Brain functioning

Brain once again able to function. Ah, so nice. Now, if only I can stay healthy for a while. Maybe eat more vegetables or something.

So you remember I had this random theory of utter geekery about the similarity of ancient Chinese poets and contemporary musicians, rappers etc?

Well, let's put this to the test shall we? I have an excellent candidate. Qu Yuan 屈原, arguably the first Chinese poet of note. He was originally a court official who was exiled and eventually threw himself into a river and drowned. Before he did, he wrote a series of exceptionally long dense poems with lots of mythological references, apparently these are veiled metaphors to his country's political situation.

Suggestions?

What is wrong with me?

As a result of still kind of having some kind of stomach bug, I've been eating some pretty plain stuff. However, I've managed to become addicted to and devour a bag of Lychee/Coconut jellies, you know the ones that come in little plastic cartons and have warnings about them getting stuck in your windpipe? I ate an entire bag tonight. They are curiously soothing to the stomach.

Thinking

Hooray for not being responsible. Today I went to Taibei and bought two books and didn't do any homework. I think my Chinese is finally good enough to read some of the books I've enjoyed as translations. So I bought Republic of Wine by Mo Yan. The translation's quite decent, if you enjoy "the cannibalism as a metaphor for social commentary" school of Chinese literature, I highly recommend it. The other one I bought was Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian. We'll see if I actually get around to reading them before I have to ship them back.

I really need to cut down on my social anxiety though. I think I must be coming across as an idiot. The very polite salesman who attempted to sell me a $7900 backpack leads me to conclude this.

A note, when trying to sell someone something, if they ask you if there are any other models, do not tell them that this is the only option. Particularly if they can walk next door and find something $2000 cheaper. (A conspicuous lack of options makes me suspicious.)

When I actually do buy a backpack, I sure as hell ain't going back there.

Family History

In a conversation I had with a friend, I mentioned that, although it's really corny, when I run into difficult stuff here I think about my great grandparents and what they had to do when they came to America. And then generally whatever I'm going through doesn't seem so bad. My friend expressed some surprise that my family's been in America for so long. And it's true, the majority of Asian immigration to the US occurred post-World War II.

It's actually kind of weird since I have an almost textbook family history in some ways. I'm not entirely sure when my great grandparents (all 8 of them) came to the US, but it had to be before 1907 for the guys since that's when the Gentlemen's Agreement eliminated Japanese immigration to the US. Apparently my great grandfather's brother was caught in Japan at the time the agreement was passed and was unable to return.

Two of my great grandfathers started out in Seattle, one of them settled there for a while before moving down to LA where he supposedly founded a grocery store empire in the greater Los Angeles area and became seriously wealthy. The other one worked his way down the coast and out to Hawaii where supposedly there was an uncle waiting for him. When he got there, his uncle had disappeared and no one knew where to find him. Finally, one other set of great great grandparents came over as a couple and eventually settled in one of three somewhat "utopian" Japanese farming communities, the most famous of which was the Yamato Colony.

It actually surprised me but in a couple conversations I've had with people, the camps have come up. And although there's usually some amusing confusion about my grandparents being "in camps", people generally really surprised that my family was interned. I guess for me it's not really that unusual. I mean, my family is Japanese American, most of us were interned. But I guess most people have never met someone whose family was interned. Whatever.

The grocery empire was totally lost because of internment. They had to sell everything and lost a lot of money, and they never really recovered. Had my family held on to their stores, I'm sure our family would look a lot different, maybe I wouldn't have even been born, I don't know.

When I think about it, my great grandparents were pretty amazing. Most of them came to America at the age of 16 either to work or to marry some cousin who was 10 or so years older than them, and not speaking English. They lived in a country that was hostile to them and denied them citizenship. They worked dangerous and low paying jobs which Americans were not willing to do. Most of them never returned to Japan, which meant that they never saw their families again, and probably only occasionally heard from them.

My great grandparents took some pretty big chances. They were most likely motivated by inheritance disputes, poverty, shiftlessness, or just plain lack of options. However, it is good to remember them sometimes when I start feeling too sorry for myself.

Hooray for Surface Mail

I'm packing my first box of stuff to ship back home tonight. Rarely has packing ever put me in such a cheerful mood. The first survey of my home leads me to believe that I have actually accumulated few possessions which should make the whole process a lot easier.

I generally end up packing things in a hurry late at night and usually spend a lot of time carrying things and wondering why I have so much stuff anyway. Hopefully surface mail is significantly cheaper than airmail. I mailed some gifts to people today and holy jesus crap that was expensive! The good news is that the women at the post office are always incredibly nice and helpful.

Fortunately it looks like I will be able to acquire free boxes from my place of employment. Hooray for free boxes!

I am a bad neighbor

Some people have moved in upstairs, and I sometimes wonder whether their loud thumping coincides with the times I play music without headphones. It seems to sometimes.

Perhaps it's because I listen to things like XiuXiu -Boy Soprano without headphones. Maybe I should buy a more comfortable pair and wear them all the time, you know, to be nice.

Hooray for Soapboxing

So FireflyNightLight called my attention to this kid who needs a bone marrow transplant.
http://www.helpsamiam.com/
The site above lets you know more about his story and also gives you several useful links to registering. So register!

Also if you are Asian or partially Asian, this website
http://www.aadp.org/
will also help you register, since this issue is of particular concern for Asian Americans. Something you're probably aware of if you read Angry Asian Man as obsessively as I do. In case you don't that's why I posted it here.

You can also read more about the guy here
http://kimchimamas.typepad.com/kimchi_mamas/2007/02/seeking_bone_ma.html#more

And even if you're not Asian, register anyway. I found out I was 10% Native American, your ancestry may surprise you and therefore save a life!

See I'm not crazy

Remember when I wrote about a sea change in Asian American youth? Well check out this article which was part of a study done by some brand insight firm (whatever the hell that is) called, "Ten Things Every Brand Should Know About Asian- American Youth."

It's not the awesomest thing ever. A lot of the items it mentions are pretty obvious to anyone who is Asian American and is moderately aware. I.e. being hapa or part Asian is ok; we don't want to be the nerd on TV; we want to look cool; we hate that "where are you from" question; we hate William Hung etc.

Some stuff on there did surprise me. We like easy listening??, I guess if Josh Groban counts as easy listening, I've known a couple people who like him, but still, easy listening??, and apparently we gamble.

Ambivalent things included: Korean culture is "hot", I think that would vary depending on which ethnic group you ask. As for Korean culture, especially film being hot, you don't need to be Asian American to know that. As if Oldboy, the entire filmography of Kim Ki-duk, and the dreaded remake of My Sassy Girl didn't clue you in already. I was also not aware that Martin Luther King was a particularly Asian American role model. Malcolm X seems like a figure whose ideology has been far more influential among Asian American activists.

Anyway, despite the no duh-ness of this article, it is kind of interesting to me that someone bothered to even make this study. It does sort of support my crazy theory of a shift in identity of Asian American identity right? And as usual, I'm sure someone will try to use this to try to make money off it. However, they shouldn't get too excited, even MTV couldn't make money off of us yet.

Updates

My sister told me today that I don't update enough. To which I reply, "Fie! I update more than anyone else I know with a blog." This is probably because I have less of a life than anyone I know with a blog.

Besides, recently I've been sick so nothing interesting physical or mental has really happened. Also I think at this point, I'm in danger of posting a lot about "Aagh, I don't want to be here anymore! I want to quit my job and go backpacking!" type things.

On a lighter note, while waiting to throw my garbage away, this man and his wife walked by and the guy was repeatedly patting his wife's ass. It's cool that he loves his wife and all, but do I and the rest of the people throwing garbage away really have to be part of the moment?

Dialup

I dislike dialup internet with the passion of a thousand suns. In other news, I have returned to the land of the living. Although I still get this strange sore throat only at night. I'm unsure how to interpret this.

In other news, I went to the National Palace Museum which finally reopened with its total collection. It's very pretty and shiny. However, I find that my enjoyment of any given museum is inversely proportional to the number of people who are in it. And there were a lot of people there. That said, there were a few things that were cool enough to make me weak in the knees.

Oh yes, and I'm reading Hongloumeng in the original Chinese. It's 500 times better than the translation.

That's all for now folks.

