel stay was arranged where I discovered hotels don't provide toothbrushes anymore. Fuzzy teeth were bad enough, but the view out the window of one of those big L.A. industry billboards was more disturbing. (We don't have signage like this in Hawaii.)

All night, I felt like I was being watched. Even from a prone position in bed. Talk about peeping toms!

If it had to be a film star, why couldn't it have been this one?

I could have closed the drapes, but I was relying on the sun to wake me to get back to the airport where they had neglected to rebook me on the next flight out. They had to handwrite a ticket! Eventually, about 24 hours after I left Honolulu, I arrived in Atlanta, all groggy and jet-lagged with bad breath and disoriented after a long walk from gate to baggage claim, past an endless display of somewhat disturbing sculptures by an artist from Zimbabwe. I waited patiently --what else can one do?--with a bunch of people at a carousel that kept recirculating the same bags and no one was claiming any of them. I had a nasty feeling my own bags had gone missing. I looked up at the ceiling and experienced a truly Kafka-esque moment.

I'd been rerouted to Antlanta! As if the hideous Zimbabwe bronzes weren't enough, these guys --at least 24 inches long, antenna to tail--formed a strange welcoming committee. And I have confirmation that I was not hallucinating. Whose idea was this? Promoting Georgia red fire ants? Just what a person after 24 hours in the air with missed connections and lost luggage needs to see. Was it a promotion for a remake of Them?

My wayward luggage was eventually delivered to my Atlanta hotel, which also makes me wonder about yet another of the art installations at this curious airport.

This "piece," cleverly named "Samsonite," appears to commemorate the loss of luggage by travelers from all 50 states. If I had had the presence of mind, I would have searched for the Hawaii license plate to photograph. It reminds me of those charm bracelets composed of tiny enamel maps of all the states in the union. (I have one.) But I just wanted to get away from those ants.

And this was just Day One.

**I also wish I had had the presence of mind to have written the first comment on this Youtube link. I take the liberty to quote it here:

Atlanta was a city, landlocked, hundreds of miles from the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean, Yet so desperate the city's desire for tourism that they moved offshore, becoming an island and an even bigger Delta hub. Until the city over-developed and it started to sink. Knowing their fate, the quality people ran away, Ted Turner, Hank Aaron, Jeff Foxworthy, the guy who invented Coca-Cola, the magician and the other so-called gods of our legends. Though gods they were, also Jane Fonda was there.

How to Paint Obstinate Smelly Hairy Beast of Burden

2011-10-22T19:40:00.001-10:00

One of my very early attempts at brush painting was this image, based on a black and white photograph from a very old book on China.

I'll Never Be Your Beast of Burden

Except for one person who thought it was a turkey, (who probably never has seen either a real camel or a turkey) most people like the painting very much. And actually, I like it a lot too, the camel and the coolie have a strange relationship, something like Bette Midler and Mick Jagger (click the caption link). Although now I look at it and see it is still very western watercolor style, not the technique taught in my new manual, "How to Paint Lifelike Camel," in Chinese, acquired via eBay from Shandong. I was working from the manual today, and showed the Wizard some preliminary camel studies.

The Singing Camels

"They don't look like camels," he said. Then I showed him the manual. "They don't look like camels, either," he said. "But they don't look like turkeys." But I sorta think they do.

Camels and turkeys and ducks, also one of my favorite critters, actually have a lot in common. They are irascible and walk funny. Like some of my favorite people.

Why This?

2011-10-14T11:31:00.002-10:00

I knew all these people are nuts, on both sides, but this pushed the camel lover in me over the edge. Why sacrifice a camel to celebrate the victory?

I am reminded of an incident after Desert Storm (1990-91), when a Kuwaiti farmer was delighted at the return of his camel after the fighting stopped (then). His farming area in Kuwait had been declared a military zone by the invading Iraqis and some of the camels were frightened away. But after five years, she came home to him. He wrote a poem in praise of his camel's loyalty. "Praise Allah," he said. "CAmels are known for their loyalty, but this is a miracle." And not only that, she was pregnant.

I wrote a little poem at the time to commemorate the camel's homecoming:

I had a little camel

She ran away from me

She returned a bigger camel

Soon we will be three.

Now I write:

You've overthrown Gaddaffi

This we plainly see

But I'd rather the ship of the desert

Trample over thee.

The Brush and the Sword

2011-10-08T14:49:00.000-10:00

I like this Chinese wolf brush. It has a slightly warped bamboo handle with attractive etched calligraphy, it has lost its hanging loop (if it ever had one), but the bristles are strong. Or what's left of them. It was losing hair, probably through my neglect, but I injected a little super glue into the base, probably not a very orthodox treatment, and it seems to have stabilized. Although now that I study more closely the calligraphy on its handle, I see it is a shan ma (mountain horse) brush, although not as stiff and dark as my others. A mountain pony, perhaps.

I was thinking about this brush a lot as I watched Painter of the Wind, a Korean drama very very loosely based on the lives of Kim Hong-do and Shin Yun-bok, two important Korean painters of the 18th century. To think I ever would have given a second thought--even a first thought--to Korean painters of the 18th century! Getting hooked on Korean sa geuk has opened up whole new worlds beyond delight in the incredibly attractive, talented and teary actors who turn up in these things.

Painter of the Wind is about a young woman who has been disguised as a boy to be apprenticed in the imperial painting academy and her teacher who is strangely clueless (but puzzled) concerning her sexual identity, as is the giseang (geisha) who is the young painter's best...friend. The plot has all kinds of gender identity overtones, and is complicated when the young painter is "sold" by her adoptive father to the man who also has "bought" her BGF and killed her father. Like in wuxia, we have talented orphans seeking revenge with their weapons of choice. But here, the orphan wields a paintbrush, not the less mighty sword. In real history, Shin Yun-bok was not a woman, but in the drama and history, his/her erotic paintings (by18th century standards) turned the Korean art world upside down, like a Joseon Mapplethorpe.

I have yet to determine if watching this while engaged in my new brush painting class with a Korean nun has informed my studies, although it was a pleasure to learn some things about making color, and watching the brush in action, a character in its own way, as much as the original paintings which drove the plot. And I haven't seen such poignant unrequited sexual tension since Witness, the 1985 movie with Harrison Ford set in an Amish community.

I started watching Painter of the Wind with a set of DVDs I got a while back somewhere I don't remember, possibly from my Chinese video vendor, but more likely online on the cheap. The set has dreadful nearly incomprehensible subtitles, and in the middle of the second of nine discs it simply failed. But it is available on the awesome dramafever.com (please to excuse shameless promotion of commercial site) with far better subtitles.

Here's nice commentary about the series. Not martial arts...just art, and completely captivating.

Painter of the Wind

2011-09-24T15:08:00.000-10:00

DR. LAO AND THE GIANT CUCUMBER
Finished the 40-episode TV version of Wing Chun with the ultra-attractive Nicholas Tse, an extended telling of the famous Prodigal Son movie, to which I have referred previously, mostly because of the enchanting kung fu calligraphy scene with Sammo Hung. I don't have a lot to say about the series except that Sammo's son Sammy is fabulous, like an evil Donnie Yen, in a role like Al Pacino's in Scarface. Nicholas Tse is very pretty to look at and probably added a lot of sex appeal for younger audiences (well, me too), but the original Prodigal Son actors, Lao Sammo and Yuen Biao, brought to the series some continuity from the past, and great elegance and credibility.

Sammo Hung, Nicholas Tse, Yuen Biao

Of the genre, I probably would recommend Vincent Zhao's Master of Tai Chi series, but this was not a waste of time. And it had a happy ending.

But what's with that big cucumber? Pigua fist? Pickle fist?

Deadly Cucumber Fist

Next on my viewing schedule was The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, something that turned up in my Netflix DVD queue. I don't remember selecting it. But... Tony Randall as a 7,000-year-old Chinese sage! (Best role since the beatnik in Bell, Book, and Candle. Except that wasn't Tony Randall, it was Jack Lemmon. IMDB is such a great resource. But really, Jack Lemmon, Tony Randall, and even Peter Sellers...they're all the same. Great!)

An MGM film from 1964 (the Wizard remembers it but I don't--ta shi lao, buguo, wo shi bu lao) this film, a strange combination of The Music Man, Seven Samurai, Godzilla and maybe Wall Street, is the best Tao-themed movie I think I've ever seen. It would have been cool to have Bruce Lee playing Dr. Lao (or Lo, as the character calls himself, Canto-style), or even David Carradine...no, I take that back, Tony Randall was exquisite. (Although apparently there was an idea that Peter Sellers should have done it...but really, Tony Randall is an American Peter Sellers. And Peter Sellers is an English Jack Lemmon.) The Grasshopper here was a cute little haole boy named Mike who received the sage's lesson.

Based on a novel, the film, a classic period American Western, is about evil landlords/developers/speculators and peasants; honest but lonely journalists and librarians; vain and stupid ordinary people; the idea that what's old is new; that ancient Chinese wisdom (and magic) prevails, and that the world has some sort of mythical continuity. Oh, and redemption, although that apparently wasn't part of the novel. Tony Randall plays not only the clever Chinese "fakir" (clearly Lao Tzu), but also Appolonius of Tyana, Merlin, the Medusa, the abominable snowman from the Himalayas, Pan, and a big talking snake. Dr. Lao/Lo keeps a pet fish in a bowl which, if exposed to air, turns into the Loch Ness Monster--a dragon really, but one that has to be appeased, or at least calmed and shrunk by a rainmaking machine, a device constructed of bamboo with fuses that need to be ignited with his long Chinese pipe.

In one scene, on the site of Dr. Lao's circus, the sage is fishing (anachronistically with a rod and spinning reel) in a totally dried-up creek bed. The sceptical journalist there to interview him points out there's no water in the creek. Dr. Lao (or perhaps Chuang Tzu) points out he's not using any bait. Then he catches a really big fish. "A tlout, a tlout!" he exclaims with delight.

Got Netflix? Get this film. It's a delight.

9/11/11

2011-09-11T17:51:00.000-10:00

I am willfully ignoring the 9/11 anniversary hoo-ha --what can I say really?-- by focusing more on the Chinese mid-autumn festival. It is the full moon! It's that time again, I am eating White Rabbits (although no-one has given me any mooncakes) and practicing painting the Four Gentlemen: bamboo, orchids, chrysanthemums and plum flowers.

I don't really enjoy doing these: it is exercise. (And actually, I did not do any orchids; they bore me.)

But I discover truth in something a qigong teacher told me in Wudang. The move you don't initially like or find difficult will become the one you are most proficient at if you practice. I have begun to enjoy the plum blossoms! Combining the wisdom of my Chinese master and my new Korean teacher, I painted some plum blossoms that I actually liked.

****
Have begun another Chinese TV series, from 2007, Wing Chun (aka Yong Chun) with the hot commodity, Nicholas Tse, very pretty with flirtatious mannerisms (and an unusual hawkish nose) that lead some to say he's not a very good actor. In any case, the series (so far) really belongs to Yuen Biao, in a role with a dignified but powerful demeanor that makes me think of a Chinese Pierce Brosnan or Roger Moore. (Ling ling qi?) And who else appears? Sammo Hung, and Gordon Liu in a cameo. The young Mr. Tse is adorable, as is Sammo Hung's son, Sammy, but this series is making me really appreciate the old guys. Seasoned tofu, as my friend says. Speaking of which, two of the characters, children of a noodle/tea shop owner, are actually named Bun (Xiao Mantou) and Tofu. Bun is in love with Nicholas, Sammy is in love with Bun, Nicholas is in love with some ballet dancer who goes off to Hong Kong. Nicholas and Sammy are inadvertent circumstantial enemies; perhaps it will work out. Nicholas's father, Yuen Biao, was the target of someone pulling Gordon Liu's strings, but they had a rapprochement in the middle of a serious fist fest. Perhaps Nic and Sammy will work it out too. Seems to me Bun holds all the cards.

In the meantime, I contemplate the cover of the DVD set. Nicholas Tse appears to be fending off a giant cucumber. I know nothing of deadly cucumber fist. (But I think I could paint a cucumber.) I have 30 episodes of 40 to go. Anything could happen. Bun could give everyone mooncakes.

2011-08-21T19:48:00.011-10:00

NOT AS EASY AS YI, ER, SAN (1,2,3)

I've been in a kind of wordless state the past few days, an in-between feeling, looking back on a few months of activity, engrossed mostly in reading and videos and Chinese language study. I am a little anxious because I am starting a new Chinese painting class this week, with a new teacher, a Korean nun whose style seems to be very different from that of my teacher of the past two-and-a-half years, a traditional Chinese bird and flower painter. It looks like she may be retiring; fortunately I have access to a new venue. But whether it is tai chi or wu shu or painting, we get attached to our teachers, our shifus. Eventually one of us moves on. The student feels humbled.

So feeling a little like Xue Rengui greeting his shifu in The Legendary Warrior, my latest Chinese series, based on a historical figure, I gather my energy to move on.

I didn't feel like painting today. I have no picture in my mind, and besides I've been reading about painting too much to focus on a particular subject, and I really don't even feel like writing. So I picked up a brush to try something different. Building on a few rudimentary lessons from my former teacher, I consulted a couple of fine textbooks on calligraphy and decided to jump into it.

Learning calligraphy is painting with no subject (although that's a stupid thing to say, really, a Chinese character is a picture, though practicing strokes is like practicing scales), writing with no words...learning it is like learning to dance. I remember my teacher's advice, I follow the 1,2,3, turn, press, and lift instructions in the book, and splatter and dribble like an uncoordinated moron. Over and over and over. Until eventually, I feel the rhythm of the brush stroke. I become one with the brush, and occasionally execute a stroke that looks almost acceptable. Never mind that there are many strokes to master, and characters are built up from them like a ballet. And then characters with characters to make a phrase or a poem. I practice the basic bone stroke*, the component of the characters for one, two, and three, recalling the fluid grace of the swordsman in Hero; the old monk who paints sutras on a wooden deck with his cat's tail in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring; Sammo Hung doing kung fu calligraphy in The Prodigal Son (go to 54:50 in the video), or the water painters on sidewalks I saw in Chinese parks:

Solo Running Script

Two-Handed Couplets

And I am still stuck on the simple bone stroke. "Practice, practice," my teacher says. "Slowly, slowly." For years and years.

*A quick search on this term yielded some hits I really wasn't looking for!!!

2011-08-15T06:30:00.007-10:00

WEEKEND TIME TRAVEL

(This post was actually written a week ago--today is August 21. What is past? what is present?what is future?)

Since I spent some time in my office on Saturday putting last minute touches on a proposal due today, I took the opportunity to pretty much not do anything on Sunday. I passively time-traveled my way through Chinese history, finishing my current wuxia series and three movies that took me from Han China at the time of Cao Cao, to the birth of the Republican revolution in Hong Kong in 1906 to contemporary, post-modern Shanghai.

I'm not completely sure of the time frame of The Handsome Siblings, could be Song, could be Tang, but in the jianghu, the specific dynasty isn't important, it's just old and a little separate.

And irrelevant. In the middle of the last episode, I sent an email to my video vendor..."Do you have The Spirit of the Sword?" another series by the same author with Nicholas Tse. I have become accustomed to seeing him in films, but didn't know he did a lot of these longer TV series. Not unexpectedly, she did, and, "It's on sale!"

Donnie Yen didn't look bad (if a little short and pale) as Guan Yu, a classic general, bigger than life, from the Three Kingdoms Period in The Lost Bladesman. And he also played against his own standard in Beggars and Assassins, about a fictionalized (I think) attempt on the life of Sun Yat Sen in Hong Kong in 1906.

Alas, there was no swordplay or martial arts in Suzhou River--well, some beatings and a knifing--but what do you expect in contemporary Shanghai.

People sometimes comment about this passion/obsession of mine, the Chinese things. "You must have been Chinese in a past life," they say. But I think it may be the opposite. I'm studying to be Chinese in a future life. I wouldn't have fared well as a female in the Chinese past...none of the options are very appealing or likely...as a concubine, a bound-footed tai tai, a peasant, a servant.

The future for women in China looks better. (Assuming of course, I came back as a woman.) It is a truism that education is the key to improving women's status, giving them more options and control over their own social and economic lives. But some studies suggest it may be the one child policy that --despite its application in a society that favored boys--in the end is working to benefit girls (the ones who are born and kept anyway. I recently heard a depressing story about mothers in Pakistan, where policies against birth control keep a woman literally barefoot and pregnant against their will, in terrible poverty. And the face of African famine is usually overburdened women with several starving children. It's easy for us to say, why don't they stop having all these children, but cultural influences--religious values and patriarchy (patriarchal religious values)-- are working against them.

If there is time travel, or reincarnation, I hope I am prepared and aware. Perhaps I'll come back as my own granddaughter, (like Song Il-gook in Muhyul.)

2011-08-09T20:49:00.008-10:00

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.

2011-07-12T12:36:00.011-10:00

Da Bai Tu!**

I've been challenging the temporary crown I had placed last week on pre-molar number 20 (my dentist always talks about my teeth with reference to the numbering system) with some of the curiously addictive and very chewy White Rabbit Creamy Candies I bought in Hangzhou in May during a brief and slightly pointless stop at a huge grocery and dry goods purveyor: Trust-Mart. (Perhaps "Wal" means "Trust" in Chinese?) Our expert interpreter and guide insisted we stop there to get "dunnage," which puzzled us. She said it was a word she found in the dictionary. So in addition to stocking up on bottled water and some fruit (cherries were in), I picked up a small bag of White Rabbits to complement my big solid brown Easter rabbit (da qiaokeli tu) I'd brought from home with an eye to celebrate "Year of the Rabbit" at some auspicious moment.

I never did open the bag of White Rabbits in China (although we demolished the Easter bunny in a hotel in Beijing). Only yesterday I re-discovered them among some tea snacks I'd also gotten in Hangzhou: tiny tasty dried and sugared kumquats and plums to enjoy with my longjin.

I was going to send the White Rabbits back East with the Wizard as a gift for his sister's middle school class but I selfishly broke into the bag and consumed seven of the little milky sugary buttery taffies and then thought, maybe I can buy them online (if not Chinatown--I need an excuse to go to the video store). So Googling, I find a big Wikipedia entry about the iconic sweets along with the disturbing news that, in 2008, they had been recalled all over the world because the milk powder used in them was also contaminated with melamine. I was in China when that scandal broke, but I didn't think too much about it: I was drinking tea and beer and eating mostly rice and cabbage. Hmmm...maybe not so good to send to Auntie's students.

Contemplating the little pile of wrappers crumpled on my desk (I knew enough to not eat the outer wrapper, only the inner edible rice paper one), I wondered if I'd just poisoned myself. (None of my wuxia dramas has ever mentioned an antidote for melamine.) I did learn they have just 20 calories, and most people willing to eat them agree their mild flavor is curiously comforting. Not cloyingly sweet, a whole bagful could be consumed before you know it.

Determined to save myself, I looked for a 2011 update on the White Rabbit story. It looks like the company has recovered from the incident and entered Year of Rabbit just fine. According to AFP:

The scandal bankrupted Sanlu, once one of China's largest milk firms, after six infants died and nearly 300,000 fell ill - but White Rabbit survived. The sweets, which contain 45 per cent milk powder, were relaunched in China a month later with 'melamine-free' labels and banners in stores reading 'a healthy White Rabbit is jumping back into a big market'.

I only wish I hadn't thrown away the bag, not that I could have read the expiration date. I hope these were fresh. But at least I got them at Trust-Mart!

**Big White Rabbit

POSTSCRIPT

We stopped by Longs (CVS) on the way home tonight and what did I find but a HUGE display of White Rabbit candy in the center aisle where all the weekly specials are. Was I channeling White Rabbits today or have they been there all along? Now I can do a taste test, comparing my Hangzhou Trust-Mart stash against Hawaii imports! Feed my head indeed! Get high on melamine?

