august

My mom won't let me re-read The Bell Jar because she thinks it'll be bad for my mental health, which kinda sucks because I was really looking forward to it. Jia Tolentino talks a bit about it in part of Trick Mirror and it made me realise that I really remember nothing from that even though I think I read it twice when I was 13/14. It's funny how little I remember from stuff: I've seen Inglourious Basterds at least 3 times but when I rewatched it this summer I realised that I always forget that LaPadite betrays the Jewish family in the tense opening scene, and also that Christoph Waltz ends up doing a deal with the Americans. I guess that's a good thing, because I can keep revisiting stuff and get new things out of it each time. I managed to read about 5 pages of The Bell Jar before my mom took it away and whaddaya know, zero recollections.

Heart palpitations, still. I ended up sleeping 5 hours last night because I had a dentist appointment, and then fell asleep on the sofa from 6-9pm which doesn't bode well for my sleep schedule. Right now my heart is just beating too fast and strong for me to really want to turn off the lights and just lie there, so....

Earlier I laid on the floor for a while looking at the light fixture in our living room. It's the same one that we first got when we first moved into this house in 2006 and I'd never noticed it before, really. It's kind of ugly, this Dalek-looking assemblage of concentric rings with golf-sized crystal balls hanging off of it. It felt good to lie on the floor because of the cool tiles. I'd wanted to do it back in Palo Alto but most of the Airbnb was carpeted except for the toilet, and I wasn't going to lie on the poop and pee floor. Also, the toilets are shared, and it would've been pretty weird for someone to see me. More specifically, I remember the evening when I had the strongest urge to go lie there I really didn't want O to come and see me because it would look like some massive desperate cry for attention. I didn't want attention, or at least not more than usual. Just that nice cool feeling. The next morning I sat at the kitchen island, which is covered in these beautiful deep turquoise tiles (but that make the surface of the counter uneven) and just pressed my face against it. I did look crazy, and I felt it, but it was more acceptable. I could just say, "I'm really tired" (which was true because I'd had a Breakdown the evening before and not gotten that much sleep). That's something you can just say and people will accept it. In the movie The Farewell, which I saw twice, they say that a lot so that family members won't probe. In late-stage capitalism I guess everyone's just always tired and other issues are, to some extent, about being tired anyways. Or is that a reach. Anyway, I had my arms on the counter in this frame-like shape and placed my face into the center, like at the massage places where they have a hole in the cushion. Then I took my arms away and pressed by forehead there. After O finished his breakfast and left I cried a little bit, still with my face there. I didn't know what I wanted or needed. I had Mitski's "Crack Baby" stuck in my head because I'd been listening to it on repeat. The most dramatic moment, I'm sure.

Today I finished reading The Idiot and read through Yanyi's The Year of Blue Water, which Lis gifted me and said was similar in some ways to Elif Batuman. I definitely enjoyed it a bit more than I normally enjoy poetry, since I don't really understand much of poetry and feel kinda bad that I don't. Some of the lines in there were good. He talked a lot about writing -- writing as a way to survive, writing as something that he had to do like it was just bursting out of him, he needed it to make sense of his life -- which is also something Jia Tolentino talks about and just stuff I've been thinking about lately. Like, do you have to need to write to be a writer? I don't know if I need to write or if I just write because I don't really have anyone to talk to / writing as a way to force someone or something to listen to me. I feel like writing the blog post yesterday helped in some way. Proper punctuation and capitalisation and all that. I guess writing stuff down like this feels better because I'm not really expecting any kind of reply from the void, whereas I tend to be frequently disappointed by interpersonal exchanges.

Sidenote: Why does Min Jin Lee have to retweet basically every mention of her on Twitter? I mean I see why, but she always does them in a huge batch when she comes online and it just floods my feed. I suppose I should just unfollow her.

Thinking, now, about the man in the Economy check-in line at SFO who got upgraded to First Class because the San Francisco - Zurich flight was hopelessly overbooked. As he walked away from the red-carpeted counter he had that expression where you're trying really hard not to smile. First Class -- First, not Business!

I told O that I was trying to be more generous to my friends, which is true. I'm usually quite stingy and get stressed about spending money, but I tell myself that buying gifts for friends, whether it's their birthday or I've just been thinking of them, is a good thing. I said this when he protested about me buying him boba, even though I had said I would because I'd lost a Love Island bet. I hadn't thought Amber would pick Greg over Michael, but she did. When she did, it was a moment of absolute euphoria. We screamed and cheered, and O threw himself onto the floor, I think. It was carpeted. I find that a bit gross, because carpets have accumulated years and years of dust whereas at least you can scrub down toilet tiles. But yes, generosity. My friend E, who to be honest I don't know super well but who is just an absolute darling, very sweet and adorable, had a birthday picnic back in May and I went and got her some stuff from Lush. I even paid for a little handkerchief to wrap it in. And it felt really good that I was doing this for someone else.

What I'm trying to say is I'm trying to be kind and generous and open-hearted, partly because I feel like have a slight mean streak or at least used to, partly because I always feel like I'm too self-absorbed and selfish and self-centered, partly because people are always talking about how important friendship is and I agree but I don't know if I really have that kind of Perks of Being a Wallflower type of thing going on and I try to invest in the people I'm around. I always try really hard to not try and expect anything back because interpersonal relationships aren't transactional, they're built over time -- like how whenever E (a different E from the Lush one) pays for me at mealtimes and I try to pay him back, he shrugs and says "I'm sure it'll even out in the future. At some point you'll spot me for something." It's annoying, but it's also very moving. What he's saying is that he likes me, that we're friends, that we're going to continue to hang out a lot in the future and continue to be friends and he'll continue to like me. That's a pretty nice thing. Nevertheless, it always hurts a bit when I feel like I haven't gotten back what I've given. Like how when I'm depressed and it's pretty clear that I could do with some help (sometimes I specifically ask for help, like for help making soup or something) and my friends don't really show up for me. Or I'm just not asking properly. Or I'm isolating myself on purpose. I sometimes don't have the energy to talk, but I always kind of need someone there to absorb the unspoken energy that I have, if that makes sense. I don't have any study buddies.

I'm making myself a bit sad writing this. I hadn't expected to go into how I'm really lonely or whatever. Basically I shouldn't have such high expectations about anything and I should stop trying to make stuff into things and just let it be, and I should be kind. I was telling O (and this is again something like what I wrote on Tumblr like 2 weeks ago and I'm annoyed at myself for wasting time re-hashing stuff but I guess I've led myself here so) that if we'd met in some more organic situation like if we attended the same university, I would've probably made some kind of snap judgment and dismissed him and we would never have been friends. He says he thinks we would've been friends but not best friends, but he thinks that because he's good with people and somehow adapts to whoever he's with. I think he's very different in different contexts, and I would've seen the way he behaves when he's with others just categorised him as some typical American dude who's way too much in his comfort zone, who moved with too much ease. Or, I don't know, I can't really imagine what I would be like at an American university -- probably I would've just become an Asian-American which is depressing as fuck. "So if we weren't friends, it would be your fault", he said, and yeah, basically.

The only reason why we became so close is because we were in this weird situation where we only had each other, 24/7, and saw each other all the time. It made me sad when we both left (and still sad, now, because he's a terrible texter (he had warned me) which doesn't help my attachment issues) because I felt like this was one of the deepest friendships I'd ever had, and it had only lasted around a month, and I was basically never going to see him again and that was that. I knew, again, that the only reason we were so close was because of this highly unique and almost artificial context... like being the only two people on a spaceship, or being stuck at an Arctic science lab during a blizzard, etc etc -- fanfiction setups, almost. In a regular situation everyone has many acquaintances and you kind of cycle them around. Given the choice I would've obviously hung out with different people instead of giving O this impression that I was some kind of unhinged suicidal witch who needed to be looked at all the time or else she would evaporate, like how the Weeping Angels from Dr Who turn into stone when someone is looking at them so you just have to keep your eyes on them all of the time and not blink. So because it was so unique, I know that I shouldn't see this as some kind of indictment of all my other friendships, but I can't help but feel like my regular friendships don't really match up to this. At university, aren't you actually supposed to have breakfast together, watch Love Island in the evenings together, go out for a weekly dinner on Saturday night, late night talks every once in a while, have banter inbetween? I mean these are regular things you do with your so-called best friends, so when you distill it, it does feel like I'm missing out on something because I'm doing them with a handful or rotation of individuals. Like how when I told E (a third E!) that I ate alone all the time and had no hangups about it, it was just convenient, and she said she couldn't conceive of it -- even if she was at home making pasta she had to take it into her friend's room for a chat. This is a weird example but I think I'm bringing it up because my month in Palo Alto I was a lot like this E.