Gandhi and other saints

Salman Rushdie is one of my favorite writers. Although, like Virginia Woolf, one of my other favorite writers, sometimes I like his essays more than I like his novels, probably because they make me think.

His review of the film Gandhi in Imaginary Homelands "Attenborough's Gandhi" really made me think. The implications of the essay have been with me for quite some time. The essay itself is so good I'm tempted to just quote all of it, but I'll restrain myself. Rushdie asks the question of why the British would want to deify Gandhi and then answers himself.

The answer may be that Gandhi ... satisfies certain longings in the Western psyche, which can be categorized under three broad headings. First, the exotic impulse, the wish to see India as the fountainhead of spiritual-mystical wisdom. Gandhi, the celluloid guru, follows in the footsteps of other pop holy men. The Maharishi blazed this trail. Second, there is what might be termed the Christian longing, for a 'leader' dedicated to ideals of poverty and simplicity, a man who is too good for this world and is therefore sacrificed on the altars of history. And third, there is the liberal-conservative political desire to hear it said that revolutions can, and should, be made purely by submission, and self-sacrifice, and non-violence alone.

The most interesting point, to me, was the third point. Because it sounded quite familiar. Isn't that what we learn in elementary school when we learn about Gandhi? It's a simplistic story, but it's one that's been fed to schoolkids in America for decades. And often the story that we hear is the one that Rushdie cites, that through non-violence, and shall we call it submission, the civil rights movement or Indian independence, or whatever struggle of your choice, was accomplished. What kind of effect has this had on our thinking? On the strategies of activists? It seems slightly conspiracy theorist-ish but really, does the American education system choose to valorize this type of thinking on purpose so that when the masses rebel they're easier to squash?

The message of Gandhi is that the best way to gain your freedom is to line up, unarmed, and march towards your oppressors and permit them to club you to the ground; if you do this for long enough, you will embarrass them into going away. This is worse than nonsense. It is dangerous nonsense. Non-violence was a strategy chosen for a particular people against a particular oppressor; to generalize from it is a suspect act. How useful would non-violence have been against, say, the Nazis? Even in India, the leaders of the independence movement did not succeed because they were more moral than the British. They won because they were smarter, craftier, better fighting politicians than their opponents. Gandhi shows us a saint who vanquished an Empire. This is a fiction.

Rushdie's discussion of Gandhi puts me in mind of America's treatment of Martin Luther King. Their stories are remarkably similar if you think about it. Men dedicated to nonviolence who were assassinated by someone. Both of them had rather significant character flaws, but were later sanctified by history. This seems like a variant on The Noble Savage. The native nobly demonstrates his dedication to a strict set of ideals, which which results in his death at the hands of his own people. And in the end the white man survives to tell his story, The Last Samurai is an excellent example of this.

This is not to say that Gandhi and Martin Luther King themselves would have advocated this. But after their deaths, their images have been manipulated in order to fit this model of martyrdom. Whereas revolutionaries who advocate violence, such as Malcolm X, or Nelson Mandela are not handled with the same ease. They make people nervous, and generally they find acceptance only by their late conversion to nonviolence. Why mus all good revolutionaries be nonviolent?

What does this mean for us exactly? I think it raises some interesting questions on how we've been taught to think about acceptable resistance. For example, most left wing activists use peaceful means of self expression. How much of this is due to the rhetoric of nonviolence? Maybe we should rethink how we think about resistance and the struggle and how we intend to go about this.

Golden Fire Pig would make a great band name

As a former classmate reminded me today, it is in fact, the year of the Golden Fire Pig. Apparently a time of great fertility. Asian countries with negative population growth rejoice!

In honor of the New Year, I have compiled a random list. I don't know why being sick compels me to write about music. You guys will just have to deal, or not read, it's really up to you.

Albums I'm Very Glad I Bought in The Year of the Dog
The Decemberists The Crane Wife
The Decemberists Picaresqueties
Lateef & The Chief Maroons: Ambush, I've started liking Quannum Records more and more. This album isn't particularly long, but damned if I can find a song that I don't like.
Blue Scholars- Blue Scholars, Remember when I said it might be love. It really is love. I listen to this every day and haven't gotten tired of it yet.
Ladytron- Witching Hour, this is definitely not particularly deep, but it really is fun.

Albums I Feel Guilty for Downloading Illegally
Blue Scholars- The Long March EP, so I went out and bought a bunch of Common Market to make up for it. They're pretty good too.
Magnetic North- Magnetic North In all fairness, I can't buy this in Taiwan. Asian American emo-rap, as Wendao Jinxin calls it.
Far East Movement- Folk Music, my opinion is that Jin should just get these guys to produce all his albums for him. Their verbal skills aren't as good as Jin's, but they can build a much better album than he can. That said, any "cred" they had vanished when I found out that one of the member's dad is my dentist. I would have bought this too, but I can't find it in Taiwan either.

Albums I Should Have Downloaded Illegally
Pretty Girls Make Graves- Elan Vital, there's one or two good songs on here, that's the best thing I can really say about it.
The Far East Movement mixtape, eh this was really just a warm up for Folk Music. Anything on here is done better on their CD.

Albums I'm Very Glad That I Downloaded Illegally
Sufjan Stevens, I do not like slow sad, lo-fi indie pop. I keep trying it in the hope that I might like it. I never do.
Jay Chou- Still Fantasy, not bad, but just indifferent. It was a big disappointment after November's Chopin.

Breaking News on the Mummy 3

If Jet Li is in fact the villain in the Mummy 3 I will abjure all faith in the Creator.

Looks like I have come down with some sort of stomach bug. So I will not be traveling during the New Years holiday. Instead I will lie on my bed reading the library books my Chinese tutor gave me, and wait for death and drink EmergenC.

If I die, I leave my Sleater Kinney and Le Tigre CDs to my sister. May she torment my mother and the parakeet with "I'm So Excited" as she wishes.
All Asian American hip hop and my Better Luck Tomorrow soundtrack I leave to Wendao Jinxin.
All strange electronica that sounds like it was made by a robot, particularly a lady robot, I leave to Laurel, so that I may continue to humor her obsessions as I did in life. Ditto for my Decemberist CDs, and Pretty Girls Make Graves' Elan Vital, it's a crappy CD but it has a song about pirates on it.

Over and out.

A random theory

The more I read Chinese poetry the more I become convinced that Chinese poets and contemporary rappers are actually quite similar. Seriously! Chinese poets even had pen names and often went by multiple aliases! Also most classical Chinese poetry was once set to music, even though the music is no longer extant.

There are still differences of course, there were no ancient Chinese battle MCs (that we know of, although if there were that would be awesome). And Chinese poets had to observe complex and more fixed patterns related to the music and rhyme scheme they were using. However, some of these poems did become extremely popular as popular songs.

I'd love to do a project where I matched famous Chinese poet with a contemporary popular musician. You know, based on style, image, and general public perception of their personality. There's this one Tang shi I read that could totally be an emo song.

The best thing to come out of American remakes

of Asian movies is the release of Infernal Affairs 2! If you haven't seen Infernal Affairs 1 go check out the review at LoveHKfilm.com. It's definitely one of the most famous HK films in recent memory, and has yet to be surpassed. However, one of my favorite films of all time is Infernal Affairs 2, the prequel to Infernal Affairs 1. If you like triad drama, gun fights, and hot Asian men in black shooting other people, this is definitely the movie for you. (Perhaps the absence of hot Asian women is why this series never got a wider release. Elva Xiao's kind of hot but she's only in IA 1 for about one minute. Whereas Shawn Yu, who's quite hot, stars in Infernal Affairs 2.)

Thank you, Martin Scorcese for making a remake of Infernal Affairs because the powers that be will finally release Infernal Affairs 2 and 3 in America. Although I still say that Tony Leung, Shawn Yu, Edison Chen, and even Andy Lau could kick Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio's asses any day.

Poetry

A couple weeks ago, a discussion about poetry got me thinking about what poetry is exactly. There is, I agree, a certain sense of recognition. That's half of it. I guess for me it's also a question of rhythm. Some poems or their rhythm or something will get in my head and once inside, it's usually rather difficult shake off. I'm not really sure why that happens, it just does.

Like this, for example.

When the green field comes off like a lid
Revealing what was much better hid:
Unpleasant.
And look, behind you without a sound
The woods have come up and are standing round
In deadly crescent.
(from W.H. Auden, "The Two")

I don't know why it got stuck in my head, but reading the whole poetry discussion, I remembered it, and felt compelled to go look it up.

Honestly, as a former literature major I've often had to analyze things in great detail. While I probably gained a lot of insight from the process, it took a lot of the magic out of things. Knowing the why and the how usually do. I never really studied English (language) poetry, and I'm really glad, actually. So I can just say, poetry is just magic, simple as that.

What 50 kuai will buy you

You know I never usually buy lunchboxes on train platforms. But on my last disastrous train trip, at 3:00, I finally gave in. And I didn't get food poisoning. Go me.

As much as I respect Margaret Cho

sometimes her "mother" schtick makes me uncomfortable. To her credit, the time I saw her, she did the "mother" thing only on request. But why do people like to see her Korean mom act so much anyway. Generally, I'd say that it's not Asian people making the request, it's the white people. Why do they eat it up so readily? What's with the fascination with crazy Asian parents.

I bring this up, because I have noticed that many of my white friends and acquaintances quite readily think that every Asian person has "crazy Asian parents." If a parent does something weird, it must be because they are a "crazy Asian parent." Sometimes parents are crazy, not because they are Asian, but because they are just crazy.

For example, one of my white friends told me "Oh right. M, she has this crazy Asian family." Later, I find out this probably came from the story about how M's mom forbade her to eat bananas since she was a child. And also characterized them as worse than alcohol and pot. Other than that, M's family seems fairly functional. Now, I'd probably characterize the story as somewhat amusing and prejudiced against bananas, and perhaps taking the whole no banana thing a bit too far. And possibly crazy. But certainly not "crazy Asian." Hating bananas really has no relation to Asian culture, unless there was a memo and I wasn't paying attention.

And also, isn't the label "crazy" just a label for "fresh off the boat" or just "Asian"? And therefore Asian parents are crazy because Asian culture is on some level repressive and crazy? I may just be performing some faulty mental algebra, but really it's sometimes seems that way.

I'm hypothesizing here, but possibly the "Asian parent" thing is kind of exotic to people. They've read about it in the Joy Luck Club and so it's this novel experience. Also, I think it gives them the chance to laugh at Asian people through their children's eyes, so since it's being mediated through another Asian person, maybe it seems ok, than just laughing at someone's mom on the street. I'm just throwing it out there. What do you think?

Sometimes

It's just not in the cards to take good pictures. I uploaded the pictures from my camera and only two or three were any good. This is the best one of the lot.

Is it just me

or is the Democratic Primary looking almost as diverse as the cast of Captain Planet?

We have Dignified Black Man, Icy Blonde Lady, Cocky White Guy, and Hispanic Dude of Dubious Origin, all we need is some Asian Lady from some unspecified part of Asia and they can combine their powers to form Captain Planet! (Or maybe that's Al Gore.)

(My student gave me some bubble tea tonight, he may or may not have spiked it with some fairly hardcore crack.)

The Super Sign

Damn Magniloquence, making me think in the morning. It strikes me that perhaps a healthy discussion of what these words, like equality, diversity, and equal opportunity mean. Recently I read The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making by Lydia Liu. Some ideas from there resurfaced when I was thinking about equality, and now again when Magniloquence and her link bring up diversity. Liu brings up the concept of the super-sign "a linguistic monstrosity that thrives on the excess of its presumed meanings by virtue of being exposed to, or thrown together with, foreign entymologies and foreign languages."

Equality and diversity don't necessarily fall under a strict definition of a super sign since this is an English language term, being used in relation to the English language. However I think Liu's discussion of the super-sign could be useful in a discussion of what equality has come to signify to various parties, as well as the discussion of what diversity means to the academic establishment.

"What is a supersign? Properly speaking, a super-sign is not a word but a hetero-cultural signifying chain that crisscrosses the semantic fields of two or more languages simultaneously and makes an impact on the meaning of any other discrete verbal phenomena that linguists can identify within particular languages or among them. The super-sign emerges out of the interstices of existing languages across the abyss of phonetic and ideographic differences." (Liu, The Clash of Empires, 13.)

Again, equality and diversity, these complex terms don't fully qualify as super-signs under Liu's definition because they exist in one language. However, I think Liu's term does articulate, to some extent, the questions of ownership and the struggle for mastery of a word.

She mentions as the struggle between the British who sought to ban the Chinese word 夷 from use, because they identified as "barbarian." The two words then became lumped together, although historically, 夷 did not have the same derogatory meaning as "barbarian." In this case, the Chinese word came to be identified by its English "translation" and banned.

In terms of equality and diversity, people may be talking about entirely different concepts or values which are just lumped under the same word. When I talk about the need for more diversity, does this mean the same thing as some college administrator talking about "diversity"? And also, more importantly, whose interpretation of diversity is ultimately winning out?

I'll leave the question of what I think diversity means myself for another time.

Day in the the life

So as some of you may remember, I made various flippant predictions which continue to come true. One of my former Kejian students stopped me on the street tonight to chat. O Life, just when I think we might make some kind of peace, you come up behind me with a beer bottle. I should really stop keeping score of how many matches with Life that I've lost. I was always really bad at sports.

In other news, Magniloquence and I were linked by Little Light. This may be the biggest thing that has ever happened on this blog. I've been linked by a couple other people before, but not anyone whose blog I enjoy as much.

My (Chinese) New Year's resolution will be to eat three full meals at regular times for a week regardless as to whether I'm working or not. If I can do this, it will be a personal best.

The Score

as it stands today.

1 Point for me, I manage to take a picture in a photobooth today that does not make me look like some sort of criminal or a fugitive from the law or the INS.

1 Point for life. I also manage to mishear a total 3 times because I have my headphones on. Once again making an ass of myself.

I think Life and I can call it even today. However, the night's still young.

Thoughts on 2008

Recently I read this article about the whole Joseph Biden "articulate, clean black man thing" It's not available at the Washington Post anymore, so I can't link to it, but the part that caught my attention was this passage,

It's interesting that Obama's reaction dealt solely with the A-
word. "I didn't take Senator Biden's comments personally, but
obviously they were historically inaccurate," he said in a
statement. "African-American presidential candidates like Jesse
Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton gave a
voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one
would call them inarticulate."

The author goes on to say

I realize the word is intended as a compliment, but it's being used
to connote a lot more than the ability to express one's thoughts
clearly. It's being used to say more, even, than "here's a black
person who speaks standard English without a trace of Ebonics."

The word articulate is being used to encompass not just speech but a
whole range of cultural cues -- dress, bearing, education, golf
handicap. It's being used to describe a black person around whom
white people can be comfortable, a black person who not only speaks
white America's language but is fluent in its body language as well.

2008 is going to be interesting because there are so many "token" players this time around. We have "the woman" "the black man" and "the Mexican." In a normal election, we'd be lucky to even have one of them, and they probably wouldn't be a very serious contender. Right now "the woman" and "the black man" are the front runners.

Anyway, as this progresses, it will be interesting to see how these candidates, particularly Obama and Clinton present themselves and try to craft their identities to claim the best advantage. Just like how Pelosi, was, by some newspapers' estimation, attempting to use her gender as to identify herself and her party more strongly as a breath of fresh air.

Love triangle

There's totally a love triangle developing among my sixth graders. Alice has consistently liked Wayne (Ichiro) for quite some time. Which both me and my friend Iris have noted with amusement. However Wayne's a typical 12 year old boy, and he has no clue. Yet every 10 minute break, Alice is always right by Wayne, giving him crap.

However recently, one of the other boys, Greg, and Alice have been having these yelling matches. And Patrick, another student, commented “一個兩口" or "Oh, a couple." I think Patrick might have something there. It's like a Korean soap opera only with 6th graders. How will it end?

It's funny how this stuff which used to annoy the hell out of me when I was younger, I find sort of amusing now.

Anyway, I'm also in the midst of planning a month long trip to China and Japan in the summer. I hope to hit Hong Kong, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Beijing, Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo. Possibly in that order. If you've been there and want to tell me something that's cool to do, send me an e-mail.

Adventures on the train

So yesterday I attempted to go somewhere new. However I didn't plan my trip very well, and therefore spent a lot of time on various train platforms waiting. By the time I got to where I was going, it was getting late and I was tired, so I only stayed for about an hour and a half, and then got the train back.

On the way back, this screaming child was banging the bathroom door open and closed. While his mother half-heartedly (and ineffectually) tried to stop him. He wasn't really listening. This young guy looked over, smiled, and shook his head at the kid, gently but firmly. The little kid got so scared that he went away and never touched the door again. I had to cover my mouth because I was smiling. It was seriously the awesomest thing I'd ever seen. Although the mom was probably kind of embarrassed, this 20 something year old guy accomplished in one second what she'd been trying to do for 5 minutes.

GWB

Why can't he just build statues to himself like other absolutist dictators? What's good enough for Kim Jong Il should be good enough for him.

Also, why is he so concerned with his legacy? He's still alive. If he wants to be remembered forever, he should go build a pyramid in Texas. With gold, lots and lots of gold.

Deep thought for the day

Part of getting used to having long(er) hair again, is that now I actually have to comb it once in a while in order not to look like a hobo.

Place settings

So now that I've taken care of equality and race, I promised my friend I'd go back to his original intent which was to discuss the possibility of equality between the genders. As much as Wendao Jinxin will attempt to get me to talk about gender once in a while, I've never felt all that qualified to talk about it. It's probably due in some part to my discomfort with feminism, or at least the feminism that I've run into in my small life.

This is a topic that Magniloquence or Little Light could probably do better. However, since both of them are probably a lot busier in more productive ways than I am right now, I'll give it a shot.

Much like my ramblings about minority equality, I'm hard pressed to figure out what true gender equality would look like. Equality, as Magniloquence points out, should not mean the same thing as sameness. Although the two are often conflated. It also depends on what you think equality is.

According to some people's world view, the genders are equal. Each gender has its own assigned role, passive and active, aggressive and submissive, strong and weak. It was always an argument that the sexes had separate but different spheres, each completing one another. According to this world view, the sexes are already equal.

What makes this theory problematic is its rigid definition of gender roles and its assumption that all men perform their masculinity in the same way, and all women perform their femininity in the same way. And of course that all men are 100% masculine and all women are 100% feminine. It's too rigid a theory to allow for "deviancy" from the norm.

Also according to contemporary, progressive ways of thinking, the problem with the theory lies in the difference in status between the two. Their roles may be complementary, but their places at the table are not equal.

While the silence in the comments section indicates that many of you are rather bored by what I've been doing recently, I would, as always enjoy hearing comments on this.

The Light of Other Suns

I'm not sure why but every time I buy a light bulb I'm convinced that there are light bulbs with bases of different sizes, although in reality they're all the same and I should just stop stressing.

Anyway, in an attempt to get more natural light, I picked the Energy Saver "warm light" bulb. Now, it seems that while the rest of my house has normal florescent light, my bedroom exists on a separate world, with an aging yellow sun.

Bad Day or a Change of Pace

Yesterday, I locked myself out of my apartment, and then a minute later, stepped in dogcrap. According to Taiwanese thinking, I should have bought myself a lottery ticket. I refrained, mostly because had I attempted to do so, I probably would have set myself on fire in the process.

I only write about this now, because it's now impossible for Life to make the day any worse.

Oh yes, and remember how on New Year's Day I predicted in jest that this year I'd see more people from my past. Ran into another old coworker at the Fine Art Museum a couple weeks ago. He didn't recognize me either.

You win again，Life

Holy Crap

This Equality thing is like a meme. How much further will this go? I'd like to hear back from more people, whether or not you have a blog.

Equality in Atlantis

Recently a friend of mine started two separate conversations with me and another friend of ours about equality. On my end, the conversation began with the question, "can we ever be equal? and if not why then do we strive for equality?"

First of all, my first impulse, as a person trained by the institution-of-higher-learning-that-I-went-to, is to unpack the terminology. Who are "we" and what are we talking about when we talk about "equality"? And how do we define equality? Anyway, I wrote back about political power in relation to racial minorities. And as it turns out, what my friend meant was in terms of gender equality.

Meanwhile Wendao Jinxin, thinking along similar lines, posted his thoughts on his blog. I'm curious what you, all 9 readers who visit multiple times, think of this.

My conversations with both people are worthwhile. For the moment, I'll follow my original line of thinking, which was about racial equality and what that would look like, if we could attain it?

First of all, who are "we"? I'll take this as all underrepresented, underprivileged people, poor people, women, queer people, racial minorities of all kinds. Anyone who doesn't consider themselves to be equal right now, and lives in fear, to some extent, of repercussions that might result from who they are.

Equal to what? Defining it as The Man, would be too easy and too simplistic. I'll define it as those people, who can live without fear of oppression due to who or what they are. This definition is still problematic, but I'll let it stand for right now.

And finally, what is equality? Equality, at least in terms of social justice-y types, has become a signifier for equal rights and equal opportunity. When did equal rights for all citizens become an right, and a signal of an enlightened state? Certainly America did not begin as a society based on equal rights for all. I'm vaguely aware of the debate about man's natural rights, and the inherent rights of all human beings. Those of my 9 readers who are better versed in the Western canon than I, please feel free to enlighten me.

Equal rights and opportunity for everyone? What does this mean and what would this look like? To me it's almost inconceivable. Please show me a society which was truly equal. Even states which have been founded with the intent to create an equal society have failed to live up to their ideals.

So if it is impossible, or perhaps it's better to say improbable, why should we work for an equal society? In my opinion, the idea of creating an equal society is a bit like the idea of travelling to Atlantis (I am totally stealing from W. H. Auden's poem "Atlantis" and from Brooks Hansen Perlman's Ordeal). Although as Wendao Jinxin says, the old timers make the realistic decisions that actually help people, many activists initially became interested in social justice of some sort because of this idea of the equal society. The fact that Atlantis doesn't exist doesn't make make its presence any less powerful in our minds.

Webb Part 2

Perhaps I wasn't being clear. Hopefully some time and some sleep have made my thoughts slightly more coherent, and concise.

I don't disagree with his concern for the poor and that aspect of his populism. However, if he's going to draw from that legacy, white populism and Jacksonian populism have some pretty nasty roots. Jackson became popular among white Americans through his slaughter of Native Americans.

My point is that white populism has consistently functioned by appealing to a white populace while oppressing or advocating for the oppression of people of color.

Webb clearly drew on this legacy in his speech and draws on this legacy in order to craft his political identity. However, he also raised some issues which reference the other xenophobic legacy of this identity in the speech. Through the indirect reference to American jobs being sent overseas. This makes me wary of Webb as someone whose outward appearance can easily be identified with the theft of jobs.

Webb seems like a fairly smart man, he knew what he was doing I'm sure. It's a successful way to be a politician. However it doesn't mean I have to get behind him.

Navel gazing

Somewhere along the line, I started being able to read Song dynasty poetry (well with the help of extensive footnotes and the dictionary). I'm not sure how that happened. To me, to some extent, this signaled to me that I've almost accomplished what I set out to do when I moved here. My real goal is to read Honglou meng, but that's another story.

However, as much as I've enjoyed my time here, I'm definitely feeling like it's time to come home. In fact, I kind of wish I was leaving a little sooner. However, being here a bit longer, I'll improve my Chinese a bit more. I'm just starting to feel more and more like it's time to move on.

Looking back on it, it's sort of difficult for me to say whether my time here has been well spent. It kind of is what it is at this point. There's no point in evaluating it. That said, I've certainly learned a lot here. Even if it wasn't what I thought it would be.

曉出淨慈寺送林子方 - 楊萬里

畢竟西湖六月中，
風光不與四時同。
接天蓮葉無窮碧 ，
映日荷花別樣紅。

SOTU Democratic Response

Thanks to my mother, I sometimes read political blogs. However, recently I've been feeling like I've just been reading the opinions of many white upper middle class guys. And reading the largely positive responses to Jim Webb's State of the Union Response and how great it was, this feeling has only become stronger.

When Webb was elected, he was dubbed a populist or a "people powered candidate." My far left politics nonwithstanding, I'm somewhat wary of white populists. According to my understanding of American history, many populists and labor organizers have historically mobilized working class whites against those swarthier than they. The questions of race and exclusion have played a large part in the history of organized labor. And anti-immigrant sentiment has always flared when jobs are scarce. Asian American history is an excellent example of this.

Looking at Webb's response to GWB's State of the Union address, there were a couple things that sort of bothered me. One of course was the mention of the "good American jobs" that were going overseas. It marks Webb to me as a populist to some extent. He positions himself in support of the working classes and the have nots. However, the flipside of the good American job line is that it has been frequently used in anti-immigration rhetoric and still is. I found its presence in Webb's speech rather disturbing. There was nothing overt about it, but to me it felt like a line was being drawn in the sand.

Furthermore, the presidents he referenced in his speech, Teddy Roosevelt, Andrew Jackson, Eisenhower, were all war hero presidents. Given the circumstances surrounding the State of the Union address it's really not all that surprising. I find it sort of interesting to note, however, that many of these presidents became war heroes by imposing American imperialism upon those swarthier than they. Webb even identifies as a "Jacksonian Democrat." As I recall, Old Hickory, who was a populist president, spent a large part of his career murdering Native Americans. Populism has often widened divisions between white people and people of color rather than it's united them.

For all that he's married to an Asian American lady and has a half Asian kid. And for all that he won his election based on the racial remarks made by George Allen to his South Asian staffer. For all that I still prefer him to George Allen. (I would probably prefer Pauly Shore to George Allen.) Webb isn't a populist for Americans who look like me.

Oh yeah, Webb's Vietnamese American wife account of how "her husband often teases her about the escape. "He says that if [U.S. troops] hadn't rescued me, I'd be snaggletoothed and selling pencils on the streets of Saigon," she said. "It wouldn't be too far from the truth. If I'd stayed behind in Vietnam, I wouldn't be where I am today."
doesn't really make me want to jump on the bandwagon either.

The Xanga Generation Part 2

You know I'm almost positive that no one reads these rants of mine. But whatever. I do think the existence of Xanga and rice rockets signify the existence of an emerging Asian American identity. And possibly with that some sort of uniquely Asian American culture?

I'm not even really sure what I think about this, however, I think that our identity is becoming less and less that age old story of being the only Asian kid for miles and miles around and having that warp a sense of self. You know, obsessing about the black hair and narrow eyes. Wanting to be blonde. Although in all fairness, I know people like that too. Instead, we've started identifying ourselves against other Asians. And there are tons more Asian Americans hanging with other Asians, not in a self conscious way, but rather like the characters in Derek Kirk Kim's "Same Difference."

This is proved of course, by my scientific theft of something off a group on The Facebook. The group itself is titled "I Ain't No Ghetto Asian." and the description reads,

"For the Asians whose cell phones aren't rigged with those crazy ass lights, whose cars aren't riced out, whose hair isn't reminiscent of eye-stabbing weapons, and who d0n'T tYPe lYke ThIs."

As dubious as my source is, something that can be seen in the creation of this group is the effort of some Asians to distance themselves from the so-called "Ghetto Asian" which they obviously feel is somewhat overpoweringly prevalent or why bother making a facebook group to proclaim your non-identity?


I don't know if I'm necessarily saying that this trend will be something huge. I guess I'll say I think it's something that might become something. I won't be any clearer than that.

And now for something completely different

I found this on littleyellowdifferent. It's a list of bands which promote "the gay," and therefore should be avoided. There's nothing I can say that will make this site any better than it is. Just go look.

The Xanga Generation

In which I will ramble along about some ideas that I've been ruminating about, citing things of dubious academic content, and which are largely anecdotal in nature.

It's often been a complaint among Asian Americans that our community is a difficult one to organize, because, uh, we don't really have a culture. However, I've read a couple articles in the last year that correspond to my general feeling that this is slowly changing. To be fair both of these guys are about 10 years older than me, and are therefore out of this cultural movement, if we can really even call it that.
"APA: So you're pretty positive that there will be an Asian American audience that will be identifiable within the next generation or so?

SK: I think it's happening now. I'm very positive. I was in New York and I realized [there are] these 13 to 16 year old girls and boys. It's the Fast and the Furious demographic: they want something that's quick – a popcorn movie, a summer action flick. But they see a character that speaks English, and they can identify with him, because he’s American. It just happens [that he’s] this Korean American guy in Tokyo. They like that. They want to see their faces without the kung fu, without the accent, without the emasculation, without and the asexual characterization; and you realize with these girls, they want their idol – they want their Johnny Depp. And you know they're going to go to college, they’re going to be educated, and they’re going to be the ones who are buying the tickets. Because it's not about being Korean American or Chinese or Vietnamese or Japanese. It's just Americans that happen to be Asian. I think it's changing. I felt that. "

From Asia Pacific Arts' interview with Sung Kang

"I think the Asian American community right now is in the midst of defining itself. For a while I think we were all trying to be white. Then there was a period of time when we were trying to be black. And now we're finally coming up with something that's truly our own."

At Bishop O'Dowd, where he's in his ninth year of teaching, Yang says, "I see the difference in my students and how I was. They're much more aware of Asian culture. And they're much more proud. They wear their skin with a comfort that I didn't have."

From The San Francisco Chronicle's interview with Gene Yang

Both of these comments sort of stuck with me, as putting into words, this feeling. One time, my sister and I were hanging out in the University District, and we walked past this car. Then we both sort of paused, and said at the same time, "That's an Asian car." How did we know? Well it was a souped up navy blue Acura with tinted windows and giant shiny rims. But more importantly, why were we able to both define it so definitively as an Asian car? Clearly we were picking up on cues, which we weren't even really aware of ourselves. Although memory has definitely colored how I view the experience, the certainty I had at that moment hasn't really gone away. It was an Asian car.

To me, the ability to identify something as Asian meant something. The accusation that is often leveled at our community, which I subscribe to in some part, is that we are indistinguishable from white people, in the things that count, consumer habits, political preferences etc., and are therefore ignored politically, while also being allowed into the white man's club.

However, at the same time, a lot of these canonical Asian American narratives of growing up as the only Asian kid in a sea of whiteness, I've never really related to. As much as it's become the dominant myth, and I'm sure there are lots of Asian Americans who have had those experiences, it's not mine. I grew up in areas with a healthy Asian American population. I've always had Asian American friends, and while there are definitely times when I felt estranged and still feel estranged from the Asian American community, it's always been there.

I also do feel like, younger Asian Americans are coming together, rather unconsciously. For example, Xanga. I mean really, how did the Xanga become the Asian American Live Journal? Does anyone really know how that happened? And yet it did. And it functions (functioned? I'm old and therefore out of touch with today's youth) as a community of sorts. An annoying community sometimes, but at the same time, a largely Asian American community nonetheless.

You know, if I keep writing this, it will become ridiculously long and Justin will kill me for clogging up his inbox when he's writing a thesis. I'll continue these "thoughts" (i.e. ravings) in another post.

Well ok

My sister's DNA test tells us that she is 88% Asian and 12% Native American. I'm generally conflicted about my ethnic identity. Now I'm just confused. If she was alive, Ba-chan might have some explaining to do right about now.

Guilt

So while ordering coffee in a Starbucks, I got stuck with this female barista, who, in my opinion was attempting to show off her English. Needless to say, I'm not really all that impressed by the use of English anymore. And also her English name was Feeling, not that this has anything to do with anything, but Feeling, for Christ sakes. And sort of told me, rather than asked me if I wanted a tall. At which point, being kind of grumpy (and let's be honest here, kind of an asshole) I was rather visibly annoyed and specified, in Chinese, that I wanted a small.

She then didn't ask me if I was taking it out, or drinking there. I was waiting for my Chinese teacher, so I was drinking it there. She was visibly rather annoyed, and I was visibly rather annoyed. The end.

However, being Japanese, and therefore already guilty in the womb, I now feel like I was an asshole, or even worse, an AMERICAN asshole. Oh horror of horrors. Or am I just succumbing to the Taiwanese sentiment that people who speak English ostentatiously are just trying to show that they're better than everyone else?

簡體字和繁體字

同學們和老師們，
我的繁體字讓你很煩惱嗎？ 還是你朋友用的簡體字你完全看不懂？去看看這個網站吧。只要你copy and paste然後你copied and pasted字就會變成你喜歡種的體字。
http://www.khngai.com/chinese/tools/convert.php

Random Observation

I may have to gain back some of the weight that I lost, or just like, work out more or something. Some of my third and fourth graders can totally push me around (literally!) And don't even mention Josh, the fifth grader who's small and built like a barrel.

Assorted things

The greatest thing since sliced bread: dumplings with corn in the filling. I kid you not. I've eaten them for dinner and now breakfast, consecutively.

On an unrelated note, I think I've now listened to the Blue Scholars for the past 2 weeks at all times excepting times when sleeping, showering, or teaching class. In fact, I very well may have irritated some people at school for listening to my mp3 player constantly while prepping classes. Could this be love? On the other hand, I just listened to DJ Shadow's new album. So maybe it's not.

The people next door are fighting again. This would be more bearable if the mom didn't have such a screechy annoying voice.

The wildlife

was generally not all that photogenic. This being the one exception. Other than that, the only animals I saw were some fiddler crabs and what looked like lung fish, you know, those fish that can breathe the air and can live in shallow mud.

Don't know why

but I was kind of obsessed by the power lines.

Why is it that...

everywhere I live, the people who live upstairs do something that sounds like they're building tables. Is there some sort of logical explanation for this or am I just kind of crazy? What the hell are they doing up there?

I need some caffeine.

I haven't had any caffeine

and therefore cannot think of a clever title.

紅樹林

Little Asia on a Hill 2: The Return

Don't worry, it's not another long soap box post, but I read Oliver Wang's analysis of the article. It's a lot more literate and better written than mine. You should check it out.

Pretty Pretty Pictures

I believe the last time I wrote a long long rant, I promised on my day off I would go somewhere and take pretty pictures. Enjoy it while you can, suckas, I don't know when the weather, or the picture taking light will be this good for a long time.

Just so's you know, this is Danshui.

Also as per the request of various people with an unhealthy interest in sweater vests, I probably took more pictures of myself in this batch than I have in the last year and a half. If you want them you'll have to e-mail me.

Little Asia on the Hill

So here's my two cents on Little Asia on the Hill, that article that's been making the rounds. Whatever, I've got the day off, I've got time. I have to give the writer credit, he is a kind of crafty, and steps around making an egregious error that someone can then call him out for. He covers the history of racism against Asian Americans and the recent lawsuit by Jian Li, charging that universities discriminate against Asian Americans by holding them to higher admissions standards. He even mentions something about model minority myth, quoting from Daniel Golden's book, "'Asian-Americans are the odd group out, lacking racial preferences enjoyed by other minorities and the advantages of wealth and lineage mostly accrued by upper-class whites. Asians are typecast in college admissions offices as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science.'"

All very well and good. However, sandwiched in between these examples, Egan will wave the yellow peril flag a ton. For example, the accompanying photographs consistently portray, as my sister astutely pointed out, the people in the picture are all East Asian Americans, and all seem to be fairly clean cut and honestly rather nerdy looking. Seriously though, shouldn't we have at least had one spiky haired dude just for representation's sake?

Characterizing Berkeley "overwhelmingly Asian" he goes on to paint this picture of the campus.

And at least on this morning, there is very little speech of any kind inside the Free Speech Cafe; almost without exception, students are face-planted in their laptops, silently downloading class notes, music, messages. It could be the library but for the line for lattes. On mornings like this, the public university beneath the towering campanile seems like a small, industrious city of über-students in flops.

So wait a minute, from the little table that the NY Times provides, Asian Americans are 46% at Berkeley 43% at Davis, 56% at Irvine and 43% at UCLA. So hold up, if there was a college campus was 46% or 56% white, would this college be described as "overwhelmingly white"? Overrepresentation of Asian Americans in proportion to their numbers in the populations aside, 56% of one ethnic group does not merit the charge of "overwhelming." And then tying it to a studious campus, and connecting it to the apparent lack of political activism on campus just seems sort of low.

The big stumbling block that Egan encounters is his inability to comprehend, as is the case with many journalists, that Asian Americans are a diverse group, with many different origins and economic backgrounds. He does pay some lip service to it. "A little more than half of Asian freshmen at Berkeley are Chinese, the largest group, followed by Koreans, East-Indian/Pakistani, Filipino and Japanese." So where are the Vietnamese Americans? If Egan did his research he should know that Vietnamese Americans are a fairly significant portion of the population of California. Poorer Asian Americans are hurt just as much by the absence of affirmative action as poor whites, poor African Americans and poor everyone else. Not that Egan sees this,

IF Berkeley is now a pure meritocracy, what does that say about the future of great American universities in the post-affirmative action age? Are we headed toward a day when all elite colleges will look something like Berkeley: relatively wealthy whites (about 60 percent of white freshmen’s families make $100,000 or more) and a large Asian plurality and everyone else underrepresented? Is that the inevitable result of color-blind admissions?

Why are white people the only ones who get the benefit of class analysis? Everyone else just kind of gets lumped together regardless of economic background. Perhaps this is the future of great American universities, minorities are not allowed to have an economic background. Then Egan definitely goes the yellow peril route with this little gem

One study at the institute looked at Asian-American students in lab courses, and found they did better solving problems alone and without conversations with other students.

What the HELL does this have to do with affirmative action? I mean, I thought the article was about affirmative action. What does this one study on Asian American study habits have to with anything? However, it does have a lot to do with conflating all Asian Americans and reinforcing the robot-like model minority stereotype which Golden condemns in the quote on the first page. Awesome.

One final kick in the teeth
But Berkeley is freighted with the baggage of stereotypes — that it is boring socially, full of science nerds, a hard place to make friends.

Honestly is this really true? I've never heard that about Berkeley.

Well if you've made it to the end you deserve some sort of prize. I'll go out and take some pretty pretty pictures today to make it up to you.

B-side

The joys of applying to grad school (in which there is freaking out)

As I think I've mentioned here before, I've been applying to graduate school. I've honestly been trying not to thinking about it, since the mere thought is enough to make me feel paralyzed with fear. However, after hanging out with some people studying Chinese at Taida, it's been on my mind quite a bit. In sending in the last bit of paperwork, I discovered 4 typos in the writing sample I've sent to other schools. Needless to say I spent the next hour freaking out. I swear to god I'm just going to assume I won't get in this year and apply next year. Anything other than that will be some sort of awesome uncalled for miracle.

On a totally unrelated note, I am for the moment completely in love with the Blue Scholars.

Why is it

that when a high school in which whites are the minority does well there must be some "reason" when for high schools where whites have always been the majority, doing well attracts no notice?

A dead butterfly

For more pictures of my obsession with photographing dead animals please see here

我真少了一根筋

I've been running around like a madman. Most advisable while also having ongoing asthma problems. Anyway, I went to the hospital for my health check. Every so often, a nice lady will take pity on me because I seem so freakin' clueless. That happened at the hospital, she even called me on my cell phone to tell me I left my passport at the hospital. It was really one of those, How have I even lived this long? moments.

In other assorted news, there are few things I hate doing more than shopping for clothes, and there are fewer items of clothing that I hate buying more than I hate buying pants. I bought two pairs of pants. I may even have to buy a few more, so I don't wear them into the ground like I usually do with my clothes. I also bought a sweater vest. I'm not sure exactly what this says about me.

In which I make observations about various things

So today I had an asthma attack and went to the doctor. I have to add that it is scary to have to fight for breath and it's also kind of scary when it's your own body preventing you from breathing. It also really wears you out. I'm tired. I also emerged from the doctor's office and even bigger fan of the Taiwanese medical system. I paid 150 NT to see the doctor, this is $4.55 US dollars. For the two inhalers the doctor prescribed me I paid 140 NT, a whopping $4.25 US. All told it cost me less than 9 dollars to see a doctor and get a prescription. And it also only took about 25 minutes. In the States, I'm lucky if I pay less than 99 dollars to see a doctor. Now hopefully these two inhalers do their thing. Universal healthcare is awesome.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm getting kind of disturbed by presidential funerals. I mean, I guess I'm still too young to remember most other presidents dying, but did they really get this royal funerals, with their body being paraded around the country? It just seems like the president is becoming more and more like a king.

Also I don't really know much about Gerald Ford, but it seems like a lot of the articles I've been reading valorize his loyalty to Nixon. I mean, is everyone forgetting, this is Nixon, you know the guy who broke a lot of laws and stuff? Incredibly anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist blah blah blah. I mean, if Ford says this type of guy was his best friend, and they were on the same page, what does this mean exactly? Loyalty is great and all, but just cause the guy died doesn't mean we should forget the other dead presidents he associated himself with.

The end of the world

There were these pigeons flying around in front of the light. Unfortunately my viewfinder wasn't being cooperative. So I just sort of randomly pointed and clicked. It worked out fairly well for just doing that, sometimes that's just how these things go.








Honestly, I didn't intend for it to look quite so bombastic, but there it is.

New Years Day

I climbed this hill. Since I had another Monday off and the weather was nice, I decided to be kind of irresponsible and go hiking. It was a really weird trip. On the way there, I ran into doubles of this guy I knew in high school and this guy that I know here. 真嚇我一條．Plus I also ran into a couple teachers from my former school who didn't recognize me. Either my hair does have a great influence over my appearance or all Asians really do look alike. Seeing all these people made the day sort of weird, and I was already feeling kind of weird as it was. I'm kind of glad New Year's Day is over.

My mother often says that the stuff you do on New Year's Day will be rather common throughout the year. If this is true, I guess I'll be seeing a lot of doppelgangers, old coworkers, and I'll climb a lot of stairs in 2007.



Since I was by myself, I could go as far as I wanted, so I walked to the top of 茶壺山．Everything's in black and white, clearly I miss my old SLR camera.

Flat Daddies

Apparently some government official's bright idea was to make a bunch of life size cutouts of soldiers in Iraq so they can stand in for the real soldiers. It occurs to me that you could do something really sick with imprinting, like taking a picture of a duck and then convincing a baby that it's her father. I'm sick, sick I tell you.

Mostly though, it just seems a little creepy.

New Year Letter

Under the familiar weight
Of winter, conscience and the State,
In loose formations of good cheer,
Love, language, loneliness and fear,
Towards the habits of next year,
Along the streets the people flow,
Singing or sighing as they go:
Exalte, piano, or in doubt,
All our reflections turn about
A common meditative norm,
Retrenchment, Sacrifice, Reform.

from W.H. Auden's "New Year Letter"

臺灣地震

The first thing I usually do in the morning is check my e-mail. And I had an e-mail from my sister asking about the earthquake and if I was still alive. Of course, I was more like "What there was an earthquake?" I read a newspaper later that day and found out that the aftershocks had hit northern Taiwan around 8:00. At that time I was taking out the garbage. I didn't feel a thing.

An Open Letter

An Open Letter to that Dude in the Neighboring Building Who Hawks Up Phlegm at 4 in the Morning,

You have some impressive vocal power. Not only do I hear the hawk, in all its moist detail, the sound of the spit actually echoes throughout the neighboring buildings.

Also, why are you up at 4 in the morning hawking up phlegm anyway? Either quit smoking or drink some hot water, dude. The present state of affairs really isn't working out for you.

The Banquet or Why do I keep watching these movies?!

It's got to be some sort of self flagellation on my part, why do I keep watching these movies?

Ok so here's my review of Feng Xiaogang's (馮小剛）'s The Banquet. So although the genre might annoy me I do have some genuine reasons for watching the movie. For starters, it's based off Hamlet. As a literature nerd, I have always liked Hamlet. Possibly because lots of people die. So seeing it adapted to ancient China sounded kind of interesting. I mean Akira Kurosawa adapted King Lear into Throne of Blood. Furthermore, it's then a film targeted at Western audiences, selling itself as a traditional Chinese story, which is in fact based on a Western play. How very meta.

Some of the plot devices work pretty well. For example, Gertrude's incestuous tension (some say) with her son makes a lot more sense if she's in fact his stepmom. And since she was first engaged to the Crown Prince, but was later married to the Emperor, it seems like a good indication by ancient Chinese standards of the moral weakening of the regime or the rotten state of Denmark etc. Furthermore, the part where Claudius sends Hamlet off to England is adapted to sending Prince Wuluan to the Qidan in the North as a royal hostage. Which was a nice detail, since Chinese history has many stories of hostages being sent north.

I guess for my taste, The Banquet followed Hamlet a little too closely. So I already knew what was going to happen. Also a lot of the relationships between the characters weren't really explained. Most importantly Prince Wuluan's (Hamlet's) relationship to his father. Like Hamlet he's bent on avenging his father's death, but Hamlet's father didn't marry Hamlet's girlfriend. Clearly this relationship was a little bit twisted to say the least, but the movie doesn't go there. However, knowing that this event took place makes his single mindedness a little unconvincing. Furthermore, Wuluan isn't really crazy enough. Hamlet's indecisiveness and erratic nature is excusable because he's acting insane or he is actually insane. Wuluan broods a lot, but he seems more or less mentally sound.

Zhou Xun, who I normally really like, plays Qingnu, the Ophelia character, but she doesn't really connect with the character, and honestly the character is so blindly loyal to her lover, that she comes off as annoying rather than tragic. Kudos go to the guy (who looked a lot like Shawn Yu) who played Qingnu's brother. He does exhibit the kind of obsessive (and seemingly slightly incestuous) love for his family members that Hamlet is really all about. But he's only onscreen for about 20 minutes.

Ge You, who I also normally like a lot, is underwhelming as the Emperor. He was incredibly creepy in Farewell My Concubine, he's not really all that creepy here. And at the end, seemingly acts on his feelings, and dies somewhat nobly. Which seems an odd way to go for a guy who poisoned his brother, married his sister-in-law, and tries to kill his nephew.

As for Zhang Ziyi's character, the Empress Wan'er, she wasn't out and out bad exactly. But the movie clearly intends her to be a devious monster. Instead, for a large part of the movie, she seems like a cold woman, who was caught up in royal intrigue, rather than the irredeemable monster that she's supposed to be by the end. Also her feelings are pretty obvious from the start, which makes their revelation at the end kind of underwhelming.

Aside from acting problems, there's total gratuitous martial arts stuff in here. I mean randomly characters will bust out with martial arts stunts, that seem both out of character, and also they disrupt the narrative. Also, this is the Chinese nerd talking but, there is NO WAY that every member of the royal family is an accomplished martial artist. And furthermore, I can buy that the dead Emperor was a skilled warrior, however, that he taught his young wife his skills, I do not buy for one second.

Finally, as usual in these movies, Zhang Ziyi takes off all her clothes multiple times.

checklist of CTHD clones
Zhang Ziyi: Check
Gratutitous martial arts scenes: CHECK
Philosophical/nihilistic ending:Check
Yuen Woo ping: Check
Use of bright color for symbolism: kind of but not really
Golden finger: No, although Ge You does have this large jade pendant that he uses in creepy ways

Other things which are not ok

The cat who is in heat, and chooses to announce that to the whole frickin' world at midnight for the last couple nights. So so very not ok.

Things which make me distinctly unhappy

Running out of gas on a rather cold winter morning and having to take a shower with freezing cold water.

Talking to people from the phone company in Chinese. (I hate talking on the phone.)

Talking to the gas company on the phone, also in Chinese.

Wasting 2 hours of my life watching The Banquet. Is there a movie with Zhang Ziyi in it where she doesn't take off all her clothes?! Perhaps secretly this is why she's famous. Come to think of it, Gong Li did that too back in her Zhang Yimou days.

Marijuana US Top Cash Crop

I believe I've mentioned before that life in the US is kind of surreal. Well it's gotten slightly more surreal.

Over wheat and corn and...other, uh, legal crops?

Hibernation

A cold front came in yesterday and now it's rather cold. I've been feeling really sluggish and I've been wanting to eat a lot. Therefore I assume I must be hibernating. In order to keep warm, I've closed all my windows and doors and so I feel like a hamster in a small box.

I've also watched all of Wang Kar-wai's movies in the last three days except for Chungking Express, Ashes of Time, and As Tears Go By. For the record, that means I have watched Days of Being Wild, Fallen Angels (1.66 times), Happy Together (2 times), In the Mood For Love, and 2046. Clearly it's been rather existential. A student of mine once said that 2046 is like a summary of all of Wang Kar-wai's movies, so you have to see them all to understand it. Now that I've seen almost all of them, except Ashes of Time, I think I agree with her. Although this doesn't really make me like the movie a whole lot more. It also didn't make me like Zhang Ziyi a lot more either.

I will say there were a good ten to fifteen minutes where she impressed me with her acting, and about 35 minutes where I sort of understood why people say she's hot. However I think one of the reasons the film suffered was because she had no chemistry with Tony Leung. In the Mood for Love is a compelling story because you can believe that the two characters are in love. However Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi's characters are supposed to be in love, but I never really felt it. Since their affair takes up a large part of the movie, this really hurts the movie's credibility.

That said, Faye Wong, Gong Li, and the Japanese guy (Takuya Kimura) are all very good. Tony Leung is ok. He was rather smug throughout the movie which made it difficult to connect with his character. I know he's supposed to be hiding fear and a broken heart, maybe he hides it a little too well for me. At least the heartless cad in Days of Being Wild had a reason of sorts for being heartless.

However, 2046's ending is rather interesting, since it states that love is all a matter of timing, sometimes two people are right for each other but the time's just not right, so nothing happens. After having seen most of Wang Kar-wai's movies this does seem to be a fitting conclusion for most of them. Many couples have missed connections in his films, Andy Lau and Maggie Cheung in Days of Being Wild, Leon Lai and Karen Mok, and Takeshi Kaneshiro and Charlie Young in Fallen Angels, Chang Chen and Tony Leung (possibly) in Happy Together, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung (famously) in In the Mood for Love, and Tony Leung and Gong Li, and Tony Leung and Faye Wong in 2046. Clearly I have watched a lot of Wong Kar-wai in a short amount of time.

Well, I have nothing more to say on the subject. Except my theory that perhaps the graphic sex scenes with Zhang Ziyi was Wang Kar-wai's way of apologizing for coercing Tony Leung into doing a sex scene with Leslie Cheung in Happy Together.

The Promise

I'm not sure if Chen Kaige's The Promise 無極 is out in the States. If you have a chance though, I kind of recommend it in sort of a car crash kind of way. Although Chen Kaige is probably the second most famous Sixth Generation Chinese film maker, (The most famous director being of course Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige's former cinematographer, but I digress.) I guess I've never really enjoyed his films all that much. I've seen quite a few of them, I even wrote my thesis on Farewell My Concubine 霸王別姬. The only one I enjoyed was The Emperor and the Assassin. I guess to me, Chen Kaige's movies tend to be sort of overly ponderous. And recently people have criticized him for making that art house type of movie starring Gong Li that was pioneered (with great success) by Zhang Yimou. At his best, Chen Kaige uses his films to discuss interesting ideas. The Cultural Revolution, in Farewell My Concubine, which had a great deal of personal impact to him. In The Emperor and the Assassin, the idea that power corrupts. As for Temptress Moon 風月 , I have no idea what that was about. It was also just kind of bad.

Ok, so with that paragraph of Chinese studies nerdiness aside. The Promise was a highly anticipated movie. Chen Kaige's great fantasy/martial arts(ish) epic. In roughly the same vein as Crouching Tiger and Hero. The cast is pretty good, although most of the actors are unknown to Western audiences. Cecilia Cheung and Nicolas Tze, Hong Kong superstars, Liu Ye, of Lan Yu fame.

Cecilia Cheung plays the most beautiful woman in the world, who as a starving orphan was made into the most beautiful woman in the world by a mysterious goddess, under the condition that she never know true love. Anyway, naturally, she has a lot of guys chasing after her. Such as an arrogant General, his slave who can run at superhuman speed, and the Duke, who wields a golden finger on a stick (DON'T ASK).

Cecilia Cheung falls in love with the slave, but he was wearing the General's armor at the time, so she think she loves the general. And the slave, Kunlun is too obedient of a guy to set her straight. Anyway, the general naturally loves her too. Meanwhile she's sometimes caught by the Duke who puts her in a giant bird cage and puts a bird costume on her. Meanwhile Kunlun is trying to find out about his past, and why he runs so fast that he can apparently run through time. Meanwhile, the Duke's assassin Guilang, who seems to know a lot about Kunlun's past, follows him around in a bird cloak that the Duke put on him. Hopefully, this plot outline makes some sense, I don't know that the movie made a whole lot of sense to me in particular.

To be fair there are some good things about the movie, so let's get them out of the way first. Cecilia Cheung does look like she could be the most beautiful woman in the world. Liu Ye is good in his secondary role, he's probably the only character that I cared about. Sometimes the movie does look quite fantastic.

However, the plot is so incoherent that it's difficult to connect with the characters. You never really know why people are doing what they're doing. Why is the Duke evil? All he seems to do is put bird costumes on people, does this make him evil? Why is he more evil than the General, who is seen sending some slaves to their death with very little remorse at all? Why is Kunlun so loyal to the General, who never really shows much concern for him. Stealing his girl, taking him as a slave etc. Why is the goddess wandering around manipulating events? What does she want? The movie never really answers these questions. Furthermore the ending is rather unsatisfying and seems to be one which we're supposed to think is "deep" or "philosophical," although it mostly comes across as pat.

Furthermore, for a movie that seems to rely on the visuals to carry part of the movie, it doesn't always look that good. The armor is clearly made of plastic. And the silly props, such as THE FINGER really make it hard to take the movie seriously. To top it all off the action scenes don't even look all that cool.

So to sum up, the plot and the sort of over the top visuals really kill the movie. The acting's mostly ok. But the plot makes it really difficult to care about the characters, and only Liu Ye actually made enough of a connection for me to care about him. I mean, it's kind of bad when the one person who resonates in a movie, is the tragic assassin. Chen Kaige just seems to waste a lot of opportunities, I mean if you're going to pay money for Nicholas Tse to appear in your movie, shouldn't you at least make him look cool? Instead, Chen Kaige saddles him with a golden finger and silver lipstick. And by the time he's whining about his child hood trauma, I've ceased to care whether any of the characters live or die.

checklist of CTHD clones
Zhang Ziyi: No
Gratutitous martial arts scenes: Check
Philosophical/nihilistic ending:Check
Yuen Woo ping: No
Use of bright color for symbolism: Check

Rosie O'Donnell Ridiculousness

angryasianman has been covering this pretty well so if you want to learn more about this just visit his site.

Here's a link to the segment on the show which is up on Youtube

This morning (12/5/06) on "the View," Rosie O'Donnell and the gang were discussing the Danny Devito "incident" when Rosie remarked that this was such big news everywhere that people in China were probably saying "ching ching ching chong Danny Devito ching chong ching chong drunk on The View ching chong (etc.)" I was sort of surprised about her lack of insensitivity especially considering her outrage at Kelly Ripa's Clay Aiken comments recently. I guess it's another example of how stereotypes/ racially insensitive comments about Asians can be made and no one thinks much of it, or even bats an eye. Not even sure how many others who were watching the show even noticed it, but it bugged the crap out of me!

anyway, apparently she just takes the usual cop out "it's not a big deal" route. Anyway, if you want to write to various people to tell them what you think of 'em you can write them here. It's super easy. There are three women you can e-mail. I just e-mailed them all. I guess I'd encourage all 5 people who read this to write, just because Rosie O'Donnell's show reaches a much larger audience than the assholes who make lame comments on talk radio stations. It's a good opportunity to show that Asians can't be pushed around in a bigger way. And also it just freakin' ticked me off.

Things that make me angry

Sometimes I'm hard pressed to decide what kind of person I hate more. However, articles like this make me lean more heavily towards rich people. I've sort of been irritated on a low level about the decrying of the "ipodification" of America. And now apparently the downfall of Tower Records. I guess what sort of annoys me about this is that the people who moan the loudest are liberals. This seems slightly like wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

I mean ok, if by your theory many people in America are poor, they don't have a lot of spending money right? Which means our budgets for buying luxury items, such as music, is relatively limited. So, if you can go to Tower Records and buy a CD for $20 or you can download it off iTunes for $9.99, or download it illegally for free what are you going to do? I mean if you supposedly support the rights of the working class and lower middle class, don't blame them for the downfall of Tower Records. People have a hard time making ends meet, don't blame them for not patronizing the "cool" independent record store. Also apparently the downfall of Tower Records equals the downfall of civilization, or musical civilization, perhaps they amount to the same thing.

Perhaps people gravitate towards iTunes, Amazon, Target, and Walmart because they are cheap and affordable. They offer services which Tower doesn't really offer, significant discounts, free shipping, lower prices etc. The economy is bad, people have less money to spend. When that happens, chains go out of business. It happens.

I may just be ranting though.

O Life

Stupid things I've done this week.
Broken my water heater
Broken a mug
Life 6 Me 0

Sometimes it's a wonder to me how I manage to survive daily life. This is not a reassuring thought.

Sean Bell Shooting and Institutional Racism

I thought this article was quite interesting. It's nothing I didn't know already, but it's quite a powerful piece of writing. Read, discuss if you want.