And in all fairness to both the White Rabbit Candy Comapny and Jefferson Airplane, there is another story behind the Chinese white rabbit: it is part of a folk legend. We see a man in the moon, or perhaps green cheese, but to the Chinese, there is a rabbit in the moon. The mid-autumn festival involves a rabbit on the moon pounding herbs to make a pill of immortality. The Chinese found centuries ago that mercury wasn't the right ingredient to achieve such a goal..maybe try melamine?

And it is no surprise that White Rabbit did intend to market the new healthy product as Golden Rabbit, the special icon for 2011. Although the candy I just bought is classic White Rabbit. Maybe I have to go to the mainland to find the Golden Rabbit.

Okay. I know I'm beginning to ramble on about this...one rabbit makes you bigger, one makes you small....

2011-06-29T16:14:00.006-10:00

THE TROUBLE WITH SPAM

Could anything be more controversial than Spam, and I do mean the meat kind, not just the annoying stuff that accumulates in your inbox? Well, I thought lots could be more subject to horror and ire. I have been warned (a little unnecessarily) about the horrible additives

in the ubiquitous canned meat for which there is an actual local Hawaii cookbook--I have a copy and I know the author. I know it's not good for me, and I really consume little (although I have a sudden craving for a Spam musubi, a snack also loved by President Obama, thus proving he was born in Hawaii).

But if anything relegates the Spam cans to the disaster shelf (which now has a new meaning), it may be a story cited by one of my blog-o-pals. I flatter myself to think that my previous Defense of Spam was the reason for his posting of this article. In such a way, I actually may have helped spread information about something very ugly going on in the Spam factory. (Although I'm sceptical about the idea of Hormel pig brain slurry being shipped to Asia for use as a stir-fry thickener; the stir-fry dishes I ate in China were rarely "thickened" with anything. Not that I wouldn't put it above the Chinese...perhaps pig-brain gravy is a traditional delicacy. And apparently it is in the American South.)

It's hard to do anything without participating in some kind of hidden horror...open a can of Spam and condemn some poor illegal worker to auto-immune dysfunction...drive your car and melt the icecap...buy cheap coffee and ruin the rainforest...every day another mea culpa. This is the meaning of original sin.

But every day, another chance to start over.

2011-06-16T11:17:00.003-10:00

IN DEFENSE OF SPAM

And I mean the "meat" kind, not the e-mail kind.

People in Hawaii have the idea that no one else in the world ever ate Spam, but I grew up with it on the East Coast. One of my favorite meals as a child, derived from a school cafeteria lunch, was green beans (probably canned), potatoes, a little onion, and cubes of Spam, cooked up as a stew. It was yummy. My druid-ish mother-in-law was known to make Spam roasts, studded with cloves and garnished with pineapple. And in Hawaii, Spam musubi is a very popular snack. I have been known to indulge.

Now there are flavors of Spam (one of the best inspired by a cargo-cultish recipe from Guam), and today I raided our "disaster shelf" (where there are cans of Spam and tuna, just in case of tsunami, hurricane or nuclear disaster) where a can of "bacon-flavored" Spam was lurking. (Bacon flavor? What a surprise.) I've been having all these lunches out with friends since I came back from China, and haven't really shopped. (Not that I ever do. The Wizard is better at grocery shopping.) Home alone today, I popped a few slices of the specialty Spam on the griddle, then a egg corralled in the browned slices, and enjoyed a kind of BLT in a flour tortilla (that's a wrap) with tomato, lettuce, alfalfa sprouts and real mayo and a grinding of black pepper. Yum-me.

From the Wikipedia reference, I note that:

In China, Spam is an increasingly popular food item, and often used in sandwiches. Hormel has had a joint-venture in Shanghai for 16 years which has been highly successful in promoting Spam. In 2005, the Chinese division of Spam was one of the most profitable parts of the Hormel company. This development is due, in part, to the increasing per capita income in Shanghai, coupled with the expansion of their food diet towards more meat.

Yeah, Spam is made from what?... pig noses and toeses? But if you eat meat, and I do, what's the difference between a processed snout and a BBQ rib?

2011-06-10T20:52:00.002-10:00

IT'S ART IF I SAY IT'S ART

Not sure what to say about this. Just a couple days ago I streamed via Netflix Ed Harris's 2000 biopic about Jackson Pollock, who I really like, but sometimes get confused with Jasper Johns. If you just throw paint around, it can be fun, but I think you have to be conscious of what you're doing. And what is the difference between a paintbrush in the hands of an ape and a toddler? And Rembrandt or Jackson Pollock?

In the movie, the pivotal moment, quite delicious, is when Pollock notices a blob of splattered paint, off his canvas, and sees the artistic potential in the beautiful random distribution of pigment and goo. It is the sloppy birth of his unique signature style. I like those paintings. The mother of one of my adolescent friends once tried to approximate this style in painting the floor of a basement "rumpus room." She got us to help splatter the paint around. We had some fun, but I'm not sure it worked. Modern art sometimes bleeds over to interior decor in strange ways.

The contrast of this and classic Chinese painting is like yin and yang. My Chinese painting teacher once urged me to see a film about modern art, was it Picasso or some graphic artist? She sneers a little at Qi Baishi, the "Picasso of China." "He makes a lot of mistakes," she says.

So did Jackson Pollock. His whole life looks like one big mistake. But I could live with one of his big murals on my wall. I think, well, I could do that...but it would look like I just got crazy one day, throwing paint around in a fit. (The way I try to paint a peony, it takes a lot of practice.)

Maybe that's art.

2011-06-05T09:05:00.012-10:00

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

2011-05-29T18:07:00.005-10:00

BACK IN MY OWN BED

How I missed my Tempur-pedic (and no one is paying me to say that).

I got very sick with something respiratory on my last day in the mountains, (Kong Shan Ling Yu, indeed) and spent one full day back in Beijing in a very fine hotel, cuddled under two fluffy warm quilts, supported by a pile of pillows, on a rock hard lumpy mattress. This is the real mystery of China for me. What's with the mattresses?

But there was a remote control to a nice TV, so it was CCTV 11 (all-Chinese-opera, all-the-time) and CCTV 6 (martial arts movies and historical dramas, occasionally subtitled). Not a bad way to kick back and recover, supplemented with Chinese medicine, foot massages (which include somewhat more than feet), cupping/moxibustion (my back still looks like it was run over by a military vehicle) and tea and sympathy from my Chinese guide/interpreter who says I got sick because I didn't wear socks with my hiking sandals.

"I'm from Hawaii. What are these things called socks?" And she said I needed to go outside and get some fresh air. Visibility in Beijing was about a quarter mile. I had doubts about that advice. But I did it anyway, and survived.

So while the trip was all about serious qigong and meditation practice, and looking at a lot of Chinese paintings, I did have some interesting video moments. CCTV was fascinating, as usual; one evening there was a feature about Taoism, curiously about exactly the place we had just visited, Ge Hong's Temple in Hangzhou. And then there was the Pepsi ad that kept turning up on CCTV 6. I can't find this on YouTube (yet); Pepsi does some very amusing and innovative ads in China.

How to sell Pepsi in China: Open to a handsome Han Dynasty swordsman, top-knoted and decked out in military armour, just like the guys I like to watch in my dramas who project CGI-generated qi to overcome their enemies. Gege is calm and serious, seated crosslegged on a bridge with a bottle of Pepsi in his hand. An army gathers to attack from the other side. Gege flashes a sultry look (or maybe it just looked that way to me) to the opposing force, takes a long swig of his Pepsi, and then...burps...a really big one. The opposing army retreats as big waves of burped qi overwhelm them. He raises his bottle in triumph and his soldiers come forth to finish what the Pepsi energy didn't. (Terra cotta Pepsi bottles in Xian?)

Then there was the very fine video offering on Korean Airlines' A330-300. (I've never been a big Airbus fan, but this widebody was a nice plane. KA seems to be upgrading and replacing its 747s.) A host of films to choose, all individually digitally controlled with a touchscreen at the seat. I watched a Korean tearjerker (there's a redundancy there) outbound that I have since forgotten, then discovered Andy Lau's new Shaolin...I remained on board until everyone else exited the plane in Seoul to see the end. I was able to do that. I watched it a second time on the flight home and decided I liked it a lot, especially the part when Jackie Chan says, "I don't know kung fu."

Not limiting myself to the martial arts genre, I also used the KA DVD player to watch a romantic comedy/drama that featured not only an elaborate ceremony for a divorce, but also a pre-death funeral, If You are the One, Two, a sequel to If You are the One, One (which I have never seen, but expect my video vendor to press on me when I see her again.) It starred the very fine Ge You, who I know mostly from The Emperor's Shadow, but I was intrigued by Sun Honglei, very big in Chinese film right now. No wonder I recognized him. Another strong stunning Northerner like Zhao Wen Zhuo, from Harbin.

I saw his face (right) on a billboard passing through Shiyan (not to be confused with Xian), a gritty town where the only industry seems to be cars and trucks and parts for them. The Detroit of China. (Although judging from the everyday restaurants we stopped at there, Chinese auto workers really know how to eat.) I've never seen so much public signage for gears, distributors, axles, and assorted nuts and bolts. Sun Honglei's face was welcome relief. (Although Andy Lau was all over the place too.) "Who is that? I know him," I asked my interpreter about Mr. Sun. "An actor, he plays bad people...he has a bad face," she said. Actually, I think he is quite attractive, but Eastern and Western standards of beauty and handsomeness seem to be a little different.

I still dropped Zhao Wen Zhuo's name whenever I could, though I got a sense that he is a little over the hill now, not new, like a Tom Hanks or even Robert Redford. Still, a guy in Hangzhou, when I mentioned my muse's name, stroked his own face and smiled. "So handsome," he agreed.

2011-05-08T15:36:00.004-10:00

ZAIJIAN!

My bags are packed, I'm counting down hours, will enjoy my last night for a while on a soft mattress. (The Tempur-pedic is something apparently NOT made in China.) I'm entertaining myself in these hours with Shaolin and Wu Tang, another classic kung fu flick that has next to nothing to do with my trip or with Shaolin and Wudang, really. Gordon Liu and Adam Cheng represent their respective schools, both come out on top, forswearing vengeance exploited by the evil Qing lord, but are reminded in the end by a fighter with great yin pulchritude, they are...monks. Unfortunately my Netflix-sourced copy of this mid-80s Hong Kong production is dubbed in English, with Chinese and English subtitles, which don't quite match the dub. Still Gordon Liu is awesome, and Adam Cheng is handsome. I'm in the mood to travel.

I will watch another episode or two of The Shadow of Empress Wu before I leave. There'll be about 20 more waiting for me to resume on my return. I had planned to write a bit about the similarities of Lady Wu and Hillary Clinton, women criticized for playing in unwifely ways in the political worlds of men and plagued by their husbands' dalliances with concubines and interns. I'll save those observations for my return. Or maybe not. There is a Mother's Day angle that is timely, now that I think of it.

Empress Wu at 1,000 Buddha Caves, Luoyang

Liu Xiaoqing as Empress Wu

At first I thought the Empress Wu TV series I've been watching over the past few weeks was a little slow (now at episode 34 of 62). But I have begun to make connections with more or less current events making it more interesting. This is another one of those historical dramas that drives me back to the history books. Like the also slow Sunzi Bingfa, the story is about real persons in real times, in this case the Tang Dynasty.

Midway in the story, which may or not be supported by historical fact, the Empress is imprisoned because she is suspected of having poisoned the Emperor's favorite concubine, who just happened to be her own niece. I guess when you're an emperor (or a president) it's hard to keep your pants zipped. Wu Meiniang, not yet the actual empress, but advising many of her feckless husband's edicts, is attacked for not behaving like a wife. She's running the country! Killing concubines! WWCS? (What Would Confucius Say?) The poisoning of the concubine is actually just a plot to discredit her. Who would be surprised at that? She in fact did dispatch the previous empress.

We were so quick to judge Hillary's long-suffering reactions to Bill's dalliance with an intern...but perhaps Hillary had taken some lessons from Empress Wu. And Madame Mao probably envied Lady Wu's rise to power (the way Mao himself modeled himself after Qin Huangdi), but wasn't nearly as beautiful.

In any case, Lady Wu's strategy was to rule over her people the way a mother rules over her children. Happy Mother's Day!

And that's all folks, until June.

2011-05-07T05:35:00.007-10:00

AWAKENING ON A TWO-WAY STREET

"Holy crap!" I exclaimed to the void when thunder, practically in my bedroom, roused me out of my early morning dream. I'd been resting well, having cleared all work-related duties from my conscience and having the weekend to pack before leaving Monday morning on my Korean Air flight to Beijing via Seoul.

An odd office moment on Thursday enhanced my anticipation. Our health insurance carrier (AKA, health care provider) had scheduled a health education presentation. I usually attend these sessions about nutrition or exercise or proper self-treatment --things all promoted in the interest of "containing" health care costs, something I understand because 25 years ago I used to work for this particular carrier. The idea is that the more the health care provider/insurance company does to "educate" the policy holder, the lower costs will be. I am not sure this is a proven concept.

I was a little leery this time because the session wasn't by the usual charming, fit, and handsome young man (who usually tells us things we already know but in an engaging guilt-inducing manner). But the topic was intriguing: "Meditation: A Modern Approach to Ancient Wisdom." Modern, of course, means western and scientific, but still, it seemed like a good excuse to get away from my desk for an hour. Meditation was being promoted, with the sanction of the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (an arm of the National Institutes of Health) as a stress-relieving (and thus heart-healthy) technique. Not too many of the staff took the time for the brown bag -- desk slaves slammed by deadlines. "I would have liked to come, but...". If I was the CEO I would have made it mandatory that the entire staff participate. But the CEO didn't attend either. (But his administrative assistant did.)

It was a nice overview of something my China trips have been about, although the insurance company educator, who seemed to have some background in neuroscience, was quick to point out that this was not being presented as any spiritual exercise. (That was part of the "ancient" concept.) No slouch, the charming, fit, and energetic older man reviewed some classic techniques (breath counting, visualization, affirmations, mindfulness), citing The Relaxation Response from 1975 and the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. (No neidan or Wang Liping here.)

The health educator led the desperate little group (mostly from the accounting department) in some basic breath counting ("1 to 10 is good, if you can do 11 to 20 you have reached the meditative state," he claimed); some affirmations (I am confident, beautiful, etc., appealing to the HR staff), and some mindfulness ("Unwrap the Hershey's miniature--unless you are allergic to nuts or chocolate--and slowly savor it."). Actually, I'd never noticed how well-polished and shiny a Mr. Goodbar could be. And you can make it last a lot longer when you're not simultaneously slaving at your desk.

I had already become one of the interactive talkative persons in the group, being the same age as the presenter and the only one familiar with some of his antiquated allusions (W.C. Fields, patent medicine, Proust) when I made an observation based on something my Chinese neidan teacher had asked me last year.

"Are you meditating always?" Or maybe lao shi said "always meditating." Whatever. Though I suspect he might have meant "regularly," I have been thinking always since then of the notion of "always" meditating.

"You know," I said to the health instructor,"if you practice deep meditation it makes the mindfulness stuff come more easily. And mindfulness makes the deep meditation easier. It's like you're meditating always, these techniques become a two-way street."

"Ah," he said, "that's enlightenment! Everybody, talk to her." I don't think this decreases any of the deductibles on my health care plan, but later, the person who is revising business cards to reflect the new office address asked me to verify my title.

"Just put 'Enlightened One'," I joked. She had also attended the session.

"Like a certification," she said. "Certified Enlightened One. CEO!"

In the meantime, wandering about this two-way street, my attention was called to something I said just previously in "Miswiring," that I'd come to rely on my car radio when I was "tired of thinking my own thoughts." (Ah, the two-way street of blog comments, something not everyone likes, but I appreciate the dialogue, the observations. I suppose I might enjoy chat rooms and IMs, but that seems too fleeting and noisy, too much like the office.)

My blog commenter quite rightly pointed out that I might myself be a little "miswired" at the moment, and this made me more convinced that it is time to make this trip back to Wudang for a little adjustment. Hardly a CEO (that's just a title, a position of control and arrogance all too often), I'm just trying to meditate always, trying NOT to be thinking my own thoughts all the time.

But I do have a couple of trivial puzzling thoughts about enlightenment on this early stormy morning, awakened before dawn by thunder and, yes, lightning:

How do I get my health insurer to subsidize my trip in the interest of health maintenance and stress relief?
How do I clean under the keys of the keyboard of this MacBook Pro, across which I splashed a glass of red wine, and now the "q,w,e,a,s,d,z,x,c" section of the qwerty chiclets is dimmed. I can touch-type well enough, but the lit keyboard enhances writing in the dark. (They say red wine is good for your heart health, right?)

Time to brew the coffee, smell it (slowly, slowly), get a haircut, shop for travel necessities, prior to tomorrow's packing exercise, to be followed by the opportunity for 13 hours of meditation at 30,000 feet.

2011-05-03T07:56:00.007-10:00

MISWIRING

We've been having some wet and wild weather the past 15 hours, starting during my last Chinese painting class of the session, perhaps the last ever: our teacher is considering retirement and may or may not teach another class in January. (She says I must do lots of painting in China...I can sell paintings at the Great Wall. A Westerner selling Chinese paintings. "They'll be amazed. You can make money.")

We thought the class might not even continue through the evening...lots and lots of dramatic lightning and thunder, not common for Hawaii, and the rain and flashing skies continued during my drive home like some short circuitry in the heavens. The security guard at the art school advised us not to use the elevators. There were power outages and traffic jams all over the Island. "I don't want anyone stuck in the elevator," he said. We shared our end-of-class potluck with him and eventually left, no problems.

Driving out of town, I had to wait at a corner where traffic was being delicately directed through an intersection where the traffic signals had failed. Then, once on the freeway, coincident with a shocking burst of energy in the sky, my iPod, running through yet another new car radio, choked to a halt. I got a message on the radio display: "Miswiring. Check wiring and then restart unit." How disappointing. I was getting some good practice with the tones of Mandarin in a language course MP3. Ta ma de!

The new radio, installed over the past weekend was to replace the other new one (stored in the trunk for two years before installation) that got soaked and drowned in a storm on April 15. After nine months, I had finally gotten used to its excessive obsessive control features and had learned a lot, mainly using it for Teaching Company CD lectures. I ordered a cheaper simpler replacement from Crutchfield (highly recommended, great customer service) and the Wizard installed it last weekend, a little more easily this time since he had repaired the reckless damage the thieves had done previously. Easier to use, and a bit more economical, and more attractive, really, it sounds just the same and took me less time to figure out how to set the clock than the old new one.

But if it's not theives, it's what? "The lightning had nothing to do with it," the Wizard assured me. And he should know. "I switched the right and left speaker wires...I think that's what the problem is. Try to reset it, and if it doesn't work, I'll look at it later." Still it seems spooky that at that particular moment...miswiring indeed. This is the fifth radio I have had installed in TAO 61. Perhaps I should just get used to the sound of silence again. And the thunder.

2011-04-29T19:55:00.005-10:00

NO LESSON HERE

Watched a very strange old kung fu film last night, Shaolin Drunken Monk, from 1982, with Gordon Liu when he was young and wiry. It turned up in my Netflix DVD queue, which I don't pay too much attention to except to keep it full. The deliveries are always surprises. And sometimes disappointments. SDM was disappointing because it was dubbed in English, and very poorly, with no option for Mandarin, or even Cantonese, with subtitles. So no pre-trip Chinese lessons. Not that "drunken kung fu" is something I really expect to talk about.

