So much gratitude, Like A Flowing River
First, my grateful thanks whoever it was who swooped in a gifted me with another year of Dreamwidth. That was a kind thought and a lovely surprise. A little guilt-making because I haven't been posting much, but I figure there is so much to get through in any day on social media, and I don't have the wit or charm to make interesting my daily lunch, or doing laundrag, or any of the other busy-busy one must attend to to get through the day. And I don't want to burden the net with stuff that is distressing (eldercare issues) without any good end in sight. I figure silence is better.
But there are things I'm doing around that. Because I loathe exercise (actually I don't loathe exercise so much as getting overheated and sweaty), and because it really hurts duet the arthritis, I can only make myself do it if I limit my TV time to when I'm on the exercise bike. With episodes as rewards if I tackle an otherwise awful job.
Except for following The Good Placeof late I've mostly lost interest in American TV (though I do try various shows) and come back to Chinese dramas. From my position of total ignorance, it seems to me that since Nirvana in Fire came out there's been an upswing in quality. Maybe it was always there, but more of the good ones get brought over here. Dunno.
The interesting thing is, how the Chinese media makers are creating good stuff in spite of trenchant censorship. As it happens, some of the censorship I am okay with with respect to my own viewing tastes: I don't like onscreen rape, or rapey anything. That's a nono in China. The free speech/creative freedom side of me frets mightily at this. I can be glad that Game of Thrones is out there for those who love it, for example, but I'm never going to watch it.
Sidestep: gay anything is also a big nono in China. One of the things I'm really interested in is the subversive influence of Chinese women writers. Take the Guardian phenom. The show is ridiculous (I can't make myself watch it) but I deeply appreciate the phenomenon: a TV show with two characters who are obviously gay. The entire BL (boy love) trope is super popular over there as it is here--gay male relationships written by women.
Actually, Nirvana in Fire was a BL novel in its original form. I've read enough of the translation to see that the prose is awash with sentimentality--every one of the male characters has gorgeous eyes and long eyelashes and they pet each other fondly--but woven around it is a tight, brilliant plot that the filmmakers brought to life, while letting the BL aspect become intense UST, with a wonderfully done m/f romance complementing it.
Anyway, back to Guardian it had like a billion hits in the first week the show was released, the government found out, and took it off the air. But Chinese viewers are finding it elsewhere, and there are signs of its influence in other stuff; meanwhile these female authors are penning novels that can get upwards of a billion hits in a week. That's right. A billion. The sleeping dragon really has woken.
Watching this, of course, from here, with my profound ignorance of the language, etc, is like watching Shakespeare through the eye of a needle, but even so, what I see is vital and fascinating, all the more because of how China leaped from the horror of the seventies, when the cultural revolution basically knocked them back centuries, to net-savvy sophistication, creating the fascinating, deeply conflicted, complex, powerful China today.
And Like a Flowing River, made by the same outfit that made Nirvana in Fire, set a story in that period. It starts in the late seventies, when the universities opened again, and people could test to get in. Wang Kai, the absurdly handsome Prince Jing of NIF, plays a young man focused on chemical engineering; I think he's playing it slightly on the spectrum, which makes his character all the more interesting. His family is peasant stock from a very small village scrabbling to live. He and his older sister both pass the test, but only one can go because the family's reputation was destroyed due to the father, an old-style medical practitioner, having been a prisoner of the Kuomintang for a few months.
The second, and my favorite, main character is from the next village over, a soldier returned to civilian life to a dirt-poor peasant village where "we all fart yams" because there is little else to live on. He is volatile, fiery in temper, but fundamentally honest and has a good heart, which makes him charismatic but at an emotional cost that the actor does a phenomenal job with.
The third main character is an actor I guess popular in China, who plays a scrappy kid, first of several siblings whose mom, a widow, has been scraping by as a village cadre who looks out for people as best she can. He's uneducated, but finding his way toward developing businesses while the economic landscape is changing wildly around him.
Village life is beautifully played--I've seen commentary by Chinese people who also speak English, talking about how their parents say "It's exactly right!" Of course there is an overlay of the Communist party being distant but fundamentally benevolent, and yet within this framework that got them past the censor there is a great deal of criticism, couched in individual choices, including by higher-ups, and how they affect others. They also work in environmental awareness, always in context.
Like in Nirvana in Fire every character, no matter how minor, is distinct, with arcs of their own, and those who are good at facial recognition will spot many familiar faces from NIF among them.
I finished Part One yesterday, emotionally exhausted and exhilarated. I hope Part Two will come out by the end of this year.
The other one I finished was a more standard wuxia story, also split into two parts, called Ever Night. Within the framework of regular wuxia tropes there are some wonderful twists, and some brilliant set pieces. One of which was a duel between two old men, on either side of a huge dilemma, once friends. It could have been a grim and nasty bit, instead was a transcendent experience. And oh, the fan service, and the gorgeous scenery!
Anyway, these long, enormously complex stories that take the time for details are the equivalent of complex, long novels, always my favorite. That same company has also come out with The Story of Ming Lan, which is my present obsession, in all its beautiful complexity with fascinating female characters. In fact, a great many of these terrific, long, complex stories are taken from novels written by women, in which one of the many things examined is how women wielded power within the confines of the system--while questioning it, both subversively and overtly.
