香蕉牛仔诅咒 banana kowboy anathema

家鄉年華 Happy 80th mum.

2010-01-30T17:15:00.000-05:00

民主; Please Vote For Me (full feature)

2009-05-10T05:09:00.004-04:00

'Please Vote for Me's Chinese title is 民主 which means democracy. '民主' is an experiment in democracy seen thru the eyes of 3rd graders at Evergreen Primary School as they encounter a class monitor election. Evergreen is located in Wuhan, a city in central China about the size of London.

Elections in China take place only within the Communist Party, but recently millions of Chinese voted in their version of Pop Idol. Weijun Chen's film explores how democracy would be received if it ever came to China.

民主; Please Vote For Me.

2009-04-19T01:30:00.000-04:00

葉問‧IpMan

2009-01-31T04:10:00.009-05:00

Grandmaster Ip Man—the man who ushered Wing Chun kung fu out of obscurity, and presided over the instruction of a young Bruce Lee—is the subject of an exciting new Hong Kong biopix. It stars cuzzin 甄子丹, portraying the petite but powerful Ip in early adulthood (pre-Bruce Lee) during the Japanese occupation.

Thanks to the influence of Ip Man and his disciples, Wing Chun is one of the world’s most widely practiced Chinese martial arts today. Its sparse representation in kung fu cinema has been attributed to its preference for short, straight forward, simple, non-theatric, no nonsense but practical & efficient movements.

Watch for North America Spring release.

The Dragon and the Crown:Hong Kong Memoirs

2009-01-27T00:47:00.012-05:00

I had to miss the Dec.11 Dim Sum Lunch launch which fell on my students' last class & exam day, but caught up with Stanley Kwan @ his TO home for an interview today...A fascinating account of 20th century Hong Kong Identity with stream of consciousness passages reading viscerally like scenes out of a Wong Kar Wai flic.

http://thedragonandthecrown.com

恭喜发财! HAPPY 牛 NIU YEAR ! 萬事如意,身體健康 !

2009-01-25T10:46:00.022-05:00

World economic crisis doesn't seem to have much affect on the most important Chinese tradition as citizens carry on with usual shopping frenzies in Fuzhou, capital of south China's Fujian Province. The celebration activities of the Chinese Lunar New Year have reached high tide today as the Chinese Spring Festival draws near. Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year, is the most important traditional Chinese festival of family reunion. Even quake-hit regions of southwest China's Sichuan Province have found their resilient way to celebrate as these 4 girls rehearse for a show celebrating the Spring Festival in Pengzhou. 恭喜发财 ! HAPPY 牛 NIU YEAR ! 萬事如意 ! 身體健康 !

一无所有的花房姑娘 ; Nothing To My Name

2009-01-09T22:10:00.022-05:00

I first heard 一无所有 the summer of '89 during the Tiananmen Square protests when it became anthem to the Pro Democracy Movement worldwide.

Summer of '97, I was back covering the Handover for NewsWorld. It was also the eighth anniversary of the June Fourth Massacre. I remember standing in Tiananmen Square for the first time and finding myself in uncontrollable tears for no apparent reason as 一无所有 echoed from a distant boom box. It was emotionally a very moving moment for me. My only logical explanation for my reaction was that “I am Chinese” no matter how far I’ve transcended my ethnicity and cultural boundaries. But I've 'Nothing To My Name'.

While shooting 女书 after the '97 Hand Over, I saw 老崔 (pinyin: Lǎo Cuī or Old Cui as he is affectionately call) unplugged in a small Beijing venue playing 花房姑娘. I luved his Rock N Roll sound of Chinese orchestral instruments (Xiao, Suona & Pipa).

The Pipa in this live version of 假行僧 Fake Monk is 1 of my favs.

第一场雪 '09 1st Snow

2009-01-07T16:03:00.015-05:00

...1st snow of 2009 covers my NDN kar in the middle of the road tonite. A roadside soothsayer appears assuring me that a windfall is on its way. Although I should be happy with the prospects of the coming year, I'm becoming paranoid instead.

As I slowly unwound, I wonder if a past betrayal could be catching up to me. Are our individual fates sealed, or can we alter them by changing our behavior? In trying to shape our destinies, are we just bringing them on? Is knowing the future a blessing because it allows us to plan ahead and make amends, or is it the devil's curse that can’t be shaken?

I begin coming apart as winter approaches and the staticky radio warns of a blizzard. The landscape is charged with a sullen foreboding. As the weather turns colder, I can't help but fear the mysterious seer's other prediction... that there'll be no tomorrow after the first snow...

视觉诗回顾 ; Poesía Visual Revisited

2009-01-05T19:00:00.005-05:00

...some yolda-like dude once told me that memories were just that. "Like a zipper...once zipped, it was all over with. And you should never turn around to see if bus is coming once you've jumped in that cab. It'll just piss you off with unnecessary regrets".

...this is as close to NY rez as it gets...or just my way of emptying cup to taste new tea...which can be uplifting.

...but Shelley Saywell & her husband's hook up story proved it wrong & inspired me to revisit some of those buses...pondering whether they might have been worth waiting for...

无腿鸟的冥想损失 ; Legless Bird's 2008 Meditations Lost

2009-01-01T01:53:00.017-05:00

We were just 0.01cm from each other at the high point of our intimacy. I knew nothing about her. Six hours later, she fell in love with another man & is pregnant with child. The harder you try to forget someone, the more it will stick in your memory. If you have to lose something, the best way is to not keep it in your memory

You'd think one minute just flashes by...but it really lingers on. I glance at the clock and tell myself that I have to forget her starting this very minute
... on the 8th day of August, 2008...we were together one minute before 8pm. I remember that one minute because of her. We were friends for one minute from that moment on

She ask me to take her home when I was about to leave. I haven't ridden a motorbike with a woman so close for a long time. The ride wasn't that long. I knew she'll be getting off soon, but I wanted that warmth to linger on...into the night

I didn't really think she'd call. But I still hung around every time I pass that telephone booth. It was possible that she only wanted someone to chat for one night...a sexless one night stand if you will

I've heard of legless birds that can only fly and fly, then sleep in the wind when it is tire. The bird only lands once in its life time when it's time to die...she said I was like 1 of those birds that once born, would keep flying until death. Funny thing was...those birds never went anywhere. It was dead from the beginning

The best thing about my gigs are the simple organic reacts in the absence of over intellectualization. I like things arrange for me. Who's to be shot... when... where... a mirror of my life has all been destined to unfold

I look at the footage over and over again...Watching her cook again in my make-shift kitchen, I felt all warm & fuzzy inside. I'll never forget the taste of her stir fries but I'll never taste her food again...if memory of her has an expiry date, let it be 10,000 years

Go ahead. Despise me if you like... but at least you won't forget me

...if eventual seeker is "In The Mood" to ride "Chunking Xpress" on "Days Of Being Wild" at station "2046" for some "Blueberry Nites" & non-computer-generated xchange with "Rebel Of A Neon God"...send message along with legless bird

HAPPY '09...peace & rice for every1!

순두부 찌개. Soondubu, soft tofu stew.

2008-11-28T18:24:00.011-05:00

Soondubu jjigae from Maangchi on Vimeo.

Ingredients:

12 dried anchovies,1/3 cup of kelp, half onion, 5 cloves of garlic, 3 shiitake mushrooms
100 grams of beef, 1 cup of mixed seafood, 3 shrimp
2 green onions, 1 green chili pepper, 2-5 tbs of hot pepper flakes, olive oil, sesame oil

2 tubes of soon du bu (soft tofu), 2 tbs of fish sauce, and 2 eggs

Prepare stock to make tasty Soon du bu:

Pour 5 cups of water into a pot and add 12 dried anchovies after removing intestine part. Add half onion, some dried kelp (about 1/3 cup), 3 dried shiitake mushrooms, 5 cloves of garlic and boil it over high heat. Approximately 10 minutes later, lower the heat to low medium heat and boil it for another 20 minutes. Set aside the stock and take out the mushrooms and chop them into small pieces. Heat your earthen ware (or ceramic pot) on the stove and put 2 ts of olive oil. Chop 100 grams of beef and put it into the pot and stir it. Add the chopped shiitake mushroom and stir it. Add 2 tbs – 5 tbs (1/4 cup) of hot pepper flakes and keep stirring for 1 minute.

* Tips:
2 tbs—mild
3 tbs—medium
4 tbs—hot
5 tbs (1/4 cup)—suicidal hot ! : )

Pour 2 cups of the stock you made. It should be sizzling. Add 1 cup of mixed seafood and 3 shrimp. Add 2 tbs of fish sauce. Cut the 2 tubes of Soon du bu (soft Tofu) in half and squeeze it out into the pot and break the tofu with a spoon several times in the pot. When it boils, add 2 chopped green onions and 1 green chili pepper. Crack eggs and drizzle some sesame oil before serving. Enjoy hearty winter comfort food!

咸鱼妹;Salt Fish Gurl

2008-10-07T23:46:00.004-04:00

First in a trilogy of integrated arts stage productions based on the novel Salt Fish Girl by my friend, Larissa Lai (Van based writer). Cum check out my video installation part of dance performance @ Winchester Theatre on 24/25th.

大佛，你玩我呢？Buddha, r u testing me?

2008-06-13T14:29:00.026-04:00

I've only been back in town for a week & it's been 1 too many senseless tragic deaths around me. First Kyle was taken away by Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) essentially Mad Cow...now this: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2008/06/13/toronto-killings.html

Got word today from Dylan's cuzzin that he was gun down last nite while sitting in his Jeep with engine still idling, innocently waiting for a friend just down the street from me! If there is a superior being somewhere, tell him no one is allow to die around me no more dammit!...give it a rest @ least for the rest of this remaining year!

