Never-ending Holidays

It's Jan. 6, Epiphany, in the Christian/Christmas liturgical cycle, the 12th and last day of Christmas. But for so many, I can tell Christmas is long gone, all done on Dec. 25.  Why do we expend so much energy in the run-up to things, and not savor the actual time, as if it were just one minute or a day and not a period?  We were supposed to have our Christmas trees out of the condo earlier this week --that seemed wrong to me, and I like my tree so much, the lights and color and symbols, it is hard for me even now to think of dismantling it.  Especially in the Hawaii winter with gusty winds and a lot of rain. It makes things cheerful!

When I was in the grocery yesterday, (or was it last week?) the first thing I saw was the Valentine candy display.  Does anyone buy such things now, a full month and half out?

Since Halloween (Labor Day really) my life has been a virtual whirl of holidays, markers in the year...Halloween, the scorpio moment that precedes the Wizard's birthday. Then there were elections (you'd think they were holidays, the way folks go on and on) and other federal observances leading up to Thanksgiving. We managed to spend some serious holiday time with family and friends on the Mainland.  Then my birthday, then our wedding anniversary/winter solstice and Christmas.  And now... Valentine's Day?  It isn't even Chinese New Year yet!

On Christmas eve, in addition to my annual ritualistic baby boomer nostalgic viewing of Polar Express, I also watched Holiday Inn, a DVD of the 1942 musical with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire with Irving Berlin music. It recalled to me the cycle of holidays of grade school in the '50s, construction paper craft projects making silhouettes of Washington and Lincoln, and Valentine hearts to decorate the box in which we deposited little cards for classmates, unaware of any erotic significance,  and on and on through the year. But they never seemed to run together, those holidays, as they do now in consumer-based celebrations.

Holiday Inn was fun to watch, including Fred Astaire's famous patriotic firecracker dance, (compare to Gangnam Style) and Bing and Marjorie Reynolds singing White Christmas to a tree, using the bells on its boughs as part of the acompaniment.  It was a quaint reverie, except for the colossal embarrassment (and bizarre counterpoint to White Christmas) of the Lincoln's Birthday celebration, with Bing Crosby in blackface, giving the shameful impression that Abe freed the slaves so they could find acting jobs in Hollywood movies as stereotypical mammys and pickaninnys.  Well, it was 1942 and Irving Berlin.  We still had a long way to go.  (Who would go to a sophisticated song and dance inn in the country to celebrate Lincoln's Birthday anyway?)  Apparently broadcast versions of the film edit this number out; I suppose if Hollywood wanted to remake the movie, in a politically correct fashion, they might add Kwaanza to the holiday celebrations or replace the Lincoln scene with Martin Luther King Day.

And it would be cool to add some lion dancing and kung fu for a Chinese New Year scene.  That's the next holiday I'm looking forward to!  Fifteen days! Spring festival! The Chinese know how to stretch out a holiday.

Welcome Water Dragon

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?

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....

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.

CLANGING IN A NEW YEAR

I thought it would be weird, but it wasn't really.  The English version of White Snake, a classic Peking opera, produced here by some UH students after six months' tutelage by Chinese opera masters turned out to be quite entertaining, rousing many shouts of "Hao, hao!" from the audience at moments of particular grace, comedy, or drama.

English lyrics with the traditional Chinese melodies did give it a kind of playful Mr. Rogers quality, but the production nontheless captured the energy of the spectacle--dramatic gestures and posing, martial acrobatics, colorful glittering costumes, all in the sparse sets Peking opera is known for.  Because the opera is broken up into many small scenes, I can understand why bits of them would become popular as spontaneous street entertainment, like YouTube clips.

I was well prepared to enjoy White Snake because I had recently watched Green Snake, Tsui Hark's movie based on the same legend, but from the other snake's perspective (and with Vincent Zhao as the troublesome monk, at right, troubled by Green Snake Maggie Cheung).

Last night's performance contrasts vividly with the Western opera season that is also upon us.  The Marriage of Figaro behind us, we will mark the actual Chinese New Year day with Wagner (Die Walkure). Chinese mythology, Norse mythology...on stage in living color. (Although Wagner always seems a little grey and somber to me.) A symphony orchestra vs. a band with Chinese instruments, clanging and twanging to fit the mood, more than a melody.

One thing both styles have in common: they seem to be particularly appealing to senior citizens.