The Left Ear; 左耳, My Kingdom; 大武生

Introducing two interesting movies released in 2015 and 2011. Both by interlopers.
The Left Ear is the directorial debut by a pop idol from the 90s and My Kingdom was directed by a critically important writer of campus ballads, a unique Chinese sub-culture. What's more? Both men were once engineering majors at top universities before quitting to pursue art full-time.
These two films, void of affectatious display of technicality, are surprisingly refreshing in story-telling.
Both are coming of age films really. The Left Ear took place in modern day small city China in the highly pressurized window of pre-annual national college entrance exam. My Kingdom took place in concessionary Shanghai from the end of Qing dynasty to the republic era where traditional Peking opera troupe performers were pulled into adventures, tragedies and betrayals only previously experienced in their repertoire.
Beginner's luck didn't favor many other equally talented first-time interlopers. 栀子花开, by variety show host 何炅, was plain miserable. The two protagonists were major miscasts to say the very least. Never mind that diversion. Please enjoy the two recommendations.

With Chinese subtitles:
The Left Ear, directed by 苏有朋.
My Kingdom, directed by 高晓松.

Go La La Go！ 杜拉拉升职记

China is urbanizing fast and Du Lala is the archetypical new-age urban white collar. She is educated, diligent, creative, outspoken and silly. She is part of the new generic breed of global urban female!
Go La La Go! is a fun-filled yuppie comedy released in 2010. The fourth film by director Xu Jinglei (徐静蕾), a lovely bluestocking who was an actor trained at Beijing Film Academy. She also stars in the film.

Enjoy the film.

Once a Thief; 纵横四海

One of Hong Kong director John Woo's early and best works before he moved to Hollywood, Once a Thief is a rare comedy that blended his trademark aesthetic violence thoroughly with amazing story-telling. 
Three orphans were adopted by a local kingpin. Along food and shelter, they were taught to steal. By the time they reached young adulthood, the trio had become so skilled at the craft that they were essential in the intricate web of global art theft and insurance fraud. Their "jobs" took them to museums and castles all over Europe. From the seaside of Cannes to the the palatial private wine cellar, the visuals of this film is simply spectacular.
You can just imagine how John Woo shows off his famed choreographed gun battle and martial arts sequence, some of the best ever made anywhere. Wicked sense of humor permeates through the screen as the characters banter, tease, dance, scheme and fight.
Starring four best representatives (the art thieves plus their godfather) of Hong Kong cinema's golden era Chow Yun Fat (Zhou Runfa, 周润发)  Cherie Chung (Zhong Chuhong, 钟楚红)  Leslie Cheung (Zhang Guorong, 张国荣), and Kenneth Tsang (Zeng Jiang, 曾江)
Enjoy the film.

Quitting; 昨天

July 5th marks the fifth anniversary of mainland actor Jia Hongsheng (贾宏声)'s death. For a classically trained actor (Gong Li, of Farewell My Concubine and Shanghai Triad fame, was his college classmate at the Central Academy of Dramatic Arts), he rose to the stature of teen idol while still in school then quickly vanished not long after college. For years, his drug use was not a secret among his circle. Every now and then he would make a memorable performance, and one of his last, Quitting, has drawn him quite a posthumous cult following. 
Quitting is a rare film in Chinese cinema and I dare say there won't be another like this. It's a movie that's completely based on true story that occurred six to seven years prior with scenes reenacted by the protagonist himself. The gut-wrenching plot centered on how Jia's naive but steadfastly devoted parents arrived in Beijing to help him rebuild his life after rehab and in the process discovered what a total stranger their son has become. Jia's own arc, which included detailed narratives of his experience with drug use, made this movie more real than a documentary. 
Can't really imagine how difficult it was for a recovering addict to reenact his past. Jia, however, made this film under the pretense that he has recovered and perhaps can make a comeback. 
But he never did. He grew increasingly detached from the rest of the world till his early demise in 2010. 
The movie smacks Beijing in the 1990s, not so long ago yet so distant looking, which is in itself quite precious to look at. 