On the other hand, it was enjoyable in the old kung fu style, no wire fu, just lots of well choreographed fights holding together a typical but hard to follow revenge plot full of flashbacks. Most of the cast, despite period dynastic costumes, sported late '70s-early '80s hairstyles that looked permed, kind of like that former Japanese prime minister with the funky hair. Except of course Gordon Liu's trademark Shaolin-style shaved head (despite the title, he did not play a Shaolin monk, and there wasn't really that much drunken kung fu).

Notable scenes, with fortunately little dialogue, were a protracted sequence with Gordon making rice wine, and a pretty vivid sexy moment in which Gordon reconnects, literally, with his childhood girlfriend, whose father killed his family. Hence the revenge plot. In the end, Gordon completes his baochou, (a concept I have learned from other Mandarin films) and the girlfriend is torn between filial piety and lust. The film ends when she plunges a dagger into her heart; it's a long freeze-frame and doesn't even feature the faintest expected trickle of blood from her mouth. Well, what would you do if your lover killed your father because your father killed his father. If a son was conceived in that one hot moment in the film, how would you explain it later?

2011-04-23T12:35:00.013-10:00

A MAN CALLED PETER

I have a weakness for films of the sword and sandal/Biblical epic/religious genre and I make no apologies for this. It has certainly lead to my preoccupation with Chinese/Korean wuxia drama.

So, during this weekend completing Holy Week and the day before Easter Sunday, I indulge in a truly weird film, A Man Called Peter. I bought this 1955 Cinemascope classic DVD on the cheap at Costco, bundled with Luther, which I recently watched via Netflix (and which was a pretty fine movie). I suppose this package was designed to appeal to mainstream Protestants. I also wanted to buy The Greatest Story Ever Told with the truly magnificent Max Von Sydow, but it came with Mel Gibson's old-Catholic version of Passion of the Christ, the bloody Good Friday epic I already own. I'll probably pick that set up next time I need cat litter and toilet paper and pass on the Gibson epic to someone who has a taste for attractive half-naked bloodied men.

I vaguely remember A Man Called Peter when it came out. I would have been seven or eight years old, probably the film was playing at one of the three movie palaces in our provincial town: the State, the Capitol, or the Rivoli. (No multiplexes then.) Set in the late 30s/early 40s, it has an ambiance of Gone with the Wind meets It's A Wonderful Life. But now watching it, I have never seen a film more worthy of MST3K parody. (Maybe my blogging compatriot, with whom I frequently argue the value and meaning of religion, should establish this as a channel...a "critique" of spiritual/religious films, MTT3K. Mysterium Tremendum Theatre 3000. With little commenting robots who are parodies of Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and perhaps, me as a stand-in for Gypsy. Note to blogger compatriot: if you do this, and you could, the idea is mine and I get some of the proceeds to be negotiated!)

Peter is not St. Peter (though the reference is obvious) but a pious Presbyterian who somehow is "called" to be the pastor of the Church of the Presidents and the U.S. Senate Chaplain. (Wow, the alliteration here was totally random! I would have said Parish, but they're Presbyterian, and this was a decade before we had a Catholic president.) His wife hotly (though she might not have recognized her own heat, this is pre-My Body, My Self) pursued him after a sermon of his she heard about women's emancipation. "What man wants a woman whose hair stinks of cigarette smoke? A woman who can drink like his buddies?" The feminist in me is slightly enraged. Need I mention that there was no mention of equal pay for equal work? This was 1955. (Although in this post-feminist world, I am struck by the new feminine mystique, the focus on the divine feminine. Pretty much what Mrs. Peter was talking about.)

Still, the movie is compelling. Maybe the whole point is summed up in the line:

"Most people get just enough of an exposure to Christianity in childhood to give them a lifetime immunity to ever catching the real thing."

2011-04-22T23:50:00.008-10:00

KABUKI!

There was a moment in my adolescence when I thought "kabuki" was the coolest, funniest, most delightful word I ever heard. I think I picked it up from the branding on a can of mandarin orange sections, so it had pleasant associations, and I used it as an exclamation, much the way you might say "voila" or "ta da." No one I knew then knew what it meant; it was all mine. It wasn't until years later I learned it referred to a particular style of Japanese theater. The kanji characters in "kabuki" mean sing, dance, and skill, and also something avant garde or bizarre. I probably executed a silly little flourish when I exclaimed "Kabuki!" when I was pleased with something.

Last night I had my chance to remember the "kabuki" feeling at a performance at the University theater of a kabuki comedy (in English) called The Vengeful Sword. After a substantial meal with Kirin beer and nigori sake subsidized by a gift certificate left over from recent association with the Miss Cherry Blossom Festival, my companion and I mostly stayed awake for the stylized performance, very pretty to watch, but not quite up to the acrobatics of Peking opera or the over-the-top flash of the Cantonese style. It's hardly appropriate, but I can't help but compare this performance with the English language production of the classic Peking opera, White Snake, I enjoyed in the same theater last year.

Of course The Vengeful Sword wasn't really opera, just a sort of melodic dialog translated to English (not a language well suited for sing-song), with intriguing background noise of Japanese instruments and singers.

I like the swordplay in my Chinese and Korean dramas .... but I was not quite prepared for the stylized weapon-wielding in kabuki. It was a little slow, Mr. Rogers' Japanese Neighborhood ...on heroin. And while the Chinese and Korean protagonists are, without much exception, very sexy, the clown-faced, bald headed samurai failed to rock my boat. Although the geisha characters, in beautiful kimono, were graceful and colorful.

Still it was fun, a culturally expanding event. I am certain there were nuances completely foreign to me; the first time I saw a Cantonese opera I was completely dumbfounded.

When I got home, quite late, I watched an episode from the Season Four set of Mad Men I picked up at Costco the day before (while shopping for an Easter leg of lamb). What strange dreams followed: Madison Avenue of the mid-sixties meets 18th century samurai culture. And now, on reflection, I'd like to see The Vengeful Sword again. Kabuki! Bring on the nigori.

2011-03-17T08:55:00.009-10:00

RANDOM RANTS

My mind is cluttered, disturbed, boggled, full of sloshing debris like the tsunami wash. Many thoughts, observations just flooding through, eddying around.

I might attribute this condition to the anticipated SUPERMOON. Seems like every time a month goes by, there's another lunar anomaly to worry about. Closest in 18 years! But 18 years is nothing in the large scheme of things. I can remember 18 years ago, and I don't remember that moon.

Or it may be from watching news because there's so much of it right now, but never enough of the right kind. Where is Walter Cronkite when we need him? Once in the evening was enough to calm us during the Cold War. But CNN, as sloshy as my mind, where newsmen not only report the news, but make it, interviews the husband of a New York Times reporter among four missing in Libya. He is, according to the CNN reporter, a "Reuter" bureau chief in New Delhi. Reuter? It's Reuters, people. (Although someone named Reuter did found the company.)

Anyway, that bureau chief says of his wife, who has been indulging in some sort of humanitarian aid in Libya, "She has to come home, we've got to have kids." In times of nuclear ambiguity, overwhelming natural disaster and war on several fronts, that's the first thing I always think of!

And then, later, a beautiful woman, not Mr. Reuter's wife, loses the feed to a correspondent and says, "I hate when that happens." Would Cronkite ever have said that? Or something like another reporter, somewhat ditzy, the kind that used to be an excuse for why women should NOT report the news, "The tension so palpable you can almost feel it." I suppose there are excuses for all this, but it seems to me standards have deteriorated.

Or maybe it's the Chantix ad, a drug commercial that I wasn't sure what it was for at first, mostly endlessly listing horrible side effects from skin rashes to suicidal urges while a middle-aged couple chat in their kitchen. Chantix is an enchanting "stop smoking" drug. If the side effects aren't scary enough to make you quit, continuing to smoke might be the better alternative. And who names this stuff? Drug naming and Google account visual word verification seem to use the same algorithms.

So one half hour of TV news makes me crazy. I'm going to go back to watching DVDs of Eagle Shooting Heroes tonight where the subtitles offer better entertainment and edification. In the last episode, the endearingly cute kung fu mistress is kidding with her goofy sidekick. "Would the Emperor like some flesh fruit?" For all I know, that's exactly how the Chinese script reads. Once finished with their dallying over kiwis and pomegranates, they go to seek the magical coveted manual of "splendiferous" kung fu. That sounded a little too Akbar and Jeff to me to take seriously...until the Wizard said, "No, that's a real word. Look it up."

And indeed it is. Although, according to my American Heritage dictionary, best used ironically. And not recognized by the Google blog spellchecker which wants me to change it to "splenderous." I expect to hear some CNN reporter use it tomorrow.

"In a splendiferous effort by Japan's National Defense Force, with the assistance of Gamera, nuclear disaster has been narrowly averted. Flesh fruit has been delivered to all affected. Here to speak with us, is that Giant Turtle...oops, sorry we lost the feed. I hate it when that happens."

2011-03-12T11:21:00.009-10:00

TURTLE MEAT

Not to make light of a serious event -- well maybe a little -- but, where is Gamera when we need him? Or her?

In 1989, on a flight back from Tokyo on JAL, I was privileged to have a window seat in business class on the 747. My aisle-seat companion was a very tall attractive young Japanese man who was on his way to a conference on rocket propulsion in Waikiki. Really. During the flight he was studying a Japanese-English dictionary of rocket science terms. Sometimes it IS rocket science. We got to talking after comparing notes about some curious tropical and Asian fruits on offer in the in-flight magazine/catalog. (Who would send their friends a durian?)

The gentleman offered his business card to me. I still have it somewhere, and until this moment I could remember his name, very lyrical. He was with Mitsubishi Aerospace. Like a stupid person, I said, "How interesting, I just bought a new Mitsubishi car." (It turned out to be a piece of junk.)

He turned in his seat, hands clasped, and bowed to me. "Thank you for buying our product," he said. I can't imagine a Chrysler space systems employee ever doing that to a Japanese person proud of his new Dodge RAM. (If there was such a person.) In the course of 89,000 miles, I always thought of Mr. Matsuzaki (or maybe that was his first name) when I drove past Pearl Harbor in that car.

He went on to talk about Star "Tlek." Who was my favorite character? He liked Dr. McCoy. I would have thought Scotty would have been his idol. (I was personally in a Kirk place at the time, not an Ohura.) "Do you like Godzirra movies?" he asked. Sure, I liked Godzilla, and Gamera. All those Japanese monster movies parodied on MST3K.

Then, very serious, he said, "I wonder about Godzirra. Was he a boy or a girl? He had a child. But I wonder. How could he have a baby?" This was one of the strangest encounters I have ever had on an airplane. At first I thought maybe he was hitting on me, but not. He was seriously interested in sci-fi and the reproductive nature of Godzilla.

Today, I wonder how he's doing. Did Mr. Matsuzaki get a family? Is he a salaryman with Mitsubishi? A scientist working on programs and products? Have any friendly creepy monsters come to rescue him and his friends during tidal wave/earthquake/nuclear failures? The images of the first surge over Honshu sure looked like "toy boats" being hurled around in a Godzilla vs. Gamera movie.

Where are the saving monsters to clean up the mess, pick up these toy boats?

UPDATE (3/20): After a futile search looking for the business card of Mr. Matsuzaki, the name magically comes to my mind: Nobuaki. Nobuaki Matsuzaki. What a lovely, poetic name to remember over more than 20 years.

2011-03-09T15:29:00.011-10:00

DEATH AND TAXES

Managed to make it in time to Ash Wednesday Mass, though cutting off someone in the right lane to enter the church parking lot, free and conveniently located across the street from our tax accountant, where I had to deliver papers following the service, rendering what is his to Caesar. I was a little distracted on the drive in after a meeting I thought would never end, listening to a Teaching Company "Philosophy, Religion and the Meaning of Life" lecture about Elie Wiesel and his father during the Holocaust, painted as a tragic modern saint figure as a complementary bookend to Abraham and Isaac. Well, that put me in a perfect mood for the imposition of ashes.

I composed myself for proper cathedral behavior, and managed to follow along nicely in the service. I haven't been to a proper Anglican mass for a while. Maybe five or six years. I was charmed when the Bishop's homily referred to Saint Francis of Assisi, recalling to me the movie I watched recently where I perceived Taoist themes of yin and yang, nature and compassion. The Bishop told a story, almost as mood-altering as Elie Weisel's, about a woman with terrible face cancer (like St. Francis's lepers) in a nursing home he had to visit while a seminary student. Depressing, these ashy stories.

Which lead to the "Prayer over the Ashes." All solemn and pious, quietly settling in for a little meditation, surreptitiously experimenting with Taoist mudras while kneeling...and then my phone went off. My friendly reliable mechanic was calling. The ring tone I have assigned to his number is..."Start Me Up." Mick Jagger in the Cathedral. OMG. (At least it wasn't "Sympathy for the Devil.") Fortunately the phone was readily accessible in my bag, so I silenced it. Which was fine, until the voice message alert went off a minute later. Ring tone: "Like a Rolling Stone." Bob Dylan in the Cathedral. "Once upon a time, dressed so fine, threw the bums a dime, in your prime...didn't you.?" Silence! At the next convenient moment I retrieved the phone to turn it off. I do this for the opera; why didn't I think to do it for a mass?

When passing the peace, I apologized to those around me. No one seemed to care. I think I was forgiven.

A dash to the accountant. "If you have questions, don't call me, call my husband, I don't want to know." Back to the church parking lot. I'd left a sizable offering in the plate, but I didn't want to over-exploit my stay in the garden. I did take a moment to contemplate the fountain in front of the Cathedral. A big bronze image of St. Andrew and his fish, but the pond was empty of water, full of writhing snaky cables and copper wire. A couple of workers were standing around, doing something to the display. They thought it was funny when I took a photo.

"Spirituality is a work in progress, "I said. They laughed.

One more stop while I was in the neighborhood. My Chinese DVD vendor called me last week about the big sale she had on Tai Seng DVD sets.

She was talking to an older retired Japanese woman when I arrived, and we all started to chat about the DVDs. The retiree likes Taiwanese and Korean dramas and the historical epics I like too. "Those guys are all so handsome," she said. She assured me that retirement was great, she was busy and only regretted not retiring even sooner so she could take classes and watch DVDs. I wonder what her cellphone ringtones are.

I took her energy to heart as wise Ash Wednesday advice. Emily the vendor asked what happened to my head, there was black stuff on my forehead. "I've been to church," I said. "Oh, I thought you'd bumped into something." In a way, I did; spirituality is a work in progress.

I made my selection, buying enough for a free movie, increasing my backlog of DVD series that will carry me well through Lent, to say nothing of probably all the way to Advent. In 2012.

I want to go to China in May, but my plans are a bit tentative. This may be the closest I get. After all these videos, I should be able to speak Mandarin. Language -- like spirituality, also a work in progress.

2011-02-27T08:58:00.007-10:00

CAPSULE REVIEWS

A little under the weather with a late winter cold, enjoying a few capsules of Alka Seltzer Plus, I turn to the Chinese medicine of videos. Finished Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, the wuxia fantasy set in part in Wudangshan, nearly as familiar to me as my own neighborhood. The double-edged plot swirls around the acquisition of two important magical weapons in the Yuan Dynasty, and the plight of Zhang Wuji (or Chang Mo Kei, for the Cantonese speakers), the ultra-cute top-knotted orphan, who has a bad habit of promising to marry any woman he meets along the way. He has extraordinary kung fu and leadership skills, but is a little blind in the relationship area. (He has over-committment issues, and celibacy seemed not to be an option.) Of the four fiancees, one returns in self-exile to lead her monastic sect in the jianghu; another conveniently, but poignantly, dies (or so everyone thought); the third carries out some revenge missions that both help and hinder Wuji/Mo Kei, and the fourth, the most unlikely, but perkiest, a Yuan princess, disowns her Mongol heritage to become his life-partner. This all suggests that arranged marriages may have been a good idea. But who speaks for an orphan?

Or maybe not, as seen in In the Wild Mountains (Ye Shan), another hilly escape, this time to the Shaanxi countryside, where the lifestyle is undergoing Deng Xiaoping's economic transition. Here, the setting also looked familiar to me; in 1988, the Wizard and I took a train for a weekend in a remote area three hours out of Beijing in a peasant's guest house to wander about the mountains, eat noodles and ride horses. Last spring, I mentioned to my guide in Beijing that I had been to Ye Shan Po, but I was never quite sure where it was...west, north, south? "How do you know about Ye Shan Po," he asked, as if I had discovered a state secret. He told me it has become much more developed as a tourist destination. I feel partly responsible. (I was part of the rising of the Chinese middle class?) It only occurs to me at this moment that the movie's Chinese name is the same as the area I visited: Ye Shan. Wild Mountain. Don't know what the "Po" might be, a yin, earth spirit maybe?

In the movie, two brothers, one traditional and lazy, the other, fired up by the idea of money-making schemes, are married to the wrong women. In an effectively legal wife swap, they manage to live the lives they were supposed to. If you're an entrepreneur, probably a supportive equally driven spouse is a good match; if you just want to kick back and smoke the tobacco and make babies, a quiet domestic partner is probably more suited for happiness. The movie explores the changes in social and economic structures that were (and still are) happening as a result of economic reforms in rural China, but the landscape was what really grabbed me.

I picked up My Son, a more recent Korean film, at the going-out-of-business sale at my neighborhood Blockbuster (everything must go...no one seemed to want this one but me). The tale of a father, imprisoned for life for robbery and murder, gets a day's leave to meet the son he hasn't seen since the boy was an infant. That leaves a lot of room for emotional drama and some comic moments too (mostly rendered by the guard who accompanies the prisoner on his visit home). Compassion in the face of great tragedy is the theme of this, and if you liked Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, you will enjoy this one as well. Pay close attention the first time around; it has a completely surprising twist that you will only be able to experience once.

Lightening the mood with some martial arts, The Prodigal Son, not a Biblical epic, but a 30-year-old and fabulous kick flick by Sammo Hung (rendered as Samo in the credits) with his buddy Yuen Biao in his first big break...all these actors who were younger then, but still kicking. I especially like a scene, Chapter 12 on the DVD, the "Drunken Calligraphy" demonstration: Sammo Hung performing with a huge inky brush, not quite the way my Chinese painting teacher delivers her lessons. This is hard to find to buy (even Netflix had to get it from another location), but in a simple search I found it for you to watch here. (For a calligraphy lesson from a master, start at about 56:50 in the video.)

2011-02-19T11:31:00.002-10:00

TECHNOLOGY SUCKS

Wanted to take a picture of some very beautiful cloud formations off the lanai, and thought I would just use the Wizard's nice new Nikon digital SLR that I got him for Christmas--there it was on the coffee table. But can I figure out how to make it just take a picture? I am lost in some menu land. (I drove his car yesterday and had the same experience with his new radio; I didn't want to listen to his Teaching Company CD of the "Life and Operas of Verdi," so just thought I'd tune into NPR. But how? I have gotten used to my own new audio system, but there seems to be no consistency to these things. Too many tiny buttons with cryptic icons. Just give it up. (But eventually I did find the radio.)

And, actually I think I have figured out how to TAKE the photos, but retrieving them is another matter. Nice camera really, the Nikon. Feels good in the hand. Next I will post a comparison of the images from my faithful pocket Casio XILIM and the hefty Nikon.

2011-02-12T19:16:00.008-10:00

THE TAO OF ZEFFIRELLI

A little break from my fantasy travelogue of Wudang, my Netflix DVD delivery this week was Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon, a film I never saw when it was released in 1972 (the day before my birthday, but I wasn't really doing film that decade). Some years later it was recommended to me, maybe in the early '90s, by a guy who loved it, and who in retrospect, looked a lot like the character of St Francis of Assisi in the film. (Indeed, he was a kind and sensitive Catholic.) It appears to be one of those films that is rated as "my most favorite movie ever" by some folks.