Well, I see I've blabbered long enough, and need to get back to work.
This entry was originally posted at https://sartorias.dreamwidth.org/996281.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
But there are things I'm doing around that. Because I loathe exercise (actually I don't loathe exercise so much as getting overheated and sweaty), and because it really hurts duet the arthritis, I can only make myself do it if I limit my TV time to when I'm on the exercise bike. With episodes as rewards if I tackle an otherwise awful job.
Except for following The Good Placeof late I've mostly lost interest in American TV (though I do try various shows) and come back to Chinese dramas. From my position of total ignorance, it seems to me that since Nirvana in Fire came out there's been an upswing in quality. Maybe it was always there, but more of the good ones get brought over here. Dunno.
The interesting thing is, how the Chinese media makers are creating good stuff in spite of trenchant censorship. As it happens, some of the censorship I am okay with with respect to my own viewing tastes: I don't like onscreen rape, or rapey anything. That's a nono in China. The free speech/creative freedom side of me frets mightily at this. I can be glad that Game of Thrones is out there for those who love it, for example, but I'm never going to watch it.
Sidestep: gay anything is also a big nono in China. One of the things I'm really interested in is the subversive influence of Chinese women writers. Take the Guardian phenom. The show is ridiculous (I can't make myself watch it) but I deeply appreciate the phenomenon: a TV show with two characters who are obviously gay. The entire BL (boy love) trope is super popular over there as it is here--gay male relationships written by women.
Actually, Nirvana in Fire was a BL novel in its original form. I've read enough of the translation to see that the prose is awash with sentimentality--every one of the male characters has gorgeous eyes and long eyelashes and they pet each other fondly--but woven around it is a tight, brilliant plot that the filmmakers brought to life, while letting the BL aspect become intense UST, with a wonderfully done m/f romance complementing it.
Anyway, back to Guardian it had like a billion hits in the first week the show was released, the government found out, and took it off the air. But Chinese viewers are finding it elsewhere, and there are signs of its influence in other stuff; meanwhile these female authors are penning novels that can get upwards of a billion hits in a week. That's right. A billion. The sleeping dragon really has woken.
Watching this, of course, from here, with my profound ignorance of the language, etc, is like watching Shakespeare through the eye of a needle, but even so, what I see is vital and fascinating, all the more because of how China leaped from the horror of the seventies, when the cultural revolution basically knocked them back centuries, to net-savvy sophistication, creating the fascinating, deeply conflicted, complex, powerful China today.
And Like a Flowing River, made by the same outfit that made Nirvana in Fire, set a story in that period. It starts in the late seventies, when the universities opened again, and people could test to get in. Wang Kai, the absurdly handsome Prince Jing of NIF, plays a young man focused on chemical engineering; I think he's playing it slightly on the spectrum, which makes his character all the more interesting. His family is peasant stock from a very small village scrabbling to live. He and his older sister both pass the test, but only one can go because the family's reputation was destroyed due to the father, an old-style medical practitioner, having been a prisoner of the Kuomintang for a few months.
The second, and my favorite, main character is from the next village over, a soldier returned to civilian life to a dirt-poor peasant village where "we all fart yams" because there is little else to live on. He is volatile, fiery in temper, but fundamentally honest and has a good heart, which makes him charismatic but at an emotional cost that the actor does a phenomenal job with.
The third main character is an actor I guess popular in China, who plays a scrappy kid, first of several siblings whose mom, a widow, has been scraping by as a village cadre who looks out for people as best she can. He's uneducated, but finding his way toward developing businesses while the economic landscape is changing wildly around him.
Village life is beautifully played--I've seen commentary by Chinese people who also speak English, talking about how their parents say "It's exactly right!" Of course there is an overlay of the Communist party being distant but fundamentally benevolent, and yet within this framework that got them past the censor there is a great deal of criticism, couched in individual choices, including by higher-ups, and how they affect others. They also work in environmental awareness, always in context.
Like in Nirvana in Fire every character, no matter how minor, is distinct, with arcs of their own, and those who are good at facial recognition will spot many familiar faces from NIF among them.
I finished Part One yesterday, emotionally exhausted and exhilarated. I hope Part Two will come out by the end of this year.
The other one I finished was a more standard wuxia story, also split into two parts, called Ever Night. Within the framework of regular wuxia tropes there are some wonderful twists, and some brilliant set pieces. One of which was a duel between two old men, on either side of a huge dilemma, once friends. It could have been a grim and nasty bit, instead was a transcendent experience. And oh, the fan service, and the gorgeous scenery!
Anyway, these long, enormously complex stories that take the time for details are the equivalent of complex, long novels, always my favorite. That same company has also come out with The Story of Ming Lan, which is my present obsession, in all its beautiful complexity with fascinating female characters. In fact, a great many of these terrific, long, complex stories are taken from novels written by women, in which one of the many things examined is how women wielded power within the confines of the system--while questioning it, both subversively and overtly.
Well, I see I've blabbered long enough, and need to get back to work.
This entry was originally posted at https://sartorias.dreamwidth.org/996281.html. Please comment there using OpenID.