Aventurina King

Floor carpeting, stretches of sidewalk and squeaky clean skyscrapers, yes, I am definitely back in New York.  And it's back here that I realize how different from a western city Beijing is.  New Yorkers taking the subway have the luxury of holding their books in front of them, regally lifting their elbows like a college professor with his textbook.  In Beijing, hardened subway readers must squeeze the newspapers up to their nose and adopt the compact stance of an Egyptian mummy. 

But then there are places more crowded in New York than in Beijing.  Museums are not a big thing in China, museum going is not on the top ten list of Chinese people's week-end activities (which would in foremost positions feature surfing on the internet in a café until dawn, clubbing until dawn or karaoke until dawn).  When I asked my Chinese friends why they wouldn't come to the Shanghai's art museum one sweltering afternoon, they retorted "I've been to the museum once, seen it, why would I go a second time?"

The 23rd of August, I returned to New York, city of museums and high brow culture.  A few days later, I was at the metropolitan museum, sauntering through knit-browed Greek sculptures and mute 16th century porcelain tea kettles.  I arrived in the temporary exhibition Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams His Art and His Textiles

6 months ago, I had visited the same exhibit in London at the Royal Academy.  The theme and information ran the same: Matisse was deeply inspired by the colorful fabrics and clothes he encountered and featured them in many of his paintings, his bold-colored and confident-stroked style he owed to these fabrics.  The space was small: paintings and drawings along with fabrics and clothes packed into three small rooms on the top floor of the academy.  Pieces of fabric were placed alongside the paintings in which they were featured or the paintings which exhibited the same stylistic characteristics as them.  It was quaint, the thesis was well supported and one came out convinced of how much Matisse's painting style was influenced by his props.

The exhibit then traveled to the metropolitan, but in this institution, it became something more.  The exhibit did not only prove how closely Matisse had worked with his fabrics, it demonstrated the evolution of this artistic relationship.  There were more paintings and they spanned a bigger portion of Matisse's life.  The paintings of fabrics and clothes were presented in a chronological order that delineated Matisse's artistic maturation. 

The exhibition began with Matisse's first paintings, those which were completed before he discovered the fabrics.  They were classic still life paintings, copies of those from 19th century masters.  Perhaps the colors were a bit more opaque on the glasses and paper, the surfaces already leaning toward a unified plane, not the original's shimmering cluster of photographic details.

But then Matisse discovered the toile de Jouy.  This blue and white patterned linen is revealed with the same amount of suspense released as the revelation of a murderer's identity in a crime novel.  Its importance is mentioned with increasing persistence throughout the first portion of the exhibit, and then finally, there it is, a wall to its own, gloriously trailing along the painting in which it is first depicted.  In this first painting, Matisse's change in style is immediately apparent.  The colors of the cloth in the painting are bolder then in his still lives, they become sticky and savage.  Later, he extends opaque, collision of colored planes glides over the rest of the canvas.

In the next rooms (and there are quite a few of them), fabrics and clothing are introduced in the same way as the toile de jouy.  I favor the room with all the ink drawings.  Inspired by the Romanian shirt (a piece of clothing composed of three puffs of fabric, one covers the waist, the other two are decorated, encrusted with sequels and cover the arms). In a style of drawing which looks more like writing, Matisse inscribes the silhouette of his models and their Romanian shirts.  The lines are deliciously simple, they swirl, travel over the paper, pirouette into spirals then impetuously run off and do the same thing elsewhere.  It is careless but so precise.  Matisse is endowed with quality I look for in every artist:  Effortlessness that never misses its mark.

I arrived in Ulumuqi, xin jiang three days ago.  It is a city in the far west of china, circled by the Russian, Kazakstan and Pakistan borders.  Exactly whether the city is circled or in the encircling ring outside the chinese border would remain in doubt without a map.  Mosques and arab style architecture sprout out above the flattened rows of shops and restaurants which flank the streets.  Signposts are in three scripts: pin yin, chinese and arabic writing.  The city is a sea of 30 year old decaying high-rises flowing away from the centers.  There are two centers, indicative of the nature of Ulumui's duality, the official one is the people's square, a smaller deserted model of tiananmen square complete with stele and smoke colored concrete.  the second one is the bustling "basha" (bazaar), a tourist oriented arab market under a tiled muslim building. it has a large quantity of cheap fake imitation jade bracelets naturally supplied with a home printed certificate of their authenticity, tacky sequel muslim  dresses and hats along with arab knives packaged like cigarettes.  In front of the building, fruit vendor carts vie with cheap sock and cellphone trinket carts for the attention of muslim capped leather featured men and dark eyed-brown haired women.

