GOT SATISFACTION?

This morning, aware that today was the Summer Solstice, I tried to achieve a nice balanced state while doing my freeway commute.

Then I noticed a silvery late-model quasi-German luxury car (an Altima, whatever that is) with a large inscription across its rear window.  I'm used to the silly Olde English "In Memory of's" on SUVs and trucks, but what was someone thinking to plaster, in pretty wedding script, "Never Satisfied," for all to see? It was a pretty nice car, really. There was a small subscript I couldn't make out, maybe a dotcom, or a surf gear trademark, or a Bible Verse citation. As I was catching up to see what it was, the Altima moved to an exit lane.  Maybe not satisfied with the freeway.

MY THREE CENTS WORTH
Last night, for the first time since my return to the Islands from the Mainland (the Chinese one) I presented my Costco card, like a passport, at the gate to the Temple of Compulsive Bargains and Excessive Quantity -- not nearly as enjoyable as The Temple of Timely Rains and Extensive Moisture at Beijing's Summer Palace, where I lingered just three weeks ago.

I don't recall actually praying for rain then, but after I explored the temple, I enjoyed a lovely light drizzly hour reading Chinese poetry on a stream bank under some willows.

But back to shopping. I visit the big warehouse mainly to stock up on cheap cat litter for the Yellow Emperor and Fifi, but invariably wind up with some large package of fruit of the week (Rainier cherries are in!), maybe some bargain DVDs.

I waited patiently in the checkout line, possibly channeling the weird energy of the Qing Empress Cixi (commissioner of a marble boat, one of the most bizarre misappropriations of defense funds ever). The customer ahead of me was ready to go with his giant bag of prepared frozen jiaozi and an extra huge sack of tortilla chips, for which he had paid cash. The checkout clerk was frustrated because she needed a new roll of pennies to finish off the last three cents of his change. Her bag boy support was going from checkout to checkout lane looking for pennies, and the line was backing up behind me.  She already had my Costco passport ready to process my load, so I handed her three pennies.  "Give these to him so he can leave, you can give three back to me."  This seemed to confuse her...how would she indicate this on my checkout slip? "I'll just charge you three cents less for something." Huh?

When my load was scanned and paid for, I made an eager move to push my cart out. She was still waiting for a manager to bring her a bulk roll of pennies and said, "Don't you want to wait for your three cents?"  "No, I don't care about the pennies," I said, returning my debit card to my change purse. I think my three pennies caused her a bit of a headache...perhaps her register closing will be three cents off one way or the other...or it could be in her favor, if she just pockets the damn coppers.  Costco is too big and bureaucratic to do that thing small shops do, the little dishes of spare pennies at the register for the convenience of customers and clerks.

As I pushed my 84 pounds of clumping cat litter toward the exit, where I had to show my receipt like a customs declaration, it occurred to me that shopping at Costco has a lot in common with international travel--the really annoying bits.

NAME-DROPPING IN CHINA
You'd think that after three weeks of Chinese food, Chinese people, Chinese religion, Chinese smog, Chinese rain, Chinese language, Chinese art, I might want to settle in at home with a pepperoni pizza and an Al Pacino movie.

But last night, I was compelled to re-watch "True Legend (Su Qiu Er)" the Vincent Zhao Wen Zhuo (Chiu Man Cheuk) film I had been longing to see for a year, failed to see in Beijing (on 3D on a big screen, long past its debut and widely available on DVD), but scored as a Hong Kong region DVD in Honolulu Chinatown before I left home. It's about the popularizer of "drunken fist," an on-going theme in martial arts classics.  I loved Vincent in it, and refuse to compare his performance with anything by Jet Li or Donnie Yen (Zhao is a decade younger, anyway), although the segment that featured David Carradine (to whom the movie was dedicated, after his peculiar demise) was terrible...if I were Carradine, I might have looked for a less embarrassing way out of the embarrassment of the film role.  What was he thinking?

What I did do in China was drop Vincent's name a lot.  "Oh, yes, he's so handsome," our tour guide agreed. She knew all of his TV roles. Although another male tour guide said he preferred Hollywood movies, like Star Wars, when I told him I liked Chinese film.   Movies and Zhao Wen Zhuo were good topics for conversation with cab drivers.  One said he liked Julia Roberts, whose big grin was everywhere in Lancome advertising all over China, even more prevalent than Mao's kitchy visage.  We agreed that Julia and Vincent both had wondrous big smiles.

So, Vincent's name earned me a little street cred in China, and I had to pay homage on my first movie night back at home. Having done that, next on the agenda is to complete the Korean Jumong series, on my iPad, a pleasant little traveling companion and addictively good story. Too bad it's in Korean, not Mandarin. It sounds really foreign. I was getting used to CCTV in Beijing which featured whole channels devoted to martial arts, drama series and Chinese opera. Returning home one evening after a live opera sampler which included scenes from White Snake, with which I have become very familiar, I turned on the opera channel...to discover an honest-to-Mao revolutionary opera being played out.  It was just like classic Peking opera, but with characters dressed in Red Army uniforms and 1960s peasant chic.