Didn't wanna let all this get to me...So I stopped by crime scene en-route to Thai food tonite shaking my fist in dee wind & shouted out 'f-u!' as I rode my iron horse against dee odds of straying bullets & had myself a hunk of cow 4 dinner in defiance! (of Mad Cow)

Crime scene had police shell case markers everywhere. It looked like Al Capon's St Valentines Day Massacre. They were obviously hit by a spray of gunfire! The black Range Rover was still there & you could still clearly see where bullets had smashed through the windshield and the metal body of the vehicle! But Police investigation is still claiming it as "innocent victims of a car jacking that went wrong". I don't buy that. Why would any1 spray a "marketable" vehicle with bullets if they were trying to jack it?

I don't get Jetlag & was doing fine with the sleep...now i'm all fucked up stayin up all nite listening to Ethiopian rock n roll wide awake.

...maybe afraid to sleep like I might not wake up again...

In memory of Kyle & Dylan. May you journey to a better & more peaceful place than ours.

'Opening Shot' revisited...中餐館首播.

2008-05-10T23:18:00.011-04:00

My mom said seeing my Chinese name roll up the credit at 7:30 pm tonight on OMNI 2 was dah best Mother's Day gift I've given her so far ! Even though she secretly wishes the broadcaster had gone with
牛仔國... She has put her prodigal son back on dah WILL !

The Chinese version of Chinese Restaurants series debut this weekend on OMNI 2 Television, broadcasting one episode a week for the next 15 weeks. Starting May 10, each half-hour episode will be shown at 7:00 pm Saturday, and repeated at 11:00 pm Saturday and 9:30 pm Sunday. The series is narrated in Cantonese by John Sham, with original language dialogue and Chinese subtitles.

Join us this summer on an epic global journey, travelling from The Canadian Prairies to The Arctic Circle Oceania; stopping along regions in The Carribeans, Latin America, Middle East, The Indian Sub-Continent, Sub-Saharan Africa; bringing you into the lives of extraordinary families as they share moving stories of struggle, courage, displacement and belonging, and what it means to be “Chinese” today.

For information about OMNI 2 schedule, see http://www.omnitv.ca/ontario/schedules/omni2.shtml
For information about Chinese Restaurants & Clips, visit http://www.ChineseRestaurants.tv/production/production%20diaries.html

We don't do Chinese Food deliveries if you get dee munchies for Chicken Balls with dat glow in dah dark florescent orange sauce, but please spread the word for huddles around dah telee....

《中餐館》中文版將於本周末在OMNI2首播

關卓中編導的《中餐館》系列中文版將於本周末起在OMNI2電視台首播。自5月10日起，連續15個星期，每個星期六晚上7點至7點半播放一輯，並於當晚（星期六）晚上11點及次日（星期日）晚上9點半重播。本系列所含方言均配有中文字幕，並由岑建勳擔任粵語旁白。

欲知...

I gave dis HOTTIE 12" on National Telebision!

2008-05-05T02:54:00.029-04:00

"So I just found out from the Slice website that you and dah boyz will be on next Tuesday's episode airing May 13th @ 9:00pm sharp on Slice TV, Channel 41. Looking forward to re-living the moment when I hacked off your mane. My new favourite men's look: Asian Urban Cowboy! xox Kel."

Superstar Hair Challenge II. See link for multiple air times:

http://www.slice.ca/Shows/EpisodeGuide.aspx?Title_Id=116176&Root_Title_Id=109979

"I considered rocking the faux hawk & lost my locs to this Biker Chic on Slice !"

背叛. Nerakhoon

2008-04-20T12:35:00.007-04:00

Great Film! Check out Ellen Kuras & Thavisouk Phrasavath's repeat screenings on April 22 & 27 @ HotDocs.

"NERAKHOON (The Betrayal)" is the personal story of a Lao family who survives the ordeals of the Lao secret air war. This ordeal starts with the father joining the CIA, the forced exile of the family to America, continuing after the split of the family. It is an epic immigrant drama, full of humanity,wit and tragedy, poetry and ancient philosophy. Its form is unique, merging the documentary and narrative in a poetic memoir with the viseral edge of cinema verite that unfolds over 23 years.

年纪老是他妈的！Gettin Old Sucks!

2008-04-09T02:55:00.017-04:00

we were spoil...pushy wild. now we're bored...tubby mild.

狗!他们正在日本佬,而不是漢人! Jiggah not Chiggah DAWG!

2008-04-06T12:15:00.007-04:00

if nigga dont get good grades nigga not gonna go to college if nigga dont go to college nigga cant get job if nigga dont get job nigga dont make money if nigga make no money nigga cant get BMW7series nigga...
...wonder if phucker who posted this is from RFK (Rob Ford Klan). He seems to think all Asians are Chinese.
Asians in video are Japanese dawg! title credit even says JAPAN TV dawg! There're Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Singaporean, Thai, etc. in Asia. Not all the Asians r Chinese, DAWG!...even Russell Peter knows better.

...& not all Han Chinese r anti-Tibetan...not all Chinese r part of BEIJING REGIME! many of us that got slaughtered during TIENNANMEN were HAN CHINESE! DAWG!
Not condoning nor excusing BEIJING REGIME for Tibetan oppression, just want to point out that Chinese r also victims of BEIJING REGIME. Peace & Rice.

阿婆爆粗. Cursing Grannie.

2008-04-02T12:13:00.006-04:00

笑死我呀! This video was apparently posted solely to entertain and not to insult grandma according to the maker. Every1 so far thinks it's my mom but it's not. Although my mom would curse with that same vigorous intensity, but she would also kill me with the same vigor if I ever did this to her online.

Having been shot in Guangdong, I highly doubt that Cursing Grannie would ever have an opportunity to insult any English speakers...my mom on the other hand does so quite effectively on her own in TO without any lessons from me!

客家市区牡蛎! HAKKA BALL & Urban Oysters!

2008-03-29T14:44:00.012-04:00

Thanx y'all for dee bIRphdAY wIShes...& TINA TURNER's bright red Pomegranate lips w skin tight hugging spandex. Especially to Helen for closing dah nite with me @ late nite Persian Vodka Bar (http://banu.ca/) on Queen West dat served Dom balan - ‘Urban Oysters’ (lamb testicles marinated in vodka)!

I tried gettin photo...but 'em horny buggers run away quick! I guess I would too if some1 was tryin tah have my balls with their vodka!

I tink dis officially qualifies me an 'OLD FART' status update!

现代种族主义范式.Modern Racist Paradigm

2008-03-22T14:20:00.009-04:00

A well researched documentary that exposes the "White" Media's long-term agenda to standardize Caucasian people as the "social norm" for general society. Through the globalization and centralization of the "White" media and its constant propagation of repetitive images depicting Caucasians in positive roles and as protagonists while usually depicting Non-Caucasians as background characters and antagonists -- which are often connected to negative themes and stereotypes -- the media elite have been able to effectively condition general society subconsciously into adhering to a racist social hierarchy in which Caucasian people are at the very apex.

The documentary addresses many modern-day internalized racist psychological dispositions (subconscious forms of internalized racism) which are unknowingly passed down from generation to generation due to the globalization and pervasiveness of "Whiteness"; a cultural assimilation process of which, is directly derivative to historical European expansionism, colonialism, and imperialism.

For more detailed research, please go to: http://opposingdigits.com/racistparadigm/

The article in the link above (which has much more information than in the video) also exposes "race" as being nothing more than a social construct. It (the article) exposes the fallacy of "race" and the color labels that are part of it; examples include the terms "Black" and "White", etc., and how those color labels are subconsciously associated with underlying negative and / or positive themes.

Note: This video is designed to serve as an introductory presentation to the article itself.

Note: This is the stuff 'White Media' conjures up! Luvly...huh!

山珠穆朗玛峰在更好的日子.'给和平一个机会'. Mt Everest in better daze.'GIVE PEACE A CHANCE'

2008-03-20T01:45:00.008-04:00

My Han cuzzun with 喇嘛大哥 (ex-Tibetan Lama brother) last month. Would Tibetan brothah turn his knife on Tin Chor this week? Wat dah phuck has happened ?

The '08 Tibet Games.

2008-03-19T14:54:00.004-04:00

大昭寺上个月. Jokhang Temple last month.

2008-03-19T04:25:00.014-04:00

My Han & Tibetan friends were one with dee Universe last month at Jokhang Temple before the violence erupted... what dah phuck happened last week?

重访天安門和缅甸.Tiananmen & Myanmar revisited.

2008-03-18T01:08:00.023-04:00

Photos from The Economist, the only foreign news organisation with official approval to be in Tibet—which was applied for and granted well before the unrest erupted.

Toilet paper as make-shift Khatas (ceremonial scarves given at greeting or departure),“inviting” China to leave Tibet.

Check out these links:

http://kadfly.blogspot.com/

http://www.slate.com/id/2186753/
http://chineseinvancouver.blogspot.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7299597.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7299642.stm
http://www.globaldashboard.org/asia/downtown-lhasa/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/18/tibet.china
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=380089
http://chriscarrollsmith.blogspot.com/2008/03/violence-in-lhasa.html

炒抢福特鱿鱼 sack Rob Ford's sorry ars!

2008-03-08T17:16:00.007-05:00

我们不是地毯 We're not carpets!

2008-03-06T20:03:00.004-05:00

Toronto councillor Rob Ford draws rebuke, saying 'Oriental' people are 'taking over'.

"You want to see workaholics, those Oriental people work like dogs, they work their hearts out, they are workers non-stop. They sleep beside the machine. I'm telling you that's what makes them such hard workers. Those Oriental people are slowly taking over," he said during a council debate on whether or not to keep retail stores open on statutory holidays. His comments were offensive and inappropriate.

Councillor Shelley Carroll quickly retorted by quoting Asian American comedian Margaret Cho who said, "carpets are Oriental, people are Asian."

It's not the first time Ford has been accused of uttering racially-fuelled remarks. In 2002, his colleague Giorgio Mammoliti filed a complaint under the harassment and race relations policy at city hall, saying Ford called him a "gino boy." Ford denied making that comment. It's unacceptable in this city and it's unimaginable that we have an elected official making these comments.

