The ultimate awesomeness of VLC + a review of The Founding of a Republic

Yesterday I went to Boston to visit some friends up at Marsh Chapel to talk about academic matters upon my abrupt return. However, I visited Chinatown and picked up, along with some lunch, a copy of a new Chinese blockbuster released back in September, The Founding of a Republic 《建国大业》. Sadly, the DVD was coded for Region 6 and my WinDVD is permanently set to Region 1, so I had to watch it in VLC (to which I can only say ‘开放原始码运动万岁！’ – that’s ‘long live the open source movement!’ for you non-Chinese speaker types out there).

There were some in both the American and the foreign media who wrote off this film as yet another official government-driven propaganda piece, and perhaps understandably so – but it was about the tumultuous period in Chinese history out of which the current government was founded, so my expectations going in were shaped by these considerations. For someone unfamiliar with Chinese history, this film would be hopelessly confusing given its immense cast (all of whom are introduced with Chinese nametags at their first appearance), which is a pity, since it is actually an almost Shakespearean drama. (To be perfectly honest, it might be said that a lot of Shakespeare’s plays themselves were propaganda pieces favouring the ruling monarchs of his time. His portrayal of the ancestors of Elizabeth I Tudor in his Henry VI progression and Richard III, and of James I Stuart in Macbeth, were flattering often well beyond their historical desserts, and his portrayal of their enemies almost always as villains.)

And what a drama The Founding of a Republic is! The producers of this film were much more generous to Jiang Jieshi 蒋介石 (leader of the Guomindang government which is now Taiwan, played by Zhang Guoli 张国立) than Shakespeare was to, say, Richard III Plantagenet, and the film is more powerful (in my opinion) for that consideration. We see in General Jiang a man who is thoughtful, reflective and even caring, but whose tragic flaw is his inflexibility: he is stubbornly determined to tighten his grip on China and quash his political opposition despite the urgings of his wife, his close friends and his trusted advisors. We watch him as he spurns Mao Zedong’s 毛泽东 (played by Tang Guoqiang 唐国强) diplomatic gestures and refuses to entertain notions of a multi-party democratic government; we see him falter as his son uncovers deep corruption and even treason within his own family. But if this is propaganda, it is certainly fairly tame and considerate, even generous, to General Jiang’s character – the directors are not encouraging us to hate him and view him as a fascist devil. Behind the smile of the general-turned-politician we see the subtle movements of hesitance, of worry and of pain in his face (even as he is ordering political assassinations and turning a blind eye to blatant abuse of power), and we pity him – even at the end when he has truly lost everything he sought to preserve, alone, grieving and facing the rain.

On the other hand, Mao’s portrayal does have some rather retro flourishes of old-timey propaganda about it, as he is portrayed as an only slightly cynical nice-guy whose sole vice is the occasional cigarette (or four or five). We see him playing with children, who call him ‘daddy’ and ‘Uncle Mao’, in a field of flowers while discussing strategy with Zhou Enlai 周恩来 (who gives a piggyback ride to one of the kids). He is always cool, collected, affable and polite; portrayed either as a genuine nice-guy or as a thoughtful, hard-nosed realist puffing wryly on his cigarettes – never the firebrand revolutionary. When he speaks about defeating the powers of the reactionary government in the name of the working class, it almost sounds like an afterthought, a throwback; almost as if it is done tongue-in-cheek, though the historical man clearly would have taken himself more seriously. Closer references are made to the literary-historical figure of Liu Bei 刘备 from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: in particular, Liu Bei’s flight from Chang Ban, when he refused to leave behind the civilians he had brought into peril. Mao insists similarly that he prefers to have lost the land and have kept the people. Indeed, throughout the movie, we see Mao as being more than a bit of a softie – it’s a big emotional moment when he is in the big military procession in Beijing after the Gongchandang have taken it, and is giving his salute when the frames slow down and we see a great tear of gratitude rolling down his left cheek.

The cinematography in this movie is slow, careful and deliberate, much like the rest of the movie, but fantastic. The movie shows some hints of indecision when it forgets that it is a human drama and decides it wants to be a big explosion-filled action movie or a TV documentary. Brief bits of documentary exposition are scattered throughout, cutting to a grainy black-and-white filter and giving some written explanation of political event it is showing. We get more than one art-film shot of armies moving either in triumph or defeat done in this style. Special effects were used liberally but unobtrusively (as special effects should be, rather than being shoved in the faces of the audience), particularly during the equally brief, equally interspersed war scenes. Aside from the special effects, there were some other particular interesting cinematographic conceits: the disgruntled Guomindang officer firing the rifle in target practice, after which the scene cuts immediately to the startled flight of a flock of pigeons around Jiang Jieshi and his son Jingguo (the subtext being the growing unrest and abandonment of Jiang Jieshi’s cause by his own men in favour of the Gongchandang). These little graces in technique and storytelling saved the movie in my view, but it’s still a film that takes on too much (as its rather ostentatious title suggests).

