Normally I completely ignore the Oscars. This time, however, I have a pony in the race. My cousin's brilliant son, as of this writing, has scored big time. So yes, I am paying attention.
Probably won't go see his movie in a theatre, though.
For one thing, absolutely no one to go with.
Actually, that is key.
You see, other than Cantonese movies, which I always enjoyed by myself as a secret perversion, movies aren't really my thing. I like having a warm hand to hold, and someone to talk about the movie with afterward.
While we feast upon a scrumptious dinner.
I don't really like movie theatres in SF. They smell bad, the seats are of very suspect cleanliness, snacks and drinks are pretty darn awful and cost too much, and the ambient noise makes understanding what the characters said problematic. Plus the forward rows ALWAYS have big hair.
The last movie I thoroughly enjoyed by myself was King of Masks. Yep, a tearjerker. Especially when the adorable tyke wails "wo shir ge nü-dze!"
"我是個女子！"
Oy.
Saw that movie over two dozen times. My ex hated it. Even today she still teases me by mimicking the sounds and expressions in that movie.
Fortunately she's never seen most of the Cantonese movies I love, such as pretty much every ultra-violent gangster flick with Chou Yunfat, or any of the films featuring the lovely Cherie Chung. Well, possibly excepting Peking Opera Blues. I think she enjoyed it, I'm not sure. Too much historical detail, even though the script played fast and loose with the facts quite as much as Cherie Chung's character with other people's jewelry.
It's a great cinematic romp if you are Chinese or know recent mainland history. But probably more than a bit baffling if you are American-born Chinese, and not at all fully at home in the language or the culture.
Chou Yunfat was one hell of a handsome devil in the gangster movies, and one seriously wondered why women all over the world weren't stalking him. Plus he had style.
Confession: I also thoroughly enjoyed Anna And The King.
Chou Yunfat opposite Jodie Foster.
Jodie Foster, you will recall, was blazing and brilliant in the Hotel New Hampshire, which was exceedingly kinky, in a witty sort of way.
Bears featured as sexy beasts.
See, that's what all well-rounded movies need. Hot gangsters, brilliant (or brilliantly demented) Cantonese women, sex-fetish-ursines, and a great setting. If you've got all of those, the plot is immaterial. Just tell everyone to be themselves, and wait for the sparks to fly.
That will come naturally.
This, of course, explains why my brilliant first cousin ("cousin-nephew"?) is at the Oscars tonight, whereas I am sitting in front of my computer gibbering pretentiously about film.
Congratulations, dude.
Well-deserved.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Showing posts with label 周潤發. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 周潤發. Show all posts
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Saturday, April 13, 2013
SHANGHAI BUND: A PLACE, A TELEVISION SERIES, AND A WAY OF LIFE
Late the other night I dined on Japanese crispy objects made by a company in Thailand (Taokaenoi Food & Marketing Co., Ltd.) and distributed in the United States by a Chinese enterprise whose name cannot be found anywhere on the label.
It is delicious with good nutrients from the sea, best served as snack with your favourite drink: tempura seaweed, spicy flavour. Yumminess in a re-sealable bag, invented by a computer game nerd.
Manufacturing facilities are in Nonthaburi and Pathumthani.
Naturally I washed it down with Jameson's Irish Whiskey. Which is a fine product of the Pernod Ricard Company in France, though founded by a Scotsman in Dublin. After which I smoked an English pipe tobacco produced by a factory in Germany.
Life may not be multicultural, but my habits are.
Though you might say "messed up".
I will blame exposure during my mis-spent youth for some of that.
In the mid-eighties I moved to North Beach, which is next to Chinatown.One of the tunes that seemed to be constantly playing in the background all over Grant Avenue and Stockton Street was the theme song from a popular Hong Kong television series starring Chow Yun-fat (周潤發), Ray Lui (呂良偉), and Angie Chiu (趙雅芝).
上海灘 - SHANGHAI BUND
In 1920's Shanghai two young men, Hui Man-keung (Chow Yun-fat) and Ting Lik (Ray Lui), become members of a gang headed by Fung King-yiu (played by Lau Dan 劉丹). Both of them have a serious crush on Fung's daughter, Ching-ching (Angie Chiu). For the next twenty five episodes, things go wrong in great style, ending with the death of Hui (Chow) outside a fancy restaurant on his last night in Shanghai.
You can see Hui being killed in this short clip:
As a side note, to me the scene above highlights precisely why smoking should be allowed indoors again; bad things happen when you have to go outside for a fix.
Of course, back in the eighties you didn't need to do so. You could have stayed inside, safe and out of harm's way. Since then, the non-smoking yutzes have obviously wanted us dead.
The series was a smash hit, and propelled Chow Yun-fat (the smoking gentleman in the photo above) to stardom. You may have seen him in any number of gangster flicks made during the eighties, in which he often played a man on the wrong side of the law, but with a strong sense of morality and ethics. What you probably remembered was the gallantry and likability of the character. A rogue and a crook, but an upright man with an admirable style.
The series also helped speed the end of the chip-on-the-shoulder style of entertainment characterized by every single Bruce Lee movie, most of which are only barely watchable, but only if you read Bruce Lee as a clown of monumental proportions, a veritable master of physical comedy.
