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

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.

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.

MOONLIGHT AND OPERA
An impressive moon tonight, biggest and brightest (because it's closest) --and the first full moon -- of Gregorian Year 2010. It's called the Wolf moon, and is chasing away the Year of the Ox, plodding through its last days, until February 14 when the White Metal Tiger appears.  I wonder what happens when the Wolf and the Tiger meet.  I suppose I'm mixing cultural folklore here. Next year we'll see about that!

Seems like an auspicious moment for the first opera of the season, tonight's Marriage of Figaro (Mozart).  Will be a change from kung fu/wuxia dramas. But another opportunity presents itself:  Beijing Opera at the Unversity of Hawaii (UH)! Next week, White Snake debuts.

Not Mozart

From UH's website: "This well known Jingju (Beijing "opera") in its English language world premiere enacts the famous legend of the snake spirit who descends to earth as a beautiful woman. Guest Artists from China have been in residence since August training the UH student performers."   I certainly enjoyed Vincent Zhao in Tsui Hark's Green Snake (which is related in plot**), so I must make a point to not miss this, even without my favorite taijiquan inspiration. (Though, Green Snake was really Maggie Cheung's movie; Vincent played a very weird character, a megalomaniacal monk.) Our qigong group may go see White Snake as an extracurricular activity.  Lots of good qi moves in Peking opera!

I was privileged to have seen "Peking" opera in "Beijing" some years ago.  My host offered a running commentary through the endless and convoluted plot involving emperors and concubines and generals and corrupt officials, all while the audience was chatting among themselves, cracking melon seeds and spitting them on the floor, and wandering around the theatre.

At one point, as a female character performed a lengthy aria (if that's what they're called), my companion was silent. Finally I said, "So what's going on now?"

"She is singing much, but saying little," my host said.  Which led me to think opera -- the ultimate in multi-media--is the same world-wide.  A wolf moon, an ox year... opera season everywhere!


**The White Snake (Bai She Zhuan) relates the famous legend of a snake spirit who descends to earth as a beautiful woman, marries a handsome young man, and then must fight to restore his life and save their marriage in the face of supernatural attacks from a powerful monk who believes that she is an evil demon.

SUFFERING THE NOISE

"Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else.  They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea.  ... The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquility of nature by pretending to have a purpose. ... It is the silence of the world that is real.  Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion." 

Thomas Merton

After the opera --I know  some people consider THAT noise, but actually this particular Puccini was quite quiet--a company party and the Superbowl. I feel like Punxatawney Phil.  I will try to pop back in my burrow tomorrow!  Six more weeks of winter...and silence.

The opera was indeed peaceful except for the last act in which Manon Lescaut dies in her beloved's arms in the desert of Louisiana. The Wizard remarked that he wasn't aware that anyone ever died in New Orleans for LACK of water.  Puccini's sense of geography seems a bit off.  It was nice to arrive at our seats, just in time after a lovely dinner at Cafe Sistina (perfect opera starting point) to greet last year's season ticket holders to our right.  She and I caught up on the grandchildren...a great-grandchild!...during the intermissions while our husbands paid no attention.  The Wizard was Googling with his Blackberry, her spouse was doing between-act stretches in the aisle.  

Although we were out until midnight, the next night, a company party, was not so easy. These events are always too small-talk, too compulsory, too gamey for our taste...gamey because it was a casino theme, and we don't gamble, even with play money. We left early, after applauding the awards for the more hardworking employees, and before the door prizes.  I might have lingered, but it was too...noisy.

Today I looked for peace and quiet, reading, cooking, painting, but noisy Superbowl revelry was to be heard through the trees.  I'd been invited to a Superbowl party, but one more evening out was too much, though I would like to see the friends.  Another quieter time perhaps.  The only thing I took notice of regarding the Superbowl (football, right?) was a Pepsi ad on the Yahoo homepage which featured Bob Dylan, weaving his "Forever Young" in and out of a more contemporary hip-hop rendition. This gives me mixed feelings.  It just seemed like...noise.

Ah, but as Thomas Merton reminds me...the noise is all illusion.