Here I am again talking about how I "don't seem to be able to make connections with my peers" when I was trying to talk about something positive, about how I'm trying to be kind. My point was that I wouldn't've normally given O a chance and so I should give more people chances; and that I shouldn't let my quick closeness with O make me feel bad since it's such unique circumstances and so I should stop fretting over my other friendships' "deepness" and just let them be; and finally that I shouldn't fret about my friendship with O now, because I know a lot about being a terrible texter and bad at maintaining a friendship over text and not having energy and not wanting to, so I shouldn't let dry texting give me the fatalistic impression that he now hates me/never liked me, wants nothing more to do with me, and that I should just disappear altogether, because what does that achieve, really. What's the point of playing hard-to-get when we're already friends and he already knows I'm needy as fuck? Reading about Selin's exchanges with Ivan I wondered if I could relate to her feelings, and turns out I can't, not at all, because we're in very very different situations. I was mainly thinking about how I spend my days waiting for a Whatsapp notification and then pretending like I wasn't, and feeling excited every time I'm hit up proactively. The only similar thing I guess is just that excitement and uncertainty, like having a crush, but a friend crush -- or since we're already friends, a friend continuation crush? It's not crazy that I'm like this, because underneath is the very human desire to feel like you matter, that you still matter even outside of those extenuating circumstances, that Airbnb bubble, that turquoise kitchen island, that TV room with the HDMI cable unplugged from the DVD player, Stanford campus and its ugliness and all that unhappiness, Emerson Street, carpeted corridor, Philz Coffee, boba, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Salt and Straw. That you weren't just someone he was stuck with. Just like when I meet people through activities like Isis and really want to become friends beyond that but don't know how to make it work. I need to stop playing this bitter and ugly game of viewing friendship as transactions, why didn't you hit me up first it's because you don't really care about me, it's awful. I'm a terrible friend online, to others, so why freak out when it happens to me. If I see a meme I should send it. If I think of anything I should say it. What's the point of angst and nervousness, it's not like I'll ever express it, it only stays on the inside of me so I might as well just... not. I should give and give and give and give and give and ultimately it evens out in a way that can't be calculated. It's scary because women always do that and get trampled and flattened completely, but surely that's only in romantic relationships, not friendships? I think people need to talk about friendship a lot more.

On one of our last nights in Palo Alto, O and I hugged and he was like, "You're pretty great, I care about you a lot." Obviously people have showed me direct affection before, but not as direct as this. It was a pretty great feeling that this was said, out loud, to me, friend to friend. I just need to be as nice to everyone, be honest and direct. Kind and generous, as I've said about a million times in this post already.

It's past midnight and my mom keeps coming in to check on me because she's worried I can't sleep. I eventually had to admit I was writing a blog post -- I don't think my mom or anyone really has been reading my blog posts recently since I've been so inactive -- but now she's going to read this which is annoying because it's going to change the way she sees me. I've been more vulnerable in this post than I've allowed myself to be -- to myself and to others -- in a long time. I hope she pretends like she never read this.

julie, julia, and nora

So Netflix has pushed Julie and Julia to me a lot but I never had any interest in it at all. A few weeks ago I read Nora Ephron's personal essay in the New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/02/13/serial-monogamy) and thought it was quite cute. Then the other day I thought again about Julie and Julia and how it's meant to be about a modern woman engaging with Julia Child through her cookbook and was like, "Oh my god this is a Nora Ephron movie isn't it." Sure enough Ephron was all over the credits - she wrote, produced, and directed it.

Anyway, here's my Letterboxd review:

this is SO WHOLESOMe also the fact that nora ephron also engaged so much with cookbooks... i love
edit a lot of the reviews on letterboxd are like these stories arent interesting because theres no real conflict or growth and ok sure but also not all stories have to be really dramatic to be interesting... i loved that this was about how passion and hard work and INTEREST in something can really touch and change your life, and that you can measure your life by the “mundane” things like what you cook and what you wear and **ahem** the films you watch. in a time of information overload its important to cherish the times we really do engage with something. ive just started actually cooking these past few months and even though i dont follow recipes (and prob never will bc im impatient) and also hate french food, i felt connected to this too. and obviously so did producer/writer/director + new yorker article author nora ephron !

I just wanted to add that ever since I interviewed Canadian science fiction author Larissa Lai for Sine Theta's 8th issue back in September, I've been thinking a lot about this one thing she said, about the inherently patriarchal nature of traditional Campbellian hero journey narratives. I even quoted her in a footnote in my Greenberg essay when I make a side note on the patriarchal language in one of the secondary sources. She said that traditional narratives are driven by a black-and-white understanding of conflict: good versus evil, like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. She said that they're stories about the boy needing to kill the father in order to come into manhood. But women don't want to kill their mothers - they want to have relationships with them.

“Women’s narratives,” she said, “need to be relational in the first instance, and not dialectical.”

I've been thinking about this because in some ways it feels true. In some ways I want it to be true, because then all this resentment and bitterness I have about men appears easily explained, that there's this inherent difference in the way men and women behave because of the way they've been socialised to think and to relate to people. But I'm also wary of generalising, because if you take this to the extreme you'd be saying that men are inherently violent and women aren't - which apart from being wrong is also quite dangerous because it would then excuse violence from men as 'boys will be boys' and would treat male violence as something uncurable and inevitable. But of course that's not what Lai is saying: she also talks about how women can actually be really nasty to each other and that's an aspect she wanted to explore in her books.

I've also struggled a lot with her use of the word "dialectical". Does she mean dialectical like a struggle, like a class struggle, between two sides? Or just a Socratic dialogue where two sides talk to each other to solve a problem? Because that's two completely different things and dialectics can mean either or both (or not??? IDK I'm very bad at grasping complex theory that has many explanations because the concept has been written about by different thinkers. I once cried in front of my tutor after class because I was frustrated by the ambiguous definition of the words 'semiotics' and 'structuralism'.) I guess in this context she means the former, because it would be the opposite of relational.

All this is to say is I've been wondering what kind of narrative would be a more feminine one, a relational one that's less about defeating evil. I haven't really found anything but I guess I'd say that Julie and Julia is one. But I'm wary of doing that because it's literally a movie about cooking. And what would that say about women? Lol.

I don't want to make this too long and I'm a bit annoyed that this is the first post (as far as I remember) that I'm making about the topic of Lai's relational narrative because it's literally been on my mind for months and I haven't formulated any real thoughts. This post is yet another ramble with no real aim. But I guess that's what blogs are for.

Also lol, Julie Powell just started a blog and left it there and didn't do anything to promote it (apart from telling her friends I guess) and suddenly it has a ton of readers?? How does that even happen, like how did they even find the website. There are so many websites wtf. Why can't this happen to this blog.

a love so..... beautiful...??????????

I just finished 致我们单纯的小美好 (A Love So Beautiful), which is this Chinese 23-episode TV show that tracks a group of 5 friends from high school all the way to adulthood and marriage. I started it thinking it would be a really cute rom-com but by the end it turned into a look at a really toxic, unhealthy relationship that is nevertheless portrayed as the most adorable, romantic thing to ever have happened.

Quick summary: Chen Xiaoxi, the main character, is infatuated with her classmate and neighbor Jiang Chen, who claims not to like her back. She spends her whole high school career trying to get him to fall in love with her. (He actually likes her; I'm really not sure why he doesn't act on it sooner). Meanwhile the new guy at school, Wu Bosong, likes her and looks after her a lot. There are also two other people who are their friends and end up getting married - they don't really matter. In university Xiaoxi and Jiang Chen end up together, but they break up upon graduation partly because Jiang Chen leaves to Beijing for a medical residency. Three years later, he returns to Hangzhou to find that Xiaoxi and Wu Bosong are now together. He forces them apart because he still loves Xiaoxi; Xiaoxi and Wu Bosong break up after she rejects his proposal. Xiaoxi and Jiang Chen get back together and get married.