I don't get where 'work like dogs' came from neither...cuzz my bitch just lies around & licks herself all day long! Ford had obviously just passed thru HK on an oriental carpet tour & missed LMF (LazyMuthahFuckahs) WHAT DAH FUCK!

The lyrics are ironically appropriate in Ford's context. It's LMF criticizing Tung's puppet government in HK. They're sayin shit like he's got no dick & should step down & so on...well u get dah drift...

愛是 LazyMuthaFuckas' Valentine

2008-02-15T01:06:00.014-05:00

One of my favorite Valentine tunes. I always prefer this live raw version over Sammi's even though 华仔 sounds like he's doing 'a constipated Elvis on the throne'!

Sammi's video looks like a bad PSA...But it's quite funny if you play both simultaneously slightly outtah sync like badly dub Kung Fu flix. Why ju LazyMuthaFuckas have to go breaking up!?#!

你到底爱不爱我?! 'do you fucken love me or not?!’

2008-02-13T20:39:00.009-05:00

It wasn't even Kareoki time yet @ my cuzzin’s Fukien Wedding last week when I caught this DJ belting out obliviously ‘你爱不爱我？你到底爱不爱我？’(Do you love me or not? Do you phucken love me or not?!) with his IPOD headsets on as if no one else was listening…Well...no one else was watching. I just happen to be passing by to get an extension cable from my car & the dude was on a smoke break.

I Youtubed the song in my futile attempt to decipher its lyrics & here it is:

I speak Cantonese, all I’ve been able to get in my limited Mandarin is the chorus thus far. But the key words 到底 really drives the message home. 到 literally means ‘to arrive at or to get to’ & 底 means ‘the bottom’. I think the chorus is saying ‘let’s get to the bottom, cut the crap & tell me if you love me or not’. So depending on the tone of voice, ‘你到底爱不爱我？’ can be asking sincerely, ‘I need to know, so just tell me, do you love me or not?’ or with a little more intensity, he's sayin ‘do you fucken love me or not?!’

我們可以. Bush Is Not America, Amen! 南大門, 告别. Namdaemun farewell...

2008-02-11T16:52:00.010-05:00

REST IN PEACE 南大門 NAMDAEMUN. The National Treasure of Korea & one of my favourite Night Markets in Asia was brought to a blaze by arson last nite. I remember buying a knock off Korean made Fender Stratocaster there when I shot 'Broken Roots' few years ago. Considering how much of Korea's historical treasures were destroyed by Japanese occupation (including the city walls that surrounded Seoul up until the early 20th century), it's a shame that someone wouldn't have enough respect for the few landmarks that are still standing.

年初二開年, 財神倒 . Rebel Of Dah Neon Gods.

2008-02-08T02:12:00.000-05:00

Today, we pay tribute to our Ancestors & Deities. It's believed that the second day is the birthday of all dogs so it's tradition to be extra kind to dogs and feed them well (instead of eating them...LOL!). So Bailey, it's your lucky day!

We Cantonese make 開年 'Hoy Neen' offerings to start our business on the 2nd day, burning Joss Sticks & offering food (usually 白斬雞 a whole steamed chicken or 烤魚豬 roast piglet) to our Ancestors & Deities. We pray to be blessed with good luck and prosperity in business for the year. This is also a Cantonese custom done at the beginning of every Hong Kong Teli/Film production. It's treated with utmost priority if not @ least with equal importance to any other pre-pro issues!

財神; Choi Sun (red face dude in 1st drawing) is the Deity of Prosperity. Though he started as a Chinese folk hero, later deified and venerated by local followers and admirers, Taoists and Buddhists both came to venerate him as a god.

財神's name is often invoked during the Chinese New Year celebrations. He is often depicted riding a black Tiger and holding a golden rod. He may also be depicted armed with any one of several iron weapons.

Several versions of 財神's political affiliation and subsequent deification have circulated. It is unclear whether he is a genuine historical figure, though the vast majority of stories agree that 財神 lived during the early Qin Dynasty...

ChinesePod?...no it's not the cuzzin of Godzilla...LOL! If you can ignore her annoying Rice King sidekick Ken, Jenny is a funky online Mandarin tutor podcasting out of Shanghai. If you like this, check out the Superbowl podcast from Feb. 3rd below. Jenny's a real hoot!

年初一, 新年的回憶...New Year Memoirs

2008-02-07T18:47:00.004-05:00

…centre of the table sat a circular wooden dish, enameled and gilded, in whose compartments were oranges no larger than a hickory nut, air dried in sugar, and very palatable; an assortment of rock candies, small Chinese fruits, candied; betel nuts sliced and looking like nutmegs, and melon seeds–as inevitable in their theatres as peanuts in the pits of ours. A dish of mammoth oranges, a saucer of melon preserved in syrup, and many delicacies of which even through our accomplished interpreter, we could not learn the nature, only that they were all to be nibbled, and were not quite offensive to our unsophisticated palates. A saucer of American tobacco and another of the saffron-colored fine-cut Chinese tobacco always stood side by side...

Lunar New Year, Quesnel Forks, Cariboo Gold Rush circa 1890's.

I posted this because like everyone else at the time, my Great Grand Father had gone up to Quesnel Forks initially for gold, but saw an opportunity to provide food for those too busy looking for gold. He opened the only canteen/food store in town. I sojourned to Quesnel Forks in '93 & found the only building left in semi collapse with 年画 faded Chinese New Year idioms throughout, 菜乾 dried preserve vegetables still hanging intact from the ceiling & what appeared to be two fire pits for large woks in what would have been the kitchen.

My fondest memories of Lunar New Year were those growing up in 長沙灣 Cheung Sha Wan, my old hood in Nine Dragons 九龍. The smell of Joss Sticks conjuring spirits to summon me back to a long lost land. I'm guided through winding alleyways carpeted with firecracker flakes & the scent of burning offerings from the sprinkling of Buddhist temples dedicated to various Deities.

長沙灣 was a congested, poor ghetto full of cottage industry factories (where Li Ka-shing 李嘉诚, now the richest man in Asia started out with his modest plastic flower manufacturing) & government housing projects with Mah & Pah whore houses fronting as barbershops. We didn't have much 紅包 (lucky money). But we always took time out & indulged with food over the Lunar New Year Holidays.

I remember gorging out on all sorts of deep-fried things like 芋头角 (taro grenades as we kids use to call 'em), and Mah & Granny always made these rock hard dumplings filled with sugar, coconut and peanuts inside then deep-fried. They were so rock hard you can throw them against the wall & cause some damage for sure! She doesn't make them anymore & now I miss them...perhaps only becuzz they were called 角仔, which sounds like my name sake in Cantonese.These taste memories lasted over 45 years in my mind until, one day, I realized the deliciousness was not from the taste but from the deep rooted memories of my soul to the land that raised me.

Today, we welcome Deities of the heavens and earth. Like many Buddhists, we abstain from meat consumption on the first day because it is believed that this will ensure longevity for them. But I thought it mirrored my Western New Year resolution which was to get healthy just so I can wreck myself good all over again with booze, drugs & dark angels LOL! Some also consider lighting fires and using knives to be bad luck on New Year's Day, so all food to be consumed were cooked yesterday.

Most importantly, the first day is a time when we visit the oldest and most senior members of the family. So I'm enjoying 羅漢齋 (Buddha's Delight) at Mah's house after my teaching day in the great white north (Seneca@York not Nunavut). Watched Asian game shows on teli (a contemporary NY tradition) with Mah tonite. This was a hilarious tribute to The Beatles.

恭喜發財 GONG HEI FATT CHOI...you dirty rats!

2008-02-06T13:28:00.000-05:00

It's Lunar New Year's Eve 年夕tonite & I'm busy helping or more like watching my Mah make Lorr Hon Jai (Buddha's Delight) Hoh Sie Fatt Choi (sounds like 'great life, great fortune or propserity' in Cantonese. But essentially a Sea Moss Stew with Oysters... yum) & Lorr Bak Goh (Daikon Puddin). All Chinese New Year tradition yummies. We Cantonese don't care much for recipes. But for all the Chinese Foodie Virgins, here's my abberation on foodie buddy, Susur's Lorr Bak Goh recipe:

Grate Chinese turnip (Daikon). Mix mushrooms, dried shrimps, Lap Churng (Chinese sausage), seasonings, and sesame oil together. Mix flour and water thoroughly in separate bowl. Combine mushroom mixture with flour and water mixture and heat until thick (do not let boil). Transfer mixture to a bowl and steam for half-hour. Garnish with green onion, coriander, shiitake mushrooms and cooked Lap Churng.

Stuff you need:

3/4 kg Chinese turnip or Daikon (grated)
225 g rice flour
38 g wheat flour
1 tsp dried shrimp (chopped)
1/4 cup shiitake mushrooms (diced)
1/4 cup Lap Churng (Chinese sausage)
1/2 tsp sesame oil
6 cups water
seasoning salt
white pepper

沒有老鼠

超级 (super) 碗 (bowl) in Shanghai & 1 unlikely die-hard Cowboys Fan

2008-02-04T01:46:00.001-05:00

Worlds collide here as SuperBowl culture gets podcast in Shanghai while Mao rolls over his grave in the face of his worst nightmare, an American invasion...or maybe he's just cursing "炒马特·米兰鱿鱼" which translates "fry Matt Millen squid" a colloquial way of saying "fire dah fucker". Isn't Chinese great!

