Yao Ming and Olympic Dreams

If you've ever walked the streets of any major Chinese city and happened to mention that you were an NBA fan, you've almost certainly heard fired back at you the question: "You like the Houston Rockets?" At which point, you anticipate where the conversation is headed and jump right to the chase: "Yeah, that Yao Ming (姚明) is pretty good!" After rubbing the collective ego with that reply, I've sometimes felt impressed to actually share a personal opinion. I do not recommend doing so. It's a waste of air for the most part. "I'm actually a fan of the Boston Celtics." Blank stares... "You know, Boston's home team." (crickets chirping)... "Boston...it's near New York." At which point some nervous smiles and head-nods are thrown around. Like a lot of American's fleeting affairs with Lance Armstrong and cycling, one gets the sense that the majority of Chinese interest in baskestball is solely because one of their own is in the mix.

Yao Ming is NBA's tallest player and China's best-known athlete. He was born in Shanghai where he began honing his skills as a teenager with a local club, the Sharks. His height and skills later helped win Shanghai's veteran squad a CBA (Chinese Basketball Assocation) championship. In 2002, he entered the NBA draft and was selected by the Houston Rockets as the first overall pick. He has since started seven times in the NBA All-Star Game and has been named to the All-NBA team five times. In so many ways, he is the fortuitous symbol of China's modernizing aspirations, representing the superior athletic prowess and physical dominance that China's populations possess. Known as the "Great Wall of Houston," his successes are an appropriate prelude to Beijing's 2008 dreams of demonstrating on the world stage their athletic superiority.

By many accounts, the Beijing Olympics were a huge success. China provided the world with an army of capable volunteers and translators, showcased some of the world's most daring, new architecture and proved their superior athletic might by seizing the most gold medals of any participating nation (51). Furthermore, doubts about potential terrorist attacks or media altercations fizzled out with the extinguishing of the flame on August 24. China achieved its goal of hosting the world and showing off its progress while graciously treating and safely protecting its guests. With the success of this 29th Olympiad, however, have come a series of criticisms--some old, some new--that point to a number of blemishes on this pretty face of things: the violation of open media access, violation of human rights, boycotss, pro-Tibetan protestors, religious persectuions, surveillance of foreign hotels, manhandling of foreign journalists, protest zones, secret arrests, imprisonment and harassment of protestors, etc.

Questions:

(1) Why do nations pin nationalistic hopes upon their athletes?
(2) How do the different ways in which the Olympics were portrayed demonstrate the persistance of an East-West cultural and political divide that contradicts "One world, one dream"?

Links:
* Great Wall of Houston
* The Year of Yao
* 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies
* Official Olympic Song (You and Me)

Secondary references:

* Xu Guoqi. Olympic Dreams: China and Sports 1895-2008. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008.

*Susan Brownell. Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People’s Republic. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.

*Rowan Simmons. Bamboo Goalposts. London: Macmillan, 2008.

Shakespeare, the Sonnet and China

One of PSU's own, Dr. Alexander Huang, recently published (June 2009) a benchmark study on the interpretations and performances of Shakespeare in Chinese over the past two centuries: Chinese Shakespeares (Columbia University Press). Whether you are interested or not in him (and you should be), Shakespeare's reception, influence and transformation as he has traveled through Chinese language, media and performance is something that sheds a great deal of light upon the main topic of this course: What does it means to be Chinese? As a locus classicus of the western world, Shakespeare carries more with him than bawdry witticisms, enduring plots and neologisms. His name embodies the sundry powers the West has exerted upon the world in its cultural and colonial imperialisms. How the Chinese have appropriated him in the modern era fashions its own virtual stage upon which we as critical observers may observe how the Chinese interact with an enduring paradigm of western culture.

In addition to examining the use of Shakespeare in Chinese in the recent past, we will also look briefly at how the western sonnet form was adopted by the Chinese during their New Poetry movement in the 1920's and 1930's. During this period of cultural renewal in China, following the May 4th (1919) watershed moment, the Chinese were looking to borrow and create their own, novel poetic forms that would depart from the traditional shi that had endured and stiffled creativity for millenia. The sonnet's reception and transformation in Chinese during this period is a testament to New Poetry's dedication to forming its own unique, Chinese creation.