Jiang Chen and Chen Xiaoxi have an awful, abusive relationship and I'm just going to quickly rant about this in bullet points instead of sleeping or doing work for the JCR committee.

The main issue is that, like most romances on screen, the unhealthy aspects are not highlighted and it is portrayed to very impressionable young people as something that is desirable - whereas in real life they should be getting restraining orders.

RED FLAGS BELOW.

• Xiaoxi is explicitly, clearly infatuated with Jiang Chen throughout high school, but since he professes not to like her back, there is a huge power imbalance between the two of them. First of all, Jiang Chen is a lot more academically excellent and popular, making Xiaoxi seem lacking in comparison. (Later when they're together people often comment that Xiaoxi isn't good enough for him, which further gives him control over her.) Xiaoxi is also much shorter than him so she constantly has to look up to him with big doe eyes like a dependent child. Xiaoxi hangs onto his every word and the way that he treats her, even if it's one word or one look, can affect her mood (which also affects her grades and her life). He is allowed to be as aloof as he wants because he apparently doesn't like her back. 
• He knows that he holds a ridiculous amount of power over her and is mean to her because he can. He often gets jealous about Wu Bosong and will punish Xiaoxi for it even though she doesn't understand why. 
• Example: After Xiaoxi embarrasses herself in public, Jiang Chen is about to go comfort her when she sees that she is wearing a T-shirt gifted to her by Wu Bosong after she got her shirt dirty. Wu Bosong has bought a matching one for himself so it looks like they're wearing a couple outfit. Noticing this, Jiang Chen tells Xiaoxi that she is an embarrassment. This causes her to cry for days and for her grades to suffer so much that her parents arrange for her to transfer to a different high school with a stricter learning environment. At the last minute she decides not to because Jiang Chen asks her to stay. (In his POV he says that he has "decided to temporarily forgive her [for 'betraying' him by daring to hang out with a good friend, who she doesn't know likes her] to make her stay at his school.") 
• He also refuses to vote for her for class president because she was running around on the football field with Wu Bosong. ?????? What??? 
• I honestly cannot wrap my head around the reason why Jiang Chen doesn't just get together with Xiaoxi in high school. He clearly likes her back because he gets very jealous. Yet he allows her to suffer and be unhappy - not only over the fact he doesn't like her back but also because he leads her to believe that he is flirting with a different girl. He also allows Wu Bosong to suffer, because Wu Bosong is pursuing a girl who clearly has no eyes for him. Wu Bosong would never even be a threat if Jiang Chen and Xiaoxi were already together when he arrived, because he never would have thought about pursuing Xiaoxi at all. The only explanations I can fathom are: 
• a) Jiang Chen has been cursed by a witch to never date in high school
• b) much more plausible: Jiang Chen doesn't like Xiaoxi back. He just enjoys the attention and power and control. 
• Anyway, he's 16 and they're kids. Overall he's still quite a sweet kid struggling with his own issues. 
• How their relationship starts: Jiang Chen kisses her while she is drunk. Then he starts telling people she's his girlfriend until she notices. 
• He takes her for granted and totally assumes that she consents to whatever it is he has planned for her. She does, in fact, consent but he never asks her what she thinks - only expects her to continue to adore him. 
• Although they are now together, he continues to be very cold and aloof towards her, and it's usually not obvious that this is done out of affection. Why is he still playing hard to get? Meanwhile she has to beg him for attention and constantly be really nice because a small slip up can piss him off so much that he ignores her. 
• He orders her around and decides the speed at which the relationship progresses.
• He tries to make her dependent on her. She does not make any other friends (okay, it's a show, they don't want to add too many new characters but still.) He forbids her from drinking alcohol. He tries to forbid her from getting a summer job, saying that if she wants money she can ask him for it - literally attempting to tie her to him, making her unable to live without him. When he decides such things for her there's never an explanation or even a hint of suggestion: it's just "because I said so." 
• Sidenote that isn't really about one person abusing another but a sign of an awful, toxic relationship: I have literally never seen them have a real conversation while together?? They don't communicate - the reason why they break up is because they're constantly trying to guess the other's emotions, and don't tell each other extremely important things. Instead they harbor resentment towards each other, which is the reason why they break up. There is no basis to their relationship at all. They merely react to the situations that occur in each episode. 
• He initially tells his boss that he doesn't want to go to Beijing because he and his girlfriend are going to get married - something that he never brought up to Xiaoxi. 
• During the three years that he is in Beijing, he continues to think about her and tells people that yes, he does have a girlfriend. 
• When he returns, he sees that she has moved on. He asks her whether she regrets breaking up; she says no. He continues to pursue her even though she is in a relationship and repeatedly tells him that she does not want to be with him or even see him. 
• He takes advantage of the fact that she is too polite to tell him to fuck off to insert himself into her life constantly. (To be honest, based on his behavior, if she told him outright to go away and got angry and insulted him he might have become violent.) 
• He uses a fake girlfriend who helps him to manipulate a situation so that he and Xiaoxi end up alone together. 
• He kisses her multiple times without her consent. 
• He corners and confronts her, demanding that she apologise to him. FOR WHAT?? I still don't understand. He does not apologise to her. 
• In fact I may be wrong but he may have never, ever, ever apologised to her ever. 
• He has lots of power and money, so he does huge favors for her (mainly: using his influence at the hospital to get faster and better treatment for her father; selling his car to be able to spend 400k to self-publish a book for her through a big publishing house whose owner is his patient) even though she never asked, and in fact is unaware that he has gone so far to help her out behind the scenes. Obviously this makes their relationship even more imbalanced. He already acts like she owes him unconditional adoration, but now she actually does owe him. 
• He does boyfriend-style things like picking her up and actively competing against Wu Bosong, who is literally her actual boyfriend. 
• He remains friends with her friends, and her friends invite him to every social gathering even though she is clearly uncomfortable being in the same room with him. 
• He remains in very good terms with her parents and uses them as a way to get close to her. 
• He tells her, "We will get back together". It is not a question but an order. 
• He is controlling and possessive, at all times, whether or not they are together. 
• He never considers Xiaoxi's personal feelings and opinions, because he does not consider her to be a human being. He never asks her what she thinks - just assumes that she will agree because she is like a puppy who thinks he can do no wrong. She is an object to him. He tells Wu Bosong, "she has always belonged to me." 
• After she breaks up with Wu Bosong, Xiaoxi and Jiang Chen's relationship begins anew because he kisses her without her permission and then cuddles her while she sleeps, also, obviously, without her permission.
• A highly disturbing piece of dialogue, taking place when Xiaoxi wakes up to find herself in his arms and he wraps his arms tighter so she can't escape his grasp: 
• Jiang Chen: Where are you going? 
• Xiaoxi: Toilet. 
• Jiang Chen: Will you be coming back? 
• Xiaoxi: ... Yes. 
• Jiang Chen: Okay, you can go. But come back as soon as you can. 
• I don't think I need to explain how fucked up this is. They aren't together at this point. He would not have allowed her to leave his grasp unless she agreed to return. But apparently this is very cute and they get together after this?????? 
• While she is very drunk, he asks her if she wants him to propose and she says yes. The next morning, he tells her that she had proposed the night before, and suggests they get married soon. Which she of course doesn't remember, because she was drunk and because it didn't happen. Yet he insists it was the case. This is gaslighting. 
• I don't understand this at all?? Why would he want to do this? It makes no sense. The only reason behind this is simply for control. 
• The evening after he proposes to her, she doesn't want to have sex with him and doesn't want him to come over. He forces the door open and enters her home, eventually ending up in the same bed as her. 
• The entire time that her ex is stalking her and harassing her, Chen Xiaoxi has no way out. If she tries to move away, Jiang Chen would probably transfer to a hospital near her. He would never have let her rest until she agreed to be with him again. 

Again, my biggest issue is that this is portrayed as a love story to "melt your heart", according to the YouTube description. It teaches young girls and young boys that such behavior is acceptable in a relationship. It is not. The entire relationship is a red flag made up of small red flags and Jiang Chen would have made Xiaoxi's life a living hell for the rest of her life, which would probably have ended with her being murdered by her husband, who is an abuser. 