ONLY IN YOUR HEAD
When the Wizard brought me my morning coffee today, he said, "Your phone's been ringing since 6. It's playing Bob Dylan."  It was 7.  "Please bring me my bag," I mumbled after a slurp of homemade latte.

Although I apparently hadn't heard the ringtones emanating from the depths of my leather carryall (Subterranean Homesick Blues for incoming voice  and Like a Rolling Stone for voice messages), maybe that was why I was actually having a dream about Bob Dylan before the latte was delivered.  I don't generally dream about celebrities or my particular idols -- although Vincent may have turned up in one or two -- but Bob?  In this dream, I was at a concert, a small venue, he was there, I was probably flirting, and he introduced himself.  I shook his hand. It was small and delicate and soft, feminine. I wasn't sure it was really him though, he looked young.  I commented on that and he said he'd had a face lift.

I returned the phone call; someone on the 6-hour-later East Coast urgently needed something, and I had to rush to the office to satisfy the need.  Dressing quickly, I actually put on an old Bob Dylan T-shirt. My office has a pretty forgiving dress code.

I was thinking about the dream when later someone else came to me and said, "There's a new Bob Dylan album at Starbucks."  Huh?  I usually know about these things well in advance. "No,  I'm sure that's Jakob, his son."  They insisted.  So I went to Starbuck's and confirmed that it was indeed the younger Dylan. Looked just like Bob, with a face lift.

LIVER QI UNBLOCKING?
The weather is weird (voggy and rainy and humid and oppressive) but I feel great.  It could be due to some medication I was in need of, but the stagnant feeling I've been suffering just recently has evaporated.  It could be because in less than a week, I leave for a three-week spiritual/cultural vacation in China.  In any case, the energy is flowing.  Unblocked qi?  Wu wei?

Is that why I was able to score a 3G iPad just an hour after the store opened to distribute them?  The coolest toy I've seen since an Etch-a-Sketch, which I never had. (Except a teeny tiny one attached to a pen, a sort of mini version, the nano-iPod of an Etch-a-Sketch.)  And now, after a weekend of "downloading apps," (I don't have an iPhone-but-now-I-want-one, so I've never done this), I have a Mandarin phrasebook that TALKS (in a voice that sounds like Vincent Zhao), a nice travel alarm clock, a way to update my blog on the road (China willing), visit Facebook, check weather and news (BBC and China Daily**).  A little piano.  Mahjong games.  Access to a lot of free literature. (So far, a collection of "Asian Wisdom" and Leaves of Grass.) And all my music and photos and the internet and .... the world.  Just hope I can get a China Mobile micro-sim for universal wireless access in the Middle Kingdom.  Seems to be difference of opinion as to whether they will be available.   But they make them there!

Moving on from 3G to 3D, do I credit unblocked qi for acquiring a DVD today of True Legend, the Vincent Zhao movie I have been obsessing over for nearly a year?  I should be watching it right now -- real soon now, the anticipation is delicious -- but I am still reeling with knowing I don't have to waste any time searching for a cheap copy for a buck in Shanghai or Beijing.  Although, if it is on a big screen there, I may just have to buy a ticket.  I understand some scenes are in 3D...Vincent in 3D! Vincent in the mountains.

I finished Bi Chun Mu, a good wuxia series, with some surprises, although as usual, pretty much everyone dies (martyred really)  in the end.  Since I am going to be in China very soon, I decided to follow-up with something not quite so Chinese.  What could be less Chinese than...The Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency, based on the novels of Alexander McCall Smith, set in Botswana.  I love those books, but was a little leery of seeing them translated by HBO to video.  But they are perfect.  (And you learn to pronounce those Botswana words. Rra and Mma and dumela.)  Then it came to me: this is just the yin version of House, M.D.  A gifted person who has their own sense of justice, their own intuitive way of solving problems, and their own internal suffering to overcome.  I think Precious Ramotswe, a "traditionally built" lady, does it better than the skinny drug-addled doctor.  No drugs required, just a lot of compassion.

Why am I writing this?  I must go pop True Legend in my DVD player.  Now.  The African bush is beautiful, but China is calling.

**China Daily has a headline in my first look-see on the iPad,  Shanghai Welcomes World Leaders for Expo.  I have made news already!  Actually I'm hoping everyone will be at the Expo so I can roam the Shanghai Museum's landscape painting exhibit in peace and leisure.

RETURN TO WUXIA
My festival of feature-length films recently left me with the feeling you get after you read a lot of short stories: you want a big novel to really sink into.  So I have found another Chinese TV series, 33 episodes based on the original Korean feature film Bi Chun Mu (which usually seems to be referenced in tandem with Musa, as "not as good as").

