Snow Flower and the Secret Fan – a movie review

July 16, 2011

This film (based on a novel by Lisa See) is the story of four women and of the complexities of China — Lily and Snow Flower live in 19th century Southwest China, while Nina and Sophia live in 21st century Shanghai.

The characters of Lily and Nina are played by Bingbing Li and Sophia and Snow Flower by Gianna Jun. The director is Wayne Wang, who worked on The Joy Luck Club among other films.

Even in the 19th century, Shanghai was a world apart from Southwest China and still is.  It is safe to say that the day-to-day grind of life probably hasn’t changed much (except for foot binding and more freedom for women) in remote rural villages in Southwest China, which is off the beaten track of most foreign tourists that visit China on fast-paced packaged tours.

I read Lisa See’s novel soon after it came out and although I enjoyed the book and felt it was well written, I couldn’t understand why it stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List as long as it did.  And to be honest, I still don’t. However, if there was a formula to predict why a few books are wildly successful and many fail, no one has discovered it yet.

The original story Lisa See wrote shows a small part of China and in no way represents all of China and all things Chinese. That would be a challenge since China is a diverse land with many spoken languages and cultures and one written language and a very long history.

From what I recall, Snow Flower and Lili, the characters in 19th century China, live in Southwest China and belong to one of China’s fifty-six minorities, which have unique cultures apart from China’s Han majority, and as children these two girls are sworn to be loyal friends for life.

Considering what life was like in China for woman in the early 19th century, it is understandable why such a custom would have evolved.  However, to be clear, I will remind the reader that women were mostly treated this way everywhere in the world at that time, and many still are outside the US, Europe and China. Sex slavery and abuse of women still exists in many countries such as Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Fortunate for me, I read the reviews of this film in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle after I saw the film.

These reviews, written by Sino-blind Americans, demonstrate no clue that the real purpose of this movie may have been to highlight China’s past and present and not as another cloned US movie such as two I saw recently, which reflect what is mostly popular in America. Both of these American movies, Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon and Horrible Bosses, lacked depth without a soul, and I cannot recommend them to anyone. However, I must admit that I’m capable of enjoyed both depthless movies and films with depth such as Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

I’ve been to China many times and sat in movie theaters watching movies made in China for a Chinese audience and this movie, to me, is a Chinese film with Chinese actors and actresses set in China.  After all, a Chinese film company was behind its production and the director is Chinese.

Most Chinese do not think like the average American that is often stuck on a linear path incapable of seeing the meaning between the lines. However, Chinese think metaphorically meaning if you want to understand and enjoy this film, look between the lines and learn from what is hidden in sight?

As we travel with the ancient (19th century) and modern (21st century) sworn sisters with scenes that shift from past to present, we discover that although there is more personal freedom in China today than there was almost two centuries ago, life still comes with no guarantees.  The scenes in modern Shanghai show a city in transition with old being torn down being replaced by new as if China is emerging from a cocoon. I saw this transition as a metaphor.  The scene where Nina is taking off her high heels and rubbing her feet compared to the ancient Lili (both played by the same actress) taking off her three-inch shoes and rubbing her bloodied, painful bound feet demonstrates how far China has evolved.

In fact, because this film is more Chinese than the novel written by American born and raised Lisa See, I feel it captured more of a sense of China than the novel did.

For those reasons, I cannot agree with most of the American media critics that trashed the film.  Of course, to be fair, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan would be considered a failed and flawed film to most Western critics because it is a Chinese film adapted from a Western book.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is more than just a disjointed film jumping clumsily between centuries. This film represents China and the complexity of Chinese civilization and it demonstrates how much China has changed while so much that is often out of sight of most foreigners stays the same.

If you have the patience to suspend your Western values and expectations of what movies should offer and want to discover something new, I recommend seeing this film. But be warned, since this film is Chinese (in my opinion), it pushes the melodramatic envelope beyond what most Americans are comfortable with.

Shallow thinkers that flock to see movies such as Transformers 3, Horrible Bosses, The Zookeeper, and Cars 2, etc. may want to avoid Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.  However, if you are an individual that enjoys learning and expanding your horizons, go — and take a box of tissues.