Would I recommend it? I can’t in conscience recommend it to someone who doesn’t already have some background in this period of Chinese history – I have, and I found it difficult to follow at times, the cast being as well-peopled as it was. It’s also quite militaristic, but that is to be expected from most Chinese historical dramas these days (with the possible exception of A Battle of Wits 《墨功》). But it far exceeded my own expectations. It is not to be dismissed as mere propaganda; if it is propaganda, it is surprisingly subtle in its treatment of its characters and its tangled, meandering narrative, and quite worthy of serious aesthetic appraisal.

A (pointless?) parable

If I may intrude upon my gentle readers’ time and patience (and perhaps sanity) for a few minutes, I would like to tell a brief story. Some of it may even be true. It concerns a young man whose every action was motivated by fear: a deep and enduring dread that he would be rejected by God. We might make him a member of a church, if we so wish – I imagine such fears may be common among those who find themselves adrift in the wide yet shallow ocean of present-day Christendom, even in churches which find themselves not so much professing as digging up a bland sort of fossilised liberalism encapsulated and buried by Schleiermacher and Hegel, and postmarked from the 19th century. We may imagine further that this troubled youth is a deeply ethical person, that considerations of right and wrong tend to drive his reasoning, his motivations and his actions. But this youth is a doubter: he questions his own ethical bearings frequently, even routinely; he has trained himself, perhaps not even consciously, to question what his church says about God’s forgiveness, because he conceives of this speech as cowardice meant to preserve the vanities of the church’s less ethically-minded and more hard-hearted donors. Hence, this fear that he isn’t doing enough, or that he is doing the wrong things, and that as a result God will cast him out, perhaps becomes more understandable.

I suppose we must give this sad youngster a name (the present-age being what it is, it will not long tolerate characters who are not adequately labelled, typed, squared away in neat little marked boxes and presented with all the depth, substance and individuality of a mass-produced party balloon), but in this case I don’t think it too offensive to give him one – it will not detract from what I am about to describe of him. Since he is such a doubter and exists in such fear, perhaps it would be fitting to name him Thomas. Now, poor Thomas, who is caught trying to prove to himself that he is an ethical creature, joins a service organisation in another city (maybe even another country) to do so. Now, the name of this service organisation is not important; suffice it to say that this Organisation does not share Thomas’ deep qualms, even though it undoubtedly appeals to Thomas’ need to express them (else he would not have joined). Hence, we cannot call it a for-profit outfit. But reputation – that is, the appearance of having qualms – might very well be the driving force which keeps this Organisation going; and that would prove no obstacle to Thomas. What would he care for reputation, or the Organisation’s obsession with it, if it allowed him to prove himself ethical before God – say, by teaching?

And yet, there is still this persisting dread in Thomas, which does not abate as he begins to serve and to teach. He acquires impressive credentials in the pursuit of membership and service in the Organisation: certificates, teaching-hours, time in service to other organisations; why not? All this effort to prove himself before an Organisation which highly esteems ethical behaviour (or at least the appearance of it), only compounds his fear of being found unworthy. By the time he actually joins this Organisation, he has allowed this fear to dictate every action he undertakes; it is multiplied further when the Organisation begins laying upon him the standards he must hold to: ‘thou shalt not do or say anything to embarrass, discredit or otherwise tarnish the reputation of the Organisation’, and your superiors in the Organisation will be watching you. And he takes the commandment as gospel; what else can he do?

But – alas for poor Thomas! – his fellows in the Organisation do not fear rejection or judgment before God the way he does. Moreover, the Organisation compounds the torment of the fear, as if to insult him, by simultaneously telling him not to worry, that everything will be fine. And yet, he is worried, and he thinks there is nothing they can do about it – so Thomas lies, saying that everything is fine, that nothing is wrong, that he is not worried. His fellows begin to fear him, to view him as unstable and anti-social, because he cannot talk to them even though living with this contradiction is becoming a daily torment for him. It is a torment that follows him to his work and compounds itself there as he finds his students unwilling to accept what he is offering; this sends Thomas into a deep despair, and the quality of his work declines accordingly as he senses it being appreciated less and ever less, as though God is mocking his efforts to be useful and throwing them back in his face. He brings this despair back home; he tries to lock himself in his room, or he tries and fails to control his temper over some small incident (it doesn’t matter what) – though his rage is all directed at himself, his friends and neighbours in his adoptive city begin to worry, and fear him even more.