Oh, how I have missed the sword play by attractive young men in long robes and waist-length hair and a loose top-knot ponytail. It seems so elegant, compared to the violence of a couple of non-Chinese films from my festival of the past week or so, Al Pacino classics, Scarface and Carlito's Way.  The contemporary godfather of the American criminal and cop genre, Pacino owns those roles as the eponymous protagonists...the New York Italian playing a Cuban and a Puerto Rican. I'd sorta like to see him with a sword: "You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend!"  Not sure the hairstyle would work though, the eyes are all wrong, and he's too short, really. I think he might look like Yoda in a Ming-era robe.

In Bi Chun Mu (Dance with Sword), the TV series, I find all the usual wuxia elements--hidden identities, mysterious motives, common people  pitted against the nobility, secret sword techniques, bamboo forest choreography, revenge, and unrequited love -- at least at episode 8 it looks like it will be that way.  And it's a Chinese production; I thought it would be Korean as Bi Chun Mu the film was.  So, some Mandarin exercise.

And a new face to contemplate, here, the Chinese Wang Ya Nan, outstanding among the Koreans in the cast, plays a rich boy wastrel who develops a strange deep affection for the apparent commoner-orphan,  Joo Jin Mo (who comes across a little like the young Jackie Chan). Little do either know the orphan is really the prince of Korea.  The orphaned royal heir brings Ya Nan's character out of his drunken womanizing to proceed to feel real love for his new best friend's paramour. "I feel like a beast," the well connected and wealthy Ya Nan says. "I want my best friend's girl."   She wants nothing to do with him, preferring the orphan whose father, so predictably unknown, was killed by hers. (She is his daughter by a concubine.) There is a vague bisexual element in Ya Nan's performance that leaves open the possibility for another story line --he loves both his friend and his girl deeply. I doubt such modern sexual intrigue will become part of the plot.

So I'm hooked again. Not quite a Korean soap opera, but close.  I found the Tai Seng videos for a very good price at my rarely visited WalMart, purveyor of everything Chinese-made if not necessarily Chinese in character.  Don't know if you can find these things at YOUR Wal-Mart.  But they are easily found on line.

GREAT WALL STREET
A visit last week to my local Chinese DVD vendor (a side trip from dropping off tax forms for my preparer) yielded a couple of interesting, non-wuxia/kung fu films.  First, another quasi-propaganda piece, Confucius, with Chow Yun-Fat as the sage, who actually winds up at one point having a heart-to-heart chat with Lao Tzu.  It was a pretty movie, but left me feeling like I'd watched a Chinese version of "The Greatest Story Ever Told," with CYF in the Max Von Sydow role.

I also revisited an old video tape of Bertolucci's "Last Emperor" while I made soup from the remains of my usual solo Friday night Costco huli huli chicken.  When the Wizard's away, I cook as I may...and that usually means several meals from one pre-cooked chicken.  I'd forgotten that that was a pretty good movie, even if a lot of it is made up.  I'm thinking maybe I need to read Twilight in the Forbidden City which was used (in the film at least, along with some issues of Time Magazine, eternal source of history and truth) as evidence against Pu Yi by the re-educating Communists.

Then I put Empire of Silver, the other recent item my video vendor insisted I watch, in the laptop. Despite opening with some fabulous scenes of camel caravans in the desert, evoking Dragon Inn or Seven Swords,  it turned out to have no elements of kung fu or wuxia...but a choppy plot about filial piety (there's that Confucius thing) and...banking. I didn't know that Shanxi province was the center of banking in the Qing Dynasty. Great Wall Street. A lot of guys with queues hauling around taels of silver in the late Qing and early Republic, fighting off warlords and cleaning up after incompetent bank managers.  (Well, there was one swordfight, but a gun put an end to it.) This was strangely au courant.

And there was a romantic element that could have sustained at least 24 episodes of HK TVB: the number three son (Aaron Kwok, can't hold a candle to Vincent Zhao in the desert, or even Pierce Brosnan in Noble House), is a lazy playboy who had a serious coming-of-age affair with the woman who later becomes his father's second wife. Still, the playboy bounces back to save the banking dynasty (while fighting off wolves in the Gobi and praying for advice in the ancestral hall). Tragically, his romantic interest goes off to Mei Guo with a lady missionary (who helped her get a prophylactic hysterectomy and fake her funeral), oddly, inexplicably, played by Jennifer Tilley, not so sexy really, in a cameo role.

This film, by a Taiwanese director and produced by interests in China and Hong Kong, was featured in the 2009 Shanghai Film Festival.  I think the Great Wall Street of China has moved south from Shanxi.