Just as the bazaar is the favored center, the pakistani/arab culture is the most prominent in the city.  People mostly speak we'ar and hassake, guttural, raspy languages which nonetheless flow like italian

"sis guzelle crezzzzzzzzz"=you are a beautiful young girl. "lachmat"=thank you

 Their second language is chinese, although it is a chinese branded by the characteristics of their mother tongue: harsh, at times sprinting or slowing down through a phrase where a beijing local would keep the pace clock steady, derisive of the mandarin accents which makes it often incomprehensible.  The streets aren't rife with the smell of chinese food but with the smoke of roasted lamb.  In front of the restaurants, huge barbecues emit so much smoke that it's hard to see around them.  The local's features are as arabic light diffused through a chinese pane of glass:  the hair is brown but light, the eyes are a light brown although their form is that of a sharp oval. 

In the kitchen of a chinese friend of mine, I discovered a cluster of round covered pots on the floor.  I knelt down and asked him what they were.  He took off the lid of one of them, and there it was, a huge cricket.  Along side of it was a tiny bowl, the size of my thumb's fingernail with water and an even tinier container of cricket food: "rice" explained my friend.  With a blade of hay, he started teasing the insect which immediately showed its fangs and bit at the enemy.

Apparently, cricket fighting is a tradition in china.  Individuals raise them in their homes and then take them outside to compete with their friends' crickets.

Another lid covered an even larger cricket, leaning on it's powerful hind legs.  "who do you think would win if they fought?"my friend asked.  I pointed to the bigger one. He took the opposite bet and spilled the content of the first pot into the second.  Somehow, vicious images of blood and broken limbs had come to my mind when i first heard the words fight.  But the cricket fight was to be nothing of the sort.  My cricket (the one i had bet on) bared its fangs, made a lot of noise (it sounded like the opera star renee fleming when she reaches the high A), turned over the other cricket, once or twice.  After that, it seemed like a game of cat and mouse, the opponent running around the bowl as my cricket chased it. "my cricket lost" said my friend, he took a small cricket net, delicately caught and placed the cricket back in his home.  Both crickets were rewarded with some water and food.

I just came back from my second and, I swear, final visit to a chinese hospital.  Early in the morning, I accompanied my chinese friend to Renmin Yiyuan (the people's hospital, the largest one in Beijing).  She was pregnant and didn't want to be anymore. 

From what I gathered, even though China is the number one country of child birth control (strayers from the one family, one child policy are heavily fined) pregnancies are commonplace.  Unlike in the States, one low-dosage brand of birth control pills is readily available over the pharmacy counter and condom packages sprout up in front of the cashier of any local supermarket.  But Chinese seldom use contraception, there is no sexual education in China.  Such non-chinese medecine as birth control pills is enveloped in a halo of suspicion.  "They make you fat", "They're not healthy" chinese girls snap out.  So instead of preventing, they remedy.

As I walked into the tiled, greenish light of the hallway hospital, the first thing i noticed were the beds strutting out perpendicularly in the river of people the two of us were wading in.  There were people in those beds, old men lying on their side twitching, others changing the position of their bones restlessly.  We followed one branch of the river up to the third floor.  The room was cut diagonally by a crowd of women waiting in line to be diagnosed.  My friend had already come yesterday to receive her diagnosis, and her abortion: a pill which causes instant menstruation.  But she had thrown up part of the potent medecine, she lost blood, but not the embryo.  She came back this morning to get another pill.

I waited outside the auxiliary diagnosis room on a row of hard blue plastic chairs, women kept on pouring in through the doors.  A minority were accompanied by men, harsh wrinkled fathers, or round faced husband listening to their mp3 players; most were alone, looking away from each other. They were all there to get an abortion.  White hefty nurses dawdled across the tiled floor carrying dirty bags of ustensils, a set of dirty scalpels lay on the table in front of me.

My friend came out, walked to the other side of the corridor and entered the operation room. Two minutes later, she came out, drank some water, slowly sat down next to me and said she was going to get an operation.  "You can't take the pill twice."  I suppressed a frown and tried to smooth out the warble in my voice as I placed my hand on her shoulder saying everything would be fine.

She led me in another auxiliary room, light crept through a large opaque glass panel and radiated a warm green.  Three beds flanked the walls.  She sat down and looked through the opaque light.  We remained silent, another woman came in and lay down.  Her face was expressionless, behind her black eyes, there was nothing apart from the faintly flickering apprehension of what was to come.  Both of them had their hands on their stomachs, as though they were trying to sooth, not harm what was within.

Gradually, more women came in, crowded the beds.  One paced across the room rubbing her stomach, asking how the others were doing, spurting out her everlasting distrust of men.  One, a skinny statue of marble, panic in her eyes, stood up and covered her mouth, desperately trying to suppress the urge to throw up.  "don't throw up" my friend said calmly "if you throw up, you will have to get an operation like me."