When it popped up on a "recommended" list in my Netflix queue another couple decades later (OMG, am I that old?), I thought I might revisit it. Looking really good on my new 50" plasma TV, better than the videotape I rented in the early '90s, it's a pretty film, perhaps a little contrived, about the life of St. Francis, which, as interpreted by Franco Zeffirelli, probably had great hippie appeal in 1972. And the soundtrack/music by Donovan is a little too much like the "guitar masses" of contemporary Catholic liturgy; I thought they ended in the '70s, but not. (I have a high-church-Anglican taste for Renaissance music with my bells and smells.) Not that there's anything wrong with Donovan, but, I can never hear him without thinking of the scene in Don't Look Back where Dylan pretty much demolishes him.

Still this movie, almost 40 years old, is fresh and beautiful and full of appealing message. It's not a "Catholic " film except historically (although Catholics may beg to differ) and presents a pure Gospel message that is very in line with Taoism--Brother Sun, Sister Moon, all that lilies of the field stuff? Or maybe Buddhism --a lot of caring for lepers and loving-kindness. (A book I have on the lives of the saints also attributes the "serenity prayer" to St. Francis, in addition to the "Canticle of the Sun.")

The best part is at the end: Alec Guiness as Pope Innocent kissing Francesco's feet. Ah, Alec Guiness who once planned to become an Anglican priest... but how he owned his roles: a Pope, Obi-Wan Kenobe, Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia, Adolf Hitler, George Smiley, Sigmund Freud, to say nothing of movies he wasn't in but seemed like he was, like Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter...I get him confused and conflated with Richard Harris, Ian McKellen, John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier. Well, what an awesome group for confusion! Like St. Francis and his band of Brothers and Sisters.

2011-02-10T14:48:00.008-10:00

HARDLY WORTH COUNTING
If Nielsen diaries are manually tabulated by a real person, like piecework, whoever counts my 15-minute increments of broadcast or cable television viewing will move three diaries through in record time. Two of the three don't count at all; one TV was never turned on and the other discarded just before the survey period but after the diaries were issued. Regarding the third, only one hour and 45 minutes in one week by one viewer will need to be counted or scored or whatever they do. And that was a couple of times when CNN news was on in the background while I was brushing my teeth and looking for clean underwear. The other two times, which actually might count as "watching," more like rubbernecking, were pondering the offerings of the Falun Dafa network, one of which currently is a Korean drama (The Great Queen Seondeok) with Mandarin audio and English subtitles. My limited viewing period also featured a behind-the-scenes production story of Shen Yun; subscription solicitiations (advertising) to The Epoch Times and a lot of odd health and wellness promotions. Still, much of it was in Chinese and thus a language learning opportunity. (My Chinese painting teacher has been learning English through Bible study.)

Not that the big new 50" plasma TV hasn't been used. Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber is a veritable travelogue of Wudang, but watching personal DVDs or Netflix doesn't count in Nielsen's rating eyes. (This was verified through at least two phone conversations from representatives of the company, making sure I was doing the diaries correctly. "Don't forget to mail them on Thursday," I was reminded.) Too bad. Personally selected and controlled viewing might be a statistic that would be useful.

2011-02-08T10:40:00.009-10:00

CHINESE QI BAI CLUB?
Six days after my Nielsen survey ratings exercise began, I found reason to make a second entry in my diary. Doing this for TV watching is a little like writing down all the food you eat when monitoring your diet; if you know you have to write it down, do you eat it? The study affects the behavior.

A little hesitantly, I clicked-on the new 50-inch plasma TV in my closet, perhaps the only big TV in the country that was not tuned in to the Superbowl on Sunday. I just wanted a little background information while I completed my morning toilet...a little news to confirm that there is still a world to enter (after the Superbowl and associated cultural controversies like the "groupon" Tibet ad controversy** which I only heard out about--orally --this morning from a co-worker).

I tune to my weekly 15 minutes of CNN...but wait! I spy a flyer handed to me during last week's Chinese New Year parade promoting Oceanic Time Warner's Channel 698--a lot of Chinese text--(the distributor apologized that it was all in Chinese), but I did recognize some of the images for Chinese (and Korean) dramas on offer. Hmmm...I might like this!

So forgoing CNN, I locate digital channel 698 (now I know I get digital), the New Tang Dynasty Television network (NTDTV). The morning slot featured English newscasts of Asian events, for instance, a story about a pro-democacy person's funeral webcast that was banned in Hong Kong. (I think I read about this on a Hong Kong blog I follow.) Something disastrous going on in Malaysia or Thailand, a lot of people putting their meagre but colorfully wrapped possessions in the beds of small pickup trucks...a "wish lantern" festival in Singapore...a feature on the upsurge in recruitment and training of the Japanese national guard. All much more interesting than CNN. Reminded me a little of watching TV in Beijing, slightly off-kilter, foreign, but real.

So I did a search for the network schedule, and besides there was something that sounded familiar about NTDTV. And what was it? NTDTV is the television arm of the Falun Dafa "empire," or dynasty, kind of a 700 (Qi Bai) Club with "a regular focus on the promotion of traditional Chinese culture, and [which] devotes extensive news coverage to Chinese human rights issues, taking a critical stance on the Communist Party of China." The network's website features promotional clips for Shen Yun, the cultural extravaganza I attended a month ago, and explains NTDVD's mission to:

Bring truthful and uncensored information into and out of China

Restore and promote traditional Chinese culture and values

Facilitate mutual understanding between the East and West

And who can really argue with any of that? (Well, maybe Taoists, if Confucianism is the traditional value being restored.) The "Tang Dynasty" part of the network puzzled me. I suppose there is a conservative longing, (a Tang Restoration?) to return to an era that is generally considered one of the highest points in Chinese civilization. Sort of the way Pat Robertson and his Christian Broadcasting Network longs to return to some biblically based better past.

So, this might kick up my diary entries for the next two days. I'm always willing to check something out before passing judgment. More than news and serialized historical dramas, there might be interesting qigong shows. Meditating with the TV. And more. "Health and Healing with Dr. Noto." "A Decade of Courage: The Falun Gong Story, "an ongoing documentary about laogai and organ harvesting that won an award at the Detective Fest Film Festival in Moscow and was an Official Selection at the Kastav Film Festival in Croatia. Are these like the Sundance Festivals of the former Soviet Union? Where else could you see this?

Like I said, won't Nielsen be surprised? Skewing the survey with The 698 Club...Liu Jiu Ba Hui.

**If you have to explain or justify an adverstisement, it was likely a mistake. The name recognition gained is probably all negative in the end.

2011-02-05T21:03:00.009-10:00

WUDANG 5-0

On one of my returns from Wudangshan, a skeptical friend asked me about the monks and nuns who lived in the temples, "How do they support themselves?"

I wasn't sure how to answer, but contributions, patronage, and tourism, seemed to be the source of cash.

Although, I suspect there may be something else, the same way Hawaii brings in revenue from TV and film: Magnum P.I., Hawaii 5-0 (then and now), A Man Called God (Korean drama), some highly successful TV programs like Lost, and others long forgotten. And of course movies like From Here to Eternity (I have swum at that famous beach); Six Days Seven Nights, ( I know that place where they jumped off the cliff), and Jurassic Park, filmed on Kauai. (There are a lot of movies filmed in Hawaii. And TV series.)

While visiting my Chinatown video vendor last week during the festivities welcoming the Year of Rabbit, she pressed on me a couple of Hong Kong TV series, one a precursor to Condor Hero (which I have seen and enjoyed)--"This one's about about their parents," she said--and another I had actually made a note to find, Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre*, the third part in the Jin Yong (Louis Cha) Condor trilogy. I swear the proprietress of the Dragon Gate (Longmen) Bookstore reads my mind. Or I am completely under her spell. Whatever.

So, after finishing Sweetness in the Salt, a curious romance in which I learned something about salt trading in the late Qing, and a study of the poorly received Wu Ji, (The Promise), **a film by Chen Kaige, I popped in episode one of --OMG-- forty (40) of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre.

And then had a Hawaii 5-0 moment. "Those mountains look really familiar," I thought, watching a gu qin player against a stunning background. "And wait, that's Betel Nut Palace...Purple Heaven Temple...the gate below where the old hermit lives...Golden Top." I have photos of myself with the big gate lions where a scene was shot. We practiced the Eight Brocades in the same courtyard at Purple Heaven. Indeed, the story opens with some sort of Shaolin-Wudang conflict (Buddhist vs. Taoist conflict), but I never expected to see the actual scenery in places I have come to know and love so intimately.

I once watched a Magnum P.I. episode being shot on the street just below where I lived some years ago in Honolulu. I only hope the owner of the local chicken shop and bodega got paid sufficiently for their appearance in the episode, as I hope the monks of Wudang have been recompensed for using the very sacred locations in this classic wuxia story. I had just come to terms with the exploitation of Wudang in Jackie Chan's Karate (Kung Fu) Kid, where constructed sets live on as attractive tourist attractions. But now to see these even more sacred spots, temples and mountains in film, I am conflicted.

And this is only in episode one. Like an insider, I had some moments of wonder: "How can you get there from there?"

*Although I am intrigued to find that my favorite Tony Leung, Chiu-Wai the Tiny, was in the cast of another version, back in 1986. These stories have an incredible power for retelling.

**Concerning Wu Ji, The Promise. This is a Chen Kaige film from 2005, very poorly received. This is the director that did Yellow Earth, Farewell My Concubine and The Emperor and the Assassin, movies worth watching, I think. Wu Ji was dismissed, but I think because it was misunderstood. It is not quite a martial arts film, not quite a wuxia or historical Chinese drama. It is an Asian-themed fantasy romance, maybe Shakespearean or Chinese-operatic, very pretty to look at and maybe a chick flick. If you rent it, say from Netflix, watch it once, then be sure to look at the deleted scenes, and maybe the "making of" feature. Then watch it again. I hate to think that this movie, which cost something like $35 million US, one of the costliest ever Chinese films, is not worth watching. There are some lovely performances -- by Nicholas Tse, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Ye Liu, in particular-- don't pay attention to the naysayers. This is worth it.

2011-01-20T10:48:00.006-10:00

RE-RUN?

Is it just me, or does the idea of having Jackie Chan (along with practically every prominent Chinese-American entertainer and politician in the country) at yesterday's White House State Dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao, sound like a movie plot we've already seen somewhere?

Who would need the Secret Service when Jackie's there?

2011-01-16T10:53:00.008-10:00

UNPREDICTABLE

As predictable as the Chinese (and Korean) TV series are with characters and plot...goofy sidekicks, scheming or wise parents, the secrets of heritage and revenge, historical context...I completely mispredicted the outcome of Land of Wealth.

In fact there does come an heir, the long-awaited son, legitimately through the patriarch's daughter, not the Mongolian servant, but practically everyone dies and the rest move on to a new era of the Republic and innovations in banking, with western suits, spectacles and automobiles. Traditions are carried on, but not necessarily by the people you expect to move them forward. And true love remains, if not exactly unrequited, unfulfilled in the end.

This wasn't my favorite of the TVB productions I've seen over the past couple years, but not bad, and I liked it better when it was finished. I learned some period history through reference and research, (always Googling with the iPad or poking around my own library), but Cantonese is still more or less opaque to my ear (but less so than Korean).

During and after Land of Wealth, I indulged in several Netflix-provided film features (The Heroic Trio, Chinese Ghost Story 2 and The Eagle Shooting Heroes), only one of which I will ever watch again or add to my collection.

And that's The Eagle Shooting Heroes, a completely hilarious wuxia parody shot at the same time as Ashes of Time with the same incredible cast. Ashes of Time was the film that opened up the world of wuxia and martial arts film for me. (Not Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.) I had been at Blockbuster a few years ago looking for the film in a quest to see the entire ouvre of the amazing Tony Leung Chiu Wai, (here, in AOT.)

"That's in the martial arts section," the clerk said directing me to a whole 'nother genre of "foreign."

Since then I have devoured this world, particularly the wuxia films and TV series (including Korean sa geuk), another world opened to me by a nice vendor in Chinatown and a friend who lent me the first 18 episodes of Jumong to download to my iPad which I enjoyed while traveling in China. (But I must say, that was like a free sample of a highly addictive drug.)

Which brings me to The Eagle Shooting Heroes, loosely based on Louis Cha's wuxia story, which was also the non-parody plot of Legend of the Condor Heros.

TESH is a parody of wuxia, in the way Airplane* was a parody of disaster (and pretty much all other) movies. And ironically, made concurrently with the extremely serious, fine Ashes of Time, with the same actors in an SNL-style joke. But you have to have some deeper knowledge of the genre, and even the story, to fully appreciate it. And not being remotely fluent in Cantonese, I'm sure there are lots of things I'm missing. But what a hilarious ride. Who knew Tiny Tony could be so funny and silly, and that Tall Tony could play drag as well as Patrick Swayze in To Wong Foo (etc.).

Why do I watch so much Asian cinema and TV? Because it's unpredictable.

And next up...Sweetness in the Salt, another HK TVB series about salt-smuggling, also with Steven-not-Steve Ma, here, from Land of Wealth. I just started; don't know what to expect, except that I'll learn something about the economics of salt in the Qing dynasty.

*A little nod of gratitude to the marvelous Leslie Nielsen who died this past November.

2011-01-08T10:26:00.010-10:00

SUBTITLE OF THE MONTH

I know it's not fair to find such humor in the subtitles of the Asian drama I spend time with, but still, there it is. I can't turn off my inner copy-editor nature; it would be a boring job without the hilarity and irony.

Land of Wealth, my current Hong Kong TVB series recommended by my Chinatown vendor, highly enjoyable on my new 50" plasma TV, is about Shanxi banking during the Tongzhi Restoration, a theme I never expected to articulate. I have actually watched at least one other movie (Empire of Silver) that exploits this Great Wall Street theme, and have as a result learned a lot of interesting things about the economics and politics of the late Qing Dynasty. Although it is odd to hear the dialogue up near Beijing in Cantonese. Who knew Cixi spoke Cantonese?

The series has a lot in common with that old western Western, Dynasty, an oily soap opera about scheming families, with some romance and economics. (I think. I never watched it, part of the popular literature of a certain period in U.S. dynastic power, was it the 80s?)

Back to Land of Wealth. A lot of interesting women, from the Empress Dowager to the Mongolian maid to the tai tai and her evil older sister and the wide-eyed tai tai's daughter. And odd German, English and Russian diplomats' daughters. (The Russian/half-Han girl keeps taking the fiancee of the wide-eyed daughter up in a hot-air balloon, to float over the Forbidden City.) I never quite identify with the women in these dramas (although the Mongolian maid is kind of cool; she loves horses and eats mutton and is un-Hanly outspoken.) None of the guys (Moses Chan or Steven-not-Steve Ma) holds a lantern to Vincent Zhao or Song Il-guk (who would probably look terrible in a Qing queue; though Moses Chan pulls it off as well as Vincent does), although I am enchanted by David/John Chiang, who is my age and plays a classic Confucian benevolent head of family/business. I have enjoyed his performances in three other HK dramas. He is the brother of Paul Chun, my husband's age, who was in one of my all time favorite HK films, King Hu's Raining in the Mountain. There is a lot of talent in this family.

So, about that subtitle.

The Mongolian servant was beloved by David Chiang's tai tai, who insisted at her deathbed, in front of many witnesses, that her about-to-be-widower marry the servant. She brings their hands together, insisting that the Mongolian bear the son she was never able to give to her husband. (It was foretold by the feng shui expert.) The daughters are appalled (no one wants their father to marry someone their own age, and, in Confucian society, become their mother!) But even more appalled is the Mongolian maid, who is in love with the rising protege of the widower/banker. The protege, Moses Chan, is set on a revenge mission to restore his family's name (all these family things) after their public beheading by the imperial court; they were framed, but Moses missed out on the fun because he was off in a Buddhist monastery for a few years.

Despite their deep affection, Moses says he cannot marry the maid, not telling her he will after his revenge mission is complete. She consents to marry the banker/Lord out of spite (not really for the money...well, maybe a little) and things go downhill from there.

One day, the Mongolian maid/new tai tai notices that a panel in a carved relief decoration at the mansion is damaged. Since Moses once whittled a likeness of her (and her other lover, now deceased, at least at episode 25), she summons him, spitefully, to fix it, despite his bank duties.

A messenger arrives at the bank to tell the banker/Lord, "The Lady wants third steward (Moses) to go after work to do some CRAVING."

Moses is shocked. "I once CRAVED a pair of dolls for Lady...maybe Lady has some use for me." But Lady keeps rejecting his "CRAVINGS." Double happiness? No. Gourds? No. Mandarin Ducks? No. He labors long, explaining that "to CRAVE it anew takes a long time."

It's entirely possible that craving is indeed what the Cantonese script is all about. I'm going to have to listen to the Mandarin, study the characters. If nothing else, I'll learn the words for...carving?

I have several more episodes to find out how this all plays out. Given Moses' time in the Buddhist monastery, I think he might have the ability to control his cravings, as Lady seems to have reconciled with the benevolent banker. I expect a son to be conceived. It will appear to be the banker's, but I bet he's gonna wind up having exceptional skills at woodcraving.

2011-01-05T20:14:00.003-10:00

SO MANY NEW YEARS, SO LITTLE TIME

I thought I was just dissipated after 12 days of Christmas at home, away from the day job, but maybe it was something else. After a lot of Expensive Big Bangs on New Year's eve, supposedly the last ever since fireworks are being banned in strongly Asian Honolulu (and we'll see how THAT goes), it was January 1. Again. Didn't feel any different than the day before, or really, the year before...and neither did Sunday and Monday and Tuesday. But today does feel like New Year's Day to me.

The moon was calling the shots, demurring to the fireworks, until Monday's New Moon, Tuesday's Dark Moon and tonight, a little sliver of light in the sky, the first waxing crescent, like a delicate silver upturned cup waiting to be filled.

On Tuesday, the Dark Moon, Deng Ming-Dao's 4th passage of 365 was about reflection: "Moon above water. Sit in solitude."

But there was no moon to mirror the divine, to be receptive to the Tao. But tonight, something stirs: "Movement in stillness," the weird reference in Deng Ming-Dao's next passage. 365 Tao is sometimes as relevant as the I Ching. (I recommend reading it every morning on the appropriate day. It's become a sort of liturgy for me over the nearly two decades since it was published.)

My mind, a little fuzzy the past couple days, is suddenly clearing. In a burst of energy, when I came home, I cleaned the kitchen in a flash, disposed of the trash, fed the cats, and sat down to gather these thoughts. I blame it on the moon. (Or possibly the hefty dose of naproxyn sodium I took because the weather and air conditioning in my office were making my hand ache.)

Next New Year: Year of the Rabbit, February 4th. In just a month.

2011-01-01T11:18:00.013-10:00

ENLIGHTENING RESOLUTION

A New Year's resolution: visit the eye doctor. I've been really good about teeth, moderately good about internal affairs, but eyes are so easy to ignore, real frog-in the-well (or blender) stuff.

I am plagued with late mid-life vision--I used to be able to read road signage a mile away; now I misplace glasses everywhere, and never can find the right ones. I have been known to wear two pairs at the same time. While doing a house-cleaning purge, I discover eight pairs of bifocal soft contact lenses, something I experimented with a while back, and loved, though I think I loved them too much, and wound up with iritis.

"Maybe you shouldn't wear contact lenses," the doctor said.

"Damn," I said.

Just for the fun of it, I popped in a fresh pair for the first time in...four years. After a minute of feeling there was something foreign in my eye, I suddenly can see things I miss with my otherwise naked eyes. Trees in detail on the mountains. Cobwebs in corners. (Yin and yang.) And subtitles easily read on the new 50"plasma TV (although it took some doing to figure out how to invoke them; digital devices with remote controls are so cumbersome, not like my Mac laptop that makes this all so simple.)

