Xi’an and Cinema (Universal language)
The cough which started on the final day of the Yangtze cruise has persisted and is duly irritating me today. In the Chinese media cases of swine flu are zealously reported, and any Chinese official would probably diagnose me as positive as soon as looking at me. I look forward to returning to clean skies and natural air at home which is surely the cure I need.
Upon arriving in Xi’an we checked in at the City Hotel close to the center of town. There are apparently 8 million people in this city but I have only seen what looks like one or two. The hotel is in the middle of a construction zone, walking out to the street feels like it should require a hard hat. After an “orientation” sprint yesterday evening our guide Merrick dropped us near the Muslim quarter, which was filled with stalls selling food and cheap gifts. At one point, I asked a man to take his photo by holding up the camera, and after he obliged I went nuts and took photos of several more people in the area. They were all on film, so I’m not sure how they came out, but I am confident that several are quite good.
Between Luoyang and Xi’an I think I saw about five nuclear power plants, which would explain the dismal grey color of the city despite sunshine a few kilometers away at the Terra Cotta Warriors site.
After the Muslim quarter last night I had worked up a strong appetite, and decided to try some kind of meat on a stick, from a shop front on the main drag. A picture of goats or lamb above the stall probably indicated what it was, and with a little seasoning, it hit the spot. Later I ordered a cup of noodles and a peach yogurt drink, which I discarded after deciding the ice might not be healthy. There is a possibility that all the worrying is a factor itself in my decreased health.
I decided to try some shops on “East St.” to find the worst translations of English on T-shirts possible, and deemed two garments worthy, which I purchased for about 25 yuan each. One is filled with nonsensical text and the other has a very stupid picture of a dog wearing glasses. It is the very best of haute couture Xi’an has to offer. Several shops are dedicated to selling rip-offs of American brands, like Qior-Dan, which is supposed to be Jordan, selling athletic basketball wear.
After shopping for a while, I decided I wanted to see a movie. It took several minutes of standing outside the theatre before working up the nerves to approach the ticket counter, and I finally did, and simply said “Kung-fu.” The clerk laughed, and someone came around the other side so I could point to the poster of what I wanted to see. After being forbidden from seeing something about Kung-fu cyborgs, for whatever reason, I was permitted to see something called “Eternal Beloved,” which from the poster appeared to be some kind of historical drama.
I found my way up a series of escalators, through several corridors, and into a closet posting as a movie theatre, which made my skin crawl upon entering. A few oversized chairs draped in dirty red fabric were scattered with no particular design around the floor, facing a wall from which a crooked sheet hung, which was actually the screen. Black paint was chipping off all the walls and two or three bare light bulbs in studio reflectors hung from the ceiling.
The film began and quickly got down to horse riding and spear throwing, and for the first several minutes alternated between what I assumed were battles from the past, and present scenes of a woman serving tea to her husband, screwing him, then saying goodbye as he went off to teach schoolchildren somewhere.
Soon after, as she was alone one night, a man frightfully appears in her garden, and she serves him tea.
He is some kind of ghost and as they sit he tells his own story, which lasts the rest of the movie. He is riding through the forest one day trying to shoot a pig, then he hears a girl playing the flute, so he captures her, ties her up, and marries her.
After the wedding, for some reason, while she is serving him tea, he puts her hand in a spear and tries to stab himself with it, then flees to a monastery, shaves his head, and abandons her. But she dutifully shows up every day while he prays and brings him tea, until he smashes the kettle, she cuts her hands cleaning up the mess, and then they are in love again, so she lives in a grass hut outside the monastery and brings him stuff every day and he approves by smiling very slightly.
Finally one day his father is injured by a hurled spear (in the same scene from the beginning of the movie) and brought to his son, who holds him as he gurgles blood and dies, much to his son’s dismay. The attackers then show up outside the walls, the man’s wife shouts something at them, which apparently was a bad idea, because the man slaps her and points his gun at her; and she then helps him pull the trigger and blast her to oblivion.
The man is then killed by the attackers who burst through the walls with spears and torches. So the ghost finishes telling this awful story, and disappears, leaving the woman who was screwing the school teacher earlier to look in the mirror and discover the monk’s dead wife staring back at her.
So my trip to the cinema was fascinating, despite the obvious confusion at watching a film in Mandarin, and the inconvenience of a grimy theatre, the picture was very well done, with gorgeous costumes, landscapes, sets, convincing battle scenes, and what appeared to be decent acting. I might like to see it again with subtitles, but I caught the lesson that cinema is such a visual medium, it can and should be entertaining regardless of the language. If the job is done right, the picture will convey the story without telling it to you, as the first silent films did.
At any rate, I found it a worthy alternative to stopping in one of the discos, which feature military policeman guarding the doors, in case anyone attempts to have fun, I presume, or visiting “Karaoke TV” which I understand is a thinly veiled front for prostitution.