Enjoy the movie.

Please Vote for Me; 请投我一票

Please Vote for Me is a documentary that followed a group of eight-year pupils as they run for the class monitor position in an elementary school in Wuhan, Hubei.
Perhaps surprising to most Americans, in China, democratic election processes at elementary school level are quite common. It was so dating back at least 25-30 years ago when I was in elementary school. Not every name can end up on the ballot. You have to indicate an interest to run. Teachers do tend to flush out potential candidates who fail to embody desirable qualities such as good academic standing, willingness to help the elderly and fellow classmates and decent athletic capability. In most elementary schools, each class (the entering class of 2015 for example) is divided into several sub-groups with each occupying one classroom. Students do not travel from classroom to classroom. Instead, teachers go to different classrooms to instruct. Each sub-group elects its own class monitor.
In the past, fellow pupils used to vote mostly based on the speech each candidate delivers, plus the personal assessment of course. With increasing commercialism, the voting process as evidenced in this documentary has become much more competitive and sometimes downright chilling.
There seems to be less merit-based screening up front. Competition occasionally digresses into the arena of talent show and popularity contest. In order to achieve their goals, third-graders quickly learn to canvass, bribe, barnstorm and slander, leaving not much in imagination.

With English subtitles and dialogue in Mandarin. Enjoy the documentary.

Farewell My Concubine; 霸王别姬

This blog post is dedicated to the memory of Leslie Cheung, who left us this month twelve years ago.
The English title "Farewell My Concubine" is a literal translation that can't possibly capture the beautiful tragedy in history known to everyone in China as "霸王别姬". 
The movie follows the poignant lives of two young trainees as they go through brutal Peking opera schooling that included unimaginable physical as well as psychological torture; enjoy fleeting moments of fame during warring years and suffer endless humiliations in various ideological purging that culminated into the horrific Cultural Revolution. 
The Cultural revolution, homosexuality and prostitution remain heavy subjects in mainland movies. Farewell blatantly and relentlessly touched all three. 
This movie won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival in 1993, becoming the first Chinese film to win the award and remains the only Chinese-language film to have won the award. Farewell also won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film as well as being nominated for two Academy Awards. Director Chen Kaige (陈凯歌) remains a leading figure in Asian cinema today.
In an amazing twist of fate, this much acclaimed film was snubbed by the award scenes of mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan at the time but has become an well-accepted classic with devoted cult audience.
Leslie Cheung's portrayal of the gender-bending protagonist Chen Dieyi (程蝶衣) is simply unsurpassable and without whom the movie wouldn't have existed in the first place. 
From a teen idol to Hong Kong's favorite entertainer, Leslie had by early 90s grown into a well-crafted and meticulously detail-oriented actor. 
This movie should be available even in your local library.

Attitude; 态度

Privately-funded sports-themed documentaries are rare in Asia. Taiwan's Attitude, made in 2008 is one of the few.
Attitude followed the basketball team called Taipi (台啤), short for for Taiwan Beer, (team was sponsored by a Taiwanese tobacco and beverages tycoon), a Taiwan Super Basketball League (SBL) member. Threatened to be disbanded over years of losing streak, the team dealt with issues, toughened up with relentless training, went through heartbreak and loss of life and in the end rallied up to exemplary results.
Frankly it is just plain refreshing to watch bunch of Asian guys not poring over math!
The director Leo Liao (廖人帅), an often overly enthusiastic Taiwanese entertainer with hair color loud enough to rival the feather coat of a peacock, was only 24 at the time. 
Before "Linsanity", there was Attitude.

Chinese subtitles; Enjoy the movie.