Also discover Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and/or Farewell My Concubine

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese literature, Chinese middle class, Chinese minorities, Chinese women, cultural differences, family values, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Keeping Mao Alive in the West – Part 4/4

July 2, 2011

As for Bo Xilai, the so-called darling of the Maoists according to The Economist, the weekly rag failed to mention that last year when this Chinese “Maoist” splinter of the Communist Party thought they had a leader in Bo Xilai, he had thirty Maoist hard core leaders arrested and locked up. Source: Serve the People

Bo Xilai may be a leader among Chinese conservatives but those conservatives are not Maoist revolutionaries dreaming of a return to the upside down world of The Cultural Revolution, which would turn China into a train wreck, and most Chinese have worked too hard building a modern, capitalist China to throw all that away.

Maoists have followers as well as critics in modern China. While these supporters of Mao claim that it was during his era that China witnessed mass development in terms of economy, industry, healthcare, education, and Infrastructure, his critics (that have ruled China since 1976 leading to a middle class of about 400 million) hold a different view.

According to them, the history of Maoist China was marked with uncountable deaths, and an extreme economic crisis that damaged China’s cultural heritage.

What is the difference between the Maoists in China that are a minority in the Communist Party and the American Nazi Party in the US? Do we read pieces in the Western media criticizing the US for having an American Nazi party after what the Nazis did during World War II?

In fact, in 2006, NPR.org reported, “New schoolbooks were about to be introduced in Shanghai that were moving a bit further away from the traditional communist ideology. And in them Mao was actually only mentioned once, and very fleetingly, as part of a lesson on the custom of lowering flags to half mast at state funerals.”

In that interview at NPR, Louisa Lim said, “The official verdict on Mao that the Party came to in 1981 was that he was 70% good and 30% bad. And their mythology about Mao was really that he was a great national hero who unified the country. He sort of threw off the yoke of Japanese imperialism and freed people from poverty, and that any later mistakes were made when he was older and should be weighed up against his great contributions to China.”

If Bo Xilai sounds as if he wants to bring the Maoism of The Cultural Revolution back, he is probably doing what all “good” politicians do (even in the US), and that is telling people what they want to hear to gain support. After all, in 2012, China’s leaders are changing and Bo wants to get as close to the top as possible. That is not a secret.

Start with Keeping Mao Alive in the West – Part 1 or return to Part 3

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

2 Comments | China, Chinese history, Communism, history, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Keeping Mao Alive in the West – Part 3/4

July 1, 2011

When Mao Zedong‘s Great Leap Forward failed and millions died of famine (1959-1961 — no one knows exactly how many died), most estimates by mainstream Western sources are usually high. Henry Kissinger in his latest book, On China, says over 20 million. Other Western sources claim as high as 60 million while some say 10.

This tragedy was not caused by a Nazi or Stalinist purge where people were executed or sent to concentration camps to die in gas chambers by the millions. It was a famine caused by flawed agricultural policies leading to crop failures. Most of these deaths were caused by starvation.

In fact, a few experts argue that the famine was not all caused by those flawed policies but severe weather played a role in the crop failures too and there is evidence that this may have been a fact since China has a history of famines. Records show that between 108 BC and 1911 AD there were no fewer than 1,828 major famines in China, or one nearly every year in one or another province. For example, there were four famines in China in 1810, 1811, 1846 and 1849 that caused 45 million deaths. Source: List of Famines

However, during this time of famine, China’s population increased from 563 million in 1950 when Mao first ruled China to more than a billion by 1980. Mao encouraged families to have many children.


Raymond Lotta says Mao’s Great Leap Forward was not the cause of 30 million deaths.

Even with those deaths from starvation during The Great Leap Forward, we discover from this chart, that China’s population has never stopped growing.

As for the Cultural Revolution, which is credited for another two or three million deaths (mostly from suicide due to depression), Mao Zedong put his wife in charge.  At her trial, when she had a chance to speak in her defense, she said, “I was Mao’s dog. When Mao told me to bite, I bit.”