SOAP OPERA...PROPAGANDA...AND ART
I have completed the lengthy indulgence of the Hong Kong soap opera, Into Thin Air, where the outlandish plot involving twin sisters and a man who can't tell them apart until when literally tripping down the wedding aisle the wrong one says, in Cantonese, "Deui-m̀h-jyuh" (which sounds something like "dum chia") instead of "sorry"...well, he should have just married them both Chinese style; there really was a number one and a number two.  Power Chan was charming in the only backstory of interest to me, because he was playing a former journalist, and unrequited love is always compelling (as long as it's someone else's).  He graciously relinquishes the object of his affection to his rival in the bustle of a Lan Kwai Fong evening...ah, if only I'd been there to carry the plot forward!

Concluding this series I was glad to watch King Hu's Legend of the Mountain, filmed concurrently with the hard-to-find Raining in the Mountain, a far superior piece of art; and then Musa -- which would have been more enjoyable if I had had the Chinese audio track.  I watch these things to learn language, and English dubs cheapen the experience.

But "Founding of the Republic,"a 2009 government-sponsored film commemorating the 60th anniversary of Mao's victory as the real last emperor of China, was in Mandarin. You may or may not like it.  Interesting take on the Communist triumph of 1949, as heartrending as the soap opera, featuring the very pretty Kun Chen (also of the 2008 Painted Skin and Hua Mulan) as the son of Chiang Kai-shek (and president-to-be of Taiwan) , and with cameos by practically every other Chinese actor of renown, including Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi and Andy Lau. (And this was not a Hong Kong kung fu film.) I can't remember any particular movie that deals so very specifically with the Chinese civil war.  If you already know something about the tensions and politics of the period, you will enjoy seeing this; the casting of Mao and Zhou Enlai (who I always thought was very handsome) is uncannily accurate.  China versus Japan has gotten a lot of attention (e.g., Ip Man, Lust-Caution, Red Sorghum, even Bertolucci's Last Emperor, and some others...and I fully expect someone will do a film version of the Rape of Nanjing--not something I would really want to see). But Founding of the Republic, dealing with a particular optimistic moment in China's history, beginning and ending October 1, 1949, is probably worth seeing if you are a student of modern China. Just take it with a dash of shoyu, and remember, it has nothing to do with the 25 years Mao was actually in power as Chairman; consdering the school of 70 percent right/30 percent wrong, as Deng Xiaoping said, this is about the 70 percent right part.

Followed that with Yellow Earth, a 1984 Chen Kaige film I know I saw some years ago, with cinematography by Zhang Yimou, about a Communist soldier in 1939 out in the Shaanxi countryside collecting folk songs.  It was  recommended to me by one of my Chinese painting classmates...gorgeous landscapes.  A touching story, a work of art.  But hard to find; I scored an old video tape on eBay.  It was worth every penny.

There is a fine line between soap opera, propaganda and art.  As long as you know where it is, I think it's okay to cross it now and then.

FROM 8 TO 88
I thought 8 was a lucky number, and doubly 88, but maybe not. I see a sad story, not the ubiquitous school shooting in the US, but a school stabbing, killing 8 children, in China:

And here at home, a woman, 88, is stabbed to death by her own daughter (unfortunately, aged 61, she  should have contemplated Tao #61, and I don't mean my blogs)

According to the international story,

"China has witnessed a series of school attacks in recent years, most blamed on people with personal grudges or suffering from mental illness, leading to calls for improved security."

Well, I guess. Who would do such things if not out of a grudge or because they're just plain nuts. This all suggests to me that the world's people are behaving like rats in a cage.  I think this happens when there are just too many of us, competing for too few resources--by which I mean not only or even material needs and pleasures, but unlimited space, uncalculated time, freedom, silence, and solitude.  I expect to see more of the same.

The luck of 8--which has to do with prosperity--won't save us.

MASTERCARD AND VISA
After my karma-cleansing haircut on Saturday, the vernal equinox, I once again braved Wal-Mart where I was able to get quick turnaround on photos for my China visa. While I waited for my photos, I stocked up on generic ibuprofen (wow, so cheap), toothpaste, dental floss, Metamucil (because I was there)...and a couple of cheap brassieres, which now I see, despite the familiar old Fruit of the Loom label, are made in China!

Also was compelled to visit the martial arts section of the DVD department where I grabbed a couple classic Shaw Brothers re-releases.

Then it occurred to me.  Since we do not have a Chinese consulate in Hawaii, maybe Wal-Mart could become a point-of-purchase franchise for Chinese visas.  It makes weird sense, doesn't it?

INTO THIN AIR
I may have crossed a dangerous threshold, with a Hong Kong TVB drama that is NOT set in any particular dynasty...but featuring actors from some of those long series I have enjoyed over the past year. Funny to see the actors in contemporary Hong Kong, no ancient hairstyles, no swords, no wandering around remote deserts, bamboo forests and mountains on foot or horseback.  (Although there are some nice scenes in a country park with a chocolate Labrador Retriever.)