By the mid-eighties, Hong Kong movies no longer took themselves quite so seriously, and many of the people involved had realized that as important to the genre as giving the viewers roles to identify with was imparting a sense of mood, and images of style. Shanghai in the twenties and thirties, as an exemplifier of both of those things, become a trope. Many of the classiest gangster films from that era (the eighties) are either set there, or recall that time and place in key ways.
Shanghai during the republican period was indeed all that. At that time it was a world city, and a trend-setter. A hotbed of international commerce and intrigue, filled with wheeler-dealers, crooks, secret agents, tycoons, and smugglers, as well as jazz, nightclubs, restaurants, tailors, and beautiful women.
It was the flash and dazzle of the shiny metropolis which the exiles who ended up in Hong Kong after the war missed most of all. The poverty and desperation of the time there was forgotten, the vibrancy and excitement remained. Shanghai was where China grew up.
Writers, intellectuals, and the Chinese entertainment industry had experienced a golden age.
The Shanghainese sense of pride in their city infected all Chinese, and in the fifties, after twenty years of war and chaos, it seemed like nothing like that would ever come again. The Twentieth century had, on the whole, proven rather miserable, and Shanghai by sheer contrast had seemed such a beacon.
[The video clip above is Chou Hsuen (周璇) singing Yeh Shanghai ('Shanghai at night'). One of my favourite songs by her is Moon Over the Street Corner, which can be heard here: 街頭月. Just open it up in a separate tab or window to listen, as the visuals are static. A television documentary about Chou Hsuen is here: 金嗓子.
Probably her most famous song is When Will You Return (何日君再來), recorded in 1937. Teresa Teng sang it in 1979, at which time the communists described it as an obscene pro-Japanese ode, and the Taiwanese government banned it because it could be interpreted as an invitation to the People's Liberation Army.
It's actually a plaintive love ballad.]
For the next two decades, things scarcely improved.
Shanghai had been the stage on which the ideals of revolutionary China had had their fullest play, and the arena where all movements had most memorably come to fruition. Nationalists and Communists, Imperialists and Missionaries, all had plotted, manoeuvred, and manipulated in Shanghai for several decades. When the Communists swept to victory on the mainland in 1949, that ended.
Refugees flocked to Hong Kong, and the British kept a tight lid on them for fear that the revolution would take away their European foothold in the Far-East. The exiles found safety in the Crown Colony, as well as stultifying boredom.
[A parting duet evoking exile, and the promise of return, can be heard here: 叮嚀.
As with the other links, right-click to open in a new window; static visuals again. Recorded by Chou Hsuen and Yan Hwa (嚴華) in 1939, two years before their divorce. It should be mentioned that they had known each other since their very early teens, when both were part of the Moon Song and Dance Society (明月歌舞團樂社), which produced many performers for the Shanghai movie industry who later became famous. They married in 1938, when she was 18 years old and he was 23.]
But their creativity was not routed into propagandistic insanity, as happened elsewhere; Hong Kong was an island of unexciting calm.
The gilded memory of Shanghai grew more glorious as time passed.
In reality, Shanghai had seen exploitation and bloodshed on an operatic scale, engineered by the Japanese, the warlords and bankers, Nationalists and the Communists, the gangsters of the Green Gang (青帮) headed by Big Eared Tu (杜月笙), as well as the British and French authorities in the concessions, and others. But it had also been China's first modern city.
Life had been more fast-paced, and there had been so many more opportunities for everything, including crime.
By the late seventies, the Shanghai of legend was larger than life; all good things, all style, all greatness and grandness, everything worthwhile in Chinese popular culture, had a place in the myth.
The mainland and Taiwan both failed to offer realities that matched.
And Hong Kong was realizing that it, in part, was the primary heir.
Shanghai as it had been was gone. But there was money to be made off the corpse, and lovingly the authors, actors, and directors mined the material.
It was not so much cannibalism as regurgitation of cultural themes which by that time had become instinctive, an inherent part of their make-up and their welt-anschauung.
Their interpretation was in truth a version more Hong Kong than Shanghai, just as the gangster movies set in the Hong Kong of that day and age also shaded, gilded, and repainted the facts to fit a tale.
The results were often stellar.
Fantasy is, in the final regard, what art is all about.
The Shanghai of the show had never existed in real life, but was built on a sound stage in Kowloon Tong (九龍塘), Hong Kong. None of the main actors have any connection to Shanghai either. Chow Yun-fat is of Hakka ancestry, born on Lamma Island (南丫島), Ray Lui is Chinese from Vietnam, Danny Lau (Lau Dan) is a native of Shantung, Kent Tong is a Hong Kong native.....
Even the singer who made the series theme song famous (Frances Yip 葉麗儀) is local (and like Chow Yun-fat, of Hakka ancestry).
Only the executive under whose aegis the show was produced can arguably even be called Shanghainese: Run Run Shaw ((邵逸夫) was the son of a textile merchant from Chekiang based in that city. He moved to Singapore when he was nineteen in 1926. He and his brother founded South Sea Film (南洋影片), which later became Shaw Brothers Studio and was headquartered in Hong Kong, in 1930.
When the television series came out in 1980, over a generation had passed since the period portrayed.
What the show represents is a fairy-tale of a different era, one comfortably remote enough that it need not impinge upon the present. Both of the men about whom the stories revolve are in love with the good girl, but only one of them really stands a chance. And although she is the daughter of a gang leader, Ching Ching really does represent an ideal of femininity and Chinese womanhood. She is the one good thing that stands out above all else in the violent and sordid world in which her two suitors by necessity find themselves, and inspires their continuing humanity.