I check out my new 50" plasma TV...testing DVDs of Infernal Affairs III with Tiny Tony Leung; Emperor of the Sea with Song Il-guk; Vincent Zhao in True Legend.

Infernal Internal Closeted Affairs

Song Il-guk..In My Closet!

And television. But...57 channels and nothing on. The cable connection wasn't working at first and the Wizard called Oceanic/Time Warner, whose satellite dishes are within walking distance of our apartment. He had a long conversation with the customer service rep; I think he wants to hire her. "How long has it been broken?"

"Maybe...three weeks since my wife last turned on the TV." He never watches TV. Never.

He eventually gets it up and running, and here is a Syfy (when did this channel change its name?) New Year's Day marathon of old B&W Twilight Zone episodes. Jack Klugman and, is it Jonathan Winters? (it is), playing pool to the death, like a martial arts saga. Very Taoist script, really. Next episode, abut contrived conventional beauty, not unlike the shows/channels I have never watched, Nip and Tuck and Extreme Makeover. Very prescient.

Klugman and the Devil?

"Look at this," I say to the Wizard, "the resolution is so good."

"Pretentious Communist twaddle..."

"But," he says later, "if you quote me, say 'pseudo-psychological-sociological twaddle'...but more a reaction to Rod Serling as anything else."

He was not a TZ/Rod Serling fan (or, for that matter, the equally pretentious Steve Allen). More of an Outer Limits, Fire Maidens of Outer Space kind of guy. (Not to say those Fire Maidens didn't look exactly like all the contrived beauties in the Twilight Zone episode.)

Now back to the episode with a young James Kirk (now Priceline spokesman) obsessed with a fortune telling device in a roadside diner, a devilish I Ching thing.

My resolution is really good! Especially with contact lenses.

2010-12-24T11:10:00.001-10:00

you get an Apple tablet computer in Bangkok, is it a thaiPad?

2010-12-24T09:05:00.011-10:00

GOING POSTAL

Continuing escape interwoven among the slow but intriguing episodes of Sunzi Bingfa: The Postman Fights Back, The Warrior, and Donnie Yen's Legend of the Fist:The Return of Chen Zhen.

I really should get some sort of military commission or at least a federal job, maybe in the State Department or an intelligence agency, after all this strategy study.

I stumbled on The Postman Fights Back while doing Dec. 23 Christmas shopping* and wandered into a strange but well-organized little used-media shop at the mall.** I was looking for a copy of Master Hua-Ching Ni's I Ching commentary -- you never know what people have cast off -- and found serious cheap bargains among an odd tiny selection between "Buddhism" and "New Age": a nice large format book on Ba Gua, and, just for kicks, and possibly giggles, why not, "Qi Dao-Tibetan Shamanic Qigong" by Lama Somananda Tantrapa, who runs a qigong/MA studio in Portland, Oregon. LST looks more KGB agent than Tibetan Lama, on the cover manipulating what appears to be a giant ball of plutonium (green energy) and promotes a kind of improvisational qigong. (He claims some sort of complicated shamanic/triple-Buddhist lineage, like Rasputin but with better grooming.) Well, if I can buy tickets to Falun Dafa's Broadway-style propaganda, I can at least read this on the cheap and judge for myself. All the techniques look legitimate, but I may have to visit the place in Portland to decide if the guy is for real.

Then to an 18-inch shelf of martial arts movies, all but one of which I own or have seen. Never heard of The Postman Fights Back (Postman Rings Twice, and Postmen in the Mountains, but not this.) It's a reissue of a early '80s film with Chow Yun Fat, before he was a mega-gun-fu star, relying on intense charm and good looks, smoking cigarettes in scholar's robes (looking like a young Confucius) and not too bad kicking. The plot involved being asked to cart some mysterious packages to a warlord in the north who was fighting for Yuan Shikai after he declared himself emperor in 1916. (Interesting history here, kind of reactionary after the fall of the Qing; in true imperial fashion Shikai had 10 wives and 32 children. He didn't really get the concept of "republic." Not that Mao really did, either. All that chaos between dynasties.)

A trek through the mountains--this theme is like a recurring dream and recalled Dersu Uzala, Kurosawa's romp through Siberian wilderness. The mysterious packages turn out to be parts for a machine gun. Serious bloody gun-fu ensues. In the end, the protagonist/postman, (not CYF), overcomes the bad guy with a clever bamboo dagger, assembled so that after impaled in your gut, when you pull it out, it explodes like a firecracker. (Like some of the bizarre weaponry used in The Four.) Which suggests that machine guns and daggers do not kill people, people kill people, and themselves. But the bamboo dagger was much more elegant.

And even more elegant was Donnie Yen, who took out a WWI German machine gun nest with his feet and fists as Chen Zhen, though I think he did make efficient use of a conventional dagger.

Postman Fights Back used the mountain courier as an element, which was also central to Postmen in the Mountains, a lovely 1999 film, not at all martial or historical, that I enjoyed a few months ago, even if the last 10 minutes on my cheap DVD were unwatchable. I don't think it mattered, there wasn't much of a plot for climax.

Which there was in The Warrior, a 2005 Hindi film which featured the spiritual conversion of a warrior/tax collector on his romp through the Himalayas to escape his pursuers. A kind of Indian mafia story, shows it's hard to leave the family...but you can, though you might compromise you own high principles at the very end. No postal theme here; the mob didn't rely on courier services, they just raped and pillaged on their own.

Countering all the violence in these films, I must point out that in my three recent holiday visits to the U.S. Post Office, the postal clerks were all models of efficiency and compassion in the face of this busy season. In Sunzi Bingfa, communications are sometimes transmitted on silk, with calligraphy, attached to well-aimed arrows. Talk about express mail. But this holiday, no evidence of anyone "going postal."

* When you always find the coolest things for yourself.

**Cleverly called "Book-off" and run by an immigrant Chinese man who on check-out asked me if I had any books to sell. Mai mai, how the economy works. (In Chinese, mai (3) and mai (4) are two different words, with different tones, which mean buy and sell. When Vincent Zhao implores, at the end of the clip, "meiyou mai mai," he's saying "no buy, no sell." Can you not say meiyou to this man?)

***I have nothing but respect for the Post Office. Maybe not so much American Airlines Cargo, who seriously delayed a critical shipment I arranged last week. Was this retribution for making fun of their digital Christmas Card?

2010-12-17T21:53:00.006-10:00

FIRE TURTLES AND ICE TOADS

Just wondering. These were readily available in a street market, a mall of fresh delicacies, in Xian. The reality of China. Get 'em while they're hot...and cold.

Fire Turtles?

Ice Toads?

2010-12-15T21:16:00.019-10:00

WORLD VIEW

While I have been enjoying a 36-episode mainland-produced Chinese TV-series about Sun Tzu and Sun Bin (The Art of War and the 36 Stratagems), I've taken a break now and then from the slow-paced drama, (by Korean drama standards), a little didactic at turns, even though the characters are interesting and attractive, and the Mandarin is slow and simple enough to make me think I can speak and understand it. I bought this set of DVDs in Hong Kong a couple years ago thinking it was an academic PBS kind of exposition about the Art of War, but I was wrong. It's a TV play. It has a quality that makes me think of peasants sharing a TV in a village and enjoying a cultural rendition of their heritage from 2,000 years in the past.

I was poking around on the Wizard's shelf of Teaching Company CDs which include pretty much the entire history of Western Civilization back to Mesopotamia and wondered why he never wanted to listen to my set of "From Yao to Mao," the only real Asian history course available from the company.

"I'm interested in where I came from," he said. Which leads me to wonder if I was Chinese in another life.

The entertainment breaks I take from Sunzi Bingfa are kung -fu movies. In a curious completion of a series, I watched Kung-Fu Master (called something else in Chinese) with Yuen Biao, an unintentional (?) third part of a trilogy by the intricately connected Three Guys (above right): Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and, Yuen Biao. Maybe not as holy as the three pure ones, but it might be fun to see them in a film as Fuk, Luk, and Sau, (below left) the Chinese Gods of Good Fortune.***

I kinda detested Jackie Chan's recent remake of Karate (Kung Fu) Kid, as much as I kinda liked his Wushu with Sammo Hung. Both had kind of the same theme, masters somewhat reluctantly bringing along young students.

But I wasn't quite sure what to make of Kung-Fu Master, with a more classical historical theme, which opened with some creepy scenes (kung fu with a coffin?) that blended an ambiance of King Hu's A Touch of Zen with surreal 1960s Avengers action. I rented the DVD from Blockbuster, watched about 15 minutes and returned it. But I added it to my Netflix queue, and gave it another shot.

The film is basically one long fight, with an incomprehensible plot. However, I understand it is an abridged version of a TV-series, which may explain why it was marketed as a film, for people who like to see the kung fu without caring why the action is taking place.

Yuen Biao, right, who is just wonderful, if like Jackie and Sammo, maybe just a bit long in the tooth, (like myself) works his way through a kind of test by an evil general who has some sort of grudge against the Shaolin Temple. Eventually, the Temple is destroyed and Yuen Biao, "Omitofo," and his band of brothers vanquish the evil forces and, since their temple has been demolished, one can only surmise they go on to perform shows on stages in Beijing, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

I was a little frustrated with an inexplicable reconciliation with one of the assassins who are out to get Yuen Biao, I think it was Nicholas Tse, and I eagerly waited for him to return to the action, but he never did. There was a scene, reminiscent of the guqin-accompanied imaginary duel between Jet Li and Donnie Yen in Hero, where the 7-stringed lute is used as a lethal weapon. And in a very Avengers surreal nightmare scene, Yuen Biao negotiates a HUGE tangled pile of Chinese benches. (I liked this, at left, a lot; it reminded me of when I broke the Taoist hermit's stool. And how I usually feel about housework. Not that I'm so skilled at it.)

My first impression was this was the worst kung fu film I'd ever seen, but the scenes are lingering in my mind, as hard to ignore as the strange mole on Yuen Biao's forehead, more noticeable than the burn scars on his scalp which identified him as a Shaolin monk.

With this still on my mind, I paid a visit to The Dragon Gate Bookstore where my video vendor read my thoughts and laid out for me copies of Tsui Hark's Detective Dee, and Donnie Yen's Legend of the Fist: Return of Chen Zhen.

I paused watching Detective Dee (which features Andy Lau as a character initially as raggedy as Vincent Zhao's drunken master in True Legend/Su Qi-Er...is this a trend?) to jot these thoughts down. Detective Dee, set in the Tang Dynasty during the coronation of the only female Son of Heaven of China, Empress Wu, opens with the frequent spontaneous human combustion ("self-burning") of some guys involved with constructing a REALLY HUGE Buddha in her honor, way bigger than Yuen Biao's pile of benches...this CGI Buddha makes Hong Kong's Big Buddha look like a lawn ornament. Andy Lau is retrieved from prison (and nicely cleaned up and shaved) to solve the case, where the Buddha is intended to literally topple the empire, and the most significant clue in which is highly poisonous "fire turtles," the seeming opposite of the medicinal ice toads, about which I have previously commented. I might note the fire turtles look remarkably like a delicacy I avoided in Xian a couple years ago.

I've recently watched a few Korean and Chinese dramas of a forensic detective nature (The Four, Damo), and I can only hope this will live up to those standards. Such as they are.

***And now I am getting a concept for a screen play about the Three Pure Ones; the number one of them, Yu Huang, the Jade Ruler or the Pearly Emperor, was said to have been so "super-eminently beautiful ...that none became weary when beholding him." So do I cast Vincent Zhao or Song Il-guk? Well, since there are three protagonists, I can throw in Tony Leung Chiu-wai and have a truly dazzling fantasy epic with all three, gods representing the entire Hong Kong, Mainland and Korean film industry.

2010-12-11T08:32:00.014-10:00

SHEN YUN SCAM?

While beginning (and possibly, hopefully, completing) my holiday shopping at the mall last night, I bought a present for us, me and the Wizard, or more accurately, myself, two tickets to January's performance of Shen Yun. I'd just selected a couple of Aloha shirts at Macy's (the former Liberty House, as most of us who have been in Hawaii for some time still call it) for him and his father, choosing them in less time than it took me to pay for them. Was it my current preoccupation with K-drama that drew me to some really very nice shirts made in Korea? And 40% off. Which I discovered after I pulled them off the rack. I am at my most decisive, and lucky, at Christmas. (Read about picking out a tree over on the Yang Side.)

Then a stop at Sephora whose $20 discount coupon was burning a hole in my complexion. (Only Sephora discounts cosmetics; the big department stores like Macy's/Liberty House never do.) I have largely overcome my obsession with maquillage et parfum, but every now and then, I succumb to a girly desire. It was my birthday, more or less; they promised me a birthday gift. But the clerk forgot to give it to me. It is a test of my obsession: do I go back to claim it?

Still, good scores in hand, I was feeling a little drunk on plastic money when I was attracted to a kiosk promoting a big Chinese performing arts spectacular to occur in January at our concert hall where we have season tickets to the opera. On the signage, a leaping Chinese guy in a topknot with an archer's bow--that will stop me in my tracks any time. Two Chinese women were touting the show..."a visually dazzling tour of Chinese history and culture." Having missed Zhang Yimou's big production at Hangzhou's West Lake, and as an afficionado of shows like the Shaolin Monks (in Beijing); a bizarre Las Vegas/Disney-esque survey of 5,000 years of Chinese history in a different venue in Hangzhou; Cantonese, Peking, and televised Revolutionary Opera (in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Honolulu), to say nothing of the various odd Chinese vaudeville extravaganzas that come through Honolulu every year around Moon Festival and Chinese New Year, I was intrigued.

A very nice Chinese woman chatted with me about the show. I said I traveled to China frequently and had been to Wudangshan several times. She knew where that was. "Lots of Taoist culture there," she said. I told her I enjoyed the local Phoenix Dance Chamber performances. She knew who they were.

I looked at the brochures, curious that the performance was presented by The Falun Dafa Association of Hawaii, but you wouldn't know this without looking at the mouseprint. I know who Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) are. I said I'd think about it. "It has nothing to do with Falun Gong," she assured me.

Then, in a Costco/shopping network moment, get-it-while-it's-available, I caved and bought two tickets. The Wizard buys the opera tickets; I drag him to the odd Chinese culture events.

At home in a fit of shopper's remorse, I poked around the net for reviews and comments about the show, just starting its 2011 World Tour, which will not include the really big chunk of the world known as the People's Republic of China. Apparently Shen Yun has everything to do with Falun Gong. Shen Yun was banned in Hong Kong (now part of the PRC as an SAR; it is not banned in Taiwan) because its association with Falun Gong puts it in an adversarial position with the CCP. The reviews boil down to, on one hand, amazing art with a spiritual message, and on the other, propaganda (for Falun Gong) and mediocre art. (The Chinese invented propaganda. I say this while watching Sunzi Bingfa, a Chinese TV series about Sun Tzu, Sun Bin, and the 36 Stratagems, all of which is basically about deceitful strategy and propaganda, or The Art of War.)

But now I am committed. No refunds on the ticket. So, I look forward to the event as another research point in my ongoing independent study of Chinese history and culture. It's real-life drama, a little like Perhaps Love, an excellent Chinese movie I just watched, a movie about making a movie, with two levels of the same story. (I highly recommend it.)

I am caught in a yin/yang moment. Though, had I read the reviews and various commentaries prior to swiping my credit card, I still would have bought the tickets (but maybe only one, and a cheaper seat) just to find out for myself. I look forward to observing this, and will post my own opinion come January. Probably on the Yang Side.

5,000 Years of Chinese History in Hangzhou

Hong Kong 2008

2010-12-09T16:58:00.002-10:00

FOR YOUR HOLIDAY SHIPPING
Be sure to consider American Airlines, who just sent me the scariest Christmas card ever.
And this is for real.
What were they thinking?
Converging airplanes are never a good thing.

2010-12-07T20:53:00.006-10:00

ONE-LINE REVIEWS

While spending a few hours, no, a lot of hours really, swooning over Song Il-guk in Muhyul, at right, I did watch a few feature length films about which I feel a compulsion to comment. I recommend all these movies.

Address Unknown: Highly disturbing but intriguing Korean film, but you might want to avoid movies that include warnings that "no animals were harmed" in the opening credits unless you like to eat dog meat.

Wasabi: Confirms that the Japanese are the French of the Orient and that the French are the Japanese of Europe.

Dragon Tiger Gate: The usual martial arts school saga, who doesn't love Donnie Yen, but I can never understand why the subtitler can't tell the difference between a plague and a plaque.

Addicted: Things can get really confusing when your lover is in a coma and has a brother who is in love with you.

I may be too preoccupied with Asian film, but today while reading my freebie subscription to Time I found a couple of Western holiday releases I might plan to see: Helen Mirren in The Tempest, apparently filmed in Hawaii, who knew, and Johnny Depp in The Tourist.

2010-12-03T10:58:00.016-10:00

MOONCALF-ISH?
What have I learned from Korean drama? Some King's English!

While watching Muhyul, (at right) via dramafever.com (highly recommended), I have been enjoying subtitles that are by and large grammatically excellent, well punctuated, and I can only hope, more or less accurate. The subtitling team actually takes credit for its work. (The Written in the Heavens Subbing Squad, aka WITHS2). But there is a curious tendency, like in the King James Bible, written the way it is to emphasize antiquity, to employ terms that I'm not sure even Shakespeare ever penned. Certainly nothing I've ever used, lyrical epithets, some of which you may recognize, but others which sent me to my OED. I hope to work some of these into corporate memos and telephone conversations:

you anserine...innoxious ...undextrous... dullards
you miserable begonians
you yeasty slattern
those facile runagates
you inutile (not a word I can find, but perhaps a pesky Taoist)
you fatuitous man
he's a pertinacious specimen
you ruthful nimwit
you wretched dotard
he's a felonious scapegrace
those comiserable rapscallions

All of these are usually repsonses to questions like:

What is this audacious pertness? Why did you beguile me with such:

mendacious trifle
dastardly prodigality
heedless nimiety
shady celerity
uncanny diabliery

At which point a warning may be issued that someone will "cark himself "(or perhaps, "cark you!"), asking forgivenss of his "peccancy," excusing himself to "micturate" while "perlustrating the intelligence." (I think this might mean taking a piss while considering the state secrets he has been entrusted with and possibly divulged.)

In light of such "ludicrous jabberwocky," due to a "fruit of my misreckoning," a battle fails despite someone having sent "oodles of troops." (Though that last one must have come during a quick ramen lunch away from the Oxford Korean-English Dictionary of Archaicisms.)

But my favorite phrase is "you harebrained mooncalf" which I have been employing recently as an acronym, HBMC.

Which is what I was wondering if I was, hoping not, when I noticed on my very cool iPad app called Luan, which puts the phases of the moon at one's fingertips, that today --my birthday (or as a spiritually inclined friend put it, the anniversary of my incarnation) --is the last waning crescent moon, which precedes the dark moon of Saturday, and the new moon on Sunday. I wasn't sure what a dark moon was but according to Wikipedia it is "the moon during that time that it is invisible against the backdrop of the sun in the sky. The duration of a dark moon is between 1.5 and 3.5 days, depending on the orientation of the Earth and Sun.

"In astronomicial usage, the new moon occurs in the middle of this period, when the moon and sun are in conjunction. This definition has entered popular usage, so that calendars will typically indicate the date of the 'new moon' rather than the 'dark moon.' However, originally 'new moon' referred to the crescent on the first night it is visible, one or two days after conjunction. Maritime records from the nineteenth century distinguish the dark moon (no moon) from the new moon (young crescent)."

The darkmoon, also called the dead moon (kinda creepy following my birthday) is regarded as preparation for the new beginning that begins with the new crescent.

