Today my Chinese Cinema class took a field trip to the China Art Museum, Shanghai to check out the animated version of Along the River During the Qingming Festival. If you remember back to my first semester at ECNU, I judged a English contest for the Communist Youth League at the China Art Museum. The original Along the River During the Qingming Festival in Beijing, know as China's Mona Lisa, depicts the Song capital of Bianjing, modern Kaifeng, during the Qingming Festival. The animated Along the River During the Qingming Festival was the China Pavilion's big hit during the Expo 2010; when the China Pavilion of Expo 2010 became the China Art Museum, Shanghai, they kept the massive video exhibit in tact. To be honest, the animated Along the River During the Qingming Festival feels like it would be better taught in a Chinese Gaming class rather than a Chinese film class; the work reminds me more of video games like Banished or the civilian campaign in Stronghold 2 than any film. It is a work you can watch for half an hour, though this may be because I tried to find the Jews of Kaifeng in the work (I think I found one). With so much going on and so much motion it is almost impossible to view the whole work quickly. It is a very interesting piece of multimedia art and is worth checking out if you have some extra time in Shanghai.
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I was reading over the Wikipedia pages for the films I watched in my Contemporaneity Chinese Film class to prepare for the midterm. The Wikipedia page for the first film we saw, Monster Hunt/捉妖记, mentioned that many of the scenes were shot in Zhanghjiajie national park. What is interesting is whoever made the signs for the park didn't mention that a relatively new (released in 2015 with a squeal coming in 2018) and very popular (Monster Hunt is the highest grossing local Chinese film of all time) was shot there. The only film that had signs and locations about it in Zhangjiajie was Avatar, a foreign film. Perhaps it is because even though Monster Hunt was successful it wasn't nearly as successful as Avatar. Perhaps the foreign film, Avatar, was easier to market than the local film, Monster Hunt.
As some of you may or may not know, East China Normal University is one of China's major research universities. Thanks to new technology invented by East China Normal's own School of Science and Engineering I have been given the opportunity to study abroad from my study abroad. I will truly be standing on the cutting edge of both physics and history with this opportunity. Dr. Zong (棕老师) of ECNU's School of Science and Engineering in conjunction with Prof. McFly of the NYU-ECNU Institute of Physics at NYU Shanghai have invented a BYD e5 with a built in flux capacitor that, once it reaches 141.62 km/h or 88mph, can travel backwards or forwards in time. Since the BYD e5 is an electric vehicle, only minor upgrades were needed to get the car to accept the new plutonium electric generator in the trunk. Hopefully, I will be going back to 1885 to do research on Shanghai's International Settlement, now called the Bund. Being an American, I should have few problems blending into the multinational community that was the International Settlement. Unfortunately, I will have to put my blog on hold during my time in the past though, if all goes well, you my dear readers shouldn't notice anything since for you it should feel as if as though I was only gone for a few seconds. If something does go wrong, I will be removed from the timeline so you won't be stressed about my issues at all. That's time travel for you, so it goes. For those of you who are worried, don't be, Dr. Zong and Prof. McFly have assured me that everything will be alright and I will be back safely in this time period before you can even finish reading this post. I have also been talking with Juniata, the College is willing to transfer the credits ECNU is giving me for doing this research project back when I return in September. It will be a bit of extra paperwork though, since I will be on a new study abroad experance. I will update you all soon when I get back to the future.
Note: Have a happy April Fools Day all. Warning: This blog post contains super minor spoilers from the movie Kekexili: Mountain Patrol. I don't talk about anything that happened outside the first few minutes but if you want to watch Kekexili: Mountain Patrol totally spoiler free be warned. I guess I should also put a trigger warning that I get into traditional Tibetan forms of corpus removal so if you aren't into that you might want to skip this post.