In the tale, successful gangsters and thugs are not always coarse and vulgar, but can indeed represent the same gallantries, idealism, and gentlemanly qualities that Chinese have always aspired to. Circumstance may determine one's station in life, but the person should nevertheless be faithful to what is civilized and worthwhile.
True to the constraints of real life, however, this tale is at times convoluted and messy. After having worked for Fung for several years, Hui (Chow Yun-fat) settles in Hong Kong, later returning to Shanghai. For both the very highest of motives as well as personal vengeance, Hui ends up killing Ching-ching's father, who was co-operating with the Japanese, and whose paid goons had slaughtered Hui's wife and in-laws.
He dies on the night that he was going to leave for France to find Ching-ching, determined to make things right again.
One should always aspire to rectitude, but events may sabotage the attempt. That does not mean that it isn't worth doing, merely that life sometimes really stinks.
Constancy does not necessarily get rewarded.
But it's worth it for its own sake.
Other than casting ideal ethical conduct into a new format, the show also achieved one other remarkable result: anti-heroes who dressed with style and pizzaz, and didn't act like idiots.
These were men that one could emulate, if not in actual life, but in personal behaviour and attitude. Instead of goobers wearing floppy kung-fu pajamas, Hong Kong television and movie screens started showing gangsters and crime-fighters with realistic clothing. The violence and moral questions were still there, but the characters had fleshed-out.
Up till the seventies, Hong Kong cinema had always shown right and wrong simplistically, with few shades of grey. All of sudden (actually, over a period of five or six years) snappy suits and multiple shades of grey became the norm, and the stories more complex and challenging.
Of course, for the juvenile delinquent element black and white was still the most recognizable facet, but they started aspiring to better presentation.
Clothes may not make the man, but they make the man much more.
It's that sense of real people, admirable individuals, rather than strictly two-dimensional epitomes, that made Hong Kong movies during the mid to late eighties worth watching. You might judge the actions reprehensible, but the characters were more complex and understandable in their responses.
And afterwards much of them stayed with you.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It is delicious with good nutrients from the sea, best served as snack with your favourite drink: tempura seaweed, spicy flavour. Yumminess in a re-sealable bag, invented by a computer game nerd.
Manufacturing facilities are in Nonthaburi and Pathumthani.
Naturally I washed it down with Jameson's Irish Whiskey. Which is a fine product of the Pernod Ricard Company in France, though founded by a Scotsman in Dublin. After which I smoked an English pipe tobacco produced by a factory in Germany.
Life may not be multicultural, but my habits are.
Though you might say "messed up".
I will blame exposure during my mis-spent youth for some of that.
In the mid-eighties I moved to North Beach, which is next to Chinatown.One of the tunes that seemed to be constantly playing in the background all over Grant Avenue and Stockton Street was the theme song from a popular Hong Kong television series starring Chow Yun-fat (周潤發), Ray Lui (呂良偉), and Angie Chiu (趙雅芝).
上海灘 - SHANGHAI BUND
In 1920's Shanghai two young men, Hui Man-keung (Chow Yun-fat) and Ting Lik (Ray Lui), become members of a gang headed by Fung King-yiu (played by Lau Dan 劉丹). Both of them have a serious crush on Fung's daughter, Ching-ching (Angie Chiu). For the next twenty five episodes, things go wrong in great style, ending with the death of Hui (Chow) outside a fancy restaurant on his last night in Shanghai.
You can see Hui being killed in this short clip:
As a side note, to me the scene above highlights precisely why smoking should be allowed indoors again; bad things happen when you have to go outside for a fix.
The series was a smash hit, and propelled Chow Yun-fat (the smoking gentleman in the photo above) to stardom. You may have seen him in any number of gangster flicks made during the eighties, in which he often played a man on the wrong side of the law, but with a strong sense of morality and ethics. What you probably remembered was the gallantry and likability of the character. A rogue and a crook, but an upright man with an admirable style.
The series also helped speed the end of the chip-on-the-shoulder style of entertainment characterized by every single Bruce Lee movie, most of which are only barely watchable, but only if you read Bruce Lee as a clown of monumental proportions, a veritable master of physical comedy.
By the mid-eighties, Hong Kong movies no longer took themselves quite so seriously, and many of the people involved had realized that as important to the genre as giving the viewers roles to identify with was imparting a sense of mood, and images of style. Shanghai in the twenties and thirties, as an exemplifier of both of those things, become a trope. Many of the classiest gangster films from that era (the eighties) are either set there, or recall that time and place in key ways.
Shanghai during the republican period was indeed all that. At that time it was a world city, and a trend-setter. A hotbed of international commerce and intrigue, filled with wheeler-dealers, crooks, secret agents, tycoons, and smugglers, as well as jazz, nightclubs, restaurants, tailors, and beautiful women.
It was the flash and dazzle of the shiny metropolis which the exiles who ended up in Hong Kong after the war missed most of all. The poverty and desperation of the time there was forgotten, the vibrancy and excitement remained. Shanghai was where China grew up.
Writers, intellectuals, and the Chinese entertainment industry had experienced a golden age.