So, I'm wondering if I'm just a harebranined mooncalf for paying any attention to this, or is it kind of cool. Old age is new age?

Speaking of Muhyul, (Jumong/Haesin Redux) it's everything I hoped for. Lots of Song Il-guk, on a horse, shooting arrows, gazing into his doomed lover's eyes, mowing down everyone with a sword. Well, if this gets me going, I guess I'm not THAT old.

Jumong & Haesin (Muhyul above)

2010-11-23T14:06:00.004-10:00

SOMETHING TO CALM KOREAN TENSIONS

Can't we make love, not war?
Some Song Il-guk diplomacy?

2010-11-21T09:54:00.004-10:00

POSTSCRIPT TO POSTSCRIPT

The North Koreans are moving right along, it seems, enriching uranium, if not their population's diet.

"Hecker said his first glimpse of the North's new centrifuges was "stunning."...The facilities appeared to be primarily for civilian nuclear power, not for North Korea's nuclear arsenal, Hecker said. He saw no evidence of continued plutonium production at Yongbyon. But, he said, the uranium enrichment facilities "could be readily converted to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel."

"From my perspective, it's North Korea continuing on a path which is destabilizing for the region. It confirms or validates the concern we've had for years about their enriching uranium," Mullen, the top U.S. military officer, said on CNN's "State of the Union."

All this Korean drama ...and I don't mean Hallyu, (which doesn't include stunning nudes or nukes)...just north of the DMZ. Maybe everyone involved would do well to settle in and watch Lobbyist. The script is all written.

2010-11-20T20:18:00.003-10:00

POSTSCRIPT TO PREVIOUS POST

Apparently the South Korean "nude" project has revived like Harry/Haili, according to interesting news I uncovered just now in China Daily (almost as strange to read as the subtitles in Lobbyist). Was it just coincidence that I watched this drama now? Perhaps Song Il-guk could become president of South Korea. Life seems to be imitating art. So intriguing.

2010-11-20T07:16:00.015-10:00

NAKED NUDE AMBITIONS****

@@@Spoiler Alert@@@

If literal clarity was what I was seeking, I would have done well to spend more for my DVD set of the Lobbyist, K-D with Song Il-guk. My cheap acquisition's video quality was just fine, but the subtitles decayed exponentially after episode 12 of 24. (And the half-life of Korean drama is really long.) Capitalization, spelling, and word order seemed to reflect the increasing boredom of the translator, whom I suspect was Chinese. I don't know if Korean shares the Chinese language's lack of distinction in third-person pronouns, but it was a challenge sometimes to determine precisely who, or what, the dialogue was about. Song-il guk? His mother? A sheep? A nuclear submarine? But one perfects one's skill at figuring things out from context, taking a Taoist approach to cognition, and I was grateful to pause the DVD from time to time to decrypt the meaning (and sometimes just to gaze at Song Il-guk's eyes). It did prove the observation that you can understand words in a sentence if the first and last letter of the words are accurate, but watching whole sentences turned into a word scrabble from time to time.

I have made a living correcting bad grammar, spelling and punctuation, and typos are as entertaining as irritating. But I rarely come across such delightful twists as a reference to someone having a "bad tempter." Later, he was called "the madness temper guy." The character was a bit of a devil. He was way too "forcefuk."

In Lobbyist, Song Il-guk's wacky devoted sidekick (there's always one or two) in a nuclear submarine project formerly was a hotel doorman and black market racketeer. When he first met Harry/Haili (SIG's character) he suggested that if he wanted to impress his long lost childhood sweetheart, he could procure for his gift-giving what every girl likes: "bracelet, watch, cothes, shoes, handbag, case, golf cue, abd bear gall bladder (all sic)." (Forget the knockoff LV bag, bear bile always works for me!) Never mind that this girl was into submarines and revenge.

This guy, a little dorky, but one of the drama's most endearing characters, with spiky gelled hair and retro '50s eyeglasses, moves on to "Guba" cigars and Russian "eggbeters" (helicopters) before the really big acquisition...plans for a nuclear submarine featuring French technology and German engineering, a sure winner in any domestic arms build-up.

Lobbyist features the usual plot points involving orphans, love triangles, manipulative parents, naked ambition, (but never naked sex), revenge, politics, and weaponry, in this case not my personal preference, swords, arrows and martial arts skills, but guns, helicopters, tanks and submarines. (Although SIG does get to show off some nice kicking. And he's pretty cute when he's tinkering with a tank.) The political plot is driven by South Korea's longing for a nuclear fleet which Harry will help to acquire.

Until the American ambassador/CIA rep puts a stop to the plan. "Only conventional subs for you," he sternly warns the South Korean minister of the navy.

"But," the minister sputters petulantly, "China has nude!" Earlier he had lamented to Harry the lobbyist (or as sometimes translated, "persuasive talker"), "I don't have the ability to help in nude project." But South Korea can't argue with America. No nude! We mean it. (Nude:sic.)

The story comes to a not-nude climax (in episode 24) at a New Year's kick-off party for the submarine program on the deck of a dry-docked WWII-era destroyer. Save-the-date cards had been distributed much earlier by the conventional sub side. A peculiar element of this scene is when the bad guy sings The First Noel in Korean, very poorly, reminding us of Song Il-guk's earlier and utterly charming impromptu performance of I'm in the Mood for Love ...if it should lain we'll let it***...at a book signing party for the President's son who was a naive proponent of nuclear forces for South Korea in addition to being an accomplished cocktail pianist. These talented persuasive talkers and government officials! And Song Il-guk can tango too! What a guy! If Ronald Reagan can be US president, maybe SIG can be Korea president? Anyway, I've been to events like that kick-off party and book-signing.

But never like this: after searching all over the ship, Harry/Haili/SIG comes finally to the aid of his competitor (Maria/Malia, the love interest) who was representing the conventional sub promoter, albeit being horribly exploited by her boss, who is now holding a gun to her head, in a stand-off with Saturday night specials...the bad guy is killed, the exploited girl is saved, and it's not clear what happens to Harry. I suppose this is a metaphor for nuclear MADness, what happens when you have "a bad tempter."

But despite profusely bleeding wounds to the gut and drooping off into deadly unconsciousness, Harry is miraculously resurrected to join Maria who has given up her international arms ambitions to teach English to children in Kazakhstan, where she and Harry were really happy together before. Harry suddenly appears radiantly in the middle of her class in a meadow where sheep are grazing, not the first K-D where Song Il-guk makes a sort of Messianic return. (Though he failed to fulfill his promise to the Korean defense minister to "succeed in nude career with my own hands."*****) We see Maria is wearing the crystal pendant** he gave her when they were ten years old.

Lobbyist predicts The Divine Hero/A Man Called God. Only in Emperor in the Sea (Haesin) was it obvious that SIG would not survive the dozens of arrows piercing his body, like Saint Sebastian. (Here is a You-tube clip which accompanies Yeom Moon's death scene in Haesin with the U.S. Navy Hymn.)

Having finished the contemporary Lobbyist, I now look forward to Muhyul, a sa geuk follow-on to Jumong. I found it to watch on-line, with better subtitles. In Muhyul, Song Il-guk (of tremendous Jumong fame) plays Jumong's grandson, demonstrating one interpretation of immortality. I'm thinking SIG is in fact immortal one way or another. These dramas are accumulating like Gospel stories, and I fully expect him to be cast as Jesus one day. If you looked at that Haesin clip, you will agree, he could do it really well.

**CLYSTAL CREER

A curious side note to Lobbyist is its sponsorship by the Swarovski Crystal company. There is not a scene in which some elaborate crystal construction is not set on a desk or side table, dangling from a cell phone or ears, to say nothing of a franchise shop being a cover for one of the international arms dealers. Swarovski appears even in a terrorist camp in Kazakhstan, in particular an amber quail egg of a pendant which first is seen around the neck of ten-year-old Harry when he and his girl first develop their curious shared passion for submarines. The pendant gets passed back and forth between them from episode one to 24, a symbol of their lasting affection, but really, incredible product placement for Swarovski.

***THE LAIN IN SPAIN

Actually, don't you think this scans better than "rain?"

Let sleeping lains lie?

****This title is gonna get me a LOT of hits!

*****And this is making me think of scripting a drama of my own, working title, Cloning Vincent and SIG, a three-some love triangle with Zhao Wen Zhou and Song Il-guk...and me. Filmed in Hawaii, Wudang, a Buddhist Temple in Korea and, why not, Kazakhstan.

2010-11-13T14:35:00.004-10:00

MASKED AND ANONYMOUS

Here's a funny story. A Chinese person tries to seek asylum in Canada wearing a Hollywood-designed mask to get through airport security.

Masking turns up not infrequently in Chinese and Korean dramas to assist a hero in his efforts. In The Divine Hero, Song Il-guk used a Mission Impossible-style mask to disguise himself as his enemy to fool someone. (His real visage is much more attractive than the mask.) And historical swordsmen are always covering their faces with bandanas. Perhaps the practical use of masks is cultural; the masking in Chinese opera is elaborate and deeply significant, clearly identifying characters and their motives. I always felt truly transformed with my Halloween masks as a child; when I apply makeup it is to elevate myself to something I am not quite. (Even though makeup artists will insist makeup is to ENHANCE your natural beauty, there is a transformative element going on.)

Still, I would like to know just what mask this Chinese refugee was using. Whose identity was he borrowing?

Makeup (Mask) Styles of Peking Opera

2010-11-11T20:18:00.009-10:00

DERANGED MARRIAGE

I interrupt myself in the first few moments of hour six (of 24) of The Lobbyist, a contemporary Korean drama about international arms trafficking, and a kind of precursor to The Divine Hero, also staring the divine Song Il-guk. The only reason I'm watching this. So hot! With a simmering plot. Still, I pause to share some subtitled dialog which just made me choke.

A little arranging of a marriage for a clearly wrong (at least in episode six, who knows?) union of two attractive young Koreans who have no prior interest in each other is going on over a dinner table where the powerful parents are plotting the future.

Dad of the squirming groom-to-be (not SIG's character but hardly unattractive) says, "He has a goof future." (SIG=Song Il-guk. It would be confusing to indicate "sic" as I quote these subtitles.)

The FoG continues, "...but your doughter (so malleable? so rich?) is more excellent."

"To be honest, Meilan (the yeasty doughter) is not bad too," the father of the bride agrees.

At which point, the prim, proper and wistful mother of the apparently willing bride chimes in to point out, "Mr. Jiang, your son is hot."

If I had a daughter, and had a chance to marry her off to Song Il-guk...what else could I blurt out?

Bring Him Home for Dinner, Dear!

2010-11-06T17:38:00.003-10:00

BLOODY CREATIVE

I am intrigued by a scene in my current K-D indulgence. The female protagonist, escaping an arranged marriage, has gone to the temple to pay respect to her dead parents. Her "wanted poster" identifies her as someone in mourning clothes. Coming down from the mountain, she is inadvertently close to a sword fight and her white hanbok gets splattered with blood. Her sword-fighting paramour, one third of the requisite love triangle, is very clever. He searches the body he has dispatched for a piece of charcoal. In the next scene we see that the sleeve and skirt of her dress is not blood-splattered, but sports an elegant plum-blossom design. Her savior has drawn in branches, no more mourning dress, but now tres chic.

Actually this technique, connecting splatters, is one taught by my Chinese painting teacher. I don't think I would have fully appreciated this scene without taking the painting class. How everything fits together! You just have to be open to the connections.

2010-10-30T21:25:00.006-10:00

HERE AND THERE

And everywhere. In the midst of enjoying "Rosy Business," a superb HK TVB series set during the Taiping Rebellion in Wuxi, in Cantonese with English subtitles, I watched for the sixth time Wong Kar Wai's "Ashes of Time," the movie that really got me interested in wuxia and the martial arts genre, done in Mandarin with a convoluted plot and an outstanding cast that never bores. It was Tiny Tony Leung (Chiu Wai) I actually sought out the movie for, but it also includes Tall Tony Leung Kar Fei, Brigitte Lin, three Cheungs (Maggie & Jacky & Leslie) and Carina Lau, Tiny Tony's wife. Talk about all-star cast!

But like some kind of addict, I return to Korea for The Slave Hunters...subtitles for which must have been translated by someone with a really unusual dictionary.

"ferine little twerps"..."wobbling like a parturient wench"..." "her fugacious smile" ..."cunning little varlet"... Who talks like this?

The subtitler must use the "Special Oxford Korean-English Dictionary for Asian Drama for Westerners." I enjoy all these things to expand my mind, (never mind the swashbuckling swordsmen), picking up Mandarin, Cantonese and to a lesser extent, Korean. But I never thought I would be expanding my own English vocabulary!

If you don't know these words, just look them up. You'll learn more that way than if I just tell you what they mean.

I think I may have use for "cunning varlet" at work this week.

2010-10-18T15:44:00.005-10:00

IMMORTAL ICE TOADS

Just completed John Blofeld's Taoism: The Road to Immortality, which may be the loveliest overview and exposition of Taoism I have ever read, though not sure I would have said that three or five or ten years ago. Blofeld is one of the spiritual "Old China Hands" whose name turns up among the folks, like David Kidd and Graham Peck, who were lucky enough to be in China in the mid-20th century, sometimes for political reasons, sometimes for spiritual ones.

In this book, nostalgic, informative and objective, I found an explanation (or at least a curious reference) of something that intrigued me in a Hong Kong kung fu drama I enjoyed some months ago: the ice toad. I shouldn't be surprised that scriptwriters of popular Chinese TV series might have heard some old stories of Taoist immortals. Wuxia literature and film is replete with references to Taoist practices.

In a discussion of the "mysterious portal," the gate to immortality, Blofeld retells a classic story of "A Gift from the Moon Goddess." A seeking scholar is invited by a Taoist to follow him into a gleaming white landscape.

"Passing through a 'rockery' of ice pinnacles skilfully (sic) arranged to resemble a chain of mountains, they came to a moated place...wherein a venerable toad of prodigious size, its body seemingly composed of lustrous white jade, sat working with the kind of pestle used by druggists."

The seekers moved on, advised by the toad, "Brother, you know I cannot stop now,"and taking no further notice of his visitors, it "continued pounding some gleaming crystals from which arose what looked like the rainbow mist one sometimes sees above a rainbow on a sunny day." The seekers leave the toad to his labors and ultimately come to see Chang O, the Goddess of the Moon.

The actual meaning of the toad is still completely opaque to me. In the drama, the ice toad absorbed poison in characters so afflicted. I only know it must have some larger older mythical significance than a weird idea in a TV series.

POSTSCRIPT

A little googling about Chan Chu, the jade sitting frog, reveals:

Moon Goddess Tradition

Historically, Ch'an Chu is also associated with the Chinese moon goddess, Heng O, according to "Myths and Legends of China" by E.T.C. Werner, a Fellow at the Royal Anthropological Institute and author of several noted studies of Chinese culture and folklore. In Chinese mythology, the moon is associated with immortality and the feminine principle of "Yin," as opposed to the masculine principle of "Yang." Because Ch'an Chu dwells with the moon goddess, the sitting frog is able to use "Yin" energy to drive out negative energy and welcome positive "Qi" energy, according to Werner's studies.

I actually have a copy of Herr Werner's book; how funny that a Google search would send me back to my own bookshelf. Now, would someone tell me where to get an "ice toad." Maybe eBay?

2010-10-17T08:11:00.015-10:00

PHONING HOME

An element in classical Taoist practice and philosophy is the concept that the physical body, the structure of one's life even, is a patterned microcosm of the larger phenomena and forces in the universe and society. The dynamics of yin and yang, the wu xing, the bagua, the hexagrams, all can be used to understand and describe the world --from the internal processes of your digestion and inner spiritual progress, to the forces of nature and socio-political events. We may long to be hermits, separate from the dust and noise of the world, but it's hard to do that in today's society; we are left to create the hermitages inside ourselves.

I have been thinking about this after a blog-o-pal observed how technology --particularly cell phones and digital media players-- contributes to the noise, virtually addicting their users, blocking them from any spiritual understanding or development. Or at least that's what I think he meant...he may beg to differ. "The master does not own an iPod," he says. This thought was ironically communicated via the internet.

Like practically everyone in China, our Taoist master in Wudang was always on his cell phones, sometimes dueling cell phones; he used one of them to provide quiet background music for our Eight Brocades practice. Sometimes a sound track can be useful; other times it is distracting. Indoors it can add to the practice; outdoors it competes with the sounds of nature. I'm reminded of the singing speaker-rocks on some of the mountain trails, annoying Buddhist music but certainly much more tolerable than the Maoist-propaganda broadcast (with no on/off switch) to an earlier generation used to imposed noise. Because of this, perhaps the Chinese can tune it out more easily.

"On my way home, just leaving the temple...."

Yin Yang Phones

My other teacher, a scholar-meditator, carried a laptop and could sometimes be found updating his website.

Though working within ancient traditions, these guys use state-of-the-art technology. Technology that has replaced the obsolete tools of swords and gourds. (Will the cell phone someday become symbolic?)

The challenge, like that of quieting the noise of one's own mind, is to know when enough is enough. Having mastered my new car radio, I am enjoying Teaching Company CDs, and certain music on my iPod soothes me on commutes home. I have yet to succumb to the actual radio parts -- I have been more likely to choose silence over NPR, even.

Worse than the noise of technology though, there is the noise of society, i.e., that hell of other people. I am constantly bemused by a running theme in the Chinese and Korean drama I have been studying (possibly an addiction, more likely just something I have to explore to its zenith so I can let it go, an exercise in attachment to Vincent Zhao and Song Il-guk). The theme is of the orphan, the long lost family member who returns to revenge or heal the family from which he was stolen or abandoned...usually well before he knew there even was such a family. (Not infrequently this discovery is made during a death scene, at which point you learn the person you are in love with is...your brother.) Perhaps my own condition of only-childness --solitude comes naturally to me-- makes this puzzling. What is it about bloodlines and geneology that makes one person more family than another? It appears that the sibling is the most family-validating relationship in the here and now, even more than parents and children, which are projections of self into the past and future. I have friends (who have siblings) who say, "You are a sister to me." I treasure that, but not completely sure what it means exactly. I'm not sure what my reaction would be to someone who arrived at my doorstep to announce, "I am your half-brother; during the war, your father and my mother...." Soap opera fodder.)

Carried to an extreme, the notion of siblings might explain the arguments over useless islands claimed by various nations; family is just nationalism on a smaller scale. Homesteads and remote islands...whom do they belong to? And when someone wants you to be on their side, they want to make you family, ohana, with invitations to big noisy family dinners, political rallies, school reunions, family-expanding ceremonies. I've always felt like a spectator at these things, celebrating my own sacramental moments privately or with a chosen few.

As a Taoist-leaning only-child, I sometimes step back and wonder. What's with all this noise?

"Can You Come to Tea?"

2010-10-11T09:30:00.010-10:00

MIXED FEELINGS

I have no idea how to express that in Chinese, but I wish I could. Something like xin nongcuo? Heart confusion? I'm just guessing. A dictionary can be a dangerous foolish thing and explains all those bizarre subtitles.

Just watched the just-released DVD of The Karate Kid, remake of the 1984 classic (with Jackie Chan, who was actually kind of sweet in the Mr. Miyage role), a movie I never much liked anyway. I am left with a confused heart.

I wanted to see it, had been advised to see it, because it has scenes shot in Wudangshan, a place I have visited three times and where a part of my heart remains. I intend to return. It is strange to see temples, mountains, and even people, really, that are part of my own private memory, in commercial film.