This has actually made me afraid to ever break up with my boyfriend, in case he somehow ends up becoming that crazy ex and/or the next men I date will be abusers who will ruin my life. This show has made me very upset and uncomfortable. Bye. 

seoul searching: diaspora angst from a fresh angle

I just saw Seoul Searching, a 2015 film set in 1986 about kids from the Korean diaspora who are sent to a summer camp in Korea to learn more about Korean culture (basically the same as the root-seeking camps that the Chinese government does today for Sino diaspora kids that I've been to 3 times) and even though it was a bad movie I loved it so much. It was just so cute. My Letterboxd review (pasted below) says enough to be honest but I wanted to record the fact that I saw this film on my blog because I think it's really important. I'm actually quite surprised a film like this was even made. It's just a really sincere attempt to reflect the diasporic experience and it may be cheesy but it definitely spoke to me. I'd put it up there with Bend it Like Beckham as movies that are just wonderful and fun and about the diaspora. It's pretty sad that any film that even touches this subject is immediately entered into some sort of canon because there are so few of them, I guess, but I enjoyed this much more than, say, L'âme du tigre, which frankly took itself a bit too seriously and tripped over its angst. The diaspora angst in that film literally consumed the entire film whereas Seoul Searching and Bend it Like Beckham have actual plots. 

Anyway this is what I wrote on Letterboxd: 

i was gonna say "i was gonna say they shouldve ended the movie with the slo-mo fight but then we never would've seen sid and klaus dress up as each other" but i take it back because not only did the only half-black character get zero characterisation or closure and was used as just the token mixed kid / "ooo there's a half-black girl", but she was actually antagonised which is just so unfair to her - when even mike the predator got some half-assed attempt at redemption. my baby did nothing wrong!!
anyway this is a terrible movie full of stereotypes and cliches AND ALSO THE WORST BRITISH ACCENT IVE EVER SEEN LMAO HOW DID THAT GIRL GET CAST JFJDJKLFKLJDLJKS but i love it because it's so cute and earnest and sincere!!! this is diaspora angst done in a more unique and refreshing way <3

I got another message on Tumblr today from an anon who reads my blog and wanted to use the "things i like" format and it just shocks me that people actually read this like??? it's so messy and disorganised and i can barely put forth an articulated thought. thanks for bearing with me, the 3 people who view my posts <3 

things that i go back to a lot and will never get sick of (things i like #11?)

- 10 things i hate about you
- the social network
- oceans eleven
- the lord of the rings
- moonlight
- how it feels by jenny zhang
- having a coke with you by frank o'hara
- howl's moving castle (both the book and the film)
- percy jackson

hypermasculinity

Some thoughts on hypermasculinity I've been having recently:

• Just finished re-re-re-watching The Social Network, one of the best films of all time. Thinking about how at heart it's about a nerd guy who wants to one-up the jocks who have always been cooler and more popular than him and gotten more guys than him. The movie is quite misogynistic; women are plot devices or dumb bimbos rather than people –– but that's to be expected, since it's all told through the perspective of nerds and that's how they view women, merely as secondary or background characters in TV shows starring themselves. Of course the movie puts Erica at its heart. All Mark ever wanted was to win her back and by extension show that he was the kind of guy who got girls. So I was thinking about the California chapter and all the debauchery and fucking around that they do, and this new concept of male virility being not about the toned body or the money but about intelligence –– or not even intelligence but a certain kind of nerd quality. 
• Watched the play RED with Gabriel in London last week, starring Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko and Alfred Enoch as his young assistant. I didn't enjoy it because it represented everything that's wrong with art history: the veneration of the artist as a mythical genius figure and how strongly that's tied to the male ego. Which is enhanced by the Abstract Expressionist context, with the extremely hypermasculine art of Jackson Pollock. I'd never seen Rothko as part of this archetype of the self-aggrandising, self-important male artist –– I'd always loved him and thought that his paintings were really contemplative and thought-provoking and a religious experience, just like how he wanted it to be –– but now I kind of hate him after having seen this play. Even though, as Gabriel said, he's portrayed as this stubborn old man whose time is up and who doesn't want to let go, it's part of the writer's conception of him as this artiste maudit who is misunderstood by the world. I think ultimately the play still completely worships Rothko. It starts and ends with the same dialogue: "What do you see?" "Red." The assistant, the real main character, is shown as having learned about life from experiencing the greatness and divinity of Rothko, who remains unchanged, a catalyst. It's just two men standing on a stage being men at each other, monologuing on and on and on because obviously nothing is more important than what they have to say. Rothko inspiring the next generation of (also male) artists. I guess it's a little bit hypocritical for me to criticise monologuing since this entire blog is me assuming that people care what I think. I don't know I'm just rambling. And I've already forgotten some things. So whatever. 
• Also art and phallic symbols and stuff. I've run out of steam and I'm tired so I'm gonna go to bed now. 

Ponti!

I haven't written about literature on here for a while because I've just been putting stuff on Goodreads with a few sparse words as the review. I'll keep this short, but I've just finished Ponti by Sharlene Teo, who is a Singaporean author who did her BA in Law and then switched to creative writing. She won a £10'000 scholarship to finish her novel back in 2016, and this is the result.

It tells the story of Amisa Tan, a beautiful but emotionless woman who once starred in a B-movie that has now reached cult status but never became famous, her insecure daughter Szu whom she resents, and the daughter's friend Circe, who is equally lost. It spans forty years to tell the story of Amisa's departure from her Malaysian village to her crumbling marriage with a man she only loved because he loved her on one end, to Circe's meaningless life in 2020 on the other end and (spoiler alert) Circe and Szu's reunion. In the middle of it all is the year 2003, when both girls are 16 and enter into this sort of inescapable co-dependent friendship characteristic of two people who have nobody else.

I literally finished this book 10 minutes ago and had forgotten Szu's name, which is probably indicative of something. Maybe it just means that the book is really not memorable, but it could also mean that the reader is meant to project themselves (or, let's face it, herself) onto Szu. Szu is so full of self hatred, especially for her body, to which she feels completely alienated and which she mistreats (she doesn't realise until years later that she had an eating disorder in 2003). She's completely lost the will to go on – she just survives, trudging through every day and unable to stop hating her mother, allowing her mother's death to consume her entirely – haunted even from beyond the grave.

There were too many dream sequences, and the magical realism that I'd expected from a book where one of the main characters is called Circe comes at the very end. There are also hints of some science-fiction-wondrous-magical-stuff at the end but all of this could've come in much earlier and been weaved into the fabric of the story. But that might've made the plot too busy, I guess. I understand why Teo would put in the whole Amisa backstory but to be honest it didn't need to be 1/3 of the book. It makes the book seem like a lot of novels these days set in non-Western countries that tries to trace the history of the nation/culture through people's individual stories. Like Khaled Hosseini or the countless stories about China written by people of the diaspora, including Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which, again, is my favorite book, so I'm not saying it's bad. I just don't think Amisa's story contributed much to the book because all it really reveals is how much she's suffered and how bitter and resentful she is, which we can tell from Szu and Circe's points of view. It just seems forced to appeal to that market that loves to read about intergenerational stories set against a backdrop of nation-shifting changes like political upheaval or economic expansion. If it had to be included, it should've been much more revealing and rich; a couple episodes of Bojack Horseman showcase hereditary trauma much more effectively.

The back-and-forth of narratives and timeframes dances around this mystery of why Circe and Szu are no longer friends; we can tell how toxically symbiotic their friendship is, but we don't know what happened. Did Szu die? Did Circe have a hand in her death? Was there violence? The reveal is a bit disappointing, but I guess realistic. A lot of friendships, especially female friendships, kind of just fizzle out as both parties realise they never really liked the other person anyway. Szu's point of view portrays their relationship as something pathetic, Szu desperately hanging on to the cooler and more self-assured Circe who was often mean just for the sake of it. Circe, on the other hand, reminisces about the friendship in a more neutral way, admitting that she had genuinely liked Szu at first but had abandoned her when her illness worsened and she was ruined by grief. At the end of it all, Circe truly feels regret and feels haunted by Amisa and Szu, and Szu seems to have gotten over it and is living a happy life. Which is cool.