The Shanghainese sense of pride in their city infected all Chinese, and in the fifties, after twenty years of war and chaos, it seemed like nothing like that would ever come again. The Twentieth century had, on the whole, proven rather miserable, and Shanghai by sheer contrast had seemed such a beacon.
[The video clip above is Chou Hsuen (周璇) singing Yeh Shanghai ('Shanghai at night'). One of my favourite songs by her is Moon Over the Street Corner, which can be heard here: 街頭月. Just open it up in a separate tab or window to listen, as the visuals are static. A television documentary about Chou Hsuen is here: 金嗓子.
Probably her most famous song is When Will You Return (何日君再來), recorded in 1937. Teresa Teng sang it in 1979, at which time the communists described it as an obscene pro-Japanese ode, and the Taiwanese government banned it because it could be interpreted as an invitation to the People's Liberation Army.
It's actually a plaintive love ballad.]
For the next two decades, things scarcely improved.
Shanghai had been the stage on which the ideals of revolutionary China had had their fullest play, and the arena where all movements had most memorably come to fruition. Nationalists and Communists, Imperialists and Missionaries, all had plotted, manoeuvred, and manipulated in Shanghai for several decades. When the Communists swept to victory on the mainland in 1949, that ended.
Refugees flocked to Hong Kong, and the British kept a tight lid on them for fear that the revolution would take away their European foothold in the Far-East. The exiles found safety in the Crown Colony, as well as stultifying boredom.
[A parting duet evoking exile, and the promise of return, can be heard here: 叮嚀.
As with the other links, right-click to open in a new window; static visuals again. Recorded by Chou Hsuen and Yan Hwa (嚴華) in 1939, two years before their divorce. It should be mentioned that they had known each other since their very early teens, when both were part of the Moon Song and Dance Society (明月歌舞團樂社), which produced many performers for the Shanghai movie industry who later became famous. They married in 1938, when she was 18 years old and he was 23.]
But their creativity was not routed into propagandistic insanity, as happened elsewhere; Hong Kong was an island of unexciting calm.
The gilded memory of Shanghai grew more glorious as time passed.
In reality, Shanghai had seen exploitation and bloodshed on an operatic scale, engineered by the Japanese, the warlords and bankers, Nationalists and the Communists, the gangsters of the Green Gang (青帮) headed by Big Eared Tu (杜月笙), as well as the British and French authorities in the concessions, and others. But it had also been China's first modern city.
Life had been more fast-paced, and there had been so many more opportunities for everything, including crime.
By the late seventies, the Shanghai of legend was larger than life; all good things, all style, all greatness and grandness, everything worthwhile in Chinese popular culture, had a place in the myth.
The mainland and Taiwan both failed to offer realities that matched.
And Hong Kong was realizing that it, in part, was the primary heir.
It was not so much cannibalism as regurgitation of cultural themes which by that time had become instinctive, an inherent part of their make-up and their welt-anschauung.
Their interpretation was in truth a version more Hong Kong than Shanghai, just as the gangster movies set in the Hong Kong of that day and age also shaded, gilded, and repainted the facts to fit a tale.
The results were often stellar.
Fantasy is, in the final regard, what art is all about.
Even the singer who made the series theme song famous (Frances Yip 葉麗儀) is local (and like Chow Yun-fat, of Hakka ancestry).
Only the executive under whose aegis the show was produced can arguably even be called Shanghainese: Run Run Shaw ((邵逸夫) was the son of a textile merchant from Chekiang based in that city. He moved to Singapore when he was nineteen in 1926. He and his brother founded South Sea Film (南洋影片), which later became Shaw Brothers Studio and was headquartered in Hong Kong, in 1930.
When the television series came out in 1980, over a generation had passed since the period portrayed.
What the show represents is a fairy-tale of a different era, one comfortably remote enough that it need not impinge upon the present. Both of the men about whom the stories revolve are in love with the good girl, but only one of them really stands a chance. And although she is the daughter of a gang leader, Ching Ching really does represent an ideal of femininity and Chinese womanhood. She is the one good thing that stands out above all else in the violent and sordid world in which her two suitors by necessity find themselves, and inspires their continuing humanity.
In the tale, successful gangsters and thugs are not always coarse and vulgar, but can indeed represent the same gallantries, idealism, and gentlemanly qualities that Chinese have always aspired to. Circumstance may determine one's station in life, but the person should nevertheless be faithful to what is civilized and worthwhile.
True to the constraints of real life, however, this tale is at times convoluted and messy. After having worked for Fung for several years, Hui (Chow Yun-fat) settles in Hong Kong, later returning to Shanghai. For both the very highest of motives as well as personal vengeance, Hui ends up killing Ching-ching's father, who was co-operating with the Japanese, and whose paid goons had slaughtered Hui's wife and in-laws.
He dies on the night that he was going to leave for France to find Ching-ching, determined to make things right again.
One should always aspire to rectitude, but events may sabotage the attempt. That does not mean that it isn't worth doing, merely that life sometimes really stinks.
Constancy does not necessarily get rewarded.
But it's worth it for its own sake.
Other than casting ideal ethical conduct into a new format, the show also achieved one other remarkable result: anti-heroes who dressed with style and pizzaz, and didn't act like idiots.