The Drummer; 战·鼓

Earlier this month, Jaycee Chan, actor and son of the much more famous Jackie, pleaded guilty in a Beijing court to drug offense and was sentenced to six months of jail time.
Young Jaycee has always been unconventional. Born and raised in the U.S., unlike most Asian Americans, he dropped out of college (College of William and Mary to be exact. Reason for leaving? Supposedly "all you can see in Virginia is sheep".). Then in 2009, he gave up his American citizenship to become a Chinese citizen. 
Sid, Jaycee's character, is the recalcitrant loser son of a Hong Kong mob boss Kwan (played by one of bigger China region's best actors of all time: 梁家輝, Tony Leung Ki-Fai. It's a pity that most American audience might've only known him from the early 90s French film "The Lover"). 
Sid was in an affair with his father's competing mob boss's mistress Carmen. The affair was discovered and the boss demands Kwan cut off Sid's two hands to settle the whole mess. Kwan sends Sid, along with him his most trusted bodyguard, to a mountainous region in Taiwan to hide out. 
While there, Sid unexpectedly ran into a traditional Zen Drumming Troupe, concept of which was based on a real group of self-subsisting hippie-like artists rigorously train daily in the art of Zen warrior drumming and perform worldwide. Sid is quite intrigued by the troupe's athletic practices and holistic discipline and quickly joins them. To the troupe-master's surprise, Sid proves himself more than just a spoiled delinquent and starts to enjoy his new-found simple life.
However, the mess he left behind didn't forget him. In the end he finds out that the bodyguard with whom he has bonded was the main engineer scheming to overthrow his father's mob business. 
Also worth mentioning is the brief but memorable appearance by Josie Ho (何超仪) as Sid's stubborn older sister determined to stay away from her mafia father and make it as a veterinarian. True to her on-screen black sheep persona, Josie's passion for acting and singing met the cold shoulders of his father Stanley Ho, the gaming king of Macau.


With Chinese subtitles with some of the dialogues in Cantonese. Enjoy the movie.

After the Final Battle; 决战之后

For advanced learners only.

If you happen to be a contemporary Chinese history bug, you have to watch this movie.

Although to American audience, the most seen Chinese movie genre is without a doubt action/Kung Fu, to mainland Chinese audience, however, it is definitely history/war movies.

This movie documents the lives of a group of highly ranked and decorated Nationalist generals and military officers from the time they were captured by the communists towards the end of the Chinese civil war, up to the point when they received amnesty.

Adapted almost verbatim from writer Huang Jiren (黄济人)'s investigative journalistic masterpiece 将军决战岂止在战场 (loosely translated "To Generals, winnings aren't only determined on the battlefields"). First published more than 30 years ago to critical acclaim, Huang followed up with a much belated part II in 2013, bringing another round of attention. The movie, however, was adapted solely based on part I and was released in the 1980s. 

The final "battle" in contemporary Chinese history generally refers to the conclusion of the three decisive battles of the Chinese civil war (1945-1949) that ended with Mao's communist party/army reigning over mainland and Jiang's nationalist party/army retreating to the island of Taiwan. The three battles are: Huaihai (淮海战役 or Xubang-徐蚌会战 in nationalist history) , Pingjin (平津战役, or 平津会战 in Taiwan), Liaoshen (辽沈战役, 辽西会战 or 辽沈会战 in Taiwan). As you can tell, the two sides never even agreed on the official names of the battles.
Huang's own maternal uncle was among one of those imprisoned generals. Far more than being a subject matter, his connection to all the other high-profile POWs and many more of his previous fellow cadets from the Whampoa Military Academy (黄埔军校, essentially China's West Point and the breeding ground for many top military leaders and strategists for both the Nationalists and the Communists) and the Nationalist colleagues made it possible for Huang to extensively interview the POW generals. They were critical in completing the missing pieces of the historical puzzles, providing alternative interpretation for the same events, what went wrong in intelligence and counter-intelligence. 

Contrary to common beliefs, both sides engaged in significant revisionism although recent decade or so have witnessed much improved communication, collaboration and compromise. What's amazing about this movie is that it was made in the 80s, way before open discussions about what version of history really happened became the norm. Losers not vilified and victors not lionized. Here is to the beginning of objective history.