I wondered a couple of times whether this story would've been better as a film than a novel. Sometimes it feels like Teo has trouble describing something that would've come out much smoother on a screen, like when the radio plays Fleetwood Mac in the car and Amisa starts to cry – it's a bit awkward, whereas in a movie you wouldn't have to actively describe it but could just passively absorb it and it would be much more touching. But now that I think about it, there are other parts where the sensory details, especially about sweat and pungent smells, are so vivid that you would really not be able to feel the same thing in a film.

I've been thinking a bit about female coming-of-age stories. Although Ponti isn't really a coming-of-age story. Do any of the girls learn anything? We only see the result of their development 17 years later but we don't see them actually realise anything. In 2003, we're subjected to their cyclical angst. So it's not really a bildungsroman. More just a study in teenage self-loathing, which realistically does in fact feel like it'll never end. And you don't realise you're done until many years later, looking back. But anyway, stories about teenage girls. I went to see Ladybird with Gabriel back in March, and although I'm super sick of white people coming-of-age stories (like, nobody would watch a movie about me at 18 even though my life is pretty interesting because they'd want intergenerational flashbacks to how much my family suffered under Communism and/or during the Cultural Revolution) and it frustrates me that boring-ass movies about white people where nothing happens is, like, lauded by film circles –– and yet, and yet, Ladybird was so good. Even though I didn't really date anyone in high school I related to the sadness and the desperation and the pretending to be nonchalant and the awkwardness and, oh my, the scene with her mom in the kitchen... I cried so hard.

But Gabriel didn't like it at all: he said Ladybird was selfish and self-centred. While I agree that there were aspects of the plot, like her best friend Julie who immediately forgives her for treating her so badly, and also that horrible thing she said to Miguel, were pretty bad, I'm interested in the fact that both Gabriel and his brother (whom he spoke to about it afterwards) didn't feel a connection to the main character at all. The story is semi-autobiographic, based on Greta Gerwig's own girlhood. When we look back at who we were we often see the bad and the embarrassing, and it's natural to me that Gerwig would write herself as selfish and self-centred, with side characters not getting much development because that's what they are, side characters in the Story Of Her that she never really paid attention to because she was too busy thinking about herself. Even though it was a white girl who struggled with class differences between herself and the other people at her private Catholic school, I related because our issues were different but really the same.

Maybe it really is a female thing; maybe only women can understand that feeling in that acute kind of way because being a Young Girl isn't just an ontological thing, we get dragged into this common network of Young Girls where being isn't just being, but rather a concept, an unattainable concept because we can never be the Young Girls in the magazines or the TV shows. Young Girls belong to everyone but ourselves. I don't know, I haven't figured out the specifics of this yet. I'm still only halfway through Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, which really is preliminary since it's mostly just fragments, and it doesn't really match up to what I want to be thinking about, more on that later, but it does have some very interesting truisms.

Anyway, I better brush my teeth and get to writing my two essays.

my best films 2017

A list of the 11 best films that I saw for the first time in 2017 (out of the 110 that I saw this year) but that weren't necessarily released this year. (Those that were released in 2017 are marked with a *)

I log all my films onto Letterboxd (@jiaqi)!

The Best: Moonlight*
Heartbreaking story? Check. Gorgeous cinematography? Check. A soundtrack that makes me want to weep? Check. This film, which I watched once in the cinema in Geneva, once on the Hong Kong-Taipei flight, and once at a screening at Oxford, is definitely one of the best movies I've ever seen in my entire life. Oh my God. Oh my God!!! OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!! It's perfect!!!!!!!!!

Second Runner-up: Paterson*
Quietly enchanting, a slow, gentle romance that asks nothing of you but patience and silence. My review says enough. No amount of Star Wars can make me dislike Adam Driver now.

Third Runner-up: Mad Max: Fury Road
Cheekily watched this during the 10-day break that I had in my final IB exams. Exciting and absolutely bursting with energy, with as many non-CGI stunts as humanly possible, this movie will take you on a great adventure and make you wonder why more blockbusters can't be like this. And that's without mentioning the COLORS.

Visually delightful: A Cure for Wellness*
Call me a philistine, but, ignoring the plot and stuff like that, the cinematography here, you must admit, really is wonderful! And it's always a treat to see my favorite dead man walking, Dane Dehaan.

Delightful to all 5 senses: Call Me By Your Name*
I read the original book by André Aciman over one sunny Sunday morning in June, and watched this marvellous adaptation on a chilly November night, but both times I was totally seduced by this narrative, which drips with romance and just oozes summer charm. The beautiful Italian landscape drenched in sunlight; the sounds of gravel crunching underfoot and the sultry beats of Love My Way; and yes, although these senses can't actually be satisfied by a movie (for now)––the feel of cool water on your skin and the wind against your face as you whizz around on your bike; the thick, sweet smell of apricots, and the dry smell of books; and, of course, the taste of a peach. After watching it, I thought about it a lot. I decided that I really do want kids so I can raise them to speak five languages and travel constantly and love music and literature and art!

Instant classic: The Raid & The Raid 2
I'm glad Gabriel made me watch these, because this ruthlessly violent Indonesian action film and its equally thrilling sequel are the kind of film that I could watch over and over again and never get tired of. Apparently the director choreographed the Kylo Ren & Rey vs. Snoke's guards fight scene in The Last Jedi, and you can really tell because it's the best scene in the whole movie. When I die please tell everyone it's because the blind hammer girl killed me.

Expectations met: Logan Lucky*
I absolutely love heist movies but it's hard for me to find a movie that is as good as Ocean's Eleven. Turns out only Steven Soderbergh is allowed to make heist movies, because this is even better than Ocean's Eleven in that, instead of slick Italian suits and million-dollar props, it features the gummy-bear bombs of the proletariat. I watched this on the plane on the way to the Maldives, meaning I didn't have subtitles, which is a shame, but I will definitely be seeing this movie many, many times again. I was super excited for Logan Lucky and I wasn't disappointed at all.

Quietly fascinating: Casting JonBenet*
This was the first of the many films that I watched from the couch during my 10-day break between IB exams, and, having never heard of the JonBenet Ramsey case, I was blown away by this meta-documentary––especially the final scene. If I made a true-crime documentary this is most likely what it would look like. So, so interesting. It's on Netflix so watch it now!

Nerve-wrackingly good: Perfect Blue
Watched this on Halloween because cinemas in Oxford were playing it to celebrate its 20th anniversary. My first Satoshi Kon and I am not disappointed. Thought-provoking and exceedingly creepy for me to watch as a woman. Probably one of the most terrifying films I've ever seen. And the twist...!

Nerve-wrackingly good: Whiplash
How can I not include Whiplash? So intense I thought I was going to die. (I also really loved La La Land, by the way, but I never saw it a second time so haven't been able to confirm my love for it amidst the many people who told me it was overrated. I mean, it was no Moonlight, but still.)

Nerve wrackingly good: Good Time*
Watched this with Seb in September; I'd heard good things about it on Letterboxd and was surprised that it was being shown. It's quite arty so I don't know if it's an Oscar contender, but Robert Pattinson gives a really good performance in this dizzying, exhilarating, neon-signs-and-techno-beat-and-kitsch symphony with a lot of yelling people that is ultimately very, very sad.

only god forgives

only god forgives report card:

atmosphere: A+
violence: A
oedipal themes: B-
frames within frames: A+
subversion of shot reverse shot: B
strings music soundtrack: A
lighting: A++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
white people bullshit: F

Wow, I am so sick of watching 'natives' of non-European countries be utterly and completely dehumanised by white protagonists. Apart from Lt. Chang, all the other Thai people in this film might as well be rats. They lack any and all human dignity. Watching them be killed by white people and kill each other was quite nauseating because of how Winding Refn has obviously very little regard for their worth as human beings. I have yet to see a White Man In Asia/Africa story where the 'natives' aren't seen as disposable props. Mai's repulsed stare is my mood at all times throughout that film. I came to see Ryan Gosling kill people with a hammer, but boy was I glad to watch him get beat up by the detective. He deserved that. (Also, I have realised that the hammer scene isn't even in this film, it is in fact from Drive, which is amazing, and better than this film not only because of the hammer but also because of Gosling's bomber jacket, the presence of Oscar Isaac, and a bangin' techno soundtrack.)

This reminds me of that infamous interview where Winding Refn was talking about why he whitewashed Carey Mulligan's character in Drive (she was supposed to be Latina) by saying that he met a lot of Latina actresses but none of them evoked the feeling of innocence, that he didn't feel the desire to protect them, but the second Carey Mulligan walked in he wanted to protect her, and that's why she was cast. I love Carey Mulligan and she did a really great job, but damn, Nick, that is literally so racist.