And the Organisation is not pleased. For Thomas has, in attempting to uphold the golden Commandment of the Organisation on his shaky, fearful foundation, done precisely what the Organisation has forbidden him to do, threatening the reputation of the Organisation. With as little ceremony and as little trouble as possible, and in the gentlest possible terms though in the urgent need to be rid of him, the Organisation encourages Thomas to resign and leave his adoptive city to return home. Thus, Thomas has brought about the end he so feared: his desire to prove himself capable of this ethical undertaking has ended only in ruin and rejection.

It is a depressing story, and we must leave Thomas standing there, ticket in hand. Do not pity Thomas, though, I ask: not for his sake but for yours. He doesn’t need it, and any pity you could offer would be sadly misplaced. He had his chance and we must suppose that he has to keep going from where we leave him. Thomas is silent throughout this tale save for his self-deceiving lies and his outbursts of despair and rage; he has no need to explain himself any more than he needs pity, and even if he tried to, he could never seek to be understood. That explanation has no meaning for you. So why am I telling you this outrageous downer of a tale, if indeed you find it so? Why am I assaulting your sensibilities with it, if your sensibilities are indeed assaulted? It is certainly not to ask you whether the author of this parable is as fearful and as bitter a young man as our hypothetical doubting Thomas is here – there would be no point in that.

Indeed, the question should be: what is the point? If seeing from wherever you are you do not perceive, and hearing from wherever you are do not listen nor understand, then rest easy – there is no point. The story is what you make of it, for you to accept or reject. Speaking for myself, I still am not sure what to do with this story.

'10th man down' by Nightwish

Powerful song; powerful anti-war message; amazing band. Not much else to say here about the video.

It's kind of sad that I hadn't really gotten into Nightwish until after I came back to the United States - they occupy a space which allows them a good deal of freedom in terms of sound, a freedom which they use to wonderful effect, whether in short and pointed songs like this one or longer, more subtle and complex pieces like 'The Poet and the Pendulum'. Regardless, rare among metal bands is that they sacrifice raw sound to play around with the classical elements, which makes them fun to listen to.

Hints from a Dissenter

I found myself reading the opinion section in the International Herald Tribune today, and Mr Douthat’s column (regarding the Catholic Church’s recent announcement aimed at proselytising conservative Anglicans) provided me with some concern.

It would be all too easy on my part to take refuge in the notion that we of the Dissenting movements which took the ideals of the Protest closer to heart have less to worry about on these issues, gender equality being central to both our witness and to our interpretation of the messages of the Gospels and the Epistles (we don’t and it’s not, not fully, but that’s another issue). But both the Catholic Church’s tactics and Mr Douthat’s response to them are troubling and problematic. For, while Mr Douthat easily dismisses the ecumenical movement of the latter half of the 20th century as only ‘tenuously’ connected to the Gospel, he fails to produce any kind of Scriptural justification for Benedict’s recent political ploy to grab away from the Anglican Communion those who are uncomfortable with the concept of women in the clergy.

I genuinely do believe that the Roman Church is on the wrong side of history, and more importantly on the wrong side of the Gospel message, in their opposition to greater participation of women in the Church. Women, including Peter’s wife, were among those doing deeds of power in Christ’s name, and were most praised in the Gospel according to Mark for their faithfulness to Jesus and to his message. The schizophrenia of Paul in the Epistles which the churches have accepted as canon is far more troubling, but I believe that Paul was speaking in greater accordance with Jesus’ message when he told the Galatians that ‘there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28). But this is merely one small part of the content of the current debate which is tearing apart the Anglican Communion at the seams – what is at issue now is the current tactic the Church is employing to speed that process.

Mr Douthat makes light of the tragic history the Anglican Communion shares with the Roman Catholic Church, but for those of us who know it, drenched as it is in human blood and ashes and befouled by intrigue and deceit, it adds another dimension completely to the Pope’s unfortunate decision. Such an aggressive political move, aimed at mobilising a disaffected sector of the church motivated more by hate than by love, brings to mind the bloody religious conflicts of the English Protest’s infancy: the legal excesses of Henry VIII and the brutal fanaticism of his eldest daughter Mary, resulting in the martyrdoms at the stake of some three hundred men and women of conscience, clergy and common folk alike, and the dislocation of hundreds more; the shaky coalition of religious moderates under Elizabeth, followed by calls by Pope Gregory XIII for her assassination and the resulting conspiracies (one such involving Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots); the Protestant massacres in France in which tens of thousands were killed (causing greater alarm to the English church and heavier crackdowns on Catholic sympathisers); the religious turmoils within the English nation under the Stuarts following Elizabeth’s death, egged on by both Catholic and Protestant fanatics, resulting in civil war. Though the Pope’s manoeuvre here is far more genteel (by necessity, as Mr Douthat admits) than those of his predecessors, he is coming dangerously close to tapping into the historical mistrust that in some areas has not been completely forgotten (e.g. Northern Ireland).