These were men that one could emulate, if not in actual life, but in personal behaviour and attitude. Instead of goobers wearing floppy kung-fu pajamas, Hong Kong television and movie screens started showing gangsters and crime-fighters with realistic clothing. The violence and moral questions were still there, but the characters had fleshed-out.
Up till the seventies, Hong Kong cinema had always shown right and wrong simplistically, with few shades of grey. All of sudden (actually, over a period of five or six years) snappy suits and multiple shades of grey became the norm, and the stories more complex and challenging.
Of course, for the juvenile delinquent element black and white was still the most recognizable facet, but they started aspiring to better presentation.
Clothes may not make the man, but they make the man much more.
It's that sense of real people, admirable individuals, rather than strictly two-dimensional epitomes, that made Hong Kong movies during the mid to late eighties worth watching. You might judge the actions reprehensible, but the characters were more complex and understandable in their responses.
And afterwards much of them stayed with you.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, March 10, 2012
HAK KA FA 客家話 THE GUEST FAMILY TONGUE
Roaming linguists on the internet will be pleased to note that Wikipedia is also available for their reading pleasure in the Hakka language.
From the Wiki page on Hakka speech: "Hak-kâ ngî-ngièn' (yú miàng Hak-kâ-fa / Hak-kâ-va, kán chhin Hak-Ngî) he Hon-ngî chhit-thai ngî-ngièn chû-yit. Hak-ngì yû kí chûng, fûn m̂-thùng kai thi̍t set. Yung Hak-ngì-chá kîn-chhoî Chûng-koet nàm fông kí sén: Kóng-thûng, Fuk-kien, Kông-sî, Kóng-sî, Si-chhôn, Fù-nàm, Kui-chû, Hoí-nám taú laû Thoì-vân. Chhoî fà-thi chû ngoi, yû haú-tó koet-kâ tû yû hiaú-kóng Hak-ngì kai yung-chá hi kî-mìn. Yîn-koet fò khì thâ Eû-chû koet-ga, Mî-koet, Fî-chû, Nàm Thai-phìn-yòng, Yin-thu, Fî-lṳ̍t-pîn, Mâ-loì-sî-â, Au-zu tén thi fông tû yû."
[SOURCE: http://hak.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hak-k%C3%A2-fa.]
Translation: "The Hakka spoken language (also called Hakka dialect or abbreviated as 'Hak-speak'), is one of the seven great spoken language groups of China. There are mutually unintelligible variants of Hakka.
Users of the Hakka language are mostly in provinces of Southern China, such as Canton, Fukien, Kiangsi, Kwangsi, Szechuan, Hunan, Kueichow, Hainan Island, and Taiwan. Elsewhere in the world there are speakers of Hakka in many places. Besides Great Britain, speakers can be found in other European countries, the United States, Africa, the Southern Pacific regions, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Australia, and several places else."
HAKKA CHINESE
Like with the term dialect, as used in the Chinese context, the term ethnicity is imprecise and must be used with caution. The seven spoken language groups mentioned above differ from each other quite as much as the branches of the European tongues, consequently Yue (粤), Gan (贛), Ke (客), Min (閩), Hsiang (湘), Wu (吳語), and Mandarin (官語) are as distinct from each other as German, Danish, Dutch, English, und zo weiter. Within each Sinitic 'language', there may be innumerable dialects ranging across the entire spectrum of possible intelligibilities.
Ethnicity, when used within a Chinese context, does not necessarily mean of different racial origin, but more accurately describes group cultural and social differences of very long standing.
The Hakka are Han (漢), but they have their own cultural ("ethnic") norms underneath the common meta-culture that all ethnic Chinese share.
Some of those differences are due to history, some because of environment, some language-based.
[Yue (粤): Cantonese. Gan (贛): Jiangsi language. Ke (客): Hakka, spoken in Canton province, parts of Fujian, Taiwan, Szechuan, and many other places - see above. Min (閩): The entire Min (Fujian) dialect group, including Teochew, Amoy, Chuangchow, and Foochow, with speakers in Canton province, Fujian, Taiwan, many South-east Asian countries, and elsewhere. Hsiang (湘): Spoken mostly in Hunan (湖南), but also in parts of Szechuan (蜀) and Kwangsi (廣西). Wu (吳語): Shanghainese, Soochow language, and relatives. Mandarin (官語): The official language of China, based on the northern vernacular, spoken as a native tongue across a vast expanse.]
Two of my favourite Cantonese movie stars are Cherie Chung (鍾楚紅) and Chow Yun-fat (周潤發).
Like many Hong Kong people, they are also of Hakka descent.
Great actors. Great screen personalities.
And both totally dishy.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
From the Wiki page on Hakka speech: "Hak-kâ ngî-ngièn' (yú miàng Hak-kâ-fa / Hak-kâ-va, kán chhin Hak-Ngî) he Hon-ngî chhit-thai ngî-ngièn chû-yit. Hak-ngì yû kí chûng, fûn m̂-thùng kai thi̍t set. Yung Hak-ngì-chá kîn-chhoî Chûng-koet nàm fông kí sén: Kóng-thûng, Fuk-kien, Kông-sî, Kóng-sî, Si-chhôn, Fù-nàm, Kui-chû, Hoí-nám taú laû Thoì-vân. Chhoî fà-thi chû ngoi, yû haú-tó koet-kâ tû yû hiaú-kóng Hak-ngì kai yung-chá hi kî-mìn. Yîn-koet fò khì thâ Eû-chû koet-ga, Mî-koet, Fî-chû, Nàm Thai-phìn-yòng, Yin-thu, Fî-lṳ̍t-pîn, Mâ-loì-sî-â, Au-zu tén thi fông tû yû."