Hello stranger!

I watched Moonlight on Sunday and now I'm listening to the song Hello Stranger again and anyway there's nothing I can say about this film except what is the point of anything knowing that a film better than this might never be made again in my lifetime and this is it... This is Cinema and just relistening to the songs I can remember the film, it's a film that's as expressive in the things it leaves unsaid as in the moments it chooses to show! A film that felt so familiar like an old friend when I watched it, so sweet and so kind and so brutal beneath that beautiful façade of gentleness and elegance.... So exquisite and perfect and those Wong Kar-wai influences got the old man stressin' in his greasy sunglasses

When I die bury me in wistful arthouse violin soundtracks that are so short they hurt me (x) (x) !!!

Remember when chapter iii started and Chiron was so different and confident but then he picked up the phone and it was Kevin and he melted away and he was just that little boy again so shy so tender oh my oh my oh my .... Oh My!!!!!!!!!!

If a shot of a flock of birds taking flight against stormy skies was emotionally and aesthetically converted into 111 minutes of audiovisual ecstasy & agony this would be it

Logan

So human. So real. Relentless. Unforgiving. Crude. Beautiful. Heartbreaking. Human. 

I cried, not sobbing and choking like a baby whose heart has been smashed, but softly and gently because my heart was slowly dissolved in a sizzling beaker of acid over 2 hours and 21 minutes, disintegrating into nothing not unlike Caliban's skin under sunlight.

This is my favorite poster for this film. Because even though the movie is called Logan, it's not about Logan. Or not only about Logan. 

I've been thinking about the line We are the dead from Nineteen Eighty-Four lately, this is a story about the dead, about past generations giving their all to new generations, about the end of an era, about heroes past their expiry date, about degeneration and deterioration and age, crumbling age with all its unpleasantness. The screeching sounds of desperation Laura makes every time her claws go through someone's face and the roaring sounds of pain and irritation Logan makes every time his claws through someone's face –– both are so sad, so full of anger and frustration, so tired of all this shit but there's no other way out. It's a Western, with rumbling engines and orange desert expanses and a high noon showdown with your own shadow. It's a story about the hope we invest in children, the hope we have for the future, the sacrifices we have to make to get there. It's a story about Mexican immigrants and the bad guy's name is Donald. It's a story about mutants, who aren't technically human, but it's just. so. human.

A Cure for Wellness: Don't Trust Swiss Germans!

"He seems to have caught hydrophobia," the medical director said, as they hurried toward the medical center. [...] "He doesn't have any physical problems, and his brain and other organs have not been damaged at all. It's just that he's afraid of the water, like someone with rabies. He refuses to drink, and he won't even eat moist food. It's an entirely psychological effect. He just believes that water is toxic."

[...] On the table stood a glass of clear water. He picked up the glass and slowly drew it to his lips and took a sip. His movements were relaxed and he wore an expression of quiet calm. Everyone began to sigh with relief, but then they noticed that his throat wasn't moving to swallow the water. The muscles of his face stiffened and then twitched slightly upward, and into his eyes came the same fear Subject 104 exhibited, as if his spirit was fighting with some powerful, shapeless force. Finally he spat out all of the water in his mouth and knelt down to vomit, but nothing came out. His face turned purple.

THE DARK FOREST by Cixin Liu

In A Cure for Wellness, water is not the force of life but an omen of death –– or something much worse. The cold beads that cling to the sides of jugfuls of ice-cold water are transparent, but here, transparency is not honesty and purity. Rather, it is simply a more clever way to hide things that are minuscule and move swiftly. The patients are encouraged to stay hydrated all throughout their stay, and yet their dental records are consistent with the symptoms of severe dehydration. Eels run their clammy, phallic selves all over your skin, though you don't feel it at first –– only ripples of watery currents.

Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.

In one scene, Pembroke comments that modern medicine fixates too much on blood; our bodies are 65% water. Yet Hannah, whose bare feet are always damp, ventures into the pool and begins to bleed. The blood, dark and pruny red, dissipates into the swimming pool like smoke rising into the skies. There are small eels and large eels and baby eels, and they swim inside the patients' bulging veins. And there is glass: again, transparent, but excruciatingly so. There is plastic and glass and computer screens and liquids, all reflecting and showing, placing images on top of one another. All unreal images. Hannah's name is a palindrome; it reflects itself and can be repeated again, over and over, just as the threads of history are retraced. There's something in the water.

Dane Dehaan is the perfect man for this role. I cannot imagine anyone else playing Lockhart.

His natural skin tone is agonisingly pale; he looks like a dead man walking. In those white clothes that start out crisp and end up damp and filthy, his skin is almost like paper, almost translucent, with just a subtle note of color –– not a healthy, vital red or pink but more of an orange color, like preserved peaches. When outside, his pallor complements and contrasts the vividly beautiful Swiss landscapes. His grey eyes seem to have been made to melt into the sky. His arms are leanly muscular, and, as he drags himself along (with an inspiring amount of stamina) the shadows on his back knead themselves around smoothly. But his torso is pastier –– no abs and no hair –– and a little bit of belly when he sits down next to Pembroke in the yellowish-gray sauna that works with the warmish tint of his lips in the same way two colors interact on a Rothko canvas.

On an aesthetic basis, A Cure for Wellness is absolutely delightful. It's creepy and gross and beautiful.  It's poetic, with the undercurrent of water (no pun intended) that runs through the whole film and is ultimately vanquished by a blazing fire, and with a present so utterly imbued with echoes of the past. But this poeticness is also its biggest weakness. When it comes down to it, A Cure for Wellness is a film that takes itself far too seriously. It tries to be intelligent but falls short. The audience figures out the secret quite early on, but the film drags out the reveal and overexplains some things. In the final faceoff, the villain looks like Hugo Weaving in Captain America: The First Avenger, turning the ending into a pseudo-superheroic, cheesy farce. It also has a bit of a Michael Jackson's Thriller element to it, and wasn't really what I was expecting. The ending tries to raise questions à la Inception but there aren't really any questions to raise –– it would have been better off ending with something clean and clear. I haven't seen Shutter Island, but I did read the plot on Wikipedia (as I always do) and this film tries to be it, but isn't able to. The thematic motif of water is so hammered in that it starts to be annoying. As is the ballerina who is dreaming but doesn't know it.

And whilst some things are overexplained, others are never resolved. Ideas are thrown around, juggled, played with, but ultimately don't seem to have any real impact. Lockhart's relationship with both his mother and his father could have been developed further and fleshed out more. They contribute to his guilt and his mother's death has a muddled timeline that makes for an interesting montage, but the parents are pretty much forgotten in the second half of the film, with moments played over and over again like a broken record. The eels are never really explained. Neither is the reason why the old people stood up and converged onto Lockhart like zombies. And the music was nothing special. It was a bit cheaply used sometimes, to make a scene feel more dramatic than it really was. And although reviews I'd read beforehand promised no jumpscares, the music did startle me a couple of times and that's annoying. The only time the music was interesting was during the wedding scene. Also, the weird sex thing near the beginning was just weird and quite unnecessary. It was just used as a convenient plot device and for shock factor; please see Park Chan-wook for weird sex stuff done well and for a reason.

And yet I didn't really think it was that bad of a film. I went into it thinking I wasn't gonna like it, but I actually quite enjoyed it. I feel like a philistine for that. Critics have given this around 40% but I'd give it 50-60%. Seb, who went to see it with me, liked it less than he thought it would, so I look forward to reading his blog post. (Edit: Seb's post takes it from a different angle and is very insightful and interesting!)

All in all, I'm glad I went to see A Cure for Wellness. I'm very bad with scary movies, but this was okay. I admit I closed my eyes (and, on one occasion, blocked my ears) during some body horror scenes like at the dentist and with the tube. I went to see this film because I want Dane Dehaan to be happy. So yes, I will probably go and see Valerian when it comes out even though it a) has Cara Delevigne, whom I find really bland and b) is directed by Luc Besson, who made Lucy and c) looks pretty lame.