Worrying also is Mr Douthat’s proposed rationale for the Pope’s actions. He proposes that the Pope is more concerned with presenting a unified ‘front’ (his word, not mine) in a conflict with Islam than with the relations among Christians or with the rightness of allowing women to serve equally. Some hints from an English Dissenter by blood and by conviction: perhaps there is a better way to go about building the Kingdom of Christ. Christ tells us in Scripture that the heirs of the Kingdom are those who clothe the naked, those who feed the hungry, those who comfort the mournful, those who welcome the stranger, those who make peace, those who pray for their persecutors and those who love their enemies. The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury can build all the grand coalitions they so please, it will not avail them either one jot before God if those coalitions are not based on love for those who most need it, and justice and equality for those to whom it continues to be denied – for example, women and homosexuals. And it bears reminding both the liberals and the conservatives on this issue that the Kingdom of Christ is not built from conquest and the sword, nor is it built on the scale of empires and principalities and powers, but everyday, painstakingly, from even the smallest of seeds with enduring faith in the living God.

UPDATE: a needed note of levity.

Дос жылатып айтады, душпан күлдіртіп айтады

It’s a saying in Qazaq: ‘дос жылатып айтады, душпан күлдіртіп айтады’ (‘a false friend will make you laugh; only a true friend will make you cry’). I think it’s actually a very good saying – the friends you can trust are the ones who won’t be afraid to correct you when you do something wrong, even if it hurts you.

This is difficult for me to write about even now. I was invited to Nurgül Täte’s house for Courtney’s birthday party, but I was in an emotional shambles that day – my lesson had gone very poorly, and I had gone into a tailspin trying to plan my following lesson, and my host nephew and niece were trying to pick the lock on my room with a spoon. When I arrived at the house, I was on the verge of tears, and I tried to calm myself down in another room, but this caused everyone there to start worrying about me. In hindsight, I should not have gone there at all in that state, since it was offensive of me to be arriving at a birthday party when my emotions were not good – I was spreading my bad mood onto everyone else. Indeed, I had offended my host sister so badly she would hardly speak to me at all for the next two days (when we finally sorted it out). Asem and Nagima had to take me aside later and tell me bluntly that I needed to change my attitude completely if I wanted to work effectively (or at all) in Qazaqstan, that I needed to change my attitude toward my fellow Trainees and in general be more flexible.

It wasn’t easy at all to hear. But I’m glad they were honest with me – my trainers, and indeed all of my fellow Trainees, are far truer friends to me than I gave them credit for. They aren’t afraid of telling me what they think. It was good of my trainers to tell me that I need to learn to take their criticisms more gracefully, and also to have more human grace toward my fellow Trainees in general, because they are good people, every bit as good as the people in AmeriCorps, and I had been misprising them severely. They are undergoing the same trials I am, and they are dealing with them in different ways – they deserve what support I can offer. I had been holding them and myself to an impossibly high standard, and to be perfectly blunt, I needed a good slap in the face from my true friends to realise it.

Since then, I’ve been taking their advice to heart, without being overly hard on myself. I had a good discussion with Laura Marshall (whose blog site, ‘The Central Asian Times’, has some link-love in my volunteeroll to the right – visit her! If she writes half as well as my discussions with her have gone, you won’t regret it!) about how to handle cultural differences and how to manage my own stress. I’m still learning, and I should treat myself as such.

Visiting a Russian Orthodox Church …

… is definitely different from visiting an Antiochan Orthodox Church in the US. This past Sunday I went to Alexandrovski Church in С— to worship. The first noticeable thing about the church was how dark it was inside. St. Mary’s in Pawtucket was well-lit, with a sky-blue roof and great windows. Alexandrovski was much more atmospheric, with a plain wooden roof and four small windows to give the candles that were placed around the church their full effect. Before the service, the candles were blessed by the priest with holy water (from what looked like a plastic washpan of the sort we use in the монша) before being lit.