[SOURCE: http://hak.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hak-k%C3%A2-fa.]
Translation: "The Hakka spoken language (also called Hakka dialect or abbreviated as 'Hak-speak'), is one of the seven great spoken language groups of China. There are mutually unintelligible variants of Hakka.
Users of the Hakka language are mostly in provinces of Southern China, such as Canton, Fukien, Kiangsi, Kwangsi, Szechuan, Hunan, Kueichow, Hainan Island, and Taiwan. Elsewhere in the world there are speakers of Hakka in many places. Besides Great Britain, speakers can be found in other European countries, the United States, Africa, the Southern Pacific regions, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Australia, and several places else."
HAKKA CHINESE
Like with the term dialect, as used in the Chinese context, the term ethnicity is imprecise and must be used with caution. The seven spoken language groups mentioned above differ from each other quite as much as the branches of the European tongues, consequently Yue (粤), Gan (贛), Ke (客), Min (閩), Hsiang (湘), Wu (吳語), and Mandarin (官語) are as distinct from each other as German, Danish, Dutch, English, und zo weiter. Within each Sinitic 'language', there may be innumerable dialects ranging across the entire spectrum of possible intelligibilities.
Ethnicity, when used within a Chinese context, does not necessarily mean of different racial origin, but more accurately describes group cultural and social differences of very long standing.
The Hakka are Han (漢), but they have their own cultural ("ethnic") norms underneath the common meta-culture that all ethnic Chinese share.
Some of those differences are due to history, some because of environment, some language-based.
[Yue (粤): Cantonese. Gan (贛): Jiangsi language. Ke (客): Hakka, spoken in Canton province, parts of Fujian, Taiwan, Szechuan, and many other places - see above. Min (閩): The entire Min (Fujian) dialect group, including Teochew, Amoy, Chuangchow, and Foochow, with speakers in Canton province, Fujian, Taiwan, many South-east Asian countries, and elsewhere. Hsiang (湘): Spoken mostly in Hunan (湖南), but also in parts of Szechuan (蜀) and Kwangsi (廣西). Wu (吳語): Shanghainese, Soochow language, and relatives. Mandarin (官語): The official language of China, based on the northern vernacular, spoken as a native tongue across a vast expanse.]
Two of my favourite Cantonese movie stars are Cherie Chung (鍾楚紅) and Chow Yun-fat (周潤發).
Like many Hong Kong people, they are also of Hakka descent.
Great actors. Great screen personalities.
And both totally dishy.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, July 25, 2011
A BETTER TOMORROW 2 (英雄本色 2): REAL HEROES HAVE FLAWS, NOT SUPER POWERS
One of the all-time great entertainment experiences is seeing over-the-top acting, humongous-ego histrionics, and operatic mega-violence at a movie theatre.
So you can probably well-imagine that half the audience at the 金都戲院 wet their panties when seeing the 1987 action adventure A Better Tomorrow 2.
After it was over, we went into the night time air and headed up Columbus back to Broadway. We were not the equals of the tough guys in the movie, but we never-the-less felt inspired and alive.
英雄本色 2
Honour, revenge, and all the finest Cantonese values.
Nearly one hundred people get shot in a climactic gun battle the main point of which might well be gallantry, but by then you are already so foaming at the mouth from the sheer excitement of this rock-em sock-em gangster opera that you probably didn't notice.
Directed by John Woo (吴宇森).
Produced by Tsui Hark (徐克).
Starring Chow Yun-fat (周潤發) as Ken, Dean Shek Tien (石天) as Lung si, Ti Lung (狄龍) as Sung Tse-ho, and Leslie Cheung (張國榮) as his brother Sung Tse-kit.
Rice is my family
The scene in which Chow Yun-Fat proves that he's as mean-crazy a New Yorker as they come.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m0fW-SY7eY&feature=related
"You don't like my rice? You don't like my rice?!? Eat the rice!"
A Better Tomorrow II - Hotel Shootout
Ken and Lung shoot their way out of a residential hotel.
"There's only one way out. I want you to fight by my side. If we don't fight... ... we'll both die here. If we win, we'll start all over again."
[Update 03/10/2012: the original clip disappeared from youtube, so you'll have to watch Chow Yun-fat speaking German. Yeah, I know, weird. Imagine John Wayne and the Cartwrights in German. "zo, boss, wir gehen zerug nach ranch, ja?" "Ja, also denn." " Es iz doch affengeil." "Mensch!"]
It's not surprising that this became a cult film. But it's a bit disturbing that most of its non-Chinese fans do not grasp the ethical warp and woof of Cantonese Gangster movies in general, and this film in particular.
An article well worth reading on this subject is here:
http://www.mediacircus.net/johnwoo.html
"The Films of John Woo and the Art of Heroic Bloodshed"
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly: LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
So you can probably well-imagine that half the audience at the 金都戲院 wet their panties when seeing the 1987 action adventure A Better Tomorrow 2.
After it was over, we went into the night time air and headed up Columbus back to Broadway. We were not the equals of the tough guys in the movie, but we never-the-less felt inspired and alive.