Mao Zedong was 73 when the Cultural Revolution was launched, and he spent little time outside of the Forbidden City where he lived mostly in isolation with limited contact with others, which could also be seen as another sign of someone suffering from PTSD.

His wife, Jiang Qing (twenty-one years younger than Mao) was the architect of the Cultural Revolution since her husband put her in charge, and she was planning to take over and rule China after Mao’s death.  In fact, during his last few years, he was not that healthy.

Continued on July 2, 2011 in Keeping Mao Alive in the West – Part 4 or return to Part 2

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

3 Comments | China, Chinese history, Communism, history, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Keeping Mao Alive in the West – Part 2/4

June 30, 2011

Another fact that The Economist left out of Boundlessly loyal to the great monster was that Mao was not in charge of The Cultural Revolution. He started the movement to retain power then put his wife in charge. While she was busy dismantling the nation, Mao was hanging out inside the walls of The Forbidden City.

His wife put students in charge of the schools and made teachers victims.

Before that, Mao turned butchers and peasants into doctors without any medical education to guide them in the healing arts. These untrained doctors were known as bare-foot doctors with little to no training, which I wrote about at China’s Health Care During Mao’s Time.

However, as crazy as it may sound, the bare-foot doctors worked.  Life expectancy was about 35 when Mao launched this program and by the time Mao died, life expectancy had increased by twenty years.

The people that Mao liberated from feudalism know that Mao Zedong was also a poet long before he ruled China. The years of Civil War from the early 1920 to 1949, assassination attempts and broken promises by Chiang Kai-shek , and fighting the brutal Japanese during World War II must have changed Mao. For sure, The Long March was a bloody influence that possibly led to a bad case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which tends to make one paranoid.

After all, fighting a Civil War for almost 25 years and living in caves had to have an impact on Mao.  If US soldiers come home with PTSD after one tour of combat, imagine more than two decades living a life of combat.

The Maoists that The Economist mentions mostly want to have the power back but not necessarily the purges and/or denunciations of The Cultural Revolution.

With nostalgia, this minority of Maoists remembers a different time from a different perspective since they may have been the peasant leaders of the adolescent Red Guard.

Many in the West probably do not know that the Red Guard and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were two different forces and the PLA for the most part was not involved in The Cultural Revolution.  In fact, several times the PLA stopped the rampaging Red Guard from some of its destruction of all things old in China.

Continued on July 1, 2011 in Keeping Mao Alive in the West – Part 3 or return to Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese history, Communism, history, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Keeping Mao Alive in the West – Part 1/4

June 29, 2011

Even though he’s been dead since 1976 and his politics were swept away decades ago as if they were dust to be replaced with a Chinese socialist form of capitalism, there must be a reason for the Western media keeping Mao Zedong alive.

In fact, The Economist is doing its share to keep this ghost in the mind of a Western audience.

The answer might be to feed another kind of monster. The Economist for May 28 published Boundlessly loyal to the great monster to feed the Sinophobia mob’s fears of China and probably to boost sales.

To achieve this, The Economist left out a few facts and threw truth into the flaming maw of a Western fire-breathing dragon.

The only thing worth repeating was a quote from Mao Yushi (no relation to the Mao that died in 1976).  Mao Yushi says it is time to end the “idolization” and “superstition” surrounding Mao Zedong and assess him as an ordinary man.

Although this may be a good suggestion, it will not be that easy to make happen. Too many people in China think of Mao as the George Washington of China and the man that liberated China from feudal landlords and the brutal upper class supported Nationalist dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek.

In fact, most of Mao’s mistakes were made during the last decade of his 83 years during the Cultural Revolution, where he flipped society upside down by putting adolescents and those that were mostly illiterate and living in severe poverty in charge of the country while demoting the educated and middle class to the lowest socio-economic status level after stripping their wealth and privileges away.

Many of the people that Mao liberated from feudalism also know that Mao had a softer heart and was a different person long before he ruled China. Discover Mao Zedong, the poet

Continued on June 30, 2011 in Keeping Mao Alive in the  West – Part 2

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

Leave a Comment » | capitalism, China, Chinese history, Communism, history, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »