For non-Chinese: What sparked your interest in China?

You have to be a little adventurous, a bit quirky, a bit different, a bit more sophisticated than your average couch potato to love things Chinese. So how did you come to be a Chinaphile?

Shrimp with Lobster Sauce. Seriously. When I was a little girl my Aunt insisted that I try some when we were at a restaurant. She was lucky to have any left. Since then I have added many other reasons, both edible and otherwise (including the world's best soup, "Hot and Sour Soup").

I am a fan of Chinese film. I have "To Live" on DVD, and I am trying to find a copy of "Raise the Red Lantern." I love the scene in "Hero" where they ask the musician to keep playing while they have a swordfight. Talk about style!

I enjoy Chinese art, poetry, and history. So many great achievements and gifts to the world: Martial arts, fireworks, silk, acupuncture, the compass, and more. Thank you, China.

>2 waterlily: waterlily, odd you mention "To Live" as my film maker friends were talking about it over dinner tonight. I was surprised that they, who are not Chinese, would find this film appealing, find it hugely sad and funny. I thought without Chinese, the subtitles would not translate well. I'm so pleased that it has and does.

I've never cried and laughed so hard all at once. In the scene where the doctor/professor of medicine is hicupping from eating too many "mantou" after a long period starvation while the daughter of the protagonists goes into labor. I had tears streaming down my face while choking back laughter. I am still amazed the film maker's talent--it's so hard to pull of strongly opposing emotions.

I got interested because my grandmother (like me) teaches English as a second language. As a child, there were often Chinese immigrants at my Grandparent's house learning English, and they also lived in China for some time in the late 80's...I loved the postcards and photos they sent me! Also my father practices martial arts, so there were always Bruce Lee and Jet Li movies in the house, and my brother and I were read the Tao of Pooh and the Tae of Piglet while growing up (we did also read the Tao De Ching, but much later). Then in August I decided I wanted to learn a new language and so I started learning Mandarin, after which I got completely addicted to Stephan Chow movies and the rest is history :-)
I've never seen 'To Live'...here in Germany it's really hard to find Chinese movies that haven't been overdubbed but I'll just have to go on ebay and track a copy down!

>4 jenknox: It's funny to hear you complain about Chinese movies being overdubbed!

I complain about Chinese movies having the Chinese subtitles stripped out of them for the American market . I have longed to buy region 3 DVDs, just for the subtitles. Reading subtitles is good practice.

#5
I agree! I have started ordering them on ebay. There are few good sellers that send dvds out of hong kong and macau. It's cheap, the quality is good, and man do the subtitles help! But don't get me wrong...I do need them to be overdubbed, into Mandarin. My favorite films for learning Chinese are Magic Kitchen, Fighting for Love, Gorgeous,and Love on Delivery. Not that I'm a romantic comedy fan...action movies are great, too, but the danger is that you pick up...uh, less than wholesome vocabulary sometimes, and use it in class thinking its fine :-)

>2 waterlily:, 4 - Welcome to the group! I love to hear your perspectives on things dim sum.

jenknox, if you don't pick up any unwholesome vocabulary, there's no point in watching home-grown movies. :) How will you sound native talking only polite?? I guess the classroom is the best place, too, to make those faux-pas.

I once told a class I hoped they would succeed on a test, and they blanched, thinking I had used the Cantonese term to "eat s**t," which sounds like "succeed" (with a Canadian accent), on that test. The looks I got were priceless.

#7
Yeah, but when you walk into class and casually use what you assume to be a colloquial term for woman and it turns out to mean prostitute (cause you saw it used that way in a movie), you become a bit more careful about what movies you learn your English from :-)

I'm really glad to have found this group! I think I can learn alot here!

#1 --

During the last two years in high school I read only everything I could get my hands on by Mark Twain. Among that was some of his anti-imperialist writings about the actions of the West in China (and in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War).

When asked by newspaper reporters for his thoughts -- the "Boxer Rebellion" was still fresh in the news -- he responded, "I am a Boxer."

The horrors inflicted on the Chinese people, in their own country, by Western foreigners who acted as if they had greater right to be there than the Chinese, forged a view of the Chinese people as a long-suffering good people who humble one with their endurance in the face of the worst sorts of calamities and oppressions. They and their history define the phrase, "Keep on keeping on".

And my immersion in Chinese film during the past year or so has reinforced that sense (see as example "Purple Butterfly") in view of the unspeakably horrific sufferings imposed by the Japanese.

And most recently I've begun gathering materials concerning the "Rape of Nanking"*.
_____

*Primarily DVDs. I learned last night that there was a film made in tribute to Iris Chang -- URL being irischangthemovie.com -- by a Canadian group/company, but alas it seems not to be available. She was a good and extraordinary person who deserves to be remembered; so that film should be made available on DVD.
_____

Only within the last 36-48 hours I read a lengthy, wonderfully detailed tribute to Iris Chang in the online edition of a San Francisco newspaper. (I had heard about her some years ago, and her book about that horror, and was shocked and deeply saddened about her suicide. The lengthy piece provided much more detail about that, and about her difficulties leading up to it. And about her life, and her as a person.)

Simply and more generally put: I'm always on the side of the harmless underdog who is only minding his own business, and against those who are doing him harm. I am a Boxer, regardless the country and people resisting the invader.

#2 --

"To Live" is a great film. (I don't like "Raise the Red Lantern" as much" -- which can be got from Amazon.) And there is the splendid "The Road Home". And "The King of Masks" is wonderful.

And the hilarious laugh-out-loud-even-with-subtitles comedy "Chinese Odyssey 2002" with my favorite actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai (as "Bully the Kid"). And the adorable Vicky Zhao Wei (as his tomboy/restaurateur sister Phoenix). And the easy-on-the-eyes Faye Wong (as "Solid Gold Love" aka "Ro-man-tique"). And the terrific Chang Chen as the emperor (the "bandit" in the great film, by my favorite director, Ang Lee, "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon".)

And Ang Lee's lovely "Eat Drink Man Woman"!

And "Chunking Express" (with Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Faye Wong) and "2046" (with Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Faye Wong, and an amazing performance by the very pretty Zhang Ziyi) by another favorite director, Wong Kar Wai.

And (though Japanese) the hilarious and sweet "Princess Raccoon" starring Zhang Ziyi.

I "enjoyed" "Hero," but don't understand how Jet Li can actually stand up, let alone walk around, because he's so obviously dead. Why on earth star him, in the lead, as a character named "Nameless," and no pulse whatsoever?

There are many more I love but I'm not going to get up and look at the shelves . . .

And I agree fully about the extraordinary amount of beauty China has given the world -- in poetry, in the arts, in its beautiful written language, in its wonderful "traditional" "costumes". And the amazing terracotta army that leaves one speechless!

#3 --

I love "To Live," but I saw little to nothing in it that was humorous. The scene in which the daughter goes into labor -- where the doctor is more concerned with his "safety" than with doing his duty -- makes me both terrified for her and has me pounding the table in rage at the incompetence that loses such a good daughter.

Another I quite like is "Forever Enthralled," the "biopic" about Peking opera legend Mai Lanfang -- which does have much humor during the beginning with San Shin the "Master," and in the plain-clothes duet between Mai Lanfang and Ming Xaodong.

#10

I've always liked this quote of Mark Twain from Roughing It regarding the Chinese in California:

"They are a kindly disposed, well-meaning race, and are respected and well treated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast. No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. Only the scum of the population do it -- they and their children; they, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America."

(Apparently the term "Chinaman" did not carry the offensive connotation for Twain that it does today.)

So perhaps I'm interested in China and its culture because I'm a gentleman? But then, being "a little adventurous, a bit quirky, a bit different, a bit more sophisticated than your average couch potato" helps, too.

Also, I've read Iris Chang's The Chinese in America: A Narrative History and recommend it highly.

Chang's The Chinese in America is on my list. Before that, though, is her The Rape of Nanking. Though not very well made, I watched "Black Sun: The Rape of Nanking" last night. I want to know more about those -- including a German Nazi -- who saved the lives of hundreds of thousands who would otherwise have been murdered.

Of particular interest among the extras on the disk is the the installment of the WW II US "Why We Figgt" propaganda series (directed by Frank Capra) about the war in China. Though born a few years after WW II ended, and surrounded by adults who all lived during WW II, and or fought in it, and or had and or lost relatives in it, I had no idea beyond the most vague -- and such as "The Flying Tigers" -- about that part of the war.

I had vague recollection of mention somewhere along the years of Manchuria and Manchukuo, but nothing of what happened elsewhere on the mainland (except, years later, mention of the Rape of Nanking). I'd heard the phrase "The Burma Road" but had no idea what that was. I knew nothing of the ground war or its extent. Did not know -- but had a sense -- that during some twenty years the Japanese killed some 30 million on the mainland.

The basics of that part of the war are extraordinary and again show the unfathomable resilence of the ordinary Chinese people. Again and again I catch myself asking how a people can survive such a string of catastrophes that was the twentieth century for China.

All in all, I came to my sympathy for and empathy with China (and the Chinese, both in China and the US), in association with my pacifism, as direct result of Mark Twain's writings. I went from wanting to be a pilot in the air force, ala John Wayne in "Flying Tigers," to being actively opposed to US involvement in Vietnam (and its other imperialist adventures).

During the "Boxer Rebellion" "controversy," a reporter asked Twain what he thought of those events. "I'm a Boxer," he answered. Because of his anti-imperialist writings, especially those concerning China, my sympathies have always been with the Boxers.

Especially recommended: the "History Channel"'s "China's First Emperor". Then re-watch "Hero" and "The Emperor and the Assassin".

I stumbled into a copy of dream of the Red Chamber, which leb me to other Chinese classics, which led me to Mao Dun, Ba Jin, and Lao She...no going back.

15 --

Disney's film introduced me to the folktale about Hua Mulan, and I've been fascinated with the variations among the various films of it I've so far gathered (as of yesterday I'm up to five -- or six). And there are two new, scholarly, books about Mulan -- one with five variant texts (to be published in September), the other (I think published this month) which explores the changes in the legend through time (some fifteen hundred years), in relation to cultural changes.

That fascination led me to The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady: Interpretations of Chinese Poetry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), by Hans H. Frankel, which includes materials on the Mulan poem which preserves the legend. Alas, it's a bit too technical -- intensive focus on forms of Chinese poetry -- considering current distractions.

Two new films of interest, both based in history: "Hua Mu-lan"/"Mulan," starring Zhao Wei, and "Red Cliff," starring, among others, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Zhao Wei. In the first, Zhao Wei is Mulan (woman disguised as man to take her elderly father's place in the army). And in the second she's a princess who becomes a spy disguised as a man in the enemy's army.

And can't forget to note the excellent "Lady General Hua Mulan" (1964) starring Ivy Ling Po, this in part Chinese opera, as is "Saga of Mulan".

I've also been learning about Peking Opera (do a search on Mei Lanfang on youtube.com; be certain to look at what's there of "Forever Enthralled." with the wonderful Zhang Ziyi. (I have a review of "Forever Enthralled" on Amazon; I'm kicking myself for writing it too soon.)

Last but not least: through diligence I finally overcame a broken order system on the official website (peony100.com) and got "Peony Pavilion: The Young Lovers' Edition". (Cheaper than Amazon by $20.00 to buy it direct from Hong Kong -- see my comments on that on Amazon.)

The short of it: "The Peopny Pavilion" was written at about the same time as "Romeo and Juliet" -- that is noted becase "Pavilion" is about a pair of young lovers. "Peony," though, has supernatural occurences instead of suicide/s. Though the original was some twenty hours, this modern production is reduced to nine. (When it toured, those who saw it did so over three nights, in three-hour segments.)

That is a spectacular production -- some diligent search can find photos, and even some live clips, online. It's a must-see for those interested in Chinese opera. Or, at least, in the extraordinary makeup and gorgeous (and bizarre) costumes.

(A few months ago I saw my first Chinese opera -- in full regalia . . . the performers, not I . . . and it included some gymnastics and martial arts. And a month or so ago saw one without the regalia -- but was surprised when a neighbor sang a duet with another performer.

(Alas, I didn't understand a word . . .)

OK, one more film: "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress," based upon a bestselling Chinese novel, the screenplay written by the author of the novel, and the film also directed by him. Of greater interest than those facts, though, at least to some of us, is the adorable Zhou Xun, as the little seamstress.