英雄本色 2
Honour, revenge, and all the finest Cantonese values.
Nearly one hundred people get shot in a climactic gun battle the main point of which might well be gallantry, but by then you are already so foaming at the mouth from the sheer excitement of this rock-em sock-em gangster opera that you probably didn't notice.
Directed by John Woo (吴宇森).
Produced by Tsui Hark (徐克).
Starring Chow Yun-fat (周潤發) as Ken, Dean Shek Tien (石天) as Lung si, Ti Lung (狄龍) as Sung Tse-ho, and Leslie Cheung (張國榮) as his brother Sung Tse-kit.
Rice is my family
The scene in which Chow Yun-Fat proves that he's as mean-crazy a New Yorker as they come.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m0fW-SY7eY&feature=related
"You don't like my rice? You don't like my rice?!? Eat the rice!"
A Better Tomorrow II - Hotel Shootout
Ken and Lung shoot their way out of a residential hotel.
"There's only one way out. I want you to fight by my side. If we don't fight... ... we'll both die here. If we win, we'll start all over again."
[Update 03/10/2012: the original clip disappeared from youtube, so you'll have to watch Chow Yun-fat speaking German. Yeah, I know, weird. Imagine John Wayne and the Cartwrights in German. "zo, boss, wir gehen zerug nach ranch, ja?" "Ja, also denn." " Es iz doch affengeil." "Mensch!"]
It's not surprising that this became a cult film. But it's a bit disturbing that most of its non-Chinese fans do not grasp the ethical warp and woof of Cantonese Gangster movies in general, and this film in particular.
An article well worth reading on this subject is here:
http://www.mediacircus.net/johnwoo.html
"The Films of John Woo and the Art of Heroic Bloodshed"
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly: LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, January 09, 2011
PRISON ON FIRE SONG
The movie 'Prison on Fire' with Chow Yun-fat isn't the greatest movie in the world. But it's a pretty darn good movie, and as excellent a representative of mr. Chow's oeuvre as any.
That alone should make it worth borrowing from the local library.
[Prison on Fire: (gaam yuk fung wan 監獄風雲) made in 1987, directed by Ringo Lam. The movie features three stellar performances: Chou Yun-fat as Ching, the inmate of rather common antecedents, who befriends Yiu, played by Tony Leung Ka-fai, both of them versus Roy Cheung as the sadistic prison guard. It's a buddy flick, but one that speaks to the Cantonese welt-anshauung, and especially the sense of loyalty to ones friends in the hardest of times. In one sense, it's about chivalry - being gallant and righteous from the very fabric of one's character. In quite another sense, it's also about biting the ear off of a sadistic prison guard.
So there's something satisfying there for everyone.
Ringo Lam: 林嶺東 born 1955, director of many exciting action movies, many of which have an undercurrent of elements familiar to any aficionado of Cantonese operas and Gong-wu (江湖) novels. Chow Yun-fat: 周潤發 born 1955, Hong Kong actor of Hakka origin. If you haven't heard of him, you may have been living in a cave for the past twenty years. Tony Leung Ka-fei: 梁家輝 also known as 'big Tony', to distinguish him from someone else. Very good in roles that require a polished or scholarly image. Voted 'man you would really like to see in a tuxedo' by this blog. Roy Cheung: 張耀揚 often cast as a villain or sadist, partly due to his psychotic performance in Prison of Fire. Can be described as intense, even obsessed, in many of his roles.]
FRIENDSHIP'S GLOW
But what really anchors the movie in the viewers mind is the song 'yau-yi ji gwong' (友誼之光).
In this link, scenes from the movie are the background to the recording.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmcXSrgIkFw
The brassy female whose voice starts singing the song as counter point at the fifty second mark is Maria Cordero - also known as 'Fat Momma Maria' (肥媽瑪俐亞) - the Macanese songwriter and singer who wrote the lyrics.
Sut yau man lei san, gak-jo leung tei yiew;
Pat seui kien-min, sam-tsong ya chi-hiew;
Yau-yi goi pat liew!
For a cool video with the lyrics superimposed, so that you can sing along, see this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpM21PR5Jfc&feature=related
No, I don't know why this video shows famous European sights (including Keukenhof and the Arc de Triomf). The visuals are entirely baffling, and decontextual. That's common with karaoke numbers, but more often than not they'll feature some almond-eyed cutie-pie ambling along a tropical beach, with birds, water, palm trees, and icecream shakes.
Or something equally inane and stirring.
人生於世上有幾个知己
Yan-sang yu sai seung, yau gei ko chi kei ?
多少友誼能長存
To-sieu yau-yi nang cheung-chyun?
今日别離共你雙雙两握手
Kam-yat bit-lei gung ney seung-seung leung ak sau,
友誼常在你我心里
Yau-yi seung tsoi ney ngoh sam leui!
In the span of a life how much mutual recognition? How many friendships will long survive? Part today warmly shaking hands, With friendship that remains strong within both of us.
今天且要暫别
Kam-tien che yiu jaam-biet,
他朝也定能聚首
Ta-chiew ya deng nang jeui-sau;
縱使不能會面
Jung-si pat nang woei-min,
始終也是朋友
Chi-chung ya si pang-yau.
Today we mark this moment, Another time we shall meet once more; If we're never again face-to-face, From beginning to end we'll stay friends.