Today in my Chinese Film class we watched a movie called Kekexili: Mountain Patrol about the volunteer Tibetian Mountain Patrol who, in the 1990s, patrolled the Kekexili region of Tibet to protect the endangered Tibetan antelope from poachers. The move quite successfully captures the harshness of Tibet, giving it a feel somewhere between Afghanistan, Waziristan, and Alaska during the Gold Rush. To help illustrate this point, within the first 10 minutes of the movie we witness one of the Mountain Patrol member's, who was executed by the poachers, sky burial. Tibet has historically been a hard place to dispose of corpses; most of the land is too hard and too rocky to bury a body deep enough to get rid of it. Tibet, unlike many Buddhist regions, also lacks the large amount of trees necessary to cremate bodies before the invention of (and in Tibet's case access to) modern crematory machines. While the lamas (old Tibet's priest class) and other noted figures could be cremated, it was simply not possible to cremate all the dead people. Luckily for the Tibetans, Tibet is home to a large population of griffon vultures who are more than happy to eat anything dead. While Kekexili: Mountain Patrol doesn't show the full process, it shows enough for you to get the idea of what is going on. The naked dead body is brought out to a field by a Buddhist priest, sometimes the body is broken down into smaller pieces but often the body is just left whole. Attracted to the body, vultures swoop down and eat everything except the bones. The bones are then ground down, mixed with millet and yak milk, and fed to the birds who remain after the vultures are done eating. Interestingly enough, this process is not totally unique to Tibet. Zoroastrians (a small but ancient monotheistic religious group) in modern Iran and India previously Towers of Silence to dispose of their dead. Bodies would be left in the Tower for vultures to eat. Like many Tibetans, the Zoroastrians have been having issues disposing their dead using vultures. While in Tibet modern crematories have made cremation cheaper than sky burials, Zoroastrians of Iran face various government regulations and community pressures that drove the practice into disuse. The Zoroastrians of India still sometimes use Towers of Silence to dispose of their dead but, like the Tibetans, are having issues attracting enough vultures to fully dispose of corpses since the vulture population in both places has been declining. Who knows how much longer the rite of sky burial will last for? A few weeks ago in my Chinese Cinema class we watched a movie called Farewell my Concubine (霸王别姬) about the world surrounding traditional Peking Opera from the waning days of the Great Qing Dynasty to Reform and Reopening under Deng Xiaoping. While Farewell my Concubine touched on several interesting topics from the Cultural Revolution to gender roles to raising orphans to the relationship of childhood friends in adulthood, the topic that most peaked my curiosity was Peking Opera itself since I actually knew very little about it. Thankfully, my Chinese midterm gave me a great opportunity to do some research, since it is a presentation on Peking Opera and its many meny complexities (可是,我只好用中文为我的汉语口语中考试). Unsurprisingly, Peking Opera has an extremely long history with some of the traditional plays coming from ancient Chinese stories, though what we would now call Peking Opera really developed in the late 1700s. Peking Opera remained relatively popular until the Cultural Revolution, since the Red Guards saw it as old therefor something that should be destroyed. Interestingly enough, Farewell my Concubine actually depicts Red Guards humiliating members of the Opera troupe, a sight still extremely rare in Chinese cinema. While Peking Opera did live on in the Nationalist controlled Taiwan long enough for the mainland to drop the madness of the Cultural Revolution it never regained the popularity it once had. Since most of the operas themselves are quite old, they use archaic language that most modern Chinese can't really understand, even the Chinese in China have to have Chinese subtitles to understand the Chinese. There have been attempts to rejuvenate Peking Opera for the modern age by introducing new shows; apparently you can watch Peking Opera interpretations of Mao's war against the Japanese and Shakespeare. Still the traditional divisions of martial & civil operas, serious 大戏 & fun 小戏, and the four traditional forms of performers (生旦净丑) remain even while the actual costumes, production management, and training have been changed and adapted for the modern world. Chinese films, particularly by the 5th Generation of Chinese Directors like Farewell my Concubine, have come to embrace Peking Opera as a way to help tell their story. Peking Opera has also been embraced by the growing tourist trade, both domestic and international. If you are in the capital of Beijing, why not see the capital style of opera (the 京 in 京剧 literally means capital while the 剧 is some type of theater)? I have read some complaints though that much of this new Peking Opera is a bit gimicky since most people in the audience of a Peking Opera don't actually know what Peking Opera should be like. Still, it is nice that Beijing Opera is kind of hanging on.