I acquired this series because I wanted to see the charming Power Chan again in anything, (here with a couple of the girls of the show) and the contemporary Hong Kong setting is nostalgic for me.  I can watch it the way local people here enjoy Hawaii 5-0 or Magnum P.I.  The plot means little, but the settings do: "I know where that is, I've been there. That's right across the street from Aunty's house. I was there when they filmed it!"  And the curious pleasure of insider knowledge: "You can't get there from there that way that fast."  That's why the old Noble House mini-series is so appealing (to me anyway), especially scenes of the old Kai Tak airport and the Central Star Ferry terminal.  The memories! Not only can't you get there that way, it's not there anymore at all.  (To say nothing of the 1988 Pierce Brosnan, young and dashing, despite the gray temples.)

So I am enjoying the taxis and buses, the harbor, the MTR, and Power Chan, unfortunately not the top-billed or main character in the story. He seems destined to play comic relief sidekicks.  Still, the only "flaw" is the Cantonese audio, which isn't really helping me with Mandarin immersion, my justification for this much time watching a screen. But I'm hooked. Now I fear the next level of addiction, the truly hard stuff: Korean soap operas.

WHEN PEOPLE DREAM OF FLYING
it's not usually at the airport.

But this morning I jerked awake from a reverie in which I had gotten to the airport just a little late, to find LONG lines at check-in and security.  "But my plane leaves in 45 minutes," I said to someone, who took me to a more open place where I leap-frogged a couple of people, feeling pushy, to get to the check-in desk.  At which point I realized:  "I have no visa!"  At least in the dream I was wearing clothes.

Acquiring my visa to China is the task I must deal with this week. My reliable and helpful Chinese travel agent will expedite for me, because, oddly, Hawaii, despite its large Chinese population and its aspirations as a tourist destination for Mainland Chinese, has no Chinese consulate.  You can visit the ambassadorial reps from Japan, Korea, Taiwan,  the Philippines, Hungary, Peru and Kiribati, but not the great economic superpower to the west.  All visas must go through the embassy in Los Angeles, which means FedExing documents and waiting until the last minute for their properly red-stamped return.

At least I'm ahead of the game, better than a few years ago when I was about to leave for a Hong Kong visit when I noticed that my passport was about to expire WHILE I was to be in Hong Kong.  I think that may have been the Year of the Handover, so it probably would have turned into major humbug.

I've learned to plan better now.

LANGUAGE LAB

I've been busy with the 9-to-5 work duties I must fulfill in order to finance the China trip I have planned in less than two months (all I need now is visa and travel insurance) but I still have found time to watch Chinese movies--for their language support. (Yeah right. New heart-throb -- Kun Chen, here from Hua Mulan. Yes, he's reviving her with blood from his own wrist vein. Sort of a yin take on yang vampire flicks.)

I never was much good at foreign language study, particularly German, chosen in my academic youth (for those of us planning, if not actually achieving, careers in science, or possibly, in my case, philosophy). After the requisite two years of Latin, as dry and dreadful as the teacher who taught us, I endured four of Deutsch in high school and college, and while I could now probably translate a passage with a dictionary at hand, or make sense of simple instructions, I have no fluency and can't say I much like to hear it spoken. The pre-Rosetta Stone "language lab" exercises were boring (sitting in a cubicle with earphones when I would rather be out and about, doing and talking about interesting things like intoxication or sex).  I never watched German movies -- not sure there were any available (this was pre-Blockbuster and Netflix) and if they were, they were probably dreary. The only REAL exposure I got to the language was listening to my Swiss great-uncles when they lapsed into German while smoking their pipes and drinking beer.  I had some German Christmas carols on a record I once sang along with my Swiss grandfather; tears came to his eyes. My father, like most immigrants' children, had not been encouraged to use the native language, although he had a few quirky pronounciations that clearly reflected his heritage.

I think the way we approached language studies in the U.S. was all wrong (maybe it's different now); either you should get exposure in some depth--immersion--at a young age, or there should be a kind of survey approach like the Wizard had when he was doing his master's in library science: six languages in twelve weeks, in order to translate title pages to catalog foreign materials. After the survey (replacing that old pre-req Latin) then one might pick a language that appealed or was useful.  Just a few years ago, as a middle-aged adult, I took some conversational French classes, for no reason except that I wanted to be able to understand wine and perfume labeling, to pronounce these things with some degree of grace.  I met the teacher at a party and enrolled as a whimsical challenge to myself. It was the most satisfying learning experience I had had in years, and I came away with some proficiency.  No grades, no pressure (except to not waste the considerable money I invested), no drilling (except when we had a Parisian guest teacher who complained about my teacher's Spanish accent.  My teacher was from Biarritz. The Parisian taught me how to count.)