There were no pews, only some benches near the back for the older women to sit on during the service. Everyone else stood for most of the service which was almost entirely sung (in Russian, so my understanding was limited at best). Basically I offered my own prayers in English, and did as those around me were doing – crossing myself (with three fingers rather than two, right shoulder before left) and bowing, even getting on my knees and touching my head to the floor (as is done in a mosque). The service lasted a good two hours – it seemed to me that I was among the few who stayed inside the church building for the entire service, though. I met some of my students from English class outside, who greeted me with an eager ‘Мистер Купер!’ (‘Mr Cooper!’), and we went into an adjacent building for lunch.

Grace was sung both before and after the meal, facing a portrait of our Lord as an infant in the arms of St Mary Theotokos. The meal itself was борщ (borscht) with mayonnaise, bread, cookies, chocolate and tea, naturally. The church seems to be the closest thing I’ve yet seen to a community centre in С—, but only for ethnic Russians. Only Russian was spoken there; I had to manage with my incredibly simple, incredibly broken survival Russian. I didn’t manage so well when the priest tried after the service to engage me in a theological discussion; he resorted to drawing his point on a piece of paper – what looked to me like the centred-set model of the Church, with Christ as the sun in the centre and with people following the rays towards him. Definitely an interesting cultural experience! I must not have made such a bad impression, since two of my students invited me back to the service next Sunday. Time permitting, I will definitely take them up on that, but I will arrive at 10:30 instead of at 9:30 this time!

Alright, let's try this again.

Hub Day lunch break. I've got two hours - let's see what kind of photos I can upload today.







From our trip to Talghar on 18 September. It was a short hike, but a stunning one - some more adventurous Trainees (and current Volunteers) went into the waterfall for a brief shower; good thing it was a warm day.



My wonderful host family (clockwise from top left): Quanysh, Bota, Dauyr and Dana. The picture doesn't show it, but Quanysh is actually a pretty tall drink of water - he's 185 cm (about 6'1").

That's all I have time for at the moment. Көріскенше, my gentle readers.

Bring it on

Alright. It’s the fifth of October. I’ve got three classes to deliver today and two more team-teaching lessons to prepare for Wednesday. All unit lessons must be planned by the end of the week. Activities to choose for Game Fair and Health Day tomorrow. Site placement at the end of this week, plus intensive preparation for language testing next week. Welcome to PST in earnest. Bring it on.

I’m sorry I haven’t been to Ecik in awhile, and that my blog posts have gotten less frequent as time has gone on, but I simply didn’t have time this weekend to get up there – hopefully sometime before site placement I will be able to upload these posts from our favourite Ecik internet cafe (which is a basement, by the way, below a store, with five computers on mounted desks on the walls). It’s 300╤ an hour ($2.00), but man, is it ever worth it on the weekend! Ecik itself is a pretty cool town – I actually enjoy Ecik more than Almaty, since you get the benefits of being in a city (like a downtown, a bazaar, flush toilets and internet access) without the massive pollution. And the scenery is nice, too (not that it isn’t from Almaty, of course – just that it can’t always be seen).

I talked for two hours with my entire family yesterday, which was awesome (thanks, Skype!). Dad’s birthday was yesterday – I sang John McCutcheon’s birthday song. Mom’s birthday is on the same day as both Halloween and the Peace Corps swearing-in ceremony, so on the one hand it will be really hard to forget and on the other hand it will be really hard to contact her with everything that will be going on.

My full day of teaching three classes is over; it tired me out, but not as much as I thought it would. Two of the classes went well, one went very poorly. I am in the unfortunate habit of assuming the students know more than they do, and as a result one of my classes (for 8th form) was unreasonably and unrealistically difficult – based on a Robert Lewis Stevenson poem in Step 10 of our unit in the Kuznetsova textbook, with a lot of bookish vocabulary and weird constructions – and I was asking them to do critical thinking exercises based on their own feelings and experiences, which they weren’t yet ready to do (in English or in Russian!). Emiko suggested that it might have made a good university-level lesson plan, but not a good idea for 8th form in a Qazaqstani school; that lesson plan definitely goes in the mental recycle bin (it also didn’t help that I was teaching two groups instead of one and that they were being rowdy and noisy throughout). But I did learn a few things from that class (the first of which being to choose level-appropriate material for lesson planning, and not from the local textbooks). My other classes went okay, though – they were level-appropriate and the activities were good, but I still need to work on making my instructions clear for the activities I do. Today is Health Day and Game Fair, and I’ve got my activities prepped and ready to go. I’ll be monitoring Health Day activities and taking pictures at Health Day for the counterpart presentation during teacher training – hopefully I’ll post some of them on this blog. The same group of students who were at English club are likely to come to Health Day – and it’s entirely likely that Health Day will turn out to be a slight variation on English club, but I’m sure it will be fun all the same.