A Historian’s Review of Jet Li’s Fearless: Who was the Real Huo Yuanjia 霍元甲?

I just finished the movie Fearless (霍元甲) Jet Li’s self-proclaimed final wushu film. The movie itself is not bad (Not that I’m much of a movie critic). It’s about equal parts Fists of Fury and Rocky IV (compare the final fight scenes) with a dash of Raging Bull and an inexplicable Dances with Wolves second act. I like wushu movies and this as good as any. I can also see why it was so popular in China. The sight of the lithe and deadly-looking Jet Li beating the crap out of a giant white guy (in this case Aussie professional wrestler Nathan Jones) wearing red, white, and blue shorts must be as satisfying for the average Chinese teenage male as it was for my young punk ass to watch American Hero Rocky Balboa beat down the steroid-pumped Ruskie, Ivan Drago, back in 1985.

*****************************************A quick spoiler alert: Most Chinese are familiar with the story of Huo Yuanjia and so know the basic plot of the movie. If you don’t know the story and don’t want to know what happens, you might want to stop reading here. *****************************************

The movie is loosely based (sometimes VERY loosely) on the life

August 31st, 2006

The Major Leaguer from Tianjin, China

One of the great time wasters, at least for me, is the Baseball Reference site created by Sean Forman. You see, I was one of those kids with his nose buried in a stack of baseball cards wondering just who was the best player back in 1982 (Robin Yount) and wondering why I had not been born blessed with the hand/eye coordination necessary to hit a curve ball. (It didn’t help that my coach was fond of yelling such useful advice as “Stick your leg out a little bit. Getting hit is as good as a hit!”)

Since I do regret my occasional procrastination (at times), I thought I would give myself the illusion of productivity by combing Baseball Reference for things Chinese and, lo and behold, there he was: Harry Lees Kingman, born in Tianjin, China in 1892. Kingman’s grandfather came to Tianjin in 1860, part of the first wave of missionaries following the signing of the Beijing Convention. Kingman’s mother was, she claimed, the first white baby ever born in North China.

Kingman is the only major leaguer ever to hail from mainland China. (In the interests of not sleeping on the couch, I’ll

August 29th, 2006

Sex in Shanghai

I passed by this reference on EastSouthWestNorth yesterday but had no idea it was such a cause célèbre until I read Ryan’s posting on his great Suzhou blog.

A young English teacher out of Shanghai has been trysting with the ladies and then posting the rather intimate details on his blog under the unoriginal title “Sex in Shanghai.” (Ed. Note as of 8/29/06 the author of the SiS blog restricted his readers to those signed on to blogspot due to the amount of hatemail he received in the last 24 hours). I went over and checked it out (ahem) and I’ve got to tell you, I’ve seen better smut. That said, the guy is a cad who lacks the insight or irony (or frankly the double-X chromosome) that made Candace Bushnell or Jessica Cutler (in)famous. He’s not doing this to poke holes in the powerbrokers of New York or Washington, he’s doing this to say, “Hey, yo! Look at me! I’m not a virgin anymore, Mom!” It’s childish and despicable. It’s also, apparently, sufficient to make our young “Casanova on the Bund” the subject of a China-wide internet manhunt.

It seems that in addition to the

August 28th, 2006

One Country, Two Prices

From the excellent people over at EastSouthWestNorth comes this little tidbit of two stores located in Beijing’s Forbidden City with the rather cheeky signs: “只接待外宾、禁止国人入内” (“Only Foreign Guests received, Nationals strictly forbidden to enter.”) While there is no historical proof that the gates to the Shanghai parks in the 19th century really did prohibit dogs and Chinese, these new signs are alive and well and hanging in the Palace Museum.

The presence of the provocative placards prompted one pundit to ponder the presumption behind the posting. In a column in the Nanfang Daily, writer Cao Lin reports that the signs were not exclusionary. Prices in the stores were so exorbitant that the signs were needed as warnings for Chinese lest they accidentally spend 1500 RMB for a 150 RMB souvenir or, worse yet, spread the word to the unwitting foreign dupes. Defenders of the prices claim to be exacting retribution for the rampages of 19th century troops, in particular the 八国联军 Allied Force that invaded in the wake of the Boxer Uprising (义和团) in 1900. Cao compares the report of the souvenir sellers to a recent story out of Shenyang where a fruit merchant priced a jin of cherries for

August 27th, 2006

Zhang Hongtu and the MoMAO website

I mentioned him briefly yesterday in my post on art and the amateur ideal, but Zhang Hongtu’s site MoMAO merits its own entry. Three places in particular are worth visiting. His “Mao” and especially his “Material Mao” collection is whimsy in the best sense of that word. More stunning are his recreations of famous Chinese works of art as interpreted through Western masters. Check those out on his “Ongoing Projects” page. And of course, his “Mao’s Last Supper” is featured in the previous post.

Mao as “Quaker”

Yuanji Shitao as seen through Van Gogh

Mao as print

August 26th, 2006
 
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