Here's the NFL teams list:

布法罗比尔 Bùfǎluó Bǐ'ěr Buffalo Bills
迈阿密海豚 Mài'āmì hǎitún Miami Dolphins
新英格兰爱国者 Xīn Yīnggélán àiguózhě New England Patriots
纽约喷气机 Niǔyuē pēnqìjī New York Jets
巴尔的摩乌鸦 Bā'ěrdìmó wūyā Baltimore Ravens
辛辛那提猛虎 Xīnxīnnàtí měnghǔ Cincinnati Bengals
克利夫兰布朗 Kèlìfūlánbùlǎng Cleveland Browns
匹兹堡钢人 Pǐzībǎo gāngrén Pittsburgh Steelers
休斯敦德州人 Xiūsīdūn Dézhōu rén Houston Texans
印第安纳波利斯小马 Yìndì'ānnàbōlìsī xiǎomǎ Indianapolis Colts
杰克逊维尔美洲虎 Jiékèxùnwéi'ěr měizhōuhǔ Jacksonville Jaguars
田纳西泰坦 Jiánnàxī tàitǎn Tennessee Titans
丹佛野马 Dānfú yěmǎ Denver Broncos
堪萨斯城酋长 Kānsàsīchéng qiúzhǎng Kansas City Chiefs
奥克兰突袭者 Àokèlán tūxízhě Okland Raiders
圣迭戈闪电 Shèngdiégē shǎndiàn San Diego Chargers
达拉斯牛仔 Dálāsī niúzǎi Dallas Cowboys
纽约巨人 Niǔyuē jùrén New York Giants
费城老鹰 Fèichéng lǎoyīng Philadelphia Eagles
华盛顿红皮 Huáshèngdùn hóng pí Washington Redskins
芝加哥熊 Zhījiāgē xióng Chicago Bears
底特律雄狮 Dǐtèlǜ xióngshī Detroit Lions
绿湾包装工 Lǜwān bāozhuānggōng Green Bay Packers
明尼苏达维京人 Míngnísūdá Wéijīng rén Minnesota Vikings
亚特兰大猎鹰 Yàtèlándà lièyīng Atlanta Falcons
卡罗来纳黑豹 Kǎluóláinà hēibào Carolina Panthers
新奥尔良圣徒 Xīn'ào'ěrliáng shèngtú New Orleans Saints
坦帕湾海盗 Tǎnpàwān hǎidào Tampa Bay Buccaneers
亚利桑那红雀 Yàlìsāngnà hóngquè Arizona Cardinals
圣路易斯公羊 Shènglùyìsī gōngyáng St. Louis Rams
旧金山49人 Jiùjīnshān sìshíjiǔ rén San Francisco 49ers
西雅图海鹰 Xīyǎtú hǎiyīng Seattle Seahawks

I like 金山49人 translation best!

'我的藍莓夜 My Blueberry Night'

2008-02-02T01:31:00.000-05:00

Looking forward to this release on Feb.13th...hope it's not just a Wong Kar Wai for dummies!

If you're "In The Mood" to ride the "Chunking Xpress" to station "2046" for "My Blueberry Nights" on "Days Of Being Wild" "As Tears Go By" thru "The Ashes Of Time"...drop a line or meet me @ The Memphis Bar & Grill, we just might be "Happy Together".

Some Morning Routine!

2008-01-27T18:17:00.000-05:00

Although both riders are pretty whacked...I'm more impress with shooting than subject rider in front. Still...some pretty phucked up shooting & riding in Kamakazi NYC traffic. Don't try this @ home kiddies...especially not with your own camera!

'Opening Shot' revisited

2008-01-18T16:35:00.000-05:00

First day of the odyssey and my first shoot with Cheuk. Not sure what to expect. Just doing what I do best… going with the flow.

Big blue Western sky…Endless fields of wheat… A perfect Neil Young album cover shot. Even with the gorgeous warm amber prairie light, it’s so freakin’ cold that I can see my own breath inside the car as we make our way on a two-hour drive from Saskatoon airport to the remote town of Outlook.

We take our time stopping along the way to grab beauty shots of the prairie landscape. It’s magic hour by the time we arrive in Outlook. We drive down the main drag like two modern day gunslingers rolling into the sleepy prairie town. All that was missing were the tumbleweeds and the Chop Suey Western sound track. We arrive at the New Outlook Café, home of “Noisy Jim”. I’ve been looking forward to meeting this old Chinese Cowboy.

My mum nicknamed me Ngow Jai, which has a double meaning, Cowboy or Little Cow. It was old village superstition to hide the identity of the eldest son moi, from the demon so no harm would come to me. Some families gave their number one son female names… but my mum got creative and decided to disguise me as an insignificant Little Cow.

Everyone including my close friends find my whole cowboy obsession odd and eccentric because I’m Asian and not White. Yeah… I don’t look anything like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, but the whole cowboy spirit has little to do with race. It has more to do with a state of mind, a pioneering spirit of risking the unknown against all odds. Since my ancestors risked the unknowns to build the railroad that eventually connected these wild Western frontiers to the rest of the country, I feel a kinship and birthright to their cowboy spirit. I’m the quintessential Banana Kowboy.

The gregarious cowboy, Noisy Jim, and I have a lot in common. He came to Canada as a “paper son”, as my father did. His adopted dad Chow Yun paid the Head Tax to get into Canada and worked as a houseboy serving rich white folks as my Great Grandfather did. We both came from a long line of family-run Chinese restaurants and speak the same singsong village dialect from Toishan County. I feel a warm familiar déjà vu like a long lost son on his home coming sojourn as I enter the New Outlook Café even though I’ve never been there before.

Click To Play

The odyssey eventually took me around the world to these other diaspora stories...

I went into this journey without any expectations. I believe that expectations only bring you disappointments. So…two cameras, thirteen countries, mega miles of digital media, more mileage than Che’s motorcycle can rev up, copious varieties of Chinese food, an extended global family and five years later… the "fat man’s feet" has shown me more than just the global extent of our culture. It has transcended my own ethnicity and cultural boundaries beyond my imagination. This series has made me much more confident in terms of who I am. I’ve been subconsciously living on the margins without borders for most of my life. But the series became the glue that solidified my experiences and now I’m making peace with that notion.

For more journal archives, please visit www.tissa.com/production%20diaries.html. Rice Bowl Diaries were my way of keeping balance or sane. Anyone’s questions it may address are as irrelevant as the answers are absurd. The film may be the only possible answer. And getting to it might mean little to anyone but us. I hope to find strength in recollecting my experiences as they had happened… and hopefully by sharing and exposing my vulnerabilities to you. My memories or thoughts in Rice Bowl Diaries might only have resonance then because they’ve been the things helping me move on.

Peace & Rice.

The Border

2008-01-08T19:18:00.001-05:00

Funny bizz aside. Last night, I watched the premiere of "The Border", CBC’s expensive sensationalized glam fiction about the two prongs of good & evil. The show is indeed slick, well-acted, and not badly written, portraying a gritty faux reality which of course makes it worse.

The CBC world of "The Border" is not mine. I'm not Muslim. However, I could not help but reflect on a different but parallel historical context (The Racist Head Tax & Exclusion Act) that my community is still waiting for remaining redress shortfalls. As China rises to world power, it will become a threat to the US more than Iraq had...& I have no confidence that Canada will not follow Big Brother's homeland security policies & revisit that same historical past.

When I finally got my Canadian Citizenship after being in Canada for over a decade, my White co-worker congratulated me jokingly with "...you can now officially go to arrivals at the airport, wave your fist in the air and yell "damn you immigrants, coming to steal our jobs!""Not that I would want to call anyone a damn immigrant. But I still don't feel much like a Canadian after all that's said & done with the whole Citizenship shpeel. I still remain on defensive guards in the face of racial profiling & will continue to do so.

I realize that "The Border" is a fictional world and a fictional show. But so much of this type of material gets swallowed up by mass appeal. l think the racial profiling used in the shows online games http://www.cbc.ca/theborder/?3 are irresponsible & more dangerous than our reality. Despite the slick production, this expensive glam show is not doing any good in educating the public, the realities of immigration & border agencies. But it is instead, fueling the life of a long senseless & evil war brought on by corporate America.

圣诞吃中菜與猶太菜,嗯!!Kreplachs & Chinese 4 Xmas YEAH!!

2007-12-24T21:07:00.001-05:00

Xmas was always the loneliest times during College when all dee Gentile students go home leaving the non-Gentile students behind with nuthin to do on Xmas day but go to a matinee. I always thought Silent Nite was so named cuzz the bloody city shuts down & the only place to get food is Chinatown.

...a number of people have expressed their discontent with the way Jews are portrayed in some scenes in this video...

I personally don't get all the fuss about Jews eating Chinese food on Xmas? What dah f#uk's wrong with dat? I eat it everyday including Xmas...but we just call it food!

yeap...I'm back Jack!...& havin KREPLACHS with my Chinese(food) 4 XMAS. Happy belated Chanukah y'all!

Hail The Mighty Han

2006-02-19T02:59:00.001-05:00

After all said & done, three words that most characterize Western society are fun, comfort, and convenience & I wanted to return to this world. If I were to choose three words that characterize Chinese society, they would be diligence, control and conformity. While I had not finished this trip a Sinophobe, I definitely did not want to be part of a world in which un-stinting hard work and adherence to social norms were values prized above all others. As the plane lifted off the Shanghai Pudong tarmac, I was filled with a sense of foreboding about what the 21^st century, China's century, had in store, and how I was unlikely to fit into any of it even if I wanted to. In the thoughts of my China comrades, I’ve been "culturally corrupted” after being abroad for so long.

It is tempting to believe in the permanence of Western cultural dominance in the world, that history is an evolutionary process and that the western concepts of liberalism and freedom have defeated all others, and are now set in stone, immutable and victorious. But this is not the case. In historical terms, the last 200 years of Western dominance is merely a historical blip. For most of the history of civilization, it has been China who led the way. The centralized state, gunpowder and printing, among many others, are Chinese inventions. And now the controversial question that has every historian in the West shaking in their booties; China’s pre-Columbus discovery of The Americas!

