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I’ve gone up another thousand on my Flickr views! It only took a little more than a month!

Here’s my page:

MFinChina

Richard Widmark, who played Skip in Samuel Fuller’s anti-Communist film noir PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET died on March 24 at the ripe old age of 93. Although he was best known for playing a psychopath in KISS OF DEATH (I’ve seen the famous scene, though not the whole movie), I first saw him in PICKUP, which I showed my students the last time I taught my American Film, American Culture class. It was a good choice because we had a short semester, and PICKUP is an example of a film noir, an anti-Communist movie, and … hmm … something else, but I forgot what … all at once. I was wondering what the students would think of the anti-Communist stuff, but by and large, they thought it was hilarious! Mo’s line, “I don’t know much about Commies … but I don’t like ‘em!” provoked a lot of laughter. I think my students had seen plenty of anti-capitalist propaganda in the past, and it was fun for them to see something from the other side.

Here’s an obituary from the New York Times: Richard Widmark, actor, dies at 93.

A story of someone who took voting seriously!

People could only vote in the place of their birth, and she had moved away.  She needed to go back, but suffers from carsickness, so …

It’s my job!

Originally uploaded by MFinChina

The young girl who was in the costume seemed to be having a good time. It seems that the character is supposed to be some sort of blue-skinned Native American, and is promoting an English school.

I’ve always thought Michael Haenke seemed so creepy and nasty that it’d be a good idea to avoid his films.  (The only good thing about him is that he makes me think about the Mr. Hankie song from SOUTH PARK, except with lyrics like, “You hate him, and he hates you.”)  Here’s a letter someone who stumbled into FUNNY GAMES without knowing what they were in for wrote to Roger Ebert’s website:

“Funny Games” spills out into the lobby
From Kate Johnson:

Too late I read your review [of “Funny Games“]. I was blindsided by this movie. Went with a friend and didn’t know a THING about it beforehand. All I kept saying was, “Let’s get out of here. It’s a MOVIE. The director/ producer/whatever is trying to forcefeed us with S–T. How can the actors even think of being in such a movie — what about that little boy?”

Finally when it was over and my “friend” looked like a deer in the headlights — I was physically sick. I demanded my money back from the box office only to have the girl laugh at me — at first. I threw up on the floor right in front of her — and it splattered. She gave me the money, helped me clean up and actually cried. My “friend” was embarrassed by my behavior — and therefore has lost my friendship. This whole last scene (starring me, my friend, the cashier at the box office), seemed a sequel to the movie.

Originally found on www.defamer.com

Professor: We have to accept the fact that there are still individuals in this country who are horribly racist, who have a completely backwards system of beliefs… Now, I call that person ‘Nana,’ but that’s neither here nor there.

University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts

(From www.overheardeverywhere.com)

No shower for you, young man!

Originally uploaded by MFinChina

A stupid warning, on a Bodum coffee press.

… is the Arabic name for my favorite cartoon, CYBORG KUROCHAN. This knowledge will probably not come in useful some day. But then again, who knows?

I was just hanging around with the Dog Man the other day, chewing the fat, and I asked him if anything interesting had gone on in the neighborhood lately. He said that nothing had, and the only interesting thing lately was the situation in Tibet. I was surprised that he had brought it up himself, out of the blue, so I asked him, “So, because you are a Han person, how do you feel about all of this?” His reply was really interesting, because it seemed to be based on his own ideas, not on anything I’ve seen in the media.

He said that he thinks the US had a lot to do with instigating the unrest. To back this up, he told me that there is a really large US navy buildup in the waters surrounding China right now, and their appearance basically co-incided with the start of the trouble. He also said he thinks the US would like to break up China into pieces, because then it would become less powerful. He believed if Tibet were allowed to separate, then Hong Kong and Macao would want to be totally separate too. If this happened, China might cease to be a strong economic and political rival for the US, just as the breakup of the Soviet Union caused Russia to become way less powerful than before.

Really, this makes a lot of sense. If there is more ethnic or regional unrest in China, it will hurt the economy because it will disrupt manufacturing, natural resource gathering, etc. It will also discourage foreign investment in China, since nobody wants to invest in someplace unstable. If Hong Kong totally separated (although I don’t think Hong Kong would ever do that; I think they are smart enough to see that their economy would not be able to survive now without strong links to China), that would be a really huge blow to China’s economy and financial sector.
He concluded what he was saying by telling me, “Bush is bad!”

It was a very interesting thing to hear, and pretty astute analysis from someone with a 9th grade education.

Wednesday I finished my classes around 11:30 and walked back to the Minhang teachers’ hotel to pick up my stuff.  I crossed the road, and then noticed a little guy just standing there as the students walked past.  He was over 50, and was dressed in a poor, farmer-ish kind of way.  As I approached him, I noticed him casually opening and unopening his coat, and then I thought, “WAIT A MINUTE!  IS THAT HIS PENIS AND TESTICLES HANGING OUT?!?”  Sure enough, the next time he did it, I saw that while he had buttoned the top button of his pants, his fly was undone, and his penis and testicles were protruding, like he had pulled them through the hole.  Not only was this unattractive, but I also wondered if it was really uncomfortable.  None of the students walking by seemed to be noticing him, and I wondered what to do?  Like, should I make a fuss?  Or wouldn’t that just make lots of girls look, embarrassing them?  Should I tackle him or something?  Should I go to the security guard at the crosswalk and make a complaint?  I stood there kind of stunned for a minute, and then decided to just say to the man, “WHAT are you doing?”  He sort of laughed, and then shuffled off across the street.