And it was cool to see Swiss Francs in a movie. It was quite interesting to watch a movie set in Switzerland, albeit about how weird and incestuous Swiss people are. (We're potentially immortal?) At the end of the day, this film teaches a very important lesson: stay away from Swiss Germans. Especially rural ones. If this had taken place in the French-speaking region, I'm sure none of it would have happened.

extreme repulsion in a way i've never felt before

This afternoon I watched Whiplash and I had such a visceral reaction to it. It was such an intense film full of cruelty and humiliation and pain. Even now as I write about this my hands feel weak, my arms feel weak, my whole body feels weak as if I was stretched out so thin that I became two-dimensional and now I'm back to normal but also not really. I feel a little faint and sick to the core. I want to melt into a puddle of nothingness and let all the particles in my body dissipate and just cease to exist. Of course it's not just Whiplash making me feel like this. Whiplash made me feel a less strong version of this, but it reminded me of the one (as far as I remember) other thing that makes me feel like this: the blood industry in rural China. So a combination of these two things have made me feel this way.

In Scattered Sand: The Story of China's Rural Migrants by Hsiao-hung Pai the author dedicates two pages to talking about the blood industry. She looks at it through statistics and facts and is mainly talking about the AIDS crisis in Henan that rose out of it.

"Throughout the late 1980s and the 1990s, AIDS began to spread most widely in impoverished villages in Henan, where peasants augmented their income by selling their blood, for as little as 45 yuan per 800cc, at unsanitary blood collection stations sanctioned by local authorities and run by private businesses."

Then:

"Poorly informed villagers flooded into blood stations. The officials, collecting their blood cheaply using substandard practices and sanitation, profited; the villagers became infected with HIV."

And:

"The authorities didn't do anything to control the spread of AIDS, and continued to reap profits from the plasma economy."

But it's Yu Hua, in the "Grassroots" chapter of China in Ten Words that really brings the repulsion. I have a love/hate relationship with this man because his writing is so good but it is so violent and sad and makes me feel terrible. He writes from a personal and emotional perspective:

"I remember as a child seeing a man pay peasants for giving blood at the hospital. he dressed in a white coat just like a doctor, but it was grubby, with dirty gray stains on its elbows and seat; a cigarette invariably dangled from the corner of his mouth. [...] In the eyes of the peasants who, from poverty or from some yet more dire cause, had come forward to sell blood, he as sometimes even seen as a savior."

He groomed the peasants so that they would allow him to take blood "straight from their hearts." He also "made them understand that, before leaving home, they should make a point of picking up a couple of heads of cabbage, or a few tomatoes and a handful of eggs. When they presented to him their cabbages, tomatoes, or eggs, they would be paying him a compliment and addressing him with deference, whereas if they arrived empty-handed, this would be to forfeit language and lose the power of speech."

I seem to remember other details. Maybe they were from other books. I don't remember. But if I think too hard and too long about these illiterate peasants who know absolutely nothing except for the fact that cash flows in their veins, who are so poor that they have nothing left to give except for their own flesh, who sell the maximum amount of blood they can, letting it flow out of their bodies, straight from their heart, agua de vida, in exchange for enough money to buy a meal, maybe, and thinking it's a privilege to do so, and then getting sick and not knowing why and dying painfully and then being forgotten -- it's the worst feeling in the world. It's a different kind of emotion that I've never felt before. I don't know its name and I don't know what to do. I remember at first it was so strong and so intense, but now it's a bit better because it's been a while but I'll never get rid of it.

Oh, wait, I think I also felt this way when Mr Coates kept showing us that video about poverty that started out with 3 different scenes of childbirth. The childbirth, with the moans and screams of pain and the goo and the purple babies and the filth and everything, was already bad enough. But there was always a problem with the sound from the smartboard so he kept having to pause it, then call service technique, then play it, then start again. I must've watched those childbirth scenes four times at least. They definitely contributed to my ever-strengthening resolve not to give birth, ever.

Anyway.

I am never going to read Chronicles of a Blood Merchant.

I am also never going to look up the organ industry in China because I'm sure it's just as bad if not worse.

On Unpretentious Films

It's the Saint Valentin and I wanted to write about two unpretentious films: Our Times (which I saw on the plane in 2015 on my way to Boston, and I think this was the first romance film where I cried) and Mojin: The Lost Legend (which I saw in the cinema in Beijing in the winter of 2014/5).

Our Times (2015), or 我的少女时代 is a Taiwanese teen romance about Lin Zhengxin, a high schooler in the 90s who is obsessed with Andy Lau and has a crush on the local golden boy. She is forced to become a crony of the school's gang leader Taiyu (played by absolute beau-gosse Wang Ta-lu), who has a crush on the local golden girl. After an initial period of hatred and bullying, the two team up to help each other find love with their respective crushes. Obviously, they become friends and then fall in love. Zhengxin (whose name is literally "of true heart") ends up with Ouyang, and Taiyu with Tao Minmin, but both are unsatisfied and wish they were together. Before they can act upon their feelings, though, spoiler alert, in true Asian-drama fashion, Taiyu finds out he has some kind of brain illness and needs to go to the States to cure it. He doesn't say goodbye. 18 years later, Zhengxin, now a self-loathing workaholic, has a chance meeting with Andy Lau. It turns out Taiyu (who is now played by the guy who played Daoming Si, who still looks like an early-2000s farce) now works for Lau and he manages to get her a ticket to Lau's concert and they reunite. This ending is so cringe and is this close to ruining the whole film, but you can just block it out and pretend the movie ends right before Daoming Si appears.

Mojin: The Lost Legend (2014), or 鬼吹灯之寻龙诀 is a mainland Chinese film based on a popular series of web novels about tomb raiders. It is in fact the second feature-film adaptation of this series, with the first featuring the likes of Li Chen and Yao Chen and looking kinda bad. Mojin, however, which was directed by the Inner Mongolian Wu Ershan and stars a bedraggledly Adonis-like Chen Kun, and Huang Bo, and Shu Qi, is much better. Starting in media res of the series, the famous tomb-raiding trio have given up their trade, but a case related to an old flame, Ding Sitian, who died during the Cultural Revolution, pulls them back in to explore the intricate burial complex of a Mongolian princess. It's an action fantasy adventure, featuring Daoist codebreaking, zombies, and vivid hallucinations. The villains are a woman who looks like a mix between singer Na Ying and President Coin from The Hunger Games, her Japanese assistant who is very Gogo-Yubari-from-Kill-Bill, and a white guy who dies.

I can't say these films are masterpieces of cinematic gesamtkunstwerk. They are not. They have their flaws, mainly cheesiness. But the latter is part of what makes them such thoroughly enjoyable movies, the kind of movies that people don't make anymore these days. They know what they are: a cute teen romance; a fun adventure flick. Their plots are cliché-ridden and predictable –– not so much to be repulsive –– just enough to feel refreshingly unpretentious. (After all, it's almost impossible not to be predictable in an age where pretty much every variation of a story has already been told.) They do not shy away from their nature, nor do they make half-hearted attempts to grapple with topical social commentary (though Mojin's communist flashbacks could be interpreted as ironic and thus political, especially with the Cui Jian song in the credits... but that's subtle. And then again the irony could be more in a nostalgic amused way rather than critical). They don't take on challenges that are too big for their shoes. There are no marvellous flourishes of acting or cinematography -- just a couple hours' escape from reality and some sheer good fun. When a film really wants to be something that it is not, it is often poorly executed and the desperation leaks from its seams. Whereas these films know their place and are content with it. And they thrive. I would highly recommend both of these films. Sorry for spoiling Our Times if you were gonna go see it.

Under the Hawthorn Tree

I have often said two things about Zhang Yimou: first, that Zhang Yimou peaked in the late eighties and early nineties. Of course, as usual, I am not an expert and am simply expressing my humble, possibly incorrect opinion, despite not having seen every Zhang Yimou film to support my statement. Yellow Earth, the film considered to have kicked off modern Chinese cinema for which he was the cinematographer to Chen Kaige's directing, is arguably his best work. Raise the Red Lantern was great. Red Sorghum was good. To Live was great. The second thing I often say about Zhang Yimou is that he hasn't made a good film since 1994. The twin wuxia epics, House of Flying Daggers and Hero are interesting in their own right but too much of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon bandwagon films to be really considered exceptional, and also they start to mark Zhang's Hollywood ass-licking era, which continues on today. I saw his Coming Home in the cinema and thought it was okay. He made a Christian Bale vehicle and is now the director of the infamous Great Wall. And, until now, I have always (rather pompously) thought I was right in making such a statement.