The return of China to global dominance, or Asian hegemony at the very least, is just a matter of time. Napoleon was ‘right on’ when he pointed towards China & said “let the Chinese dragon sleep…for she will shake the world when she awakes”. In spike of my countrymen’s inward thinking on cultural purity & their refusal to accept me as one of their sons, I still am & will continue to be proud of that heritage where I’ve hailed from.

All hail the Mighty Han.

Shanghai Gah Gah!

2006-02-19T01:15:00.001-05:00

Shanghai seemed like living in any other cosmopolitan city like New York or Paris, however with more added accoutrements. I could definitely see myself living here for a while. Entering hotels & restaurants, you floated quietly, surrounded by a host of service – a different person each to open your taxi door, the doors to the hotel, several foyer greetings and the direction to the elevators, the elevator doors and the elevator button even, several more greetings arriving at the lobby etc. In short, if you wanted anonymity and the ability to do anything yourself, Shanghai’s not the place to be.

Unfortunately the nightlife/club scene in Shanghai seemed strictly for the weekends, so as I was in Shanghai only 1 weeknight & disappointedly so, I didn't get to see too many places filled up with people. However, what I did see was very promising and revealed a city as close to being hip as one would think of New York and Paris: a host of modern minimalist restaurants and cafes with the latest cuisine, and all the most fashionable boutiques from Paris, Milan and New York.

One warning about Shanghai: if you’re some sort of Rice King with an Asian fetish, Shanghai could be dangerous for you. Almost everywhere you look, Shanghai has much more than her fair share of beautiful, lanky, long legged, willowy Chinese babes leaning by the Bund…with the wind ever so lightly tossing back her long black silky tresses as she smiles for no other reason than just to annoy you…So all you McDudes stay clear…I’m staking claims here for the brothers!

Impermanent Life

2006-02-19T00:57:00.001-05:00

Shanghai, although seemingly similar in the basic underpinnings of Chinese society, was the extreme opposite of Xian. Beijing showed me China’s Modern civilization where as Xian showed me her Ancient one. Beijing felt so permanent, so controlled, and as deterministically drawn out as her rigid avenues (as an extension of a several-thousand year dynastic tradition would warrant). But to know China’s post-modern contemporary civilization, you really need to experience Shanghai. Shanghai seems to be so much more about the impermanence of life, and thus the need to live life for all it is worth before it ends suddenly – almost more close to a sense of living each day as if it were your last.

Shanghai was so much more a post-modern, contemporary, Western-styled city, and so much more capitalistic even as I was driving in from the airport. There were so many more high-rises, fewer bikes and more luxury cars, a sea of neon as well as a host of popular commercial "consumerism", and a skyline of construction cranes and a perma-haze of gritty construction dust and debris (as opposed to the outright exhaust pollution and the ultra-dry air in Beijing & Xian).

Farewell Xian

2006-02-18T01:23:00.001-05:00

There were tombs aplenty left to visit, and temples galore, or perhaps just more replicas. But as I write this journal, I can barely remember what they were. The month is coming to an end & William has more or less finished the two repertoires he came to learn. What he might not remember completely, I have the digital evidence to jar his memory.

My cold was getting worse as The Yangtze Rivers of phlegm were flooding my sinuses into The Great Gorges. The dry and dusty air continues to make my skin itch, and those truly awful Chinese cigarettes and even the fake western ones were making me cough like a Canuck Moose. When I read the health warning 'Smiking dimages your hill' on my replica Marlboros, I knew it was time to quit & move on, believing for no sane reason, that I'd feel better in Shanghai. I felt like a shark, which like all fish, must keep moving to breath.

Risky Monkey Business

2006-02-17T02:25:00.001-05:00

Terracotta Warrior awaits me for over 2000 years. We arrived fairly early, but there was already a queue the length of the Great Wall, snaking around the square like a giant python, and controlled with difficulty by guards armed with those omnipresent electronic megaphones at 10-metre intervals, using them like whips to stop the queue from disintegrating into a heaving mob.

As I was about to join the queue, Mister Adidas points out to me that no one is allowed to bring in video cameras. I guess Emperor Qin had a phobia about them in case I was to divulge his secret whereabouts to the peasant rebels or something. On top of the X-ray machine at the head of the queue reads ‘In the spirit of fang bien, your bags must be checked in at the building off the square’. How annoying is that! I wasn’t gonna come all the way out here & leave without a single frame…this monkey’s gonna come up with a scam…think hard monkey…

The warrior site looked like a typical Chinese tourist attraction. The long street leading up to the entrance was filled with souvenir shops and food concessions. You could buy any imaginable junket available from any diaspora Chinatown, as well as Mao kitschs like watches with him happily waving his arm to count off the seconds. Of course, there were 1001 replicas of the stone warriors, from inch-high miniatures to life-size statues.

The entrance fee was 65 RMB, roughly 10 bucks Canadian Tire Money, & this monkey didn’t get busted for sneaking in his video camera. No complicated ‘Mission Impossible’ scams or anything…I simply left my camera bag behind with Mister Adidas who stayed outside the gate while I glided pass security & scoped out the joint, then I went back to the fence about 20 feet away from the main security & waited for the trained monkeys to get distracted by the fresh busload of suckers…ahhh…I meant tour groups checking in. At which point I waved Mister Adidas over & had him toss my camera bag over the fence. Voila!

2000 years ago, the price for that would have been live burial or decapitation for me, if I was lucky, and in the fine Peking Opera tradition, prostitution for William with some powerful warlord. But since The 'Son of Heaven' no longer exists, I was safe from the chopping block & William didn’t have to put out! However I did fear for my life as surging troops of Chinese tour groups in different colour baseball caps waddled around threatening to squash me as they collided.

Each group was led by tour guide leaders waving small rectangular flags, armed with those tiny quacking electronic megaphones, leading their pack around the square, like mother goose leading her flock in a V-formation. Near the centre of the square, things got too crowded for a classic V-formation, and the tour groups took on the air of penguins; huddled into each other for protection against the fierce Mongolian wind, all looking in this Antarctica of Terracotta soldiers for somewhere to lay their eggs before Winter set in and the snow started to fall.

After that onslaught, I struggled my way through the tour groups dodging every hustler who wanted to be my personal tour guide for the price of my “Nan Dan Diva in their bed chambers” & entered the three cavernous Russian-style block buildings that held the warriors. It was quite a letdown to say the least.

Each building overlooked a pit that had lines of the soldiers in it. The soldiers looked identical to the lines of replicas in the storefronts I'd just hustled by... but put in a little more scenic setting of a "genuine" archaeological dig. Not quite the Eighth Wonder of the World, as they were touting it. But the 360-degree, 10 projector films were very impressive, showing Xian in 360-degree view & the history of the site. It gave me some ideas for future site-specific film projects.

First Broadcast Deal

2006-02-17T00:38:00.000-05:00

Looks like we're on the Zheng He Trail & he's watching over us from his Star Raft in the sky!

I just got word from my producer Cheuk Kwan, that our diaspora series "Chinese Restaurants" scored it's first broadcast deal from Singapore TV; 2 years 6 runs, PAL English version exclusive in Singapore & non-exclusive Asian satelite with a footprint of 21 countries including Hong Kong, China & Japan.

We're now waiting on an Australian deal...will know soon. Hot diggadee dog! If you haven't yet, Go check out our site: http://www.ChineseRestaurants.tv

Pear Garden Or Replica?

2006-02-14T01:31:00.000-05:00

It's Valentine's Day & I didn't even get any fake or replica Valentines today. Plastic flowers are popular items but then product counterfeiting is an epidemic here. So plastic flowers must be someone's idea of fake Valentines.

I've always felt cheated by replicas, but the Chinese don't seem to mind at all. I've noticed this about the Chinese here - they seem to be indifferent towards a replica and the real thing. China is littered with parks where you can see replicas of everything. In the boarder city of Shenzhen, just the other side of my home town, Kowloon, there's a park with replicas of famous structures including the Eiffel Tower, and other famous foreign buildings like the Louvre, Buckingham Palace etc.

Foot massage girl #56 told me the other night, without a trace of irony or sarcasm, that it's more convenient that way, as you can see all the places at once without having to travel around too much, and you only have to pay one entrance fee. As if to prove their point, near the tomb of Emperor Qin, there was even a replica of a pyramid and a sphinx, so you don't have to bother going to Egypt! Is that cool or what! Fang bien strikes again!

Not that I was dieing (no pun intended) to see anything as morbid as Qin’s real tomb. But the nearest you can get to the real tomb is to stand on the hill which it was dug into. From the top of the hill, upon the mausoleum's completion, you could once see all 25 kilometers of the great emperor's magnificent mausoleum complex; an eternal necropolis, walled in and an eternal reminder of his greatness.

I did however wanted to see the site of the original Tang Dynasty Pear Garden, the birthplace of Chinese Opera since I was here to shoot a doc about a Peking Opera journey after all. But no one seemed to know of its exact location or care, including our Peking Opera Aficionado, Master Sun. Just to appease my annoying ‘foreigner’s curiosity’, on route to the Terracotta site along a dusty country road to the northern outskirts of town, Mister Adidas shouted out ‘Camera ! Kwoi ! Camera !’ as he hazardously pointed towards what was just a small dirty factory with some neighboring pig-farming peasants. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed by the absence of a replica or that this piece of obscure history has totally vanished without a trace. Obscure history has little chance of survival here.

A Treasured Legacy

2006-02-13T20:49:00.000-05:00

William & I wanted to connect with her in December. But our short & hectic stay in Beijing regrettably did not work out. I’m so glad that I was fortunate enough to have met her last summer in Canada when she was able to travel and celebrate her 90th birthday as well as her legacy to Chinese dance with three generations of dancers from Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

I always get this unexplainable melancholic sadness when I have to say goodbye to my aunties & uncles in China. It always feels like I might not get to see them again…aunties who I’ve only spent short fleeting moments with…but those short fleeting moments become a treasured lifetime.