I can't find a version with full Chinese subtitles. Deepest apologies. However, here's some small consolation: like most Chinese history/war movies, all of the characters, their positions, associated significance and events are spelled out telegram style. 

Enjoy the movie

Monga; 艋舺

Gangster themes are contemporary Hong Kong and 1920-1940 era Shanghai period drama perennials. Every few years a new one emerges. Monga, however, is a Taiwanese endeavor and it is quite brilliant and so watchable.
"Monga" is a Taiwanese aboriginal pronunciation.  It loosely means a place where small boats gather and used to be the name of an old town district in Taipei. Adjacent to 西门町, a tourism hot spot today. This cluster is where the 1970-1980ish early commercial development began.
For this type of movie you can almost imagine the mosaic of colorful characters and how they lived lives blurring the thin line between right and wrong. However, this movie is directed by Niu Chenze (钮承泽), the child actor-turned director whose acting we have seen in this blog: Growing Up. Allegedly he has himself lived a quasi-gangster life at one point in his youth. Seemingly volatile and jumpy (having even earned a well-deserved honorific Bean/Beanie), Niu is by all means a passionate director excels at using modern cinematic phrasing and maneuvering ensemble casts. In recent years nobody seems to have surpassed his attempt in telling the contemporary urban tales.
He might just become the Scorsese of Taiwan.
The movie is a true homage to youth, adventure, ambition and loyalty. I really liked all of the characters, from the formidable mafia boss who dons a shower cap to cook to your average blessed-by-ignorance ruffians.
Featuring some of the the most promising Taiwanese actors today: Ruan Jintian, 阮经天 (middle) as Dragon, the scarily disciplined number two and the real Meyer Lansky of the group; Zhao Youting 赵又廷 (second from right) as Mosquito, the fatherless new kid who valiantly and comically fought school bullies over a piece of chicken leg in the movie's much-acclaimed long opening scene;  Huang Denghui, 黄镫辉 (first from left) as the rash chubby guy of the group and Chen Handian, 陈汉典 (not pictured here) as the opposing gang's miserable gadfly who got his orifices glue-shut, literally. Huang and Chen are also very cool improv actors all over Taiwanese TV shows.
The only part I found less satisfying was the theatrically far-fetched subplot in which a frequent patron of Mosquito's mom's hair salon, another gangster figure and played by the director himself, turned out to be Mosquito's long-lost father.

Chinese subtitles; Enjoy the movie

A Chinese Ghost Story; 倩女幽魂

If you have a morbid fear towards ghost stories like I do, let me assure you that A Chinese Ghost Story will make you laugh! Few movies are the perfect blend of comedy, romance, action, period drama, and yes, ghosts.
A branch of the Chinese culture has always been dominated by ghosts, reincarnation, Yin-Yang divide and the after-world as they are important themes in both Buddhism and Taoism. Ghost stories as a movie genre have flourished as well.
The story was adapted from a short story out of a collection of 491, all ghost-themed, called 聊斋志异. So well-known is this book that in China it would be almost impossible to locate a person who has never heard of it. You will run into plenty of Chinese movies based on stories out of this book. Unfortunately the original author was prolific but highly unsuccessful during his lifetime in Qing dynasty.
Here's the gist of the movie: A lovely bookworm (宁采臣) took a nasty job as a debt collector. While seeking shelter in a deserted thousand-year old temple, he ran into whom he thought was an otherworldly beautiful girl. She was in fact, from another world: a ghost spirit in the "Yin" domain waiting to gather enough "Yang" essence by trapping and sapping healthy young males, in order to reincarnate back into physical existence. The bookworm, clueless of her scheme, foolhardily tried to rescue her out of the temple and her controlling grandma, a hermaphrodite ghost sort of, and a monster tree ghost, running a quasi female ghost brothels so that a cut of the "Yang" essence the girls sapped can be supplied to support her own transformation away from the afterworld.
If you are interested in ancient Chinese culture, I highly recommend this movie. The dialogues, choreographed actions, costume design, special effects and acting are all superior. Some even said that this movie reinvigorated the Hong Kong film industry, in a doldrum at the time, with a newly charged form of period drama.
This movie, made nearly 30 years ago, remains a classic.
The male lead was played by the one-and-only Leslie Cheung (张国荣). Cheung, before his untimely 2003 death due to severe depression, had achieved almost every highest honor in every possible field an Asian entertainer could've attempted. I will introduce more of his films in the near future. 

