Aventurina King

As promised, I have returned to the Chinese urban scrabble. I moved into my apartment yesterday. It has a picturesque (if you can imagine that) view on a gravel field guarded by other young concrete sentinels.
Beijing in winter isn’t half as bad as I had imagined it from accross the phone line with one of my Chinese friends. Her description evoked Siberia, its barrier snow storms, six layers of wool, frozen sheep and icycle nose snot. I naturally came well prepared, four heavy layers, only to find the cold quite mild. It is under 0 centigrade for sure, but the absence of New York sky scraper catalyzed wind and stinging snow makes wandering around outside my new abode enjoyable. I wear gloves though.
Yes I wandered around, I live in the North East of Beijing, just outside the Fourth ring road. Imagine cranes and 20 floored apartment buildings sprouting at every corner. The rest is low ceilinged shops, wide dusty avenues. There is a mega market nearby that sells everything from nasty colored bed spreads to health food oatmeal.
The wandering stopped quickly though when I discovered the gold mine, alibaba’s collection of 50 cent dvds including all the new Chinese blockbusters: Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige’s new movies along with Memoirs of a Geisha and Ruguo Ai (if love). So instead of spending my limited cash flow on useful goods, I purchased these dvds and carried a dvd player away from the mega market.
This morning heavily jetlagged at 3 am, I started watching Zhang Yimou’s latest: Qian Li Zou Dan Qi: Riding Alone for a Thousand Miles.
It is calculated to ring out tears from fathers. The other members of the population which include children cynicists such as me will sink into the sofa waiting for something to happen until the movie ends.
The camera follows a Japanese father on his quest to China to find a gift for his dying son. It is the video of a Chinese opera performance. Of course, there are second act complications and these constitute most of the film, as improbable obstacle after obstacle to his objective arise. The Chinese opera performer is in prison, he misses his son and can’t perform, the eight-year old doesn’t want to see his father and so on… Most of the film is in Japanese. This is probably the most interesting and laudable part.
Zhang Yimou’s Chinese audience is Japanophobe, but by presenting Japanese and Chinese characters sharing the same respect for filial piety, he might succeed in bridging some of the xenophobia.
I can only applaud Zhang Yimou for having distanced himself from his House-of-the-flying-daggers flying wire creations. With Riding Alone for a Thousand Miles he has reappropriated what he had found in Not One Less and Qiu Ju Goes to Court: his good savage venture into the values of Chinese country men. The tiny saintly voice in me sings hurrrah, he is digging out the meat of humanity and showing it to the urban corrupt masses. The real me mourns the films in which he told a story, like Raise the Red Lantern. Those had real characters, who commited sins, acted under the impulse of emotions to beat out a story. Riding Alone for a Thousand Miles is more two dimensional, it is not a story, it is a still painting of morals that have survived.

PS: Left alignement gives me the illusion of originality