說有萬里山 隔阻兩地遙
Sut yau man lei san, gak-jo leung tei yiew;
不需見面 心中也知曉
Pat seui kien-min, sam-tsong ya chi-hiew;
友誼改不了
Yau-yi goi pat liew.
Myriad mountains, and obstacles beyond measure; No need to actually meet, the heart still deeply knows; this a bond which shall indeed not change.
Like all song lyrics, the cohesion it has in its own language is lost in translation. Forgive me for not being adequate to the task, I cannot do it justice.
Go ahead and watch the movie. Let yourself sink into a Cantonese-hued world for a while, in which universal values will resonate in slightly less familiar ways than you know.
Friendships made in adverse times are annealed by hardship, made stronger by the flames.
NOTE: Previously I have mentioned this song in relation to some other matters - that post provides more framework in which to comprehend it.
This post:http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2010/05/kiss-me-you-rebel.html
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
That alone should make it worth borrowing from the local library.
[Prison on Fire: (gaam yuk fung wan 監獄風雲) made in 1987, directed by Ringo Lam. The movie features three stellar performances: Chou Yun-fat as Ching, the inmate of rather common antecedents, who befriends Yiu, played by Tony Leung Ka-fai, both of them versus Roy Cheung as the sadistic prison guard. It's a buddy flick, but one that speaks to the Cantonese welt-anshauung, and especially the sense of loyalty to ones friends in the hardest of times. In one sense, it's about chivalry - being gallant and righteous from the very fabric of one's character. In quite another sense, it's also about biting the ear off of a sadistic prison guard.
So there's something satisfying there for everyone.
Ringo Lam: 林嶺東 born 1955, director of many exciting action movies, many of which have an undercurrent of elements familiar to any aficionado of Cantonese operas and Gong-wu (江湖) novels. Chow Yun-fat: 周潤發 born 1955, Hong Kong actor of Hakka origin. If you haven't heard of him, you may have been living in a cave for the past twenty years. Tony Leung Ka-fei: 梁家輝 also known as 'big Tony', to distinguish him from someone else. Very good in roles that require a polished or scholarly image. Voted 'man you would really like to see in a tuxedo' by this blog. Roy Cheung: 張耀揚 often cast as a villain or sadist, partly due to his psychotic performance in Prison of Fire. Can be described as intense, even obsessed, in many of his roles.]
FRIENDSHIP'S GLOW
But what really anchors the movie in the viewers mind is the song 'yau-yi ji gwong' (友誼之光).
In this link, scenes from the movie are the background to the recording.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmcXSrgIkFw
The brassy female whose voice starts singing the song as counter point at the fifty second mark is Maria Cordero - also known as 'Fat Momma Maria' (肥媽瑪俐亞) - the Macanese songwriter and singer who wrote the lyrics.
Sut yau man lei san, gak-jo leung tei yiew;
Pat seui kien-min, sam-tsong ya chi-hiew;
Yau-yi goi pat liew!
For a cool video with the lyrics superimposed, so that you can sing along, see this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpM21PR5Jfc&feature=related
No, I don't know why this video shows famous European sights (including Keukenhof and the Arc de Triomf). The visuals are entirely baffling, and decontextual. That's common with karaoke numbers, but more often than not they'll feature some almond-eyed cutie-pie ambling along a tropical beach, with birds, water, palm trees, and icecream shakes.
Or something equally inane and stirring.
人生於世上有幾个知己
Yan-sang yu sai seung, yau gei ko chi kei ?
多少友誼能長存
To-sieu yau-yi nang cheung-chyun?
今日别離共你雙雙两握手
Kam-yat bit-lei gung ney seung-seung leung ak sau,
友誼常在你我心里
Yau-yi seung tsoi ney ngoh sam leui!
In the span of a life how much mutual recognition? How many friendships will long survive? Part today warmly shaking hands, With friendship that remains strong within both of us.
今天且要暫别
Kam-tien che yiu jaam-biet,
他朝也定能聚首
Ta-chiew ya deng nang jeui-sau;
縱使不能會面
Jung-si pat nang woei-min,
始終也是朋友
Chi-chung ya si pang-yau.
Today we mark this moment, Another time we shall meet once more; If we're never again face-to-face, From beginning to end we'll stay friends.
說有萬里山 隔阻兩地遙
Sut yau man lei san, gak-jo leung tei yiew;
不需見面 心中也知曉
Pat seui kien-min, sam-tsong ya chi-hiew;
友誼改不了
Yau-yi goi pat liew.
Myriad mountains, and obstacles beyond measure; No need to actually meet, the heart still deeply knows; this a bond which shall indeed not change.
Like all song lyrics, the cohesion it has in its own language is lost in translation. Forgive me for not being adequate to the task, I cannot do it justice.
Go ahead and watch the movie. Let yourself sink into a Cantonese-hued world for a while, in which universal values will resonate in slightly less familiar ways than you know.
Friendships made in adverse times are annealed by hardship, made stronger by the flames.
NOTE: Previously I have mentioned this song in relation to some other matters - that post provides more framework in which to comprehend it.
This post:http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2010/05/kiss-me-you-rebel.html
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
COMFORTABLE SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS, HOT BEVERAGES
It was a very enjoyable lunch and I wonder now why I haven't gone there more often since they finally re-opened. Also I got to see the w...
