KING OF MASKS 變臉 PIN LIM

The other evening, while my apartment mate was at the soup kitchen where she volunteers every week, I did something at home of which she would have thoroughly disapproved. Nay, it would have made her both frantic and sorely irate. The kind of thing that she would have a hard time dealing with.

I watched a movie.

This particular movie is one which I have already seen well over a dozen times. She knows it's one of my all-time favourites, yet it grates on her, rubs her the wrong way, offends her sensibilities, and abrades her no end. To spite me, she'll imitate one of the characters, uttering the Mandarin term for grandfather ("ye ye") in a heart-rending way, several times, then collapse cackling wickedly.
She's an evil child at times.

Sometimes 'yeye' (爺爺) is a very beautiful sounding word.

Chinese tear-jerk-o-ramas drive her up the wall.

The emotion, the saccharineness, urgh!

She's a woman of steel.

None of that.


"Boys piss mixed with cloth ashes will stop the bleeding."


That is what the elderly hero tells the tiny heroine -- a child whom he bought to be his heir -- moments before her pretense at masculinity crashes around her pretty little head.


我是個女子！
['Wo shr ge nǚ-ze!']

"I - I'm a girl!"


Yep. That's one hell of a revelation. Girl-children in the old society were not suitable inheritors, and counted for almost nothing. The sale of the putative orphan was made infinitely quicker by dressing 'it' as a boy and giving 'it' a short hair cut. Plus the price fetched was higher.

The next eight minutes after that scene are emotionally draining.

No, shan't post a link to the movie, nor embed it here. Reason being that doing so inevitably means that some corporate weasel alerts youtube, and the account holder who uploaded it gets in trouble. Just look for it under either the English name ("king of masks") or the Chinese name (變臉).

Great acting. Great scenery.
An adorable little girl.
And a pet gibbon.


And a lodgement called 'The Hall of the Drunken Fairies' (醉仙樓). Where a sad little girl has a comforting bowl of noodles.

It's an utterly charming movie.

Sweet.

[SOURCE: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yi-Yuanji-Two-gibbons-in-an-oak-tree.jpg.

Painting by Yi Yuanji (易元吉 'Yeung Yuen-kat').]

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