Since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Wudang has become more known to a world that (in cinema anyway) percieved Shaolin as the ultimate center of Chinese martial arts. Shaolin is a Buddhist place; Wudang is a Taoist center. There is a difference in these outlooks, not just that the Shaolin guys shave their heads and the Taoists sport unshorn topknots. Shaolin is already widely commercially understood and promoted; who hasn't had the opportunity to see Shaolin monks (if they really are monks) doing their thing on stages all across America (and China)? I am concerned that the same thing may happen to the Taoists. I enjoyed a great kung fu show at the very site of Karate Kid's filming, by young adepts showing off their skills. I would like to think they will just stay there, not become promoted like Polynesian culture is in spectacles in Waikiki and the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii.

I should say that even though I was weeping at points during the movie, it is junk sentimentalism. What mother would allow her son to take on the bullying, to say nothing of the really brutal tournament...well, the Virgin Mary I guess, but really, there was no larger principle at work here. Or was there? A precocious 12-year-old who knows a little karate (he practices with a TV show) and capoeira, who thought he was street-smart in Detroit, can become a Taoist-inspired kung fu champion in Beijing in a matter of a few weeks?

And there are some scenes that I think are not Wudangshan at all, but Huashan, anther Taoist sanctuary, but who would know? I am a little concerned that Wudang, an intensely spiritual place, is becoming a trendy tourist spot. More and more people (myself included) are drawn there the way westerners visit the Holy Land to tread the land where Jesus walked; in Wudang, to learn Taoist philosophy where Zhang San Feng created tai chi chuan.

The film has been credited with showing a new contemporary China (the Olympic Bird's Nest, the CCTV building!), fabulous rural scenery (karst formations, trains through the mountains, the Great Wall) , and other places we might never see--hutongs and street markets. But if that's what you're looking for, I can think of many Chinese- and Japanese-produced films that do a far better job: Zhou Yu's Train; The Bird People in China; Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, Yellow Earth.

I would not tell anyone to not see this film. But I would tell you to not take it too seriously.

Fantasy Set

The Real Kung Fu Kids

Real Masters Showing Off Skills

Jackie & Jaden

2010-10-09T15:02:00.007-10:00

RADIO WU WEI

I have been struggling with my new car radio, which is far from intuitive and has a manual written by so-called tech writers whose resumes must include the production of countless VCR manuals. The radio's buttons are tiny, the legends hard to see. But it's JVC so it must be good? I managed to get it to receive local radio stations and playback from my iPod, but, like MS Word, it has countless unnecessary and unintuitive features and options. Somehow I locked the CD player, the feature for which I bought it in the first place, to play Teaching Company CDs so I could learn something on my daily work commute. Alas, the radio would display nothing but the cryptic ODAA-I, whatever that meant.

I was all ready to just buy another radio, when I thought, "I'll give it one more try and then call customer service." Observing the time-honored tradition of RTFM, I retrieved the cryptic and convoluted user guide, printed in four languages, and noticed the big print on the manual's back page:

With my Hello Kitty pencil's point, I activated the reset button, and, woo hoo, now the CD player works. I reset my four favorite station presets (who actually needs 15 FM station presets and another 5 AM?--to say nothing of an option to allow user-entered text-based IDs for the favored stations, like FOX TALK NEWS, or HIP HOP CLASSICS or OLD FART OLDIES. Perhaps this comes naturally to folks who have been sending text messages on phones for the past decade). I think I have finally mastered the sequence of actions needed to set the radio clock, although it seems like it should do that automatically.

I admit all this digital technology is so cool, but I have never had the patience of a young friend who said, "When I get a new device, I just spend an hour or two with it figuring out all the commands." I want a wu wei radio. On-off. Volume up-down with a knob. A couple of push buttons for favorite stations. Maybe another button or two to activate the iPOD or CD.

At least I didn't embarrass myself with a call to a tech support rep who would have thought I was an idiot, muttering to himself, "RTFM."

2010-10-09T09:15:00.010-10:00

NORTH KOREAN DRAMA

Having finished the curious not-so-historical (and sometimes completely hilarious**) KD, The Divine Hero, and pondering the grand themes that might lurk in a TV drama based on a high-tech comic book hero, I watched with some interest the apparent transfer of power process happening in real time in Pyongyang.

The Dear Leader, (son of the Supreme Leader, no divine hero, really, though appointed "eternal president") who has the worst fashion sense of any head of state in the world, seems to have appointed his pudgy youngest son to carry forward the communist autocratic patrilineal monarchy in North Korea.

My observation was that perhaps The Divine Hero is a subtle political statement as much as a mindless sexy action thriller (accented with grand themes of justice, revenge, filial piety, "grobal" economic power, and romantic love). The fictional drama is about a gang of four corrupt businessmen, military and judicial friends who 25 years earlier stumbled into an arms and drug deal and made a huge amount of money, securing themselves in powerful positions in the economy and government. To protect their interests they tried to kill the family of the policeman who was a threat to their plans, succeeding in mom and dad's demise in a house fire, but unbeknownst to them, the children survived. The Divine Hero (played by the divine Song Il-guk, who is himself the grandson of a well-respected Korean general and recently married to a high court judge), carries out a revenge mission because the system was never going to bring the bad guys to justice. Their own children have been charged, in a Confucian way, to maintain their position and get rid of the the troublemaker. By keeping the power in the family, the tradition and the money remain intact.

Oddly, it's the daughters who help, unwittingly, to bring down the empire. One of them (a cop) discovers, too late, that in fact she is the Divine Hero's sister; another (a reporter) that she is the daughter of one of the bad guys. One lives and one dies. And not who you expect.

The Divine Hero, who has some serious issues with violence and taking the law into his own hands, is not exactly excused. At the conclusion of the drama, the reporter who discovered her father was one of the corrupt businessman, observes that if a legal system is inadequate, people will seek their own revenge and justice.

I'm wondering now if The Divine Hero has some subtle meaning in Korean. One of the tycoons is a pudgy guy with an even pudgier son who is basically stupid and, lacking any kung-fu, surrounds himself with martial artists (including a particularly amoral and deadly guy acquired from the family's casino in Las Vegas, closest to a serious threat to SIG's more skilled character.) The other target of Song Il-guk's revenge is a retired general (whose hair style is vaguely reminiscent of the former Prime Minister of Japan's) and whose son is as calculating as the other's is dumb.

They all appear to be archetypes in a corrupt economy and I would think some of these points would not go unnoticed by frustrated folks in Seoul who send care packages of ballpoint pens and plastic bags to impoverished relatives on the north side of the DMZ.

That the avenger actually comes through Hawaii is also ironic. Was it only a year ago that the Dear Leader of North Korea alluded to blowing the Aloha State out of the water?

**Subtitles and heavily accented English provide surely unintended entertainment. At one point in the story, Vivian, a gorgeous woman, yin to SIG's yang, who plays the Korean-Hawaiian connection, asks the hero, whom she has betrayed badly, "to have mercy on her soil." Also, she invites some businessmen anticipating high "levenues" (leveraged revenues?) from her project, on a tour of the planned island real estate development. "We can go up to the deck and then have a little butt cruise," she purrs in heavily accented English. Not making this up.

2010-10-03T09:22:00.009-10:00

COS I SAID SEOH

An unexpected, unwelcome knock at the door Saturday afternoon. The Wizard called for me to deal with it, not being quite so bold as Liu Ling, one of the the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove.**

It was a neighbor, not one I really know, but recognize, and a uniformed officer of some law enforcement agency, holding a USPS Priority Mail parcel.

I listened to a lengthy and unnecessary explanation how the good neighbor had found the key to the parcel drop box on the floor of the mail plaza and summoned the officer (who I think had a U.S. Customs patch on his shoulder). The package was retrieved and tracked to my address.

I'd earlier gotten my mail (apparently overlooking the key that fell to the floor) and had been a little disappointed, anticipating my latest shipment of Korean drama DVDs might arrive. I'd had a similar false hope the night before with a package, but from my friend who is moving and sent me some remnants of her purging --cosmetics, room fragrance, a miniature bonsai kit, books, a fantastic red Japanese dragon kimono).

But yesterday, I was delighted, "Ah, it's my Korean Dramas, I was hoping they would come today," then thinking I should have bitten my tongue when I contemplated the possible customs violation.

I'd ordered these things earlier in the week from a site that was mysterious and ambiguous in its marketing and payment mechanism. It was hard to tell where they were coming from and though the DVDs were cheap, the shipping costs were rather high. But since I'll try anything once, I placed an order at the only source of the complete English-subtitled "The Divine Hero--A Man Called God," and for a few other things, but neglecting to specify my "free movie" with purchase.

So I was pleased to get an email within 48 hours, with a USPS tracking number, and a note that since I had failed to select a free movie, they would make a random choice for me!

I didn't expect the parcel to be hand-delivered. After I took delivery, the neighbor and the cop, who is a resident of our complex, lingered at my doorway; was I supposed to tip them or something? Sign a receipt? I thanked them and did the Hawaii thing and gave each a big hug. I've never before spontaneously hugged a lawman. (Or even not spontaneously.) At least there seemed to be no issue with customs. The DVDs came, legitimately, from Texas. (How they got to Texas is not my concern.) I recommend the vendor if you're in the market for these things.

Sorting through the package, I wondered what the free DVD would be. They guessed my preferences pretty well with "The Legend of the Shadowless Sword," although they couldn't have known I already have a copy of that movie, but still, what were the odds? Into the Christmas gift pile, along with a duplicate copy of "House of Flying Daggers" which my Chinatown vendor once gave me free. Free film with purchase of a certain size seems to be a standard practice. Makes up for the high shipping costs.

I loaded the "Divine Hero" disc with episodes 13-24, which I had previously downloaded in Korean with Chinese subtitles but now am hoping for the clarification of a couple of plot points. (It's not like it's hard to watch again; SIG's hairstyle is more reasonable in the later episodes.)

There are English subtitles, but clearly by a Chinese translator who knows pinyin working from the Korean to render*** the English: some very curious phrasings, typos and utter lack of upper case, adding a level of entertainment and enlightenment. (You can learn a lot about language this way.)

First, Song Il-guk's character, generally Romanized as Choi Kang Ta, becomes Cui Qianda or sometimes Qiangda. And "cos" means both "because" and "course." "Wanna" is consistently used as "want to."

More for your entertainment:

"Honey is closed to that man lately." (The female protagonist has been spending too much time with Song Il-guk.)

"Don't worry, I'm a shoemaker, it's the same like mending the shoes." (A Korean who makes the most beautiful Italian-styled stilettos sewing up Song Il-guk's wound, a frequent activity in this drama. Actually, there's a lot of focus on shoes in this drama, now that I think of it.)

"I thought of you cos I wanted to heard your voice."... "Of cos I saw the suspect." ... "Maybe here there's someone I gotta mee." ... "Then we pk." (Completely cryptic.) All these in episode 13. It's going to be a fun ride.

And there's my favorite so far, a simple common typo, "Don't worry, he can survive even in the dessert." Which makes me think of Song Il-guk smothered in whipped cream with maybe a cherry strategically placed. I must help him!!

**Liu Ling, a Taoist of the second century BCE, is described as a heavy drinker who never wore clothes in his own home. A visitor, perhaps his neighbor delivering a misdirected parcel, was shocked when he answered the door buck naked. Liu Ling said,"I take the whole universe as my house and my own room as my clothing. Get out of my trousers!"

***I had a piano teacher when I was young named Ludwig who looked exactly like Beethoven. In addition to being a classical pianist, he was also pharmacist. I once said, "How did you like my rendition of the Moonlight Sonata?" To which he responded, "One renders lard; one plays music."

2010-09-28T10:52:00.010-10:00

ASTRAY WITHOUT TRANSLATION
Finished the second half of The Divine Hero, with Korean audio and Chinese subtitles, neither of which I have any fluency -- and here I stumble in my own language--the conservative English speaker in me doesn't quite know how to say that:

"in which neither of which I have fluency"...? Neither of which I understand much of? Editorial nightmare. Suffice it to say I can't understand spoken Korean and can't read Chinese characters. English is challenging enough.

But back to Korean drama. Was mesmerized through episodes 13-24, I was even dreaming in Korean, or dreaming I could comprehend Korean. Though there are a couple of loose ends in the plot, that's probably because I don't have the script. There was some strange business dealing going on, with short-selling and investments and partners that helped to bring down the financial empires of the bad guys. It was pretty easy to figure out what was going on; it's mostly action and character anyway. Or mostly this extremely beautiful man behaving decisively and honorably--his mantra, "I never hurt innocent people," a counterpoint to House, M.D.'s "Everybody lies." And his poignant emotionalism: the scenes where his sister (whom he thought had been killed with his parents) and his gorgeous doppelganger assistant die in his arms are just heartrending. There's something about a serious icy cool martial/action hero who can cry real tears--copious spontaneous tears, sometimes with running noses, seem to be a requirement for all these Korean actors. Even the bad guys tear up.

In the end, the woman who loves him (but who he used to bring her father down) and the woman he loves escape. And he apparently survives the finale explosion in a car, giving hope that he reunites with one of them (or both, why not) having ruthlessly, successfully avenged his family's death. Have heard nothing about a follow-on series, but I would watch it, even in Korean!

Can you figure out who's the bad guy?

2010-09-25T03:39:00.016-10:00

SEOUL-FUL DRAMA KING

My latest Korean drama escape has been full of surprises and challenges. The Divine Hero-A Man Called God was pressed on me by my Chinatown video vendor, not just because I told her I liked Song Il-guk (SIG), the stunningly devastatingly handsome mega-star from somewhere south of the DMZ, accomplished triathlete, swordsman, horseman, and husband of a Korean high court judge, an Asian combination of Pierce Brosnan, Johnny Depp, Al Pacino and maybe a little Tom Hanks, if any of them were also serious martial artists or athletes.

She was also pushing the DVDs because the first episode of this 2010 Korean TV series was shot in Hawaii giving a little boost to our local film industry and Korean travel agencies, thus promoting two "vital" sectors in our state's peculiar economy. If it focused more on kim chee and spicy barbeque it would also be an aid to our restaurant business, although any potential Korean tourist can get that just as easily at home.

The drama started out like any Magnum P.I. episode, featuring some shady business (an illegal arms trade) going on in an exotic hotel location--in this case not so much Waikiki but a more recently developing area in the dreadfully dry Ewa plain, the last of Oahu's easily exploitable land. An area of former cane fields, an industrial park and a closed Navy base, one of

the hottest, flatest, driest places on the island, it has become home to a new pricey resort/spa/golf area, including a Disney property for visitors who find Waikiki too family-unfriendly. (And hopefully, Koreans who have watched at leaast the first episode of The Divine Hero.) Since most old money had long taken over the cooler higher typhoon- and tsunami-safe ground in the mountains, this area is also site of new, if not exactly affordable,

housing. Fortunately you can't really see the oil refinery from any of the locations, including an artificial lagoon and some very lovely beachfront. I recently attended a baby luau (a traditional Hawaiian one-year birthday party) at one of the naturally preserved spots next to one of the new hotels. Managed by one of the old land estates, it is as you can see here, a nice place to watch a sunset or have an intimate little wedding, below.

Had I been indulging in The Divine Hero at the time, I might have been fantasizing at the party about Song Il-guk, who in the series rescued, repeatedly, a journalist who was investigating the arms trade story, which came to implicate him (in a particularly amusing scene with SIG disguised as an Arab sheik). She later becomes his main love interest in the story, although as is typical in the KD

I have watched (mostly sa geuk, or historical, tales), there are at least three women in love with him (not including all the women viewers) to whom he is chivalrous, if not entirely honest.

After the Magnum/Hawaii 5-0-style opening episode, the series moves quickly into a strange melange of styles reminiscent of Ian Fleming (with SIG as Bond, supported by a couple of loyal and clever Korean science and technology geeks); Mission Impossible, The Avengers (with a particularly beautiful Korean woman in Emma Peel leathers with great martial skills), The Godfather, Noble House, and Spiderman. The series was actually based on a popular Korean comic, and one of SIG's alter egos in the story is Peter Pan, International Man of Mystery and Eternal Youth.

***SPOILER ALERT--JUST IN CASE

SIG as Choi Kan Ta/Michael King/Peter Pan is the apparent lone survivor of an attack on a policeman's family. At 7, he was adopted by an American couple and became a clever skilled agent (of intelligence or international crime, it is not clear) and becomes dedicated to avenging his family. He returns to Korea to wipe out the unscrupulous buinessmen and government officals involved in a major drug deal theft who killed his father, mother and sister in a fire.

His accomplice, Vivian, the Emma Peel character, (representing the strangely named Castle Resort group and its exotic Hawaii property rented by the first of SIG's victims of revenge -- Castle is the name of one of the original Big Five landholders in Hawaii) is charged with seducing the sleazy fat son of one of the bad guys, a real estate, construction and illegal drug magnate. She succeeds in about 30 seconds, even while whispering endearments like "tub of lard" and "idiot" in English, which he doesn't get. She would do anything for Michael, whom she loves but betrays after he becomes attracted to the journalist he rescued in Hawaii, the daughter of another of the objects of revenge, although neither of them know it (yet). The third woman in love with Michael is the ditzy daughter of yet another of the evil tycoons; he is using her to bring down his empire. A son of of the government official is the Korean "FBI" agent chasing Peter Pan, and is also in love with the journalist. He is working with a savvy and suspicious municipal policewoman who is not (yet) in love in Michael, which is just as well. She is his sister who was unknowingly rescued from the fire by another of the bad guys who raised her as his own daughter. You can just tell there are going to be complications.

All of these developing plot points are surmised. The DVD set I bought was only the first 12 episodes of the series, good quality DVDs with English subtitles, though my Korean DVD vendor insists they must be Chinese rip-offs. (I think he is perturbed that I acquired them in Chinatown.) Volume 1 concluded with a serious cliffhanger, or in this case, a bridge leap by SIG after his shooting enabled by Vivian-Emma Peel's ratting him out to the creepy FBI agent, who is reminiscent of Dave Foley from the comedy group, The Kids in the Hall, and thus hard to take seriously. It seems like sketch comedy when he takes on SIG in any kind of fight.

I unsuccessfully searched the web to find out if Volume 2 of the series had been issued (yet). All I could locate are downloads of the rest in Korean ...with Chinese subtitles. I am left with not so much cliffhanger as Tower of Babel. The Chinese subtitles are not very helpful; I can recognize about 3 characters out of every 3,000, usually "father", "person" and numbers. It might be easier if Korean wasn't so opaque to my ear, so to speak; it has next to nothing in common with any Chinese or even Japanese. It appears to be a language well suited to expressing fiery emotion; maybe it's the kim chee. As I watch the downloads, I can generally figure out what is happening, the first 12 episodes having set up the characters, action and storyline. But I'm sure I am missing subtle clues, if indeed there are any. Still it is enough really to hear SIG's surprising deep sonorous sexy voice threatening a bad guy or wooing one of the women. For some things, you just don't need subtitles.

Wooing or Threatening?

2010-09-22T19:09:00.005-10:00

FAITHFUL FULL MOON
I thought I was going to miss it. Was at Costco getting my usual 84 pounds of cat litter and came out of the warehouse to see beautiful sunset-kissed pink clouds over the Ko'olau range to the east. I turned my back to load the cat litter and when I looked again, the clouds had gone grey.

Driving home, I was probably a little inattentive, looking for signs of the moon through the clouds, but when I turned into my complex I caught my breath. There it was, directly in front of me, touchable almost. Not easily photographed with a phone camera.

I stopped at the gate and told the security guard, "Wait 'til you see that moon!"

"Huh? Is it full tonight?"

I thought everyone knew that stuff, and everyone I told in the elevator was equally indifferent. Most people have become so disconnected with the rhythms of nature, the magic show, and even more so when there is a big flourish like this equinox/full moon simultaneity. Lots of doors open in the apartments -- it is very hot and humid -- and lots of big flat screen TVs playing.