Chinese subtitles. Enjoy the movie.

American Dreams in China; 中国合伙人

A more literal translation would be "Chinese Partners".
I see this movie as a tribute to those dare to dream.
An elitist whose father and grandfather had both been educated in the states, a country bumpkin with horrifying accents and a poetic long-haired hippie: three friends met as freshmen in the fictional Yanjing University in what seems to be the immediate post-cultural revolution Beijing in the late 1970s to early 1980s.
At the time there was such a thirst for knowledge as the decade-long cultural revolution had closed the door of higher learning to practically everyone except a few proletariat with approved background.
I have heard moving tales of how people formed long snake lines outside of libraries for hours before the crack of dawn just to secure seats to study all day. Today, I think it's not an exaggeration to say the few things that can still command such display of enthusiasm are iPhones and concert tickets (not the classical music kind mind you).
Like most students from top universities, the three friends dived into their dogged pursuit of the Chinese brand of the American dream: to score high on standardized admission tests such as the TOEFL, GRE and GMAT and through the studying process to be as linguistically and culturally prepared as possible. The goal was to go to America for graduate studies. Undergraduate and direct prep school admissions for non-immigrant Chinese students didn't become more of the norm till the 21st century.
Getting a student visa was brutally difficult for Chinese students back then even though all of the applicants went into the U.S. consulate offices had already been accepted and some even with guaranteed academic scholarships. And for those lucky few granted visas, many didn't flourish as their later counterparts would. 1980's just wasn't the time for Chinese yet!
This is exactly what happened to the elitist. He fed lab rats at Columbia University while telling friends he was conducting research; his piano-playing girlfriend worked in a laundromat while telling others she was tutoring piano in Long Island.
Meanwhile back in Beijing, two remaining friends started a small enterprise, borderline illegal at the time, to teach English, for commercial profit, to U.S.-bound students how to score high on standardized tests. Demand for test preparation was so high that one makeshift classroom quickly mushroomed into auditorium-sized lectures. Elitist abandoned his own dream of "making it" in America to join force and help thousands of Chinese students realize their own. The three friends would eventually take their company a NASDAQ-listed public one.
Heavily based on the true story behind the formation and rise to fame of New Oriental, the US-listed Chinese educational service giant with the appropriate ticker EDU, this movie is an homage to all of the post-Cultural revolution, Deng Xiaoping-era first generation of daring Chinese business leaders such as Sohu's Charles Zhang, Vanke's Wang Shi, Alibaba's Jack Ma and of course, New Orient's Michael Yu.
Three of the China's currently most bankable actors star as the three friends: Huang Xiaoming (黄晓明), Deng Chao (邓超), Tong Dawei (佟大为). 

Chinese subtitles with lots of English dialogues. Enjoy the movie.