In addition to a subscription to French Vogue and reading Le Monde on-line (although I understood Le Figaro better, maybe a lower reading level), my teacher also encouraged watching movies--the French love cinema.  I still need subtitles for French films, but it is more and more comprehensible.  So it is to film I turn to tune my ear for Chinese.

Where I have learned some likely useless phrases. If someone kowtows to me, I know how to tell them to get up. I can salute the emperor. (Wan sui, wan sui, wan wan sui!) I can say "Weishenme ni bu sha wo?" (Why you not kill me?) I have "come" and "go" down pretty well, but not quite sure if I'm urging horses on or telling my people to get out of a dangerous situation. I watch the movies with two dictionaries, three phrase books, and a guide to characters. No popcorn. I humbly refer difficult questions to my Chinese painting teacher and Mandarin-speaking classmates. (My teacher has actually offered to teach me Mandarin, but I think it's because she wants to improve her English.)

But with film, there's the problem of WHICH Chinese. Since my most recent travels are in Putonghua-speaking China, I am trying to grasp Mandarin, but a lot of the movies I watch are originally in Cantonese--Mandarin dubs just don't quite work aesthetically.  No quite as bad as the disappointment in my copy of Brigitte Lin's The Bride with White Hair, dubbed in English, with no Chinese audio track. It's a lovely movie but loses some of its charm in English. Dubbing is unnatural and awkward in any language.

So over the past week or so, not quite ready for another multi-episode wuxia fantasy epic (The Sword and the Fairy is still unopened), I brought several Asian-themed films out of their retreat in my DVD library, forgetting they were in Japanese, Korean and French.  No language lab here, but I highly recommend these:

• Zhang Yimou and Yasuo Furuhata's Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (in Japanese and Mandarin, sort of a Chinese-Japanese Love Story).
• Takashi Miike's The Bird People in China (in Japanese, and some Mandarin, extraordinary funny  sad beautiful magical realism).
• Kim Ki Duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (in Korean, nothing Howdy Doody here, a Buddhist story by a Catholic director, emotional and gorgeous, hardly any dialog).
• Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover (in French  (L'Amant), tres sexy, with Tall Tony Leung (no slouch), a period piece in early Colonial Saigon).

Not much Chinese learned to speak of, so to speak, but still lots of beautiful scenery, heart-rending emotion, some sex (in French and Korean), and ... very pretty actors. Although I should say in this recent home film fest I also watched Donnie Yen's Painted Skin, (the 2008 remake of King Hu's 1993 comeback film) and 2009's Chinese-produced Hua Mulan, (hardly Disney, see above), also featuring Painted Skin's Vickie Zhao (no particular relation to my muse Vincent, I think) and Kun Chen, (in which movie a human-heart-eating fox fairy drives them apart, in contrast to the scene above).  Perhaps he was cast because who would ever think that Ms. Zhao was actually a man unless playing opposite this ultra-attractive prince!

HAPPY GIRLS, INDEED!
I didn't realize it at first but today was "Girl's Day,"a Japanese festival that has to do with the display of historical ornamental dolls.  It's celebrated locally with good wishes, little gifts and pink mochi, not too different from the nian gao that I enjoyed recently for Chinese New Year.

I was reminded of Girl's Day when I found this propped on my office door knob....

Mochi that looks (and feels) like doll-sized silicone implants! For Girl's Day. Thus generating this very yin post. 

I am compelled to display my own very special ornamental doll, the limited edition Hitchcock Barbie (for whom these implants might be a little excessive).  

GURUS GONE WILD
Was poking around in my little library of weird spritual books and tracts and came across something by one Ilchi Lee, lurking up there beside an old first edition from 1968 by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (aka Sexy Sadie) and a recent compilation by Osho, who is the reincarnated, or re-packaged, so to speak, Baghwan Rajneesh. Gurus who attract expensive cars, property and celebrities seem to congregate, at least on my bookshelf. (Missing from the guru region was the little red-leather-bound "Gospel of Ramakrishna" which I had stolen borrowed-without-checking-out for a long time, but later returned to my college library about 15 years "overdue." I kinda wish I'd kept that one; I think he was more or less legitimate, probably why I was compelled to return the book to its rightful shelf.)

I thought the Ilchi Lee volume was weird, especially given the new age angely-unicornish cover illustration and the frequent use of the third-person singular possessive as its', but it may have been sort of prescient that I glommed onto it, because in the first delivery of my new free subscription to Rolling Stone (something I didn't even read when the Maharishi was scamming the Beatles) there appeared an article called "The Yoga Cult," about Ilchi Lee, who is being sued (and possibly defamed) by some of his disenchanted former followers. 

So I decided to read Mago's Dream, which someone had given to me when I was working at an environmental education non-profit, not long after 9/11.  Perhaps I actually paid money for it: there is a $14.95 price imprinted on it. (I see on Amazon there are 22 copies available for 29 cents, and one collectible--not mine--for $14.95. Or you can just review it here.) I do remember that some ethereal middle-aged woman had arrived in my office, talked to me about the environment, and insisted that I read Mago's Dream.