But I think the real action is outside on the really big screen of the sky. I keep pointing, but hardly anyone seems to care about my finger or the moon.

But, when I opened my own door, I dragged the Wizard outside to see it. "Wait, I have something for you, too," he said, presenting me with two tickets to next Tuesday's Chinese Moon Festival performance at the Hawaii Theatre. How cool is that? He says he may not be able to make it; a dentist appointment that day may interfere. And I have a dentist appointment on the next new moon, but probably auspicious; you can only fill something when it's empty.

But tonight, it's fuller than full!

2010-09-22T07:42:00.015-10:00

PENDING EQUINOX
Awoke this morning with my personal barometer/sinus headache caused by low pressure and rain, which will probably prevent viewing the spectacle of the full moon at the equinox tonight, not a common conjunction. Night-skygazing can be a spiritual activity, but is easily hampered by clouds, as a muddy murky mind clouds meditation.

This reminds me of my only "regret" from my last China trip, a failure to observe a particular starry night in the mountains, listening to insects and frogs, away from city lights and traffic noise. We had been out in the courtyard at the kung fu academy, watching the moon set, also noticing a passing satellite. I had washed out some underwear, hanging it on the line in the dark, then did a little qigong, a little standing meditation. I reminded myself that it would be great to come out and do some sky viewing after I had been asleep for a few hours, eyes adjusted to really appreciate the stars after the moon had gone. When I awoke at 3:30 a.m., it was just too cold and damp to leave my finally warm (if hard) bed. I told myself...tomorrow night.

But the next night it was rainy and cloudy, a condition that continued until we left the mountain. It's always better, I think, to regret things you haven't done (as opposed to what you have). You can't change what you've done, but you can always try something again, the way I finally, after several visits to Beijing, managed to spend some time at the Temple of Heaven. It had been on my to-do list for years. (Is that the "bucket list" people talk about? What is that? And the Temple of Heaven itself wasn't all that great after Wudang, though the wandering around in the park on my last day was pleasant.)

Temple of Heaven (for solar festivals)

In any case, I have already seen the Taoist mountain stars in great glory, Big Dipper and all, on a painful dark descent from the main summit of Wudangshan in 2007. I just thought it would be nice to see them when I wasn't suffering from leg pain and exhaustion. That was the real regret. But I got over it.

******
The falling barometer may also have caused some bizarre dreams for me (or it could have been a lot of really bad, if yummy, food I overate yesterday. (A chai latte from Starbuck's, a pumpkin cream cheese muffin, a Beard Papa cream puff...a Korean chili-cheese dog with jalapenos. What was I thinking? I'm fasting today, more or less, and Longjin tea has calmed my stomach.)

The dreams were only in my muddy murky cloudy mind, but they seemed meaningful. In the first, a version of the "exam in class you haven't ever attended" dream, I was among a group of peorsons to be presenting scientific abstracts for proposals. When my turn came to present, I realized that instead of a proper paper, all I had was a couple of pencil doodles on a scrap of bond paper.

"I propose," I said,"to posit an imaginary universe." I went on to discuss something about imagination, imaginary things, all fluid and fluent, it was really good, like a successful Toastmasters speech. When I was done everyone applauded. The next speaker up, said "You're a hard act to follow."

"Why don't we just take a little break, " I asked the moderator. And we did, and I woke up.

Only long enough to remember the dream and fall back to sleep again, when next I was on some sort of job interview, trying to talk to people who didn't really understand me. I was having a wardrobe malfunction, no nudity, just all tangled up, so I threw the uncontrollable bits of my costume (which may have included a sword) over my shoulder like a sari. Then as I was leaving, I met my boss on the way in. This actually happened to me once. She got the job, I got hers.

Practically everyone I know is in some state of distress over relationships, job pressure or lack of such, health puzzles...seasonal existential despair. Perhaps once past the equinox and its unusual associated full moon, things will begin to change. Partly because in past years, this is when I ordinarily would have been returning from China and I have a nagging longing to be returning (one way or the other), and partly because I am having my own share of existential despair, I hope the dreams actually mean something. In any case, "I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours."

May we all have sweet dreams tonight.

2010-09-04T11:17:00.012-10:00

NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

After so many hours this summer with long Korean dramas, it was probably time to return to a regular Chinese kung fu flick. My video queen reserved me a copy of "The Legend is Born," the prequel to Donnie Yen's homages to Ip Man and Wing Chun, the martial art form he developed and passed on to Bruce Lee. I watched it last night. (What, only an hour and a half??? Seemed like there should be at least 25 episodes in this ongoing Ip Man saga. There have been rumours of a fourth, where Bruce Lee comes under the tutelage of Ip Man, but Donnie Yen is denying it.)

The prequel features Dennis To as Ip Man, a wu shu champion and virgin actor, who resembles Donnie Yen so much that I thought it was him on the DVD cover. But not. So new there is not even a Wikipedia entry about him. He was good, very gentlemanly, cultured and a little naive, well cast as the young Ip Man. In the film, which also features Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao (but no Jacky Chan), To actually has a couple of fight scenes with the real Ip Chun, Ip Man's oldest son, now 86, not really an actor, but a serious scene stealer. (So agile: here is proof that martial arts may keep you young. I can't imagine my father, who died at 86, doing any of this physical stuff at that age.) Ip Chun was in fact Dennis To's actual sifu for eight years. These scenes made me want to travel to early 20th century Hong Kong in a kind of dreamy nostalgia. Was this a previous life of mine?

One of the interesting things about Wing Chun is that it was developed by a woman, at least according to Ip Man; in the film, the kung fu academy Ip Man is attending includes a lot of hot shot girls, leading to the plot's tragic love triangle. Don't know how much is factual, but it was a good plot and an interesting introduction to this martial art and the culture of kung fu studies. Dennis seems to be channeling Bruce Lee in his attitude toward his work:

"I hope to spread Chinese Kung Fu around the world (through his films). In a way, I do feel like I'm representing the Chinese, just like Bruce Lee did," he said. "Someone who isn't Chinese can practice Kung Fu and even be good at it, but they can never be as authentic.** Kung Fu is one of the most precious things in Chinese culture."

As for me, I am too old and busy with a job to do much more than some qigong practice and meditation (and watch a lot of kung fu film); maybe when I retire I can concentrate on some tai chi chuan, and I would love to learn some basic tai chi sword, even bagua. But I will always be a beginner and inauthentic. (And sometimes I see Westerners practicing these arts and they look a little silly, like hippos doing ballet; it gives one pause.) My interest in these martial arts came from my deepening interest in Chinese culture in general. So if as To says, kung fu is a precious element in the culture, it at least deserves some consideration and study, like brush painting, tea and the Tao Te ching. To is certainly a new kid on the scene and has lots of time to develop; I'll always be an old kid.

**I used to work with a guy, one of the hundred names, who was a Wing Chun student. He was compact and wiry, a little shy and modest. But I always sensed a strange strong power radiating from him. Like it would be best to have him on my side in a fight.

2010-09-03T18:28:00.005-10:00

GREAT SUBTITLES OF ASIA

As I have mentioned before, one of the delights of foreign films can be the subtitles.

Here's a clip from Song Il-Guk's drama, The Kingdom of the Winds, the one where he plays his own grandson (i.e., Jumong's grandson); the great subtitle is at 15 seconds in.

Now I know how to say "Arrrrggggghhhh" in Korean. Otherwise I would never have understood this scene!

And above, at right, like grandfather, like grandson.

2010-09-02T21:53:00.008-10:00

BAEK-LOGGED
Rushed to work yesterday but still found time to stop along the freeway and smell this rainbow. I thought I took this photo this morning, but as "faint ink is better than the best memory," my journal verifies it was yesterday. But the feeling remained today, when I also rushed extra early to work to meet an important deadline.

Which I did, and so felt justified to take a longer lunch to run in to Chinatown to pick up a movie my vendor called me about earlier this week, the prequel to Donnie Yen's Ip Man series. I also wanted to buy a nice lei for a coworker who is moving on, so I captured two birds in one cage. The lei vendor gave me a handful of fragrant white ginger flowers as she was packing the lei. "It's hot today, these will make you feel cool." I love Hawaii.

At the video store the vendor's aunty brought out a bag with my name on it. The Ip Man movie was there but also several other series and films she knew I would like. Little notes were affixed to the items: "Really Good, Hard to Find." "Ching Dynasty, Kung Fu."

"Got any Korean drama," I asked. She pointed to a couple of big boxes along the wall. Ah, the new drug of choice. How could I resist "Damo," the undercover lady detective of 17th century Korea with "dazzling special effects, breathtaking cinematography and mystical martial arts scenes." The Mma Ramotswe of Silla.

"I spent the summer with Jumong and Emperor of the Sea," I told aunty, who then plucked "The Divine Hero: A Man Called God" from a shelf. "You'll want this!" she grinned. Song Il-Guk as a contemporary Korean Central Intelligence agent. I prefer the historical stuff, but this was partly filmed in Hawaii, perhaps why it is readily available. No swords, horses or ponytails here, but who could resist the "new body" of SIG, looking like James Bond meets Tony Jaa.

So my new haul, with a huge "baek-log" of Korean drama, complicated my decision to invest time in Condor Hero or even House, M.D. Season 6. I wanted to kick back with something short and sweet, after the rushed deadlines and exhaustion of the job that allows me to buy all this stuff. So I avoided the decision making and popped the Netflix movie of the moment in my laptop DVD drive, Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. I've enjoyed Holmes done by Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett....and there have been so many others. Robert Downey Jr. brings a nice credibility to the character in an interesting rendition.

I didn't know that Holmes (from whom the House, M.D. character is derivative) was a martial artist. Downey opens with a scene that is as interesting as any Chinese kung fu duel. I asked the Wizard, a serious Sherlock Holmes scholar, if he really was a boxer. "Sherlock Holmes was EVERYTHING," he said. I later interrupted him to share a choice piece of dialogue: Holmes says to Watson, "Your gift of silence is what makes you an invaluable companion." The Wizard just gave me a dour "duh" kind of look.

I was dreading coming back home tonight, despite the morning rainbow, because the tree trimmers were scheduled to be at it again. The butchery wasn't as bad as I expected, and we are far from Sherlock Holmes's industrial revolution London where there was, at least in this movie, a serious lack of anything green, like a tree. It almost seemed black and white, a set full of chains and machines and slaughterhouses, a dark occult plot and serious sewage. But, a great script, good acting, and more action and special effects than Basil or Jeremy brought to the table. I've recommended it to the Wizard, not a big movie buff. But he doesn't want to talk about it. He can take his time. The Netflix mailing is hardly urgent, and I've got plenty of other stuff to entertain me.

2010-08-31T07:49:00.010-10:00

A MONTH WENT BY...

and now it's July.** No, wait, it's almost September. Tomorrow in fact, in just a couple of hours. Almost Labor Day weekend. What have I been doing for the past month, to say nothing of the entire summer?

Just read a Spanish proverb on a little inspirational calendar someone gave me which resides in my bathroom. I contemplate the daily quotes as I sit on the toilet. Fortunately they are vaguely, if not intentionally, Taoist, not like the kind you get with calendars for Humans with Seven Highly Habitual Habits and such (the ones that are about productivity and organizing and profit making).

Today's saying was, "How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward." Seems very Spanish, very Mediterranean, really, wisdom from the land of siestas. Also makes me think of guys sleeping on top of loads in Chinese trucks.

I only wish I had been doing nothing this summer; then I could beautifully rest this upcoming Labor Day weekend. After my China trip, (which basically was studying the Taoist concept of not doing, wu wei), there followed three months of stressful work, not particularly pleasant effort (that in the end amounts to not much of anything). These are the words of someone who is quite ripe for retirement, a period in which I anticipate actually doing something--but for myself, rather than effort for others merely to earn an income and make some company profitable. My marketable skills peaked some time ago, are probably obsolete now, and I am ready to synthesize my accumulated ...what?...accumulations... into something for me. I want to clear the closets of my apartment, the attic of my mind. Move stuff offstage for a nice finale, the final chapters of the novel that is my life.

+++

Actually I did do something that may be the hallmark (in my mind anyway) of this summer. (The China trip was a spring fling.) I spent an ungodly number of hours watching two extravagant Korean sageuk (historical) series with Song Il Guk (right, former pirate Yeum Jang aka Yum Moon --what a name!--here, pre-branding, in "Emperor of the Sea"--sorry no subtitles in this clip, who needs them, but warning: the branding scene at 4:30 is a little grim.) It was escape, pure and simple: from the meaningless work and into another world (there's that soap opera theme), disconnected from anything remotely modern, but full of the things that define humanity, on this earth anyway. Tragedy and comedy, love and lust, principles and immorality, war and peace, commerce and slave trading. To say nothing of agile sexy guys with very sharp swords, fast horses and archery skills. (I want them on MY side!) After scaling the peak of the 81-episode Jumong, I surmounted another in 51 hours of "Emperor of the Sea." (Bear in mind these are Korean hours, which are just about an hour, more or less.)

The story of Emperor of the Sea was really good, inspiring even. In ~850 CE Korea, the angelic Song Il Guk, (prior to his performance in Jumong), plays a morally conflicted converted pirate, not the protagonist, a short guy who looks like a Korean Martin Sheen and who doesn't look nearly so good as Song Il Guk on a horse. EotS was more or less based on a historical character, the legendary and highly principled Jang Bogo (the shorter guy's role) who opened routes in the Yellow Sea for commerce between Korea and China and helped to stop a slave trade. I've read that even guys like this series. Lots of political and economic intrigue, male bonding and loyalty themes and some very attractive ladies, a complicated love triangle but not too mushy except for the poignant unrequited love plot points. (These K-Ds are very chaste really; it would appear that a woman can get pregnant just by discreetly and reluctantly hugging a man on a beach done up in long silk robes and leather armour...well, there is that symbolic sword.) Whenever you see a "bedroom scene" it's usually because someone is sick or injured (from sword slashings), or rarely, has just given birth. The music in the clip doesn't match the show's soundtrack (the series did NOT use the U.S. Navy Hymn --at 5:48 when Yum Moon/Yeum Jang is seeking refuge in the Buddhist monastery and later dying of multiple arrow wounds--although it seems weirdly appropriate in messianic way, perhaps hinting at SIG's latest series, A Man Called God.) The whole drama has a nice sound track, which I downloaded from some free site.

This clip is nice too...another song from the series. In the video, at 2:45, observe: this man was born to ride a horse!

But now I'm at a loss for further escape...I have four more period Chinese/Hong Kong multi-episode series in the queue, (choices, decisions) and Season 6 of House is being shipped...something for the long weekend. I read a review of Condor Hero, waiting on my shelf, a recent dramatization of a Louis Cha wuxia novel. An Amazon reviewer commented that it sucked him in the same way Korean drama does. So I'm starting episode 2 tonight.

**Astute readers or other old farts will recognize this Frank Zappa reference ("Stinkfoot").

2010-08-03T10:31:00.009-10:00

RADIO DAZE
After two-and-a-half years going without, I finally have a radio installed in my car. It's been a valuable exercise in mindfulness to drive with nothing but the chatterings of my monkey mind and the sound of TAO 61's (the car's) exhaust. But this weekend, the Wizard kindly struggled to rewire the dashboard -- the thieves had made a real mess -- and get the new JVC radio+CD/MP3/iPOD-ready device installed and working. Still in the box, it had been taking up space in my trunk for two years. And in a Miata trunk, a half-cubic-foot is a lot of real estate.

It's a shiny black and silver thing, with tiny buttons, nearly invisible legends and indicators, and a coded display that I simply can't figure out, let alone see clearly. I did manage to set the clock, but I can't activate it to display the time. I'm feeling incompetent, maybe just old. (I understand why the Wizard wants an analog radio that tunes manually with a dial.)

I did manage to find a radio station this morning. I learned in a local newscast that a tree had fallen on someone and an assessment of the weak old ironwoods on the beach would begin---more tree wars; and that a nomination for the State Supreme Court Chief Justice with an unpronouncable--at least by the newscaster--Samoan name, Fa'auuga To'oto'o, had been criticized by the bar association. I once sat on a jury in his courtroom and thought he was pretty just. And I should give credit to our newscaster for trying; he has trouble with even simple things, recently commenting that we need to free ourselves of dependence on "important" oil.

Bored with the news, I opted for a CD, first of a Teaching Company series on comparative religion. But to effectively use the thing, it looks like I'm going to have to take a graduate class in radio operation -- or at least sit patiently for a while with a manual that's about as helpful as VCR documentation. (My iPAD came with no instructions, so intuitive it was, at least for a veteran Mac user --although someone considering one told me she took a class to learn it first-- I only had to ask a friend three questions about a couple of things I would have figured out anyway.)

The glitzy blingy look of the radio faceplate may help me to remember to remove it to prevent a fourth radio heist from my ragtop...it looks about as appropriate in the 20-year-old dashboard as a big diamond and ruby ring on a wrinkled hand with liver spots. (I need to schedule a detailing, to say nothing of a manicure and a facial.) My all-time favorite Sony, a couple of receivers back, was dull black and disappeared into the dashboard, although that didn't stop the rip-off artist.

If I have to actually learn how to use a car radio, I might just continue to listen to the sound of silence.

And there's something else; it really wants new speakers.

2010-07-28T21:19:00.005-10:00

BRUSH AS MIGHTY AS A SWORD
These Korean sa geuk (historical) dramas are completely surprising to me. I thought it was all about swordplay, until in Episode 8, I think, of Emperor of the Sea, the female protagonist, perhaps the first woman I can really identify with, overcomes her odds by deftly wielding a wolf brush.

A dethroned noblewoman raised by a Dragon Lady to become a profitable courtesan to some other Korean nobleman, she decides she doesn't want to marry some rich guy, but really wants to run her own business. To earn her MBA she is lucky to be taken under the wing of the merchant/pirate, played by Jumong's ultra-attractive Song Il-Guk, who is in love with her, the third part of the requisite K-D love triangle. (Never mind that the man she loves is literally slaving to build some extension to the Great Wall off in some desert province of China.) But to earn her business credentials she must pass a test: she must sell five rolls of silk to a nobleperson, apparently not an easy task in 8th century Korea. But she prevails like Melanie Griffith in "Working Girl," with a head for business and a bod for sin, not that K-D ever really shows any of that.

She arrives at her client's palace with her rolls of plain white silk and is quickly rejected by her potential customer who is busy making landscape paintings.

"But I don't want to sell you this silk for clothes," the literate and art-savvy woman says, observing the wall scrolls on display. "I see you like the landscape painting of Wang Wei...it looks so much better on silk than paper." She is invited to demonstrate her own awesome brush skills on the silk, makes the crucial sale, and earns the respect of the pirate as well as her Madam who appoints her, basically, as CFO for her trade enterprise. I should note she was also skilled in manipulating spreadsheets and creating relational databases that no one had ever thought of before to forecast and plan their business conquests.

I was delighted by this scene. I saw some paintings in the style of the 8th century poet, Wang Wei, in Shanghai on my recent trip (only derivative copies exist). I have actually attempted a couple like this, at right, myself, although not on silk. Korea and China must have been differentiated in the Tang Dynasty mostly by the Yellow Sea, the art and culture are so similar, like medieval France and Italy. The scenes in the marketplace of the K-D actually feature fake 3-color-glaze Tang Dynasty horses and other objets d'art that look lots more Chinese than Korean, not that I could tell the difference anyway.

But the best part was the skill exercised in using a paint brush to win over a difficult client/adversary. You never know what gong fu (skill) is going to get you ahead. And as much as I would really like to study tai chi chuan with Vincent Zhao and swordplay with Song Il-Guk, I think the most interesting skill I may be learning recently is my Chinese brush painting practice with my teacher. The brush may indeed be as mighty as the sword.