I sat on one corner of the beds, a quite observer, I didn't know what to do to make things better, so at minute intervals, I caressed my friend's hair, to remind her that I was by her side.  It was only when she came back after 30 minutes of operation and I saw her eyes, that something snapped in me.  Without a word, she groped for the bed, the other women helped me pull the covers over her.  She lay on her side, her eyes wide open, void, staring into the emptiness in front of them.  Her face was clear as a windless sea, but it was inert, lifeless, that of a being that had been wounded beyond pain, as in a shell shock.

I exited the silent room and fainted on the blue plastic.  Later, as we slowly walked down to the first floor, she patted her hand on my back and smiled at me, I was still crying.

Here are the things that surprised me when I first arrived in Beijing and that I've since come to take for granted.

1)eating out has become routine.  A meal in a small Beijing restaurant is even cheaper than a home-cooked meal (1-2 dollars).  In the evening, chinese people will cluster into small air conditionned cells with wooden tables.  Hard white light cuts their features.  Their left hand holds the opposite hand's sleave as its chopsticks hover over the dishes.  Then the rice bowls come (rice is a filling, it is eaten just as the meat and vegetable dishes are being finished to make sure the guests won't leave the table hungry (legacy of famines in china when the courses alone were not enough to allay hunger)).  A steadily growing crowd of Qingdao beer bottles huddle amidst the dishes.  Finally, one by one the guests part the plastic ribbons that hang from the door to keep the cold air inside, they emerge on the heat heavy street.

In even smaller, cheaper restaurants (under 1 dollar a meal) air conditionning is absent, the light wavering and venerable ancient men spit on the dirt floor.

2)My housing complex features a small park and a kindergarden.  It is therefore with precaution that I cross the complex towards the subway as I am liable at any moment to tread over a four year old, not only that, but a peeing or excrementing four year old.   Yes children from lower class families in China are shameless, using pretty much anywhere--although with a preference for uncovered, exposed flat expanses: smack in the middle of a concrete square or road for example--as a toilet bowl.  Moreover to facilitate immediate delivery, the rump part of their pants is practically slitted, they do not even need to remove the piece of clothing.  It's crouch and deliver...

3)I first discovered roasted sunflower seeds in the apartment I rented in New York.  The landowner was chinese and with a sweep of her hand indicated that I could forage through the cuboards and hoard the remaining food.  One portion of which was a parcel of sunflower seeds.  Well it smelled good from the outside, sweet with a hint of vanilla incense and acrid lemon.  I picked one out, a grey, dusty husk and popped it in my mouth.  It was a prickly, tasty experience, the sweet splinters of husk stabbing at my gum as I crunched into the tiny seed.  The prickly gradually triumphed as the taste washed away and the husk remained.

It was only once arrived in Beijing that I mastered sunflower seed snacking(or began to master, a black belt in sunflower seed crunching takes at least 6 years to acquire).  My first local landlord showed me how to insert the husk between the incisives, split it like a nut and then suck out the seed with the tongue.  Apparently, chinese kids, especially girls go through packets as fast as american kids go through oreos, hills of husks rolling on the table where they do their homework.

To be continued.....

  =   ?

1984, Yellow Earth charged in on the chinese movie scene, dispersing the 4th generation director's communist propaganda, trumpeting the 5th and 6th generation's modernist cinematography and censure-defying subject matter.  20 years later, the 4th generation may be peaking its head out on the battlefield one more time under the guise of Autumn Rain, director Sun Tie's over-dramatic blend of love, war, family and Beijing Opera.

Mr. He paces up the platform in the train station, waving an inscribed placard.  Patter, patter and down in front of him trips Qiao Laofan, the hello-kitty cute japanese girl he was waiting for.  This isn't the beginning of the love story.  Mr. He  is a 60 year old Beijing Opera professor whose effeminate hand flourish and motherly croon--remnants from years of impersonating women--make his new apprentice feel at home in the Beijing Opera school.  The love story flashes in the same night when his disgraceful son Heniao (a businessman fiii!) ceremoniously kneels on his threshold and begs to be let back and start training opera again.  He has reformed his ways, he can therefore be received.

Qiao Laofan's puppy-eyed looks and Heniao's small acts of heroism--a Beijing Opera cartwheel over a car enables him to catch up to Qiao's stolen purse--quickly confirm the inevitable.  Soon the two are enacting a Beijing Opera love story both on stage and off.  That means a lot of violins, plush slow mos, beauty lens shots prolonged through a sudden horrifying revelation, tears, separation and more tears.  The revelation comes in the form of an e-mail (that is not in the Beijing Opera) from Qiao's 84 year old father. Here, in a nutshell, is what he says "my dear daughter, you have fallen in love with a chinese man but the past must be remembered in order for it to be passed on to the future generations (beats me).  I was in the japanese army when I was young and I killed your boyfriend's grandfather."  Well that's enough to send the chinese people in the room throwing up, Qiao and He Niao's relationship into bye-bye land and Qiao out the door the same night.  At that point, I paused and played that scene over again just to make sure I hadn't slipped by something very drastic, something that would justify such a collective reaction.

