中国式离婚 Chinese Style Divorce

I am through episode 9 and I have to say the quality of the series is good. There are some jarring details (such as the scene in the school open house where only the people clapping where the main actress speaking, or the music on cue) due to low production values that bother me, but they are not detrimental to the main story. The minimalistic opening theme music with the 二胡 （erhu) is appropriately bleak and soul searching.


Update: after episode 9 the quality drops off considerably...

The Myth of Republican Shanghai

There has been a trend to revive Shanghai along the lines of its 1930s Republican splendor. Party functionaries, economic planners, and Taiwanese businessmen (many scions of pre-revolutionary Shanghai industrialists) support the revisiting of the past either out of the imperative of development, nostalgia, or lack of better ideas.

This plan is desirable for many reasons. It rebuilds a wellspring of early 20th century Chinese polity and memory. Even as it attracts wealthy overseas Chinese back with the rebuilding of the days of their parents' innocence, it also builds a centrally located industrial and financial center to counter balance regional development inequalities (Beijing in the north, Chongqing in the west, and Hong Kong in the south. Although this obsessive focus on Shanghai has had the opposite effect of exacerbating regionalism.)

Apparently, this revival of Republicanism came at a fortuitous time when the Qing dynasty was mined out of its cultural capital. Soap operas now bubble with Republican era war dramas and old KMT costumes. This fantasy is convenient for everyone. Contemporary China is too boring a copycat of western society to make good TV dramas, not to mention government censorship makes any meaningful commentary bothersome. It is one thing to win film awards in Venice, quite another to make it at home.

Which bring me to my observation that such a reappearance of Shanghai as a colonial city of the past is really lacking in foresight and imagination. Part of this thinking has fostered the delusion that traditionalism associated with the period, the co-oping of Confucianism by the KMT, should also be used as a model for guiding China. Corruption, decadence, national weakness, such are the things the revival of Republican era wants to paint as a mini-golden age of Chinese history. Pardon me if I find this farce unimpressive.

That song in Lust, Caution

'The Wandering Songstress'



If I remember correctly, it was also sang in Lust, Caution.

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

This film is in a superior class of romance movies, however, I think that a receptive audience needs to have an emotional investment to really appreciate it? Someone who has fallen or may yet fall in love; the movie does not mix well with modern cynicism about romance.

Excuses excuses

8:35 PM
basti: It is a very good excuse.
By focusing on a single girl.
It works very well to both dismiss and excuse all of your hesitations and failures.

Sinking

"One may live to a hundred, but his youth lasts only seven or eight years. What a pity that I should have to spend these purest and most beautiful seven or eight years in this unfeeling island country. And, alas, I am already twenty-one!
"Dead as dried wood at twenty-one!
"Dead as cold ashes at twenty-one!
"Far better for me to turn into some kind of mineral, for it's unlikely that I will ever bloom.
"I want neither knowledge nor fame. All I want is a 'heart' that can understand and comfort me, a warm and passionate heart and the sympathy that it generates and the love born out of that sympathy!
"What I want is love.
"If there were one beautiful woman who understood my suffering, I would be willing to die for her.
"If there were one woman who could love me sincerely, I would also be willing to die for her, be she beautiful or ugly.
"For what I want is love from the opposite sex.
"O ye Heavens above, I want neither knowledge nor fame nor useless lucre. I shall be wholly content if you can grant me an Eve from the Garden of Eden, allowing me to possess her body and soul."