remake/remodel

qiu ju and other stories

The Austin Film Society’s new free film series, entitled “The Fifth Generation: Chinese Films of the Past Two Decades,” began today. Tonight we saw The Story of Qiu Ju, directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li. It tells the story of a peasant woman who stubbornly works her way up a chain of bureaucracy to seek an apology after the village chief kicks her husband in the privates. It’s a warm and appealing movie (with a basic but sobering moral that should have but didn’t give the censors pause), and I’m looking forward to next week’s screening. Now Tamara’s only wish is to lead the simple but proud life of the rural Chinese; she wants nothing more than to wear bright red tiger shoes and to swaddle herself in puffy coats and layers of blankets while I pull her around in a wooden cart. Poverty and privation is not for me, though, no matter how noble. I see myself as a minor Communist Party bureaucrat in Zhang Yimou’s China, quizzing blushing couples on love at first sight as I sign their marriage licenses, sipping tea with old men, and pedaling around town on a rickety black bicycle. The bureaucrats in the movie were so noble and magnanimous! They wore oversized caps and furry hats. Just like real life.

This afternoon I received a copy of Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman and Other Stories from Amazon, having combed fruitlessly for months through practically every bookstore in Austin, local and national — first I looked under ‘X,’ then I realized my mistake and looked under ‘L.’ Still, no one here had it, but in any case, now I do. The title of the book obviously evokes Gogol, and supposedly the writing bears some likenesses to Russian literature, though the names mentioned were Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, not necessarily my favorites (but then again, I’ve barely read them — Gogol and Chekhov suit me just fine). The back cover of Diary of a Madman also assures me that Lu Xun is the greatest Chinese author of the twentieth century. I’ll read a couple stories before I go to bed and see. I haven’t been this excited about a book in a while, I think.

In other news, the front page of chompy.net is now available in Chinese and several other poorly translated languages if you configure your web browser accordingly.