We have lost a great patron and friend of the World Arts community. Madame Dai Ai Lian, celebrated dance artist and teacher, pioneer and founder of dance art in modern China, passed away peacefully in her sleep at 17:34 on February 9^th, 2006 at the age of 90 in Beijing.

If you are in the vicinities of Beijing this Friday the 17th, there will be a farewell ceremony for Madame Dai at 10 am in the No. 1 Farewell Room of Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.

The rest of us outside of Beijing will remember her in solidarity.

Under Your Qin

2006-02-13T04:01:00.000-05:00

I came to Xian mainly to follow & film William’s Peking Opera journey. But like everyone else, I was compelled to make my way out to see those silly Terra Cotta warrior statues. You know, those life-size replicas built by Emperor Qin to protect him in the afterlife, in place of burying real soldiers alive, standard practice at the time. The soldiers were lucky - his many concubines, servants and all but one of his 22 children did receive the honour of being buried with him, whether they wanted to be or not. Emperor Qin was the first emperor to rule a united China, but also a bit of a paranoid megalomaniac tyrant. It seems that paranoid megalomaniacs always do well, historically speaking. The Bush Dynasty in America is a prime example.

After uniting China, Qin set about making sure the whole bloody continent of a country was kept busy glorifying his magnificence, and built the greatest mausoleum the world would ever see. The terra-cotta warriors were only one small part of the 25-kilometer complex that was to ensure his greatness was never forgotten. The workmen involved in building the most sensitive part of the complex, the emperor's tomb, were buried alive in it immediately after it was finished just to ensure no one would know of its secret whereabouts. Talk about a bum rap eh! You spend 25 years - your whole life - slaving away underground on some loony's tomb, and then as soon as you finish, they bury you alive in it. I guess those poor slobs had pretty weak unions. That’s why I gave up my IASTE card…lol.

The irony is that only a year after his death, peasant uprisings destroyed the emperor's vast monument to himself, looting what they could, demolishing what they couldn't and burning the rest. Even the Terra Cotta warriors had their metal weapons stolen and were smashed to pieces. The warriors you see today were apparently put back together again by teams of archaeologists, who are so patient and skilled, they could probably reconstruct Humpty Dumpty plus the wall.

The Chinese can be a very destructive lot when they set their mind to it. They can build on a massive scale, unthinkable by other cultures, but they can also tear it all down again at frightening speed. I know it's a crass generalization, and not my first, but since so little of China's long history is still standing I can't help but make the assertion. Often when it is standing, you’ll find it's just a replica of something that was destroyed earlier, often several times over, and always for no apparent reason. The Cultural Revolution and the vandalism of the Red Guards were just a more recent, and comparatively mild, example of China's periodic lapses into a destructive insanity.

Fortunately, for the emperor, the peasants couldn't find the entrance shaft to his tomb. It was hidden in a mountain, so they never laid their hands on his most valuable loot. There is a replica of the tomb, which modern archaeologists have seen, and it apparently makes Mao’s Mausoleum look like a pauper's grave, but I suppose Mao would be glad to hear that.

Qin’s coffin is in the centre of the enormous circular vault-like tomb, and the coffins of his favourite concubines were buried into walls around him. Those lucky beauties were allowed to swallow poison rather than being buried alive. Bloody favouritism, eh? There are jewels everywhere and more gold than the Aztecs or Egyptians could shake a stick at. There were apparently also rivers of toxic lead and mercury, part of Qin’s deadly booby-traps to protect his loot, which is why tour groups can't see the original, or that's what they told us.

Goat's Head Soup

2006-02-12T03:23:00.000-05:00

The largest Mosque in all of China, the Great Mosque, is located here. It is Muslim by faith. But with its ornate, eave rooftops, spacious courtyards and stony arches, the architecture is straight Chinese. I’m fascinated by how the Muslims here have co-existed with the Chinese to the point of being absorbed by our culture & yet kept their religion intact & in peace whereas in places like Indonesia, a similar cultural mix have resulted never ending, unresolved race riots. The Great Mosque was probably one of the most authentic untampered sites I’ve visited on this tour. It is pure Tang Dynasty!

I climbed atop a pile of rubbish, peered down a narrow lane with my camera & caught some handsome Muslim boys in starched white skullcaps stirring bubbling cauldrons with floating goats’ heads. Now I know where Mick Jagger got his idea for his Goat’s Head Soup album. The boys shouted at me in Urdu. It was probably something along the lines of “outta my F-ing face with that camera, dude!”. But I couldn’t make anything out other than their breaths in tiny puffs of steam accented by the harsh back light from an overhead street lantern. An elderly man waves his fist at a pack of beautifully sullen adolescent girls walking along holding hands. The festive mood rolled back nostalgic childhood memories of late night flower markets during Lunar New Year in Sham Shui Po, my old hood back home in Kowloon.

The tall bottles of cheap Chinese beer sold in street stalls became rare since the Muslims bypass on alcohol here. But Xian's redeeming quality for me was the food. We happily ate our way through Culture Street and the Muslim Quarters for cheap, stopping every half a block or so to sample yet another delicious and unknown treat from a street vendor. We tried tons of meat skewers, various deep-fried dumpling things, and endless exotic unknown sweets.

Twilight In Muslim Quarter

2006-02-12T02:50:00.000-05:00

Xian's 70,000 plus Muslims live beyond a dark tunnel just north of Master Sun on the other side of the Ancient City Wall. Like the Peking Opera Costume Hutong in Beijing, The Muslim Quarter is another filthy but beautiful place that sits on the verge of extinction. The bright lights perched on the sparse branches punctuate the darkness like tiny pin pricks of neon. In the late twilight hours when few patrons are around, the undiffused, raw lights elongate the shadows of passers-by. People come here to stroll around & soak up the exotic atmosphere at night. The narrow pathways are unfit to host vehicular traffic; yet annoying automobiles still honk and flash their lights into the dense crowd forcing their way through.

The streets are labyrinthine with symbols of Arabian imperialism appearing sporadically. Women are veiled & swirling Arabic script (God is Great) appears everywhere on storefront marquis. The faces of the people here are rounder, paler, and more Caucasian looking with blue & green eyes. They’re the descendents of Persian merchants who came eastward along the Silk Road & settled down here with babes of the Han Empire. The women are spectacular...jumping right off the pages from Arabian Nights. Boutiques sell appropriate clothing for the believers.

We being believers & all had custom tailored traditional suites made for approximately $30 Canadian. A price tag unheard of in Beijing, & most likely laughable in Shanghai. I wasn’t sure if it was operatic training frustration or just regular shopping frenzy, but William played Santa Claus & had 6 Cheongsams made. He probably made the tailor’s year! Merry Christmas…ka-ching $$$$ !

Xmas Twilight Zone

2006-02-12T01:57:00.000-05:00

Back in Xian, we get into a somewhat regular routine. Nasty instant coffee & pastry early in the morning before vocal class at 9am to noon. Lunch at our favorite dumpling house. Errands, rest or practices for William till 3pm & we’re back for movement workshop. It’s usually dark by the time we get out & we stroll back leisurely to our hotel along the busy night market. We stumbled upon a really great foot massage place where you get an hour treatment for the price of a Latte at the airport. Since we couldn't find any decent Latte in Xian, that became our favorite pastime for most evenings. It was'nt a bad trade off.

We were strolling along the busy night market after class 1 night. The night being Silent Night…well hardly. It was Christmas Eve & giddiish girls wearing cheesy tiaras with blinking LEDs mob the streets. I had already anticipated that spending Christmas in Xian or China would be very different or even strange. Normally, back in Toronto, the streets are empty & silent (thus Silent Night) as everyone huddles at home to be with family. But here, it felt more like a cross between New Years Eve & Mardi-Gras with everyone out wearing festive costumes, many in bright red Santa Claus toots.

This shouldn’t come as a shock to me as shops have been piped with bad Christmas caroling & displaying banners advertising deals ever since we got here. But I do find Christmas strangely way more a commercialize frenzy here in this supposedly Communist State than I care for compare to the Capitalist West as I gazed at the twenty-some feet high plastic Christmas tree in aw.

Finally, we found every restaurant fully booked & dinner started to look grim as we got turned away by every Santa Maitre D’ in this Christmas Twilight Zone. In the absence of turkey dinner, we found our way back to our regular evening hangout & celebrated Christmas with our favorite foot masseuses #51 & #56. Well I have to admit; it was the most unlikely place I’d ever imagined ending up on Silent Night. But I’m sure Santa Claus wouldn’t have complained.

Good Nite Beijing !

2006-02-11T02:59:00.000-05:00

The whole stay in Beijing evolved around the silly CCTV show & none of William’s grandiose plans of hooking up with other teachers evolved. You would never guess that we were in a Communist country because we seem to be constantly evolving everything around someone else’s self absorb plans instead of what we came here to do. Everyone was looking out for number one. What ever happen to Socialism? I guess it was always too idealistic to last.

This was really frustrating for me as I found “Last Dance” being constantly shuffled to a place of very low priority. Although I always placed William’s training first above all, “Last Dance” was next in line of priority for me.

While in Beijing, we did score some free tickets to The Grand Chang An theatre. We caught some amazing Peking Opera acts & I got some really cool footage backstage. Only 40 years ago, we would have ended up with bad haircuts & sent off to clean latrines in the countryside for such bourgeois decadence. That’s what happened to many of William’s teachers! So I guess you’ve come a long way babe!

It’s been a week back in Beijing & we’ve blown 2 thirds of the month away already. We’ve got ten days left to pack what we had originally planned for thirty days. We decided to cancel our plans for Nanjing in order to have enough time for the repertoires William originally came to learn.Now that William has scratch Master Sun’s back by contributing to her on air PR machine, she has to follow thru & make good on promises of opera workshops with her undivided attention. If there were rules in the Guanxi game, that one should be carved in stone.