Materials:
*The Banquet (2006)

Questions:
(1) Is this Shakespeare or Feng Xiaogang? Why should this question matter?
(2) What does the inclusion of a pseudo-Shakespearean plot add to the re-imagination of Chinese history?
(3) What are the reasons New Poetry intellectuals gave for adopting the sonnet?

Links:
* Shenzhen Daily, Banquet review
* Movie Review Query Engine, Banquet reviews
* Imdb, Banquet reviews

Secondary references:
(1) Huang, Alexander. Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange. New York: Columbia UP, 2009.
(2) Zhang Xiaoyang. "Shaju yanchu yu shidai shenmei yishi." Waiguo wenxue yanjiu 3 (1988): 68-74.

Zhang Yimou and His Girls

Zhang Yimou is internationally the most well known of a renowned group of modern Chinese directors called the Fifth Generation. The group gets its name from the order in which it graduated from the Beijing Film Academy (Class of 1982). Zhang's is a history laden with the greatest of hardships and the highest of successes. A citation from a recent interview with Bright Lights touches briefly upon the lingering angst of his past:

"I think my experience represents a wealth of assets for my life and my work. During the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, I went from age sixteen to age twenty-six. I experienced a lot of chaotic situations, and I saw a lot of terrible, tragic things happening around me. From all that I got a deep understanding of human life, of the human heart or spirit — of human society, really — and I think that it benefits me today: in my work, in my thinking, and even in how I deal with personal problems.

The Cultural Revolution was a very special period of Chinese history, unique in the world. For many years, I wanted to make movies about that period — to discuss the suffering and to talk about fate and human relationships in a world that people couldn't control and which was very hostile. In today's political climate, such a project is impossible — as To Live (1994) has proved, at least in my native country — so I'll just have to wait."

The film we prepared for today, Raise the Red Lantern (1991), is a modern International classic based on Ni Zhen's 1990 novel, Wives and Concubines. It represents nicely two of the most salient characteristics of Zhang's cinematic art: (1) stunning visual beauty, and (2) the centrality of female protagonists. The film tells the story of a young woman, Songlian, who becomes the fourth concubine in a powerful family during the Warlord Era (1916-28CE). She is warmly received only to become slowly entangled in the poisonous machinations of the household. Her position is ultimately compromised and the trauma she is forced to endure changes her forever. The screenplay was approved initially by Chinese censors but later banned for rumors that it doubled as a veiled allegory of an oppressive communist China.

Materials:
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)

Questions:
(1) How is the feudal institution of polygamy portrayed in the film?
(2) How do women exercise power in a system where they are often made politically powerless?
(3) How does color contribute to the interpretive force of the film?

Secondary references
*Cardullo, Bert. "Beyond the Fifth Generation: An Interview with Zhang Yimou" Bright Lights Film Journal 58 (2007 Nov).
Chow, Rey. "Not One Less: The Fable of a Migration" Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes. Ed. Chris Berry. London: British Film Institute, 2003. 144-51.
*Levitin, Jacqueline. "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero, and House of the Flying Daggers: Interpreting Gender Thematics in the Contemporary Swordplay Film-A View from the West" Asian Cinema 17.1 (2006 Spring-Summer): 166-82.
*Huang, Yiju. "Weaving a Dark Parody: A Psychoanalytical Reading of Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower" Film International 6.2 (2008): 41-51.
*Lan, Feng:. "Zhang Yimou's Hero: Reclaiming the Martial Arts Film for 'All under Heaven'" Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 20.1 (2008 Spring): 1-43.
*Beus, Yifen: "The Road to Modernity: Urban and Rural Scenes in Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju, Not One Less, and The Road Home" Representing the Rural: Space, Place, and Identity in Films about the Land. Ed. Catherine Fowler. MI: Wayne State UP, 2006. 276-91.
*Li, David Leiwei: "Capturing China in Globalization: The Dialectic of Autonomy and Dependency in Zhang Yimou's Cinema" Texas Studies in Literature and Language 49.3 (2007 Fall): 293-317.