Last Friday my Chinese film class watched Beijing Bicycle (十七岁的单车), a film in part about the struggles of a bike courier trying to make a living in Beijing. While the movie isn't really about planning the optimal path for making deliveries it does highlight the ubiquitous nature of couriers in China. In the US, if I want to send a letter I will probably send it through the US Postal Service. The Postal Service actually has a monopoly on most first class mail (letters and the like), unless you need to get a letter somewhere extremely quickly or with extra preconditions you will probably just use USPS. I am not sure if China Post has a similar legal monopoly to USPS, but what I do know is courier services are far more common in China than in the US. While most courier companies ship large packages and envelopes like FedEx and UPS do, they also ship letters for very affordably prices. Chinese couriers will even ship small letters in relatively small cities. My friend's husband works for a courier company in a small Hunanese town. American cities and towns of equivalent size probably don't have companies willing to sent your letter form one side to another within the day. Last semester in my Chinese Economic Impact class, we discussed how easy it is for online marketplace companies, like Alibaba or Amazon, to ship stuff since they can just assume that every city has in place already a large courier system. Since dealing with couriers is something you probably have done if you spent a good deal of time in China my Chinese class had a whole unit on mail.
Today a friend of mine invited me to take an extra ticket to Beauty and the Beast his teacher bought for one of her former students who couldn't come. Having heard nice things about the movie from some of my Disneyphile friends, I decided to accept and check it out. Interestingly enough, most English language movies to be shown in China are shown with subtitles, not dubbing. This makes it easy for an American like my self to find something to watch. I couldn't see dubbing working for a musical like Beauty and the Beast since you would have to write Chinese lyrics for all the songs that made sense, fit with the music, and worked with the plot. If you don't like princess movies. you won't like Beauty and the Beast. While it does some things differently and is a bit darker than the animated Disney Princess films it is still unabashedly a princess movie. Beauty and the Beast is most similar to Into the Woods, down to the overall tone and mix of CGI and live action actors. I enjoyed Beauty and the Beast more than Into the Woods though, the plot is more interesting and the songs are better. My biggest issue with Beauty and the Beast is the rather slow beginning. The movie really picks up after Be Our Guest but that happens just after Beauty and the Beast's speed started to annoy me. It is also best if you treat Beauty and the Beast more like an animated film than a live action one. The often overly idealized provincial country village, the outrageously aggressive wolves, and the occasional painfully contrived excuse to continue the plot bothered me a bit when I still though of Beauty and the Beast as a totally live action film. It got into it by the end when I started treating Beauty and the Beast like a Disney Princess movie that just happened to use live actors instead of animation. Overall I enjoyed Beauty and the Beast far more than I thought so I guess I can recommend it.
If you ask most Americans to name a Chinese actor they will probably name Jackie Chan. This makes sense since, unlike many Chinese actors, Jackie Chan has released several popular English language movies in the United States. Jackie Chan is no less popular in his native China, but Jackie Chan and 成龙 (Chéng Lóng in standard Mandarin Chinese, Jackie Chan's stage name in China) are two separate entities. While Jackie Chan's work, like Rush Hour or Shanghai Noon, are comedies 成龙 has a more diverse filmography. While many of his films, like Drunken Master and Police Story (1985), have a comedic tone some of his other Chinese language films, like Police Story (2013) and the soon to be released The Foreigner, are significantly more serious. Furthermore, 成龙 has a well respected music and opera career; in China, he not only does his own stunts but he does his own soundtrack too. 成龙 is significantly more political than Jackie Chan: he has criticized the ruling Democratic Progressive Party on Taiwan (almost earning him a ban form the island), 2008 Olympic protesters, and Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters while supporting Xi Jingping's drug war and Chinese nationalism (even writing an explanation for the Chinese National Anthem, The March of the Volunteers). This year's Spring Festival Gala 成龙 sang a rather serious song about loving his homeland, China (this is somewhat important since Jackie Chan is a resident of the Hong Kong SAR and some in the Hong Kong SAR don't see themselves as Chinese). It is not like there weren't comedy bits in the Spring Festival Gala (it is important to note though that comedy bits and funny bits are different things, particularly in the Spring Festival Gala), it is just that he chose not to participate in those segments and, since he has done more serious stuff in the past, this wasn't weird to anyone. From what I also heard, he even had a sex scandal in China, which he survived I believe in part because he is seen as a more mature actor in China than he is in the US. 成龙 is defiantly more respected as an actor in China than Jackie Chan is in the United States, probably because of the more diverse and serious roles he has taken in China along with his successful Chinese language music career. This begs the question, are there any commonalities between Jackie Chan and 成龙 other than they are both stage names for the same dude? Yes actually. Even in China, Fáng Shìlóng (房仕龙, Jackie Chan/成龙's birth name), still has made his name with funny movies where he does martial arts and stunts without a stunt man, like he did in the US. His style of martial arts is also the same both in China and the US, from what I have read it is a deliberate contrast to Bruce Lee's martial arts style. He also tries to be a good role model in his Chinese and English movies, he avoids cursing and playing villains in both languages, preferring to play more every man type roles. Whatever you call him 房仕龙/成龙/Jackie Chan has, undeniably, made his name as a major actor and a house hold name. The only issue is what name your house knows him as.
