Friday Happy Hour: Pirates of the South China Sea…Don’t mess with a King’s rep…fortune telling and the Year of the Pig…baseball in Japan
February 15th, 2007 · 1 Comment
Chow Yun-fat is starring in the third installment of Pirates of the Caribbean as Chinese pirate Sao Feng. (Whose name refers to the classical Chinese poem: “The Asian market, he whispered/at a board meeting for Disney/how best to capture it/hire a Chinese guy/said the marketing rep softly.”) Piracy in China has a long, long history. Koxinga was a famous example (though his dad was more of the pirate.) And pirate crews operating along China’s coast in the 16th and 17th centuries could be surprisingly multi-cultural affairs with mixed crews of Chinese, Malays, Japanese, Europeans, and even escaped African slaves. AP has the story on the new flick along with some other interesting fun facts on 19th century piracy around the island of Lantau. (Though the line between “pirate” and “opium smuggler” on 19th century Lantau was probably razor thin, for AP’s purposes, “pirate” sounds cooler than “drug dealer.”)
- Global Voices Online looks at Cambodian scholar Keng Vannsak’s recent remarks during a radio interview that have sparked a historical controversy in the Southeast Asian nation. Keng argues that 12th-century King Jayavarman VII, a famous Buddhist sage-king in Khmer history, was actually “an utterly ruthless monarch” whose devotion to building temples ultimately weakened the empire. Keng’s remarks drew considerable criticism at this trashing of a beloved historical figure. The article notes that scholars have ancient Khmer civilization have few if any written records to draw upon for “significant periods of the king’s life.”
- IHT reports: “The Year of the Pig starts Sunday, and Chinese fortune tellers say it will be a good time to have a baby, but also warn there will be an upsurge in epidemics, disasters and violent conflicts across the world.” Yes, epidemics, disasters, and violence…bring on the newborn. Yikes. The Christian Science Monitor has a story by Peter Ford on the Year of the Pig in Beijing. Even though astrologers (and YJ’s father) keep insisting it’s the year of the “dirt pig” not “gold pig,” that doesn’t stop people from rolling out the shiny swine in the hopes of bringing on a year of prosperity. But it seems like the only people getting richer for now are those working in the booming “fortune telling” business. Fortune telling was illegal under Mao and even now media coverage of the practice is frowned upon by the Beijing authorities. But one seer, when asked if he was worried of running afoul of the secular authorities, remarked:”I can predict when difficulties are likely to arise and avoid them. If I couldn’t see trouble coming, I’d be in the wrong business.” You gotta love an optimist.
- I’m a sports fan. I’m also an Asianist. But I gotta tell you: I just don’t understand Japanese baseball very well. But since the Red Sox are set to roll out the $100 million man Daisuke (”Dice-K” as the Boston media have taken to calling him) Matsuzaka, it’s probably time I fill this knowledge gap. Fortunately for me, The Studies on Asia Series published by the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs and Michigan State University have a new issue out devoted to all things besuboro. Great way to fill the (short) time remaining before pitchers and catchers report.
Tags: Chinese History · sports
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1 response so far ↓
1 無名 - wu ming // Feb 16, 2007 at 12:46 am
yay pirates!
oh, and for kicks, check out ask a ninja’s review of the last pirates of the caribbean movie.
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