Growing up; 小毕的故事

You will never truly understand post-war contemporary Taiwan till you have watched this movie.
Towards the end of 1940s, the nationalists started to retreat to Taiwan. An overwhelming 1.5-2 million population made of mostly military personnel and their families landed there, expanding the island's total population by one quarter.
The solution for immediate accommodation was to throw all rank-and-file into blocks and blocks of tiny and connected residences sharing maze-like walkways, cooking fumes, noise from disciplining children and in many cases, even bathrooms.
These residential quarters are called 眷村 (Juancun). There were close to 700 of them in its heydays. Although literally means villages made of relatives a few degrees removed, 眷村 are really made of related non-relatives or unrelated relatives. Residents were only related in a sense that all the fathers served in the army together and were relatives because every few doors down the alley, there might be another family sharing the same ancestral roots. For Chinese, roots are traced back thousands of years and ancestry is such a relative term.
The most poignant contemporary Taiwanese subculture was born!
眷村文化 (Juancun culture) is a pastiche of Chinese regional and provincial cultures, dialects, cuisine, Peking opera, homesickness, customs and conventions frozen circa 1949. Part military base, part immigrant ghetto, part melting pot and part crucibles, Juancun culture originated as nostalgia out of denial but evolved into cohesion and resolve out of choice. So many of today's prominent figures in Taiwan came out of Juancun that its influence is still gathering momentum.
The story of Growing Up talks about a boy's experience in Juancun. As a child born out of wedlock, he moved there with his mom after she married a much older man with a reliable government job and a promise of giving the boy a good education. The stepfather proved to be kind and decent. However, the little boy only grew increasingly morose, insecure, recalcitrant and hostile by the year as if to personify the aggregate frustration of all Juancun dwellers. Facing mounting desperation, the mom kills herself as a quiet wake-up call for her son.
The movie was based on a novel of the same name. Zhu Tianwen (朱天文), its author adapted it into the screenplay. The actor playing the adolescent boy, Niu Chengze (钮承泽) has grown up to be a reputable Taiwanese director whose work I will introduce more very soon.

Chinese subtitles. Enjoy the movie.

Perhaps Love; 如果•爱

Perhaps Love was lauded as the first major original musical movie in modern Chinese cinema. If you happen to like musicals with a Faberge egg-like love triangle plot to match, you will indeed find this film spectacular.
Bearing some semblance to Moulin Rouge!, Perhaps Love is nevertheless very Chinese. Some of today's Chinese vernacular become indelible thanks to the characters. 文青, (short for 文艺青年), is a collective term for artsy youth. Cultured, petit bourgeois, slightly disenfranchised, they are ardently interested in careers in the entertainment and creative writing industries. 北漂 (bei piao, literally a northbound floater) is a 文青, typically from either humbler background or smaller towns, bravely uproots him or herself to migrate to Beijing (北京) chasing the dream. Incidentally, there's also 横漂(heng piao), a person practically on standby 24/7 for auditions, gigs as extras at China's own Hollywood 横店, an entire Eastern town, 2.5 hour train ride from Shanghai, made of clusters of filming bases with permanent thematic sets.
Our characters are the essence of the current generation of artsy youth who strives for a life less ordinary, less programmed than what their parents had lived in the pre-capitalistic China. Through the dreams of these floating artsy youth, modern Chinese consumerism is finally emerging.
I'm not a fan of musicals but have always been a fan of works by director Peter Chan (陈可辛, Chen Kexin in pinyin).
Chan attended college in the states. But after taking his first summer job in Hong Kong as director John Woo (吴宇森) 's translator and key grip in the early 80s, he dropped out. The rest is history.
Chan has the observation and patience of an anthropologist. One of his early works Comrades: Almost in Love, made in 1996, is a classic depicting the 97 HK syndrome, is a film to which I will dedicate a separate post one day.
The cast is made of three well-respected actors with singing background. One of them, Jacky Cheung (张学友), with a stature in HK's Canton Pop so significant that in Asia, his clout and fame easily rivals that of U2's Bono. The impossibly handsome Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武) and the very talented Zhou Xun (周迅) also star.

Chinese subtitles. Enjoy the movie.

A Bite of China; 舌尖上的中国

Not only is this seven-part documentary on culinary culture (食文化) a nonstop visual feast, it is an excellent reference on how food evolves and adapts, like every fabric of the traditional Chinese society.

Typically on culture, history or socioeconomics, Chinese documentaries make even better sources than movies for mandarin learning.

Chen Xiaoqing (陈晓卿), the main director for this series happens to be the editor-in-chief for the Chinese edition of Time Out magazine and no doubt a veteran foodie (吃客 or 老饕 in Chinese expressions. Former more conversational and the latter more in writing). Several prominent food critics in the bigger China region joined force consulting for this undertaking. 

