Pingyao

Hey, all. Sorry for not getting back to the blog sooner. I've been pretty busy this week, and it doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon.

"The Founding of a Republic" was no let-down. I'll admit that most of the cameos went straight over my head (I know, I really should be spending more time catching up on the Chinese soap opera scene...), but the performance wasn't bad (in a cheesy, overdone propaganda film kind of way). Here are the highlights:

1) When (I think) Chiang Kai-shek's wife, Soong May-Ling, visits the United States to plead with President Truman for financial aid, there is a fantastic scene in which she steps out of the limousine and climbs the steps to the white house. An African-American White House guard follows her with his eyes as she enters the building. When she leaves, he enthusiastically exclaims, in English, "Man! She's so hot!" ... You can tell that the director had political correctness in mind when shooting that one.

Oh, and in this same scene I learned that George Marshall, Truman's Secretary of State, had a British accent. Who knew?

2) Yep, sure enough, they mixed in Deng Xiaoping's reforms into Mao's monologues. Upon learning that all of the lowly petty bourgeoisie have fled a city recently taken by the Red Army, and worse, they've taken all of the cigarettes with them, Mao claims, verbitim, "We need the capitalists back."

All right, fair enough, while it's unlikely that Mao would have ever said such a thing, the petty bourgeoisie weren't the biggest of his problems, so I'll let it slide. And then he said something to this effect: "We don't know how to run the economy ourselves. That's where the capitalists come in."

OK. Come on. This is the guy that came up with the Great Leap Forward for Christ's sake. I don't think he'd be spouting free market theory at the dawning of the age of the Maoist planned economy. If I had to guess, I'm thinking that this scene's script was the one that the CCP had a hand in 'editing'.

3) This one's for you, Dad. The movie ends with Mao's famous phrase, "The Chinese people have stood up!", triumphant music, and with a greyscale Chinese flag fluttering in the wind. The hues gradually change until the flying flag is shown in full color and vibrancy.

Now, I'm as staunch an American as the next guy, but this scene ran shivers down my spine. It was pretty well shot, if a little (well, okay, very) overdone. It is, though, a real testament to the power of film as a political tool.

So this weekend, I'm off on another school-sponsored trip. This time we're off to Pingyao, a famous, well-preserved old town from the Qing era, located in Shanxi Province. I was just talking with a Chinese friend of mine who said that it used to be a really prosperous trade center back before the revolution, so I think it's going to have a lot to offer. Moreover, we'll be staying in an old, true-to-history refurbished Qing mansion and learning about their legal system. So that should be fun.

And unlike my trip to the Great Wall last weekend, I'm going to have fresh batteries in my camera, so I'll actually be able to take pictures. Grr... It's not a total disaster on the photo front, though. I got some of my friends to take some shots of me on the wall, so when I have time, I'll take them and link them here.

Wishing you all well!