Cultural Divides

2006-02-11T02:50:00.000-05:00

It has been common knowledge as well as a long history of cultural divide between the North & South similar to the cultural divides & prejudices between say Northern Italy near the Swiss Alps & the Sicilian regions. The prejudice being that the Northern & Wu areas (Lower Yangtze & Shanghai regions) claims to represent the ‘refined’, ’traditional’, ’pure’, & ‘authentic’ aspects of Chinese culture while snubbing Cantonese & other Southern cultures as a reflection of the ‘vulgar’, ‘modern’, ‘hybrid’, & ‘debased’ aspects.

It is not surprising that these similar cultural snobberies have found their way into the Peking Opera arena & into the critical discourses on Chinese Opera. Most Peking Opera Aficionados I’ve met so far tends to be purists with inward thinking that have been the popular trend as well as downfalls through out our dynasties. Master Soong for example when watching the Opera Channel will only watch Peking Opera, as everything else such as Cantonese or even Shanghainese Opera are consider second rate.

The Opera Channel programming is an obvious statement. Northern & Wu region theatrical genres are valued as the expressions of the Elite & are always broadcast prime time. As such, Jing Ju have grown to be representative of the ‘official’ traditional culture by even playing down their own local features & hybrid characters. This has come at the expenses of the dieing popularities of other local genres & cultures to the point of there’ll only be 1 national theatre being supported & based out of Beijing in the near future.

While the Mandarin dialect or ‘Guo Yu’, which smugly translates as ‘The National Language’, is perceived as refined, and central to Chinese culture. Cantonese & the local culture behind Cantonese opera are seen as vernacular & peripheral expressions of a low class group. I wonder how much of this reinforces or correlates to the cultural divide & my personal frustration with the status hierarchy of linguistic expression.

Yet they worship Hong Kong pop culture & Cantonese cuisine seems to be the most popular amongst the Elites. I’ve seen more Andy Lau & Karen Mok billboards here than in Hong Kong. More than ½ the films shown on the over night train were Andy Lau’s…there was a guy selling a Beijing Tabloid on the subway train today shouting ‘2 RMB…Andy Lau is dead!’. And the whole cast of entertainers scheduled for the New Years Eve count down in Shanghai are being flown in from Hong Kong. But this Honkie expiate is not considered Chinese!

The influences of the diaspora have inspired more open negotiations between the debt to the past & the desire to adapt to cultural & societal transformations. The spirit of such innovation have apparently led to unique experiments in Peking & Cantonese opera fusions as early as ’63 in New York City.

However, I really am talking through my nether regions of the armchair historian. So I’ll shut up with my academic bitching here & get back on track with the journey.

Miserable Americans

2006-02-11T02:21:00.000-05:00

Imitating American culture seems to have become invariably chic, yet most Chinese don't really think the Americans are that smart. They might however brag about the Middle Kingdom’s return to her rightful place as the world’s number one nation, yet given a chance, they would still jump ship & go to America. The truth is, they have problems liking Americans politically but are obsessed with emulating their material values. They appear to be more complex than they really are. But for the most part, their contradicting dilemma tells me they’re more or less disillusioned & resembled many miserable Americans without even trying.

This presents an interesting dichotomy among the expiates. As we watch the English language channel, William & I notice there were a host of people who we could have known from university who might have been in East Asian and Chinese studies. Some interesting and cultured, some not. Some I might even dare to say are here because they couldn't cut it back in the West, and upon somehow ending up on this side of the world, aided by a sense of privilege as only a Western income in a non-Western economic country could offer, stayed.

These Sinophiles are plastered everywhere. On billboards, television, even on sides of buses. In the West, they’d be nobodies. But here, they’re privileged with celebrity status. As for me, a descendent of the dragon, am still considered a foreigner even though I speak Cantonese. The general consensus is ‘you’re not Chinese unless you speak Putonghua’. How irritating is that!

Kuomingtangs Revisited

2006-02-11T01:33:00.000-05:00

There seems to be much more of a class based societal structure than I remember from my last visit or maybe the gap has just gotten more obvious or worst than what I was prepared for over the last 8 years.

Impeccable-white gloved service was quite a juxtaposition to the disheveled, dirty, and weather-beaten coolies who were pushing handcarts laden with everything from refuse to other people. If this was Communism, what were things like before Communism arrived? In a more class-based society, what rationale would stop some from acting on their envious thoughts of not having what others, whom they saw every day, did enjoy? And was this not just a rotation of power-elites, albeit after a certain more widely based redistribution of property?

While I perceive China as a tightly controlled society, I was also struck by the seeming fact that even this government could not control everyone. Not every business deal and not every hustler could be tracked by a central government. So over 10-20 years after the Cultural Revolution, these first business dealers, and next the progeny of those in governmental control, are benefiting and accumulating enormous wealth.

Beijing Rat Race

2006-02-10T02:31:00.000-05:00

Ultimately Beijing is just way too over spread & inconvenient & China just has way too many people. The overpopulation makes the current populace struggle for whatever breathing room they can get, making them sometimes unpleasant to interact with. The Beijing transit system could quite appropriately be whisked away to one of Dante's circles of hell. It's extremely stuffy with people sweating inside their down fills packed in like sardines for long periods of time when the ring-roads are grid locked with traffic.

A seat might open up in front of me at miraculous moments. But while I argue with Master Sun that she should sit down, some young punk from halfway across has already barreled his way into it while starring at me like I was an alien from Outer Space. What ever happen to our traditional respect for the elders? Today’s China has become such a self absorb, youth driven culture. I guess if they're that desperate, they can have the damn seat.

Last Track To Beijing

2006-02-10T02:12:00.000-05:00

After only 7 days of training, we find ourselves returning to Beijing this time by train. The train station was horrific with mob mentality that is the natural state of any crowd in China. This is what I imagine Xian to be like during the infamous Xian Incident when The Kuomingtangs evacuated. The overnight train was tiring. I couldn’t sleep & ended up abusing myself with badly dubbed Andy Lau flicks. I was exhausted & sleep deprived again by the time we arrived back in Beijing at the crack of dawn.

Walled City

2006-02-10T01:38:00.000-05:00

The city wall was interesting, in a bleak sort of way. I let my imagination run wild as I imagined Ghengis Khan and his Mongolian hoards sweeping over the hills and attacking the wall, with loyal imperial troops doggedly defending each inch of it tooth and nail, to protect the motherland from the barbarians. In reality, however, it didn't happen like that. The wily Khan simply sent emissaries to different parts of the wall until he found some corrupt official he could bribe to let him over unmolested. "Any wall," he said, "is only as good as the men defending it."

Good point Ghengis! Walls don’t seem to be effective means of defense. The effort required to build, maintain and defend them greatly exceeds the force required to overcome them, and those behind the wall become complacent and inward looking. China herself became inward looking, and as the Qing royal court amused itself behind the walls of the Forbidden City, believing it had frozen time, the West progressed and moved through enlightenment and then an industrial revolution. Centuries of self-enforced isolation had left her unprepared for Western and Japanese aggression, and she is only now regaining her position as the world's number one nation.

Restoration Anathema

2006-02-09T13:30:00.000-05:00

The Xian that stands today isn't that old. It appears more like a 50-year-old city rather than the ancient 2000 plus years old capital that it’s supposed to be. The City Wall was repeatedly damaged and rebuilt, or just destroyed by the emperor so he could refashion it in his image. Often it was burnt to the ground by powerful court eunuchs eager to get rich on kickbacks from awarding the reconstruction contracts. Sounds a lot like modern day Guanxi, doesn’t it?

The day we were leaving to go back to Beijing, William got food poisoning & excused himself for a relaxing treatment at the local bathhouse…Yeah…a likely story I’m sure…hehehe…so I was left to explore the old city wall on my own before the over night train departs in the evening.

Scaffolding was everywhere, there was so much renovation work going on that I wondered if they had decided to rebuild it from scratch again. I suppose they were just making it look newer, as the idea of old historic buildings actually looking old is anathema to the Chinese. Even renovating (as near as damn replacing it, as far as I could tell) an old building is unusual in China. Usually they just rip it down and stick a faceless office block in its place.

This is progress. Old=Bad; New=Good. If an alien was to do a whistle-stop tour of Chinese cities, he might be forgiven for thinking that the whole place hadn't existed until the fifties, that it had all sprung into existence out of nothing. In a society that boasts the longest uninterrupted history on the planet, I found this saddening.

Tourist Site Fatigue

2006-02-09T05:40:00.000-05:00

As time passes, I figured out William either goes shopping or gets facials when he’s frustrated by his lost of control in the situation. Since he decided to go for a facial this morning, I was left to amuse myself @ The Shaanxi History Museum. I passed on the tourist rip off cassette tape rental for a self-guided tour (recorded by Roger Moore – apparently a big selling point here…they love Bond…unfortunately…the wrong Bond) even though they claimed it was really worthwhile as it explained a lot about the collections that would otherwise have remained a mystery.

I was glad to be exploring alone in a dull sort of way as I watch other foreign tourists being herded like cattle from place to place with their guide repeatedly reminding them to read the English translation at the side of each exhibit, which appeared to have been translated by a machine operated by an ill-educated monkey, while they mega phoned the tour group in an ecstatic frenzy directing fellow flocks of sheep around. But like so many other 'historical' sights in China, it is yet another new, tour-group friendly replica and frankly uninteresting.

The temples, the ornate Chinese roves, the stone lions guarding the entrance and the courtyards were beautiful, I suppose, but I've seen enough already that 'temple fatigue' was beginning to set in. I was itching to move ahead with the film I came to shoot that I wasn’t appreciating them as much as I should have.

You can't enter most of the temples anyways, but you can peer into their dark interiors from a railing at the front entrance. To win this prize, you really have to fight like a Xian war refugee during her many historical battles. Around each front door, a surging mass of Chinese tourists push, elbow and snarl at each other for prime position. They fight first to get to the door, and then they fight to stay there. I was carried on the wave of a tour group or two past some of the doors as I held my camera above the wave and wondered if my health insurance covered being trod underfoot.