The production team shot in over 70 locations spanning 30 provinces of China. Every piece of material and every dish showcased had to first pass the muster of the team. 

The series was released in 2012 to much critical acclaim. A second series was released earlier this year and a third one currently under preparation.
Not chronologically connected, each independent episode focuses on one topic and builds mini stories around it. Not all episodes are totally unrelated either. Episodes 3 and 4, for example, drew inspirations from ways to preserve and transform materials. Episode 10, kind of harkens back to episode 1 as the wide array of ingredients available became front and center one more time.

In order not to ruin your appetite, I'm only offering some highlights for the first episode:

Scouting for matsukaya mushroom in Shangri-la near the Tibetan Plateau; digging up wild winter bamboo shoots (冬笋, dongsun) in Zhejiang (浙江); Scooping up lotus roots (莲藕, lianou) from drained riverbed, curing hams with local gourmet-grade salt, Episode 1 Introduced some of the basic ingredients that Chinese city folks take for granted. Wait till you see what time-honored simple delights the locals prepare out of these material. You will no longer be content with the canned or frozen generic version flooding most of the so-called Chinese restaurants in America.

They made quite a stir in China even. Price of 诺邓火腿, a type of Chinese prosciutto from Yunnan province (云南) introduced in this episode, more than doubled since this series!

After watching this series, you will only exclaim, "Chinese food has never really arrived in America!"

Episode 1 - Gift from Nature; 第1集 自然的馈赠

Episode 2 - Story of Staples; 第2集 主食的故事

Episode 3 - Inspiration to Transform 第3集 转化的灵感

Episode 4 - Tastes of Time; 第4集 时间的味道

Episode 5 - Secrets of the Kitchen; 第5集 厨房的秘密
Episode 6 - Harmony of Flavors 第6集 五味的调和
Episode 7 - The Land We Live On 第7集 我们的田野

Chinese subtitles; Bon Appetit

Each episode runs about 50 minute long. There might be one or two annoying commercials to put up with at the beginning. As a bonus, you will find 100 recipes in Chinese on the site.

Surveillance 1-3; 窃听风云 1-3

These installments of three are some of Hong Kong's crime action thriller genre at its best in recent years. A trio of male leads, played by veteran character actors 刘青云，吴彦祖，古天乐, recurs in the original and two sequels as vastly different characters. There are no logical plot connection between the three movies except for the dominant financial crime theme and the creepy, chilling, sometimes hair-raising high-tech surveillance games as the enabler.

As essential a language to many Hong Kong movies, the trilogy effortlessly deals with price manipulation, insider trading, shady real estate development as well as cops, mafia, street gangs and the thin line that divides them.
The last installment had just won the best screenplay, actor and supporting actor awards at the 34th Hong Kong Film Award in April, 2015.

The official English title was advertised to be "Overheard" which, I'm sorry to say, is flatout incorrect.

Chinese subtitles. Enjoy the movies:
Surveillance 1; 窃听风云 1
Surveillance 2; 窃听风云 2
Surveillance 3; 窃听风云 3

Three Summers; 三个夏天

A lovely coming-of-age art house film, Three Summers took place in one of the tiny archipelagos off of Taiwan.  A succession of stories over three summers centered around a pair of siblings were told through the narratives of a bumpkin-like, tomboyish, tanned-to-the-bone island native: the adoring teenaged younger sister of the duo. The big brother (played by the incomparable Tony Leung Chiu Wai, 梁朝伟, or Liang Chao Wei in pinyin, in one of his best subdued, nuanced, pre-superstardom appearances), who had ventured off to make it big in Hong Kong, suddenly returned with a mysterious arm injury at the beginning of the first summer.

