Archive for March, 2009

A Papaya Story

By
Jessica
Date: March 23, 2009Posted in: PerspectivesTags:

When my dad was in the military, he served near a mountain covered with farms. There, people planted a lot of mangoes and papayas. But some of the papaya was wild and grew on their own, free.

One day, a man from Taipei looked around and saw a big, red, pretty papaya. It was beautiful and delicious looking. He climbed up the wild tree and fell down because there was a bee nest in the tree. He cried and cried, and was sent to the emergency room. He ended up with a fever for a couple of days and almost died.

If you find somewhere there is something good there — supposedly there is something tricky there too.

Jessica is an avid fruit eater eagerly anticipating the arrival of bamboo shoot season. She would like to picnic in this 73 F weather.


Choosing Your Own Battles

By
Justin
Date: March 22, 2009Posted in: PerspectivesTags:

It’s easy for those who are conscious of their Taiwanese-American ethnicity, culture, and history to say that they would like to empower their people, but it’s not easy to do it.

I’m a senior in high school now and I’ve gone M.I.A. on you guys for a while. I live in a small town where I don’t experience much culture outside of where I live, nor do I feel the life experiences regarding my heritage that I used to feel in a bigger city. That all changed very quickly.

My school has an annual student produced play that usually is comedic and over the top, and contains a whole lot of offensiveness and hilarity. Being that it is student produced and funded, the administration does not have oversight over it, leading it to be very raunchy at times. The students love it and the students that are in the play hold it sacred because of the generous amounts of camaraderie it produces.

Without going over the specifics of the play, this year there was a character named “Pong” who was dressed in the ancient Chinese outfit with the little cap on his head and a ponytail hanging from it. He had a fu manchu beard, wore sandals and grasped his hands in a praying motion, bowing to anyone he spoke to. All his spoken l’s came out as r’s, poking fun at the Chinese accent. Best of all, he was proficient in karate and had a musical number dedicated to him as he sang “Kung Fu Fighting.” Among another Mexican stereotyped character and a French one, Pong was just another funny character to everyone.

Unfortunately, I laughed too, but as I sat at home thinking about it, I was laughing at the expense of others and myself. Then, I realized this was my chance to be the knight in shining armor for all the Asian-Americans that have been stereotyped in the media and in life repeatedly. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to call out my friends who wrote the play, the white student who played the character, nor the principal who failed to axe this character from the play. I couldn’t speak out and take action when I knew I would be burning bridges with everyone that I knew. Anybody that said anything was deemed as someone that was “taking things too seriously.”

Choosing your own battles is a battle in itself. I am sitting out a battle where this entire small town is gathering in a auditorium laughing at a caricature of theChinaman that was a symbol of racism in American history for so long. That character doesn’t just represent the Chinese. He represented the Japanese, the Koreans, the Filipinos, the Taiwanese. I think I chose to lose this battle and it makes me feel so guilty.

Justin hopes one day he will be in a position to give his whole effort in combating stereotypes. Until then, sometimes he is still vulnerable.

Ang Lee & Lust, Caution — a special screening co-presented by TaiwaneseAmerican.org

By
Grace
Date: March 21, 2009Posted in: SpotlightTags:
Ang Lee & Lust, Caution — a special screening co-presented by TaiwaneseAmerican.org

Ang Lee defies categorization and baffles critics. The Taiwanese/American filmmaker has created movies as divergent as Sense and Sensibility, Eat Drink Man Woman, The Ice Storm, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but he’s probably best known as the Academy Award-winning director of Brokeback Mountain.

On Tuesday, March 17, the San Francisco Bay area community got to see Ang Lee in person as part of a special screening hosted by UC Berkeley’s On the Same Page program and Pacific Film Archive in conjunction with the premiere San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. This particular event was co-presented by TaiwaneseAmerican.org and the San Francisco chapter of Taiwanese American Professionals.

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Around 6pm, as members of our Taiwanese American community gathered at the nearby Cafe Milano, it was clear that these attendees were excited about the opportunity to soon share the same room as Ang Lee. Our group walked over together to Wheeler Hall where the screening and talk would be held, anxious to claim our seats. The event was twice sold out with each release of ticket blocks, so we knew the crowds would be arriving early. Sure enough, the line for entry wrapped around the inside of the building, starting at the auditorium and circling around through the back hallways. Our Taiwanese American group claimed a good section toward the left, and we settled in as the auditorium gradually filled.

After a great introduction by Berkeley academic Linda Williams, Ang Lee’s latest film, Lust, Caution (2007) was screened. Unfortunately, the film had earned itself an NC-17 rating because of its graphic, extended sex scenes. I say unfortunately because an NC-17 rating is “the commercial kiss of death,” as Williams put it. The film had a typical art house run, but never had wide distribution. It’s a pity, because the film is captivating across all 2.5+ hours. And it’s the kind of film that lingers long after its close.

I was so excited to see Ang Lee that I would have been happy even if the movie was terrible and the talk was superficial. But my shoddy expectations were blown away. Actually, the most impressive part of the night was Ang Lee’s talk. How many times have I heard artists give their evasive and superficial responses– “oh, it is whatever you think it is”? To the contrary, Ang Lee was candid, open, passionate, and revealing with his depth of thought behind his film.

Some highlights:

Lee described the film as his thesis on the performing arts and his work as a filmmaker. “Sometimes I have more faith in fake things, like movies, than I have in real things.” In the film, a young woman puts her performance to the test as she seduces a man she’s trying to help her friends assassinate.

“The sex got to me. The politics got to me. I was very frightened.”

Ang Lee likened shooting the sex scenes to being in hell. He described himself going kind of crazy, as he got to a point during shooting where he began shaking all over, and lead actor Tony Leung had to come over and comfort him: “We’re just actors baring our skin. We’ll be fine. You have to take care of yourself.”

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During the Q&A session, Taiwanese American author Shawna Yang Ryan, lined up to ask Ang Lee, “clearly, you don’t shy away from provocative subjects… when do you plan to bring the story of Taiwan to the screen?” His answer was simply that when he found the right story, he would film it. He added, “I hope I don’t disappoint you.”

Well, we’ll keep right on waiting.

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This spotlight was written by your very own TaiwaneseAmerican.org photographer and Asian American media lover, Anna Wu. The original post is on her website at annawu.com.

Rent or buy Lust, Caution and see for yourself.

Go check out other films and events in the SF International Asian American Film Festival.

If you’re in the Bay Area, join TAP-SF on Facebook so you can catch the next awesome event.

And of course, don’t forget to join TaiwaneseAmerican.org on Facebook too!