After collecting my stuff from the hotel I came out, and saw the guy was still across the street.  I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but it involved his crotch in some way.  I approached the security guard by the school gate and explained to him what had happened.  I pointed out the man across the street and said I thought it was the same guy, although I couldn’t be completely sure.  While I was talking to the guard, another student came up to try to be helpful or something.  He listened for a minute, and asked if I was lost or something.  The guard said to him, irritably, “Some old man just showed her his penis.  Don’t you understand Chinese?”  The guard said he’d send someone over to talk to the flasher, and at that point I went back to the campus.  I was supposed to have lunch, but it kind of messed up my appetite.

The man may have been mentally ill or mentally retarded rather than a run-of-the-mill flasher, but it was hard to tell.  I’m hoping I won’t see him next week.

A fun quiz that I just found on Japundit.  I got an 85.

http://www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/asiaquiz.html 

Opinionated subtitler.

Originally uploaded by MFinChina

Whoever fansubbed this copy of Ugly Betty included her own reaction to the dialogue, which was, “It’s me, Betty. I have a penis.” (The translation here uses the slang “rod” instead.)

Interesting series of pictures examing how the recent events in T. have been covered by the Western media.  Many times, photos of heavy-handed police tactics in Nepal or India have been captioned as taking place in China.  Laziness on the part of news services, or something more troubling?

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200803b.brief.htm#021

Banner

Originally uploaded by MFinChina

Posted near the gate of my university today.

An oblique reference to recent events, much like when one of my old students who was studying at Shanghai Foreign Studies University was told, “Nothing is going to happen this weekend, but if you participate in it, you will be expelled,” the week before the anti-Japanese demonstrations we had a couple years ago.

For some commentary on recent events in western China, please take a look here.

I’m not sure if I’m going to this or not.  What with having to pay rent next month, I don’t know if it would be wise to go.  I’m also having trouble getting an affordable, desirable hotel room.  I mean, there are cheap guesthouses, but when I stayed in them before, I felt very creeped-out and unsafe. Plus, everything has to be co-ordinated.  I’d have to get the plane tickets, plus book the hotel room, plus get the tickets online.  If one of these steps falls though, everything will be messed up.

Today after brunch, Sherry and Anna and I want to Raffles City, a large shopping center.  They got some ice cream in big food court downstairs.  While we were sitting there, I noticed everyone around was staring at something.  There was a little girl sitting there alone with two bowls of noodles.  This middle-aged midget was coming over to the table, and I thought, “Man, everyone is staring at her dad because he’s a midget.  That’s so rude.”  The guy sat down in the seat across from the girl, and started eating from the bowl of noodles.  Sherry commented that the girl looked  frightened to her.  We looked over, to see that the guy got up all of a sudden, ambled over to another woman’s table (she was reading a book and was none the wiser about what was going on) then sat down across from HER.  At this point, about ten people were all looking, trying to figure out what was going on, while the original little girl just sat there, stunned.  After sitting there for a minute or so, the man got up and wandered away.

We were all astonished.  I’d really never seen anything like that, a stranger just coming over, eating someone else’s food, and then leaving.  I told some workers what had happened, and then went over to the girl, who was about twelve, and looked like she didn’t know whether to cry or throw up or what.  I asked her if she knew the man, or if he was a stranger.  The other ladies nearby who had asked her already told me he was a stranger, and we all told another worker from the food court what had happened.  Then finally the girl’s dad came back from wherever he had been, and by that time the people had agreed to get rid of the original noodles and give them a new bowl.

It was really weird.  I mentioned it to the taxi driver on the way home, and he said it was actually pretty common for people to do that.  I didn’t believe him until I told Dog Man about it, and he said it was common too.  He mentioned that the people who do it are never dressed shabbily, which was true of the guy we saw today.  He often also said these people try to sit down with foreigners and snag some of their food, although the girl from this afternoon was Chinese.

Today I was out shopping on Shimen Yi Lu, and I saw this really nice dress. I asked to try it on, and the shopkeeper, a woman, told me it would not fit because it was just a medium. I insisted on trying it anyway, since it looked big enough to me. When I got in, I found that just as the lady predicted, it did not fit at all because it was way too small in the bust.

I came out of the fitting room, and told her, “You were right. It doesn’t fit me.” She replied, “It’s okay here” (gesturing at the waist) “but too small here” (pointing at the bust). “You’re a big chest sister.” (”你是一个大胸妹.“)

I liked the sound of that and thought it was a funny thing to call someone, but Dog Man’s sister told me that is a pretty common term.

I just wrote this as a comment on a local web site:

If the D. Lama is as committed to peace and non-violence as he claims, it would be nice if he would ask his followers not to beat the crap out of Lhasa’s Hui Muslims. Has he spoken out about this, and if not, why not?

(For an article with eyewitness accounts, look at the Christian Science Monitor, and go to the blog mentioned in the article, which is by an American Chinese guy.)

Does lack of comment mean tacit approval?  Or is he afraid of asking people who supposedly follow him to do something they really don’t want to do, for fear of finding out he really has no influence over them?  Or is he afraid of alienating them?

I’m so excited! It’s the one called, “And if it involves glitter and castor oil, that’s his business.”

http://www.overheardeverywhere.com/