Which I never did, until I opened it yesterday after reading the Rolling Stone story.  Standard stuff, a Korean version of Taoist meditation practice (where qi is ki and the dantian is the dahnjon); heavily into Mother Earth ("Mago," which term you are supposed to repeat as a breathing mantra--conveniently, "go" is the out breath). Some not unwise observations about how our actions are often misinformed by all the "information" (beliefs, ideas, advertising) our brains have absorbed.

But then it starts to get weird.  We "Earth-Humans" are supposed to replace the "bad" information with "good" information, which of course is Mr. Lee's "information," through a process of "brain respiration."  This sounds a little like "The Prisoner."  IN-FOR-MA-TION. You are Number 6; I am Number 2.  

I think it is probably a sign that, though the new information may be in fact be "good", when people start to pay --and try to attract-- a LOT of money (way more than $14.95 for a poorly written, edited and illustrated tract) for seminars, rigorous and dangerous training, and high holy retreats to exotic proprietary gardens, there is something wrong, contrary in fact to Mr. Lee's own advice: "Do not let any information rule your soul. ... Don't let your brain be a slave to information manufactured by others and distributed under such brand names as tradition, religion, politics, philosophy and so forth."

Mago Earth Park

Unless it is the system of "Dahnak" and "Brain Respiration" as promoted by Ilchi Lee and his rather large organization of followers. "There's a seeker born every minute," they say, and for every seeker, there's someone offering something to be found--usually for a price. (And it's pretty easy to find more than you're looking for about this on Google.)  Maybe the Rolling Stone article has it all wrong; maybe he's just a Korean Mantak Chia with a spiritual-spa-garden in Sedona instead of Thailand, and lots of devoted followers and franchised operations. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. I missed the first news of this to break on CNN; tell me it isn't weird; tell me it isn't true. Was that woman who visited me in 2002 just trying to make her quota of converts?

Funny isn't it...all the really old information and techniques-- e.g., through Lao Tzu, Jesus, Buddha, meditation, yoga, prayer-- have been there all along. Is it that people need the old information dressed up as something new? (And it appears that Ilchi's strange Korean mythology is all made up anyway, like Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon.) Our modern economic society needs to buy it as a commodity, and sell it pyramid style to someone else, for it to make any sense or difference? No wonder governments get funny about it: the Chinese government fears Falun Gong (an oddball qigong gang), we fear "cults" (though you could call almost anything a cult -- the Olympics, dog breeding, the Super Bowl, American Idol).  Although, some of our own government representatives including Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Al Gore have been pretty close to Ilchi Lee, who apparently shares their vision of the world as a nicely functioning ecologically healthy village. And some adoring Lee fans have even cited such literary giants as Dan Brown, guru of the divine feminine (Mago), among their wisdom sources.

Opportunity just knocks for these latter day gurus: global warming, 9/11--time to breathe!  No wonder they get rich, just like the new "prosperity gospel" folks get pretty prosperous.  (I was watching one of those guys on TV last summer with my surgically compromised friend on Maui when she strained her stitches laughing at the guy who confessed that once he found Jesus, he suddenly had a closet full of Armani suits. People just kept bringing him suits.) Which reminds me...we're coming up on the Passover celebration of Jesus disrupting the temple moneychangers!  Prosperity gospel indeed.

WHO'S HU?
Tigers, tigers, burning bright?
Something in the eyes?

Lao Hu (Pretend Yellow Emperor)

Gao Hu (Pretend Ming Emperor)

MING TO QING
I learned some intriguing history by spending all that time with Sword Stained with Royal Blood, a tale centered on the collapse of the Ming Dynasty (although magic snake swords and ice toads probably did not figure in the real events). The Jianghu part was literary fantasy, but the political underpinings of the plot were not fiction.  An entertaining way to absorb some history...and make it feel like I am not wasting my time watching romantic soap operas of imperial China.

I was however a little puzzled by the Emperor's character: he seemed so young, but well played, by Gao Hu, a Shanghainese Tiger a couple months younger than my son.  But then I looked at the history which revealed  that  after Beijing was invaded by rebels the Ming Emperor hung himself at the age of 33!  (Younger than my son even...that means I could be an Empress Dowager.) Chongzhen became emperor at 17, inheriting a pack of troubles from his more incompetent brother. The Ming was destined to fail, but not helped because Chongzhen was too young and had advisors who maybe had interests other than his success in mind. So Gao Hu, (an actor/singer, whose name when Googled also yields a musical instrument rather like an er hu) despite his youthful demeanor, was actually even a little old for the part. Interesting too, Gao Hu's birthday is the same date Chongzhen died, April 25.