.Last Sunday, one of my Chinese friends and I went to the Shanghai Power Station of Art (上海当代艺术博物) to check out the 11th Shanghai Biennale, Why Not Ask Again: Arguments, Counter-Arguments, and Stories. The Shanghai Power Station of Art is an interesting building itself, even without the art. Established in 2012 in a renovated power station on the site of Expo 2010 the Power Station of Art maintains an industrial feel; one of the massive ceiling mounted cranes from when the Power Station of Art was just a power station still hangs over the lobby and the area around the Power Station of Art is dominated by the Power Station's now dormant smoke stack (now used as a giant thermometer). The plan for Why Not Ask Again: Arguments, Counter-Arguments, and Stories is to "emphasize the possibilities of South-South dialogue;" basically discusses issues the countries and the people of the Indian subcontinent face such as nuclear war (an issue since both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers who don''t like each other that much), poverty, poor working conditions, immigration, and pollution. While I wouldn't hang any of it in my house, the individual pieces on the three massive floors of art varied from the very interesting to the very weird. Their was one piece about the futility of nuclear war which I quite liked that let you walk through the simulated nuclear wastes while blasting the hit North Korean propaganda song No Motherland Without You or Ode to Kim Jong-Il. Other pieces involved light shifting based on your position in the room (it is hard to describe and was impossible to photograph) and a room filled with strobe lights that felt like one of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques." Why Not Ask Again also included a large amount of rather artsy multimedia displays. We saw about 2/3s of Why Not Ask Again before getting hungry. Since my friend had to return to the Minhang campus, we had lunch at a beef hot pot place I previously visited in Global Harbor and knew was good. I am pleased to stay it was still good the second time. Finally we got fresh juice and strawberries in Global Harbor before walking back to campus and parting ways. While I enjoyed both the juice and the strawberries my juice (pineapple-mango-pear) would have been significantly better with some rum.
Before I start, I combined by posts from today and yesterday because I spent most of my day today dealing with logistics for tomorrow and my trip to Fenghuang County. Also, my feet still hurt from yesterday.
A friend of mine linked a Facebook post about James Cameron's 2009 hit film Avatar. "Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time" it starts "can you name two characters and a quote from Avatar?" It then asks. The answer to both questions, for me, is no. What I do remember from Avatar was how great it looked. Now why am I telling you this? You know all the cool mountain scenes from Avatar? You know where they filmed those? On top of Tianzi Mountain (天子山), Zhangjaijie National Park, P. R. China. To enhance my nerd cred, I decided to visit what the park map called the "Avatar Filming Location." I can tell you, it does look as cool as you think it does. While the rocks don't float like they do in Avatar, the towering pillars of ancient rock are almost more impressive. What took Avatar needed the peek of human animation and computing technology to complete, nature did with only two large chunks of rock pushing against one another and some rain. In order to get to this site I had to use the Bailong elevator (百龙电梯), the Guinness Book of World Records Official Tallest Outdoor Elevator on Earth. While kind of cool, the elevator was not nearly as interesting as the mountains. After exploring the mountain's top, I ended up walking down and accidentally ending up in another section of the park. Unforntually, there was no internal park bus back to the entrance by my hotel in Wulingyuan. I ended up getting a van to Zhangjaijie City where I then got a van Wulingyuan and a bowl of cheap noodles from some random lady in the bus station. The noodles were meh. About two hours later I arrived in Wulingyuan, just in time to get my self a plate of fried rice, a box of cookies, and a bottle of 26RMB wine (about 4USD). I should have went for the 46RMB wine because the 26RMB wine tastes like Manischewitz. Even though I got lost and my legs still hate me, it was still a cool day in the park. |
AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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