[Oe List ...] Jaime for Tuesday ST, July 22

[via OE]

Forwarding the next four submissions to Saipan Tribune as I leave Canada for China.


Jaime



Coming Home
 
TheZhang Yimou-Gongli tandem that combined talents as director and actress infilms like Red Sorghum and Raise the RedLantern, joined forcesagain in a film entitled Coming Home.  The movie is set during China's CulturalRevolution an era in Chinese history that still invites polarity in thepolitical divide.  
 
The story of Coming Home isadapted from a novel, The Criminal LuYanshi.  Lu Yanshi was a professorsent to a labor camp, escaped and tried to rendezvous with his wife.  Their daughter was a budding dancer whocannot play the leading ballerina role due to her father's "outlaw"status, so she betrays the details of her parents' plan, leading to herfather's capture and she getting the dancing role.
 
Released after the Cultural Revolution, the father finds the daughteras a mere textile factory worker, and the wife developed amnesia as aconsequence of the sexual harassment she suffered from an officer's misuse andabuse of power.  Unhappily, the wife mistakesand identifies her returned husband as the officer.  The husband continues to write his wife toforgive their daughter's betrayal and to expect her husband's coming home.  The movie ends with the wife waiting outsidethe train station while the husband faithfully stands by her side as the taxidriver.
 
I am not suggesting that my coming home to Dong Bei is tragic.  However,I must say that it is difficult to remove certain bitter aftertastes of myUS-Canada experience of the last 50-yrs. A recollection of two is enough.
 
My primal wife and I, while still courting in Chicago in '67,were walking by Madison Ave. on her way to the train took her to a suburbanhome when a wino grabbed me by the cuff, pulled me against a wall, and asked:"what are you doing with a white girl, boy?"  The law has change much; the sentiment hasnot!
 
Not too long ago, a colleague in Edmonton came to Calgary for ajob interview.  The appointment was made onher married Caucasian name, but when the interviewer saw her, he declared thathis secretary made a double appointment and he was sorry he could not see her.  He abruptly left his office while she wasleft holding her application form stunned by what she felt was a blatant racialprejudice in the encounter.  Asians staffmenial jobs while the white collars stay white!
 
The prejudice against Confucian teachers was clear during theCultural Revolution, for like the illuminatiof Bavaria and the illustrado of España,the learned Confucian master tended to be aloof and powerful in ze control of thelearned elite.  They held the covetedgates of Party leadership.  Mao in theCultural Revolution wanted to return to the raw energy of workers and farmhandsrather than the disciplined rationality of the motivated petite bourgeoisie andconfident national capitalists among the four groups identified in China'srevolution.  A decisive move placed CPCintellectuals closer to the proletarian Peoples Liberation Army.
 
I saw as a University teacher how this structural haughtiness ofteachers and school administrators in China was displayed in our school diningroom where the first three floors were for students, tiered according to theprice of servings with the first floor being the cheapest; and then the fourthfloor exclusively for teachers and administrators with the price of lunchheavily subsidized by the school, and the floor equipped with an elevatorexclusively for their use.
 
I come home to China without much illusion.  I am no Sinophile but I affirm without being patronizingthe clear trends that I live with.  Hereare some:
 
1.  As the percentage ofHigh School graduates attending College (ten years ago, it was at 25 percent;in 2010, 62 percent) increases, the China market is saturated with degreedpersonal that cannot find the desired white-collar jobs.  Parents are dismayed that their child canonly get factory-line work, while children who spent a fortune for theireducation stay as far away as possible so they can be in denial, maintain aproper "face" for themselves and their family, while doing piddlylabor elsewhere.
 
2. A majority in China cuddles western consumerism and thedomestic market is measured by expenditure on non-essential consumer products, onyouth cosmetics and well-publicized but overpriced pharmaceuticals for weightloss.
 
3.  Many Chinese see thegrass as always greener on the other side, so they deeply and extensively borrowfunds for the chance to permanently live in another country, a major source ofheartaches for those who fall prey to unscrupulous recruiters on falsepromises.  (There were plenty of these inthe Saipan textile industry.)
 
4.  Ostentatious lifestylemaintains social standing.  Prodigiousspending is not unheardof in the Chinatowns around the world, and many Chinese leaving the countrystrive to join their tribe.
 
Mychallenge remains to be human in globalis. A new Zhongguoren (Chinese) can choose to be culturally centered, balancedand ever harmonious in a new planet strained by humanity's folly toself-destruct in the trappings of fame and fortune that overcomes ze sense ofselfhood. 
 
China ina new earth is where I make home.


j'aime la vie
pinoypanda2031 at aol.com

yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!


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