The day after, I talked about this with my chinese office mates, they found nothing extreme about it.  That's a difference between western people and chinese people, or between me and chinese people.  Somehow I feel such a reaction isn t justified, that love should supercede the scars of the past, that time shields descendants from their ancestors' actions.  But chinese people see things otherwise, ancestors deserve respect, their memory must be defended for tens of years after they disappear.  This belief pervades all stratas of the chinese population (at least, according to my interviews).

Maybe for this reason that the lead of a front page article in one of today's local newspapers is "There are some japanese people that like more and more to make unwarranted remarks on China"(Notice the deliberatly vague yet suggestive "some japanese people""more and more".  Or that most of the chinese people I meet--including my 11 year old english student-- will at some points in our conversation grimace and snap out "japanese people are bad" without justifying themselves.   The implicit justification being 1938, the year Japan invaded China,  the two countries steadly worsening political ties or Japan's economic advance over China.  

Which brings me to the question, is Autumn Rain a manifestation of this Japanophia? Is it a propagandistic film like those of the 1960s?  Autumn Rain is more subtle than 4th generation films.  The Japanese girl is far from any incarnation of evil, she could not be more radiant and friendly, nor her love for the chinese Heniao more pure, her filial respect more genuine.  And in the end, the two do get back together, on stage and so symbolically in real life.  She escapes only to come back and surprise Heniao as he is performing their favorite Beijing Opera.  She enters into the spotlight adorned in brilliant silk and a dazzling flowered crown, and Heniao, finally realizing it is her and not his usual stage partner first fixes her like a wounded fox stares at its hunter.  Then he erases his frown and in the same sweep forgives the past.  He entones their duet.  Pan up above their sparkling feathered headware onto the full house.  The end. 

But no, there still remain those troubling ten minutes of war footage featuring the japanese soldiers executing chinese villagers and using their body meat as stuffing for their lunch pastries.  

In the final performance, exactly what and who is forgiven?  The Japanese father's absolution remains in doubt.  Qiao certainly has everyone's blessing in the end, but this comes with her performance of the chinese opera.  At that point, she is not japanese anymore, she is assimilated into the chinese culture and then only is she fully accepted.  Verdict, Autumn Rain too hasn't forgotten its ancestors and has inherited much more from them then it lets on.

She walked in front of me with the urgency of a marathon runner. I followed her down the glittering avenue and into a dark alleyway wondering if this was all a plan to mug naive foreigners.  We were now speeding accross a parking lot and I was considering running back, when there from behind one of the concrete pillars, she produced two black suitcases.

She kneeled down, split the side of one open and her merchandise fell out, like the throat of an accordion.  I told her in chinese "give me the knewest local ones".  She rooted for two minutes in the flood while i kneeled down by her side.  Then, like a nine year old who digs up a treasure and shows it to the best friend behind her, she excitedly pushed two dvds into my face, "seven swords" and "autumn rain' all the while providing objective advertisement "these films just came out, they are so good." the dvds were cheaper then usual, 5 kuai (50 cents) instead of 6 so I purchased both and started with "seven swords".  I had read a laudatory article on it, even though it spent most of the page noticing how jam packed the first screening was, it did feign to mention the "evocative" "emotion enducing" cinematography.

Rule number one: Chinese entertainment reviews are always laudatory, they pick out the one good element in a horrible movie like a needle in a haystack and then blow it up to the size of a camel.  I read chinese music magazines where all the cds get at least a 3 out of 4 stars, same for movie magazines.

Rule number two: Always finish the book or the movie you are watching, no matter how bad it is.

Well I didn't even bother with rule number two for seven "swords".  I slammed my labtop closed just as it was climaxing (that's how exciting it was). Still I can tell you what it's about.  Of course, it's about heroism, seven swordsmen--almost all of which can do a back flip--ride through a lord-of-the-rings countryside, save some innocent villagers and wage war against the evil, money making marilyn manson-made up men.  The addition of money-making to evil characteristics gives a chinese twist to the hollywood scale epic, the badies are basically avid capitalists with doctor evil laughs, the goodies have tattered clothes and run around barefoot.  Of course, it's also about love and the more handsome of the swordsmen all end up making love at some point or another either in the hay or on a moon lit stone floor (and we haven't even reached the climax yet).  There's nothing that would ban the movie from chinese mainland theatres though (approximately 20 movies a year are nitpicked in), so it's mostly two bare backs fighting over screen space.