Part of the siblings' ancestral home serves as an eco-summer camp dormitory housing a dozen students. Campers farm, fish, swim, garden during the day and recite poetry, light Kongming lantern on the beach at night (孔明灯, hot air balloon-like paper lantern invented by famed military strategist 诸葛孔明 from the Three Kingdom era circa 220-280. Originally used as a means of communication, Lighting the Kongming lantern has become a well-wishing activity among the youth). Summer over summer, friendship and loyalty formed, love and disillusion interludes, dreams nurtured and crush nursed. 
A mosaic backdrop of Taiwan's ascend as an Asian economic tiger, through the campers and her big brother, our young narrator starts to yearn for a life of more than just marriage, fishing boats, maybe of college, office buildings, clubs and pizza. 
The pace of the movie is slow but comfortable. If most teenage-themed films are whitewater rafting, this one is a bamboo float meandering down a babbling brook. If you have seen one too many American teenage flix, you will no doubt find this film refreshing.
I'm not sure how seamless the brother's arc blends in here except it makes part of an authentic story. Turns out he was beaten up for taking up with a Hong Kong mafia's mistress. 
Screenplay by the one-and-only Sylvia Chang (Zhang AiJia, 张艾嘉). This is one talented lady whose many works as an actress, writer, producer and director we will sure to visit again and again. Supposedly the director Ang Lee (李安) once said this was his favorite indie film.

Chinese subtitles. Enjoy the film.

Postmen in the Mountains; 那人那山那狗

This turn-of-the-century gem covers the underrepresented motif in modern Chinese cinema: rural mailman. 
Our eighteen-year-old protagonist has just failed the annual college entrance exam (yes it is highly competitive. For rural youth often one in a hundred shot). He decides to take over his retiring father's country mailman route for one good reason: in his world, civil servants are more respected and enjoy benefits and pensions that ordinary farmers can't.

The father and his fiercely loyal dog decide to accompany the young man on his first journey to show him the ropes.
Neither technology nor infrastructure has reached the hinterland of Hunan. Postman's job is as tough as it was back in Song Dynasty! A round trip takes days to complete on foot and on foot only, not to mention all the wading, swimming, climbing along the way and the unbearable solitude for hours on end. Like most men of his generation, the father is ill at ease bonding with his own offspring. So taciturn was the old man that at times he seems to have been carved out of wood. Yet all the life lessons, outdoors, courtship, dreams and regrets were quietly meted out along the trip.
The residents served by the route are as lovely as any. It is refreshing to see amidst China's breakneck economic development, such innocence still exists.
Mostly shot on location in the western part of Hunan province. (Description of Chinese geography should never be so naked by the way. Almost all locales have aliases and nicknames to be properly paired depending on the context. Western part of Hunan for example, would be called 湘西.)
One can practically smell cured meats and spiced air right off the screen. Sounds of singing crickets and images of verdant mountains linger days after you watch the movie. There's not one unnecessary scene.
Excellent acting chops displayed by both actors. Making his screen debut while still a student at the prestigious Central Academy of Dramatic Arts (中央戏剧学院) and incidentally, a classmate of Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (卧虎藏龙) fame, Liu Ye (刘烨) has since established himself as one of the most versatile leading men of his generation. Teng Rujun (滕汝骏), Liu's much less-fortunate, low-key alumnus whose early career was sidelined by the cultural revolution, played the role of the father and won the best supporting actor award.

Chinese subtitles. Enjoy the movie

Intro 介绍

With increasing legions of mandarin learners and Chinese culture enthusiasts, the generally available modern Chinese cinema in the U.S. remains immutably commercial, predictable and overreaching.
Watching good movies is one of the best ways to study a language and capture the zeitgeist.
In the past few decades, Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan have all produced an amazing amount of excellent films.
In my blog, I plan to share with you as many precious Chinese films, documentaries and other media as possible. I shall endeavor to scout the Mandarin-dubbed, Chinese-subtitled version in most cases to help those language learners. A brief contextual explanation about the plot, director, actors and the significance of the film will be provided. You may also find names, places and expressions in Chinese symbols blended in as I believe this is an effortless way to learn for those linguistically bent.
Hope you find my blog useful and movies enjoyable.