Enter the Dragon -- seen for the first time.

Tuesday Evening,  I watched, in entirety, Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon, for the first time in my life.  I had seen scenes from it before, and  I was familiar with all the cliches of Bruce Lee, so I somehow assumed I had seen all his films.

 

But really, how could it be that I hadn't watched a Bruce Lee film till yesterday?  I could day that some films become so big, you don't have to see them to know what they are about.  Bruce Lee films are like Gone with the Wind, American Pie, and Saturday Night Fever, in that manner.  But as I have always said, a movie you haven't seen is a new movie to watch.  Having actually seen Gone with the Wind, and Saturday Night Fever;  and seeing that they were splendid entertainments, I have become open to taking the time to watch other movies that I have known, but not seen.

 

I didn't actually plan to watch Enter the Dragon when I got up Tuesday morning.  What happened was that Jenny and I went to eat, and do some grocery shopping in downtown Yanqiao (Tony being at preschool).  Being so far from downtown Wuxi, it is hard to find a DVD shop, and the shops you can find in the suburb certainly aren't laowai-friendly, having mostly Chinese fare and very few new releases.  We went to Yanqiao on our electric bike.**  At the supermarket, Jenny told me to drive the bike from the back entrance to the front entrance where she would pay for our purchases and wait for me -- near the front entrance was a toddler shop she wanted to check out. To get the bike from the front to back entrance, I had to ride through a street full of shops, including a DVD shop.  Through its' entrance, I saw a small selection of those tall-packed DVDs -- the tall packs often contain nine or ten movies on one or two discs -- you lose picture quality at the expense of many more hours of entertainment than a one movie DVD can give you.  Anyway, the tall packs drew me into the shop.  Flipping through the DVDs there, I found some interesting collections of horror and science fiction movies -- there were also collections of famous stars like Arnold and Tom Cruise and the Transporter guy.  And of course, I found a Bruce Lee collection of many of his movies (how many did he make - three?) and documentaries.  The two DVD set with 14 movies and shows cost me ten rmb --  very good price, but I was worried that there would be no English -- I had to go home to check immediately.

 

It turned out that the DVDs have only Chinese audio, but there are English subtitles.  So I watched Enter the Dragon in Chinese with English subtitles -- as ETD was an action film, it really it didn't make any difference.  (I also watched half a documentary as well which featured scenes from Bruce Lee's funeral -- images of his widow looking at his open-casket and immediately losing her composure, were heart-wrenching.)

 

For what my belated opinion is worth, the movie is great.  Bruce Lee has a screen presence comparable to Clark Gable, Fred Astaire, and Steve McQueen.  He shares a screen intensity with McQueen and a choreographic grace of Astaire.  ETD economically shows Lee's great Kung Fu talent, saving its' best Lee scenes for the last twenty minutes.***

 

There was a scene in the beginning of the film that showed what has always fascinated me about China -- a woman is running away from a gang of assailants and so she runs through a shanty sort of neighborhood -- the kind that I love to traipse through everyday, even in dull Wuxi. 

 

Bruce Lee has rejuvenated my interest in the Orient, if somehow belatedly.  Tony and Jenny permitting, I will watch the other movies on that DVD.

 

 

 

**For the first time, I drove the bike with Jenny as the passenger.  Hitherto, I had let her do the driving while I was the passenger.  My first attempts at driving Tony and Jenny on the bike scared the hell out of me.  Yesterday, not having Tony as a passenger, I shed my fears.  Jenny was so pleased with me.

 

***Tony watched the end of ETD with me.  He found some of the Kung Fu movies quite amusing.

Wuxi Tony Update #546: Snow!

Flurries in Wuxi

Can you see them? My wife says she has never seen them before.

Observations

The boots that Wuxi women now wear

I should show you a photo of what I am talking about.  It would make things easier.  But I feel uncomfortable asking someone to let me take a photo of their "things".

 

I have noticed a change in fashion in women's boots.  Last time, I really noticed, which was probably four years ago, Wuxi women were wearing tall boots with high heels.  It looked very uncomfortable for them, and I have clear recollections of women having just bought these boots, looking like they were walking on stilts.

 

Well, they don't do that now.  Wuxi women, today, are wearing shorter plushy-looking flat soled boots that look comfortable but with loss of grace female movement.

 

My Sunday Evening trip to the Hui Shan Tesco

I needed to buy some snacks so to the local Tesco I went.  I was an exceedingly small minority, I thought to myself as I wandered the aisles. 

 

What caused me to think this, was the look of surprise on the faces of these three young men seeing me.  One of them said "hello!" in a manner that might as well have been "hey n****!".  I had to stare right through them, as the expression goes.  I suppose I should have given them the benefit of the doubt, and not taken offence -- they may well have not known how to react to something that certainly was out of the ordinary for them.  Best to pretend I didn't see anything was probably the best policy for I felt very uncomfortable, and unable to rise to the posture of friendliness.

 

But I continued to think on about the smallness of my minorityness in the store.  "How many people are here?" I asked myself.  I supposed there were at least five hundred people in the place, maybe even a thousand.  But if I was one out of five hundred, I reasoned, that was still a small number -- point two percent.

 

The Turn Around

Chesterton has this brilliant saying about looking at things 999 times, and then seeing something for the thousandth time and seeing it anew.  I say this as this recollection of something, I should be cool about,  has stuck with me, and now I wish to write about.

 

I was able to get a seat on the bus Sunday evening.  I saw two empty seats, one behind the other.  I chose the back seat of the two