ANY WAY YOU SLICE IT

Not a bad way to bring in the Year of the Tiger, spending a few hours with another pretty boy with a sword.  Up to episode ershi san (23, of sanshi, 30) in "Sword Stained with Royal Blood," my current epic wuxia series,  based on a novel by Louis Cha, the Louis L'Amour of China. This one is an end-of-Ming story starring the charming, pouty-mouthed Bobby Dou Zhi Kong, right, a young Taiwanese actor, who has four sword-wielding women in love with him in a formulaic story about his little band of kung fu experts, including a monk, a reformed bandit, some mysterious uncles and one of the adoring women.  They are out to kill the last corrupt and stupid Ming king (whose daughter is one of the lovestruck maidens) and save the country in the face of Qing attacks. (There is real history here.) Bobby plays a moral and very agile character, although I keep thinking the role calls for Vincent Zhao, supported by Power Chan as the reformed bandit. (But that's just me. I think maybe Bobby is channeling Vincent a little.) Original language here is Mandarin, so I've been training my ear and learning some useful phrases.

A surprise element in this story (to me, maybe it's a well known Chinese thing) was the magical "ice toad," which looks like a marzipan amphibian that sucks poison (a common wuxia element) out of anyone so afflicted; the opposite, really, of the tropical bufo.  Googling "ice toad" I find that, apart from its appearance in some fantasy games, there actually are toads in Alaska that freeze and thaw; they create their own antifreeze.  Sounds like Chinese medicine; I've seen those geckos on a dipstick!  Click here for some fascinating toad-related stuff.

Taoist Immortals Dancing with Toad

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.

TECHNOLOGY

Sometimes it sucks.  I have a new Tai Seng DVD wuxia series I am watching, but the first DVD in the set has some problems. (May be all six of them do, but don't know yet.)  A few minutes in, it completely freezes my Apple DVD player forcing me to shut down, restart, and execute a special command to eject the disc.  To return the flawed product (the receipt for which I have since discarded), I would have to go back to Wal-Mart, where I shop like twice a year (for the huge container of berry-flavored Metamucil I can only get there). When I'm in Wal-Mart I'm never quite sure where I am...they're exactly the same in Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania, possibly even Beijing (although the cast of characters is probably different there...I'm not sure what Chinese Wal-Mart shoppers might look like). 

When last buying that Metamucil, since I was in le plus grand magasin  (a nod here to Target), I also was checking out the cheap DVDs on offer ( where I found Jeremiah Johnson, a truly great  movie, kind of Western wuxia, with Robert Redford, that I believe I saw in its premiere** in 1972 in Pocatello, Idaho, (which geologically is really part of Utah), and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I have never seen, but maybe it's time to find out what THAT is all about.) Then I discovered that our local Hawaii Wal-Mart has a respectable section of wuxia and kung fu videos. (Maybe I wouldn't have found this stuff in the Ocala, Florida, Wal-Mart. But then I wasn't looking, I was buying cheap household supplies for my aged father.)  On my Metamucil run, for a good price (the price you pay for enduring Wal-Mart) I bought Shaolin Grandma (subject for a whole 'nother blog post); a not half-bad Korean movie called Shadowless Sword, and a couple of multi-disc Tai Seng series. (I feel really guilty because for these I should have patronized my Chinatown vendor, but I will be back there soon, before Chinese New Year, and will certainly spend some bucks. Maybe I will ask her to stock Metamucil.)

Alas, Sword Stained with Royal Blood is giving me trouble. The Wizard, not a fan of the Mac DVD player, suggested I view it with VLC.  But I decided to test it first on the DVD player connected to our rarely used TV, where it plays just fine.  Except that the DVD player remote control doesn't work, so I can't select subtitles or control the DVD in any way. I asked the Wizard to investigate.  Indeed  something's wrong.  Why would anyone design a device controllable ONLY through a remote?  He can't determine if it's the remote or the IR sensor on the DVD player.

"I need a detector.  I need to order a new tool!"  Which he is enthusiastically now doing on line.

In the meantime, I have learned that the DVD DOES play on VLC on my Mac, (so I don't have to go back to Wal-Mart) although it occasionally burps and reverts to the Cantonese track from the preferred Mandarin, and loses the English subtitles. I can easily recover, but really something is wrong.  I hope it's only this first DVD.

In any case, it's a good story, from a Louis Cha wuxia novel.  They didn't have technology in that setting...except for fine sword production.

I wonder what would happen if I greeted the Wal-Mart greeter with a sword in hand?  Ideally with the receipt for the faulty (Chinese) product impaled on its tip. Prease to lefund this?

**I have the idea that I saw this movie in a theater in Pocatello with Robert Redford actually introducing it.  It was sort of a big deal.  But I could be imagining this, or conflating it with some other event. This may be why I now like to occasionally order shoes and bags from Robert Redford's Sundance catalog.