I will now amend my statement. Zhang Yimou has not made a good film since 1994, except in 2010. However, this is because, in 2010, he momentarily had two souls. A gentler, softer Zhang Yimou from a parallel universe who'd had a much happier childhood was transported into this universe's Zhang Yimou's body. (We'll call the other Zhang Yimou, Zhang Yirou, with rou being the word for "gentle" and "soft".) Zhang Yirou saw Zhang Yimou's mind and was sad. He couldn't understand why Zhang Yimou, once the enfant terrible of Chinese cinema, had truly become a terrible child –– a real pain in the neck with a knack for crowd-pleasing –– who had begun to plagiarise himself in order to try and replicate his success. "Why is there not more gentleness and softness in this universe?" wondered Zhang Yirou. And so he decided to make Under the Hawthorn Tree. After the premiere of the film, Zhang Yirou returned to his parallel universe. "I have done good," he thought. "I have brought some gentleness and softness into that world. I have made Zhang Yimou a good director again." But he was wrong. Zhang Yimou is not a man to be messed with. During the course of the production of Under the Hawthorn Tree Zhang Yimou had suffered immense pain due to being subjugated by another soul in his own body. He could only watch as his gentle and soft counterpart hired a new Yimou Girl and created a gentle and soft film. Although he had to admit to himself it was a good film, he decided to spite Zhang Yirou by continuing to make mediocre-to-average, 6/10-type films.

Of course, all this is to say that Under the Hawthorn Tree is a gentle and soft film. It is another Saint-Exupérien work, which is currently my favorite genre. (My second favorite genre at the moment is heist films. Ah, I love heists. Ever so much.) Although it takes place during the Down to the Countryside Movement, with parents never being seen again after being labelled rightists and with a particularly hopeless and exhausting abortion scene, the Romance of the Hawthorn tree (as the Chinese title translates to) between the two main characters is just –– so –– pure. And even though the main reason why they can't be together outright is to not endanger her career, which is fragile because both of her parents are counter-revolutionaries, all the political turmoil just seems like background noise to the sincerity of their relationship. Laosan and Jingqiu are bashful and innocent, too shy to make outright expressions of love. This is especially the case for the latter, who doesn't even have a name for him. She makes him a golden koi keychain. He buys her boots. Every little detail brims with tenderness. A tear leaks from her eye and, as she turns her head to look upwards at the ceiling, it traces a line down the middle of her throat. Her family manufactures envelopes by hand in their one-room home, and the process runs throughout the film. Stacks of ochre-yellow envelopes with crimson ink lines get passed from mother to daughter to son to daughter. Her mother uses a flat blade to cut out the corners of each paper to make flaps. Then she puts down the flaps, insisting on the folds with a heavy brick. Then the children's nimble fingers flip, stick, tuck, glue. The fresh smoothness of the paper is a constant and a comfort into which Jingqiu retreats. There are none of the exuberant and gaudy colors of Zhang Yimou's signature. The palette is subdued under a delightful wash of faded Communist era tones. Jingqiu's face (to which, I admit, I bear some resemblance) stands out among a sea of white shirts whose textures are almost tangible from the screen: once starched, but now soft to the touch, smelling of cheap simple soap and a hint of sweat, well-worn. He tells her the hawthorn tree's flowers bloom red. He tells her she looks good in red. He gets leukemia, the white blood cell disease. She wears red for him. He dies. When spring comes, the flowers are small and white, like mist, like bandages, like the splash of river water in the hot summer months.

That's all I'll say now. That's all I can say. The rest I'll keep in my heart.

La La Land

I'm sure nothing I write will not have already been covered by far more knowledgeable and insightful critics. I don't have much to say. My mom may be disappointed as she liked my reflection on Paterson. That film touched me a lot more than this one. This one was very good, and I did in fact cry (I think I can relate very much to the fear of not being good enough and not achieving one's dreams) but I didn't have a special love for it. I can confirm that it is excellent and gave it 5 stars on Letterboxd, but it also didn't talk to me in the way some other films have. I didn't think La La Land would be able to live up to its hype, a thing so massive that it seems to have developed its own sentient mind. But it really did. From the first moment in the traffic jam I knew I was going to enjoy the film. Ryan Gosling's charm made Mansplainer Seb rather likeable. The large amount of montages in the middle didn't seem like a drag when I was watching it –– I only realised how many of them there were later –– because it was a time when the film indulged in its own lush production design, which is really one of its biggest selling points. The colors! A film for people who are sick of the rain that makes their toes wet, a film for people who are left exhausted by headlines, a relentlessly optimistic film. I very much enjoyed the ending. When she first kissed a different man I thought it would pull out to reveal she was actually shooting a movie and that Mia and Seb were happily together. I was very sad and disappointed. But after that marvellous parallel montage, I realised it was for the better.

It is a sincere, wide-eyed ode to Old Hollywood, a sopping romantic that pays homage to traditional cinema and gleefully plays with clichés. It is truly a breath of fresh air, a wondrous feel-good film that leaves you with an eye for the beautiful small details of the world. In a way, it is the musical of all musicals, deftly signing off the epoch. I expect all future musicals to look forwards, not backwards.

The Léman after La La Land:

Manchester by the Sea

So I watched Manchester by the Sea yesterday. And... I don't know. It was good. But I didn't find it Oscar-worthy. It was sad and very contemplative, very much, I think, a study of one man and his relationship with the world, whether it's the town or the wave of people with whom he interacts. The humor was quite well-done but I'm not sure how well it sits with the very sombre tone of the film... without the humor, the film would've been worse off, but I don't know if it was handled that well, I guess? And I think the music got kind of boring. They would always play classical music really loud so that it drowned out the audio and the diegetic stuff would go mute... and often there would be slow motion with those cuts that are abrupt but not too much so, so that they suggest the passing of that slow kind of time. It was overused, I think, and got boring. After a while it just seemed kind of pretentious. But it also shows that the film was a very visual one. During these moments, the story is told entirely visually, a bit like a comic strip, or a photo series. The funeral scene in the middle (when everyone comes to the church and shakes hands etc) brings to mind a photo album on Facebook called "Joe's wake" where a professional photographer has been hired to help commemorate the occasion. So, very visual, kind of vignette-y (if that's the right word to use here, I guess it isn't, but the only one I can think of). And I enjoyed the scene between Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck when they confront each other and their voices overlap, trying to be polite, stuttering, stammering, yet full of pain. It's the best scene of the film, and I know this because it featured prominently in the trailer AND is the basis of the film poster (at least the one I've seen). So I've actually seen Williams with that "look" (the I-want-to-see-your-manager PTA mom haircut, and that really ugly plaid jacket) a lot of times, and I have to say it looks so bad and plain that it was actually detrimental to the scene. Overall it was okay. I didn't even cry. I think if I'd cried I'd've liked it slightly more. Eh.

more Remade in Hollywood

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Or, as Stephen Teo so correctly diagnoses, “the cinema catered to the psychic needs of the diasporic Chinese to identify, vicariously or nostalgically, with the motherland and its myths — even though many of the overseas Chinese would not have been born in China.” [...] In other words, despite the genre’s varied permutations and popular appeal, purists expect the genre to retain at its core a traditionalist, nationalist ideology of Chineseness.

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In other words, can one ever make a mainstream wuxia pian for a global market without falling into the trap of self-exoticism?

Is that a challenge I hear, Kenneth Chan? Because I will take you up on it. I already have an idea for a long novel or TV miniseries involving 5 diverse Chinese girls who do martial arts in futuristic outer space and lead a revolution against their colonial overlords. I will take up this challenge.

Readings - The Global Chinese Presence in Transnational Cinemas

All from Remade in Hollywood: The Global Chinese Presence in Transnational Cinemas (2009) by Kenneth Chan, which is basically everything I care about all stuffed into one book.

On Chinese Box by Wayne Wang, often read as an allegorical film about the Hong Kong handover (Wang denies the allegories, but to me they are way too coincidental otherwise. The symbolism is quite blatant):

The Google Book ends at page 45. Woe is me! I was so engrossed. It is absolutely fascinating and I want to know more!