Follow Me & Learn

2006-02-09T02:41:00.000-05:00

We finally got to meet Master Sun & started the Operatic training after William reluctantly agreed to travel back to Beijing & go on air for CCTV. We checked out the show on air & discovered that it is essentially a prime time but dorky ‘sing along Chinese Opera show’ for the elitist Tai Tais to learn Chinese Opera at home, a kind of Opera Karaoke if you will. The name of the show translates as “Follow Me & Learn”, so you can just imagine. After a cuppla classes, I realized they were preparations for the big TV extravaganza & not the repertoires that William had come to learn. Ai-yor! The spirit of fang bien has struck again!

Hostage Negotiations

2006-02-09T00:10:00.000-05:00

We were scheduled to meet Master Sun bright & early on our 1^st morning. But she kept postponing it because of this & that. We’re now being told that she has to go to Beijing for a CCTV appearance & insisted William to go back with her. This was the beginning of our many ‘in the spirit of fang bien (convenience)’ situations in China. It appears that the Chinese interpretation of ‘fang bien’ means when it’s convenient for them but not necessarily for you, in a sneaky passive/aggressive way. If we had known this, we could have stayed in Beijing or made our travel plans accordingly.

A trek back to Beijing is not a simple hop, skip & jump along the Gardner to Mississauga. I’m dreading this but there weren’t any choices. It wasn’t like we can stay & party with the Terracotta soldiers till she gets back! I’ve bad feelings about this. I felt like we were being held hostage by some Karaoke Peking Opera cult. If I catch William shaving his head, smellin like incent, & chanting strange tunes in water sleeves at the train station over the next few days…we’re outta here!

Master Sun has a mama’s boy Wang who looks like some walking Adidas billboard. I can’t figure out if he’s a devoted Adidas stockholder or he just loves all things foreign especially American. William doesn’t trust him. I empathize but also feel compelled to count all my teeth to make sure they’re all still there when he leaves the room. Anyways, I coined him Mister Adidas. He appears to be her gatekeeper/manager. You can’t get to her without going through him. So while we waited patiently to meet her, we’re stuck with Mister Adidas as our tour guide, killing our time, shuffling us from one more boring replica tourist site to another.

Anywhere you find tourists, you were also bombarded by over-excited guides blabbering from annoying battery powered megaphones whose worldly care seems only to not let a moment's silence pass without any form of conscious thought. My only consolation was that these running commentaries were in Putonghua, which somehow made it more bearable because I couldn’t fully understand and when the batteries were wearing down on their megaphones, almost ignorable.

Each Drop Is Life

2006-02-08T15:11:00.000-05:00

The weather really surprised me. I had been accustomed to the more damp, drizzle and mist that is characteristic of my ancestral home, Toishan in the South. But Xian was dry and dusty. Posters everywhere encouraged people to conserve water, proclaiming 'each drop means life'.

Instead of mist, one finds a slight haze. The sky here is cloudless, but not really blue - it's a kind of icky gray/blue I haven't seen before. Not even my trusty Polarizing filters were doing anything here. So it was really ugly for shooting. That's partly due to pollution, no doubt, but mainly due to the dusty yellow loess soil from northwest China being blown east by howling winds from Mongolia. The soil up there is yellow and powder like, and winter winds lift it from the ground and carry it all the way to Xian and Beijing.

The scale and intensity of soil erosion has apparently increased massively in this century. Recent rapid economic progress has brought things to a crisis point. Drought, over farming and de-forestation, combined with ever increasing demands for water from industry and the cities, are pushing northeast China toward the abyss. There’re speculations that the whole region, from Xian to Beijing, may soon become a desert if it isn’t already.

Vanishing History

2006-02-07T13:49:00.000-05:00

Xian was seemingly remote driving in through the dodgy night. But in the following daylight, we realize that it was in reality a metropolis of seven million people. From its central Drum and Bell Tower Square, the city’s four main arteries (East, West, North and South Street), spread out into infinity, dividing her in a logical and coherent way.

The square itself is actually the rooftop of an ultra modern underground shopping mall. But above ground, it appears to be a pleasant enough grassy place, where kite flying aficionados ride the wind, or rather their kites 'ride the wind'. They themselves stay on the ground to flog their kites to unsuspecting tourists willing to throw money away for junkets that can be found in any diaspora Chinatown. The square contained the two typical Ming Dynasty towers; one museum of bells, and another a museum of drums. I couldn’t tell 1 apart from the other, but I’ll never forget the eyesore that is the Golden Arches of Big Mac precariously stuck right smack in between the two.

The rest of the city centre is all spanking new. The locals brag that it’s only about 2 years new. This is surprising when you consider that Xian was China's ancient capital for far longer than any other city, and much longer than the recent upstart, Beijing. Most of the dynasties rose and fell here in Xian, but judging by the downtown area, they left no trace. War, progress and indifference have erased Chinese history. The centre of modern Xian could be any American city with malls, banks, KFCs, McDonalds and traffic jams. There’s so much traffic around the downtown circle (reminiscent of Rome) that the only way for pedestrians to get across was to build these space age Jetson like underground passageways.

Xian's citizens looked prosperous and purposeful…in the downtown core anyways. This has become a world of business and careers, of mobile phones and factories. The rough and ready Tibetans of yesteryear seemed worlds away, much to the delight of both parties, I suspect. But if you look hard enough, you might still find them juxtaposition within a 15 to 20 minutes walk away still holding on to their dear turf from extinction.

Hi-jacked To Kekexili

2006-02-07T02:46:00.000-05:00

We landed in Xian after dark only to find out that the airport was another hour & 1/2’s drive in from the boonies. Next thing you know, we were herded onto a military style transport bus crammed full of shady, disheveled characters in ill-fitting cotton padded overcoats. I was a bit disoriented to say the least…thinking I’ve just been abducted on mountain patrol somewhere up in Kekexili. I strained my sleep-deprived red eyes over the sea of bad haircuts & spotted little William dwarf in between two dirty and weather-beaten scar faces at the front end of the bus & was just as relieved with the absence of Tibetan antelopes or any other critters on board.

As the suspension less bus grind its way along the dilapidated roads, I nodded off intermittently but would awaken abruptly thinking I’ve been robbed blind & left by the road side stark naked only to catch glimpses of surreal frontier storefronts like those from old Kurosawa films passing through the fogged up windowpane. In relief, I settle back in for the long uncomfortable ride ahead while clutching on to my money belt & passport.

Master Headress Maker

2006-02-06T01:43:00.000-05:00

On our last day in Beijing, we hit the old town where the Opera Costume shops are located. I’m finally getting into a groove here... At last, some visual theme to build upon. A direction to explore the “character” of this place. The space is jiving & things are starting to jam so much better for me…

The Peking Opera costume area is a filthy but beautiful place. I spent hours shooting in the old tiny workshop while William got his repairs & orders in. I felt very privilege to be given access to this rich, yet endangered old world craftsmanship locked inside a time capsule in this vanishing historical Hutong.

But I was sadden by the imminent reality that it will be the last time I’ll see this place as it faces extinction with the forth coming progress which has already bulldozed away most of the neighboring shops. These historical Hutongs are eyesores as well as goldmine opportunities to Beijing developers. They are doing everything in their power to get rid of them before the Western world comes for the ’08 Olympics. This neighbourhood will soon be stunted over by yet more of Beijing’s gray, faceless tower blocks.

The old Master Headress Maker whose family has own the shop for generations took us out for a delicious Muslim lunch in the neighbourhood. He & his 2 sons were impress by my tolerance level for Bai Jui, their national drink, the Chinese moonshine that permeates everything everywhere you go in China.

We flew to Xian the following day. I started to get more excited about the film, looking forward to meet Master Sun & start shooting the training rituals. Most of all, I was glad to be leaving Beijing.

Peking Opera Blues

2006-02-05T23:35:00.000-05:00

William & I arrived in Beijing on a bone chilling winters day. If I were to choose one word to describe the place, it would be 'gray'. Maybe it was just the time of year or maybe that's just the mood I was in. From the weather …to the buildings …to Tiananmen Square…everything was gray, or at least, that's how it all appeared to me. However, a whopping ten million folks including some friends do call Beijing home, so they would no doubt be pretty outraged by my one-word adjective. But I wasn’t gonna wax lyrical about a place that wasn’t doing anything for me.

The municipality of Beijing stretches over an area the size of Belgium. Belgium's a pretty small country, and fairly gray too, come to think of it. But having a city the size of a country is no small feat. It took forever to get from the airport to the centre passing through row after row of tower blocks, each one more faceless than the last. Beijing used to be a lot grimmer when I was here 8 years ago. The central government has been pouring every penny into sprucing it up for the forthcoming ‘08 Olympics. But baby, you've got a long way to go before I would describe you as beautiful, or even pleasant.

There were only 2 reasons to come to Beijing. It was the only direct flight from Toronto on route to Xian & a pit stop for William’s favourite Peking Opera costume shop. Other than that, the blistery cold front blowing in from Mongolia wasn’t doing much in ways of inspiring me to haul out my baby to shoot, especially not outdoors. Call me a Whoost. But it was even too freakin cold to stroll the streets like Kafka’s watch or some other useless thing while looking for late night internet-cafes in the evenings. In day light hours, I risked frostbite (or more appropriately, wind bite) to look for ambient shots... pretending to know how bburr… bbuuurrrr…beautifully the sun would fall while wishing that I could come close to Nestor Almendros’ poetic intuition & find some real rhythm & “music” to this documentary.

I guess I should mention that I’m not just some cynical, armchair, travel writer. I really do have a mission here. I’m really here to shoot ‘THE LAST FALSETTO’. It’s gonna be a really cool doc about the final leg of an artistic journey…of William Lau, Peking Opera Diva Extraordinaire, Canada’s one & only Nan Dan Performer. I’ll be following him around through his trials of anxietie, culture shock, unpredictable existence and uncertain future.