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(From the archives: with the release of Fearless (霍元甲) in the USA and Europe this week, here again is my take on Jet Li’s final martial arts.)Original post: 8/31/06I 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 guess. 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
Some quick thoughts as I fly from New England to California this morning.
In the Times Literary Supplement is a fascinating review of Francis Fukuyama’s new book After the Neocons. (“Doomed International” TLS 09/20/06, thanks to Arts and Culture Daily for the link) Whether you love him, loathe him, used to loathe him and now love him, or some variation thereof, Fukuyama always makes for an interesting read. In his new book he argues that the Bush doctrine failed for several reasons, the most important of which was a profound distortion of true Neo-Conservative principles and Fukuyama’s own ideas. The End of History was descriptive not prescriptive. That is, Fukuyama argued that History had reached a certain point in time where ideological struggles within modernity had disappeared in favor of Western Liberal Capitalism. This did not, however, account for challenges to this New World Order from forces “outside modernity” nor did it mean that inside every Iraqi there was an American just dying to get out.
“According to Fukuyama, a misinterpretation of neoconservative principles led the Bush administration to refight the last war – ie, the war on Communism – mistakenly believing that the Iraq war would fundamentally have
Sad news in the field of Chinese history, one of the true giants has passed on. Fred Wakeman was one of the most influential and important American scholars of Chinese history. His first work, Strangers at the Gate, about the links between resistance against foreign threats and rebellion against the government in the wake of the Opium War, is a masterpiece both for its research and Wakeman’s brilliantly evocative writing style. He may be remembered best for his opus: the sprawling two-volume The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth Century China–a brilliant book that combines an immense amount of factual information with a novelist’s touch for nuance and development.
In the obituary released Wednesday by UC Berkeley, Jonathan Spence had this to say about Wakeman:
“Fred to me was always an enchanting mixture of troubadour and secret agent. His finest books were large in every sense: in length and in spirit, jammed with incident, relayed with emotion. He was a total story-teller, and tracking his tales through their webs of detail and their unexpected juxtapositions was always a fascinating task.
As YJ and I try to plan our own wedding for next year, we of course go through all the usual discussion and debates about what kind of wedding to have. We both want it to be small and tasteful, with close family and friends brought together to celebrate our new life together. Of course since we’re holding the wedding in her hometown there are ‘other considerations.’ (Read: “in-laws”) It’s looking increasingly like a larger, more boisterous affair, still with a few close family and some friends, but with the addition, it would appear, of most of the greater Tianjin metropolitan area.*
Anyway, as I think of weddings, I came across this photo layout over at the invaluable China Digital Times. (“Contrasting Weddings, Same Happiness,” Sophia Cao, 9/21/06.) Weddings have a way of showing the stark contrast between rich and poor, whether in Hangzhou or in The Hamptons, but I don’t think it seems to faze either couple in these pictures. By the by, which wedding would you rather go to? Yeah, me too.
The original article, in Chinese, and more pictures can be found at Mop.com.————————*BTW, I love my in-laws. Everybody knows that whatever the culture, the bride’s mother
Having just spent the last 18 hours in transit, I’ve been thinking a little about airplanes and airplane safety. Two weeks ago The Economist had a screaming leader on the issue of airplane safety. Here then, from The Economist, is the in-flight announcement on the (fictional) Veritas Airlines:
“GOOD morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to welcome you aboard Veritas Airways, the airline that tells it like it is. Please ensure that your seat belt is fastened, your seat back is upright and your tray-table is stowed. At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust.
The flight attendants are now pointing out the emergency exits. This is the part of the announcement that you might want to pay attention to. So stop your sudoku for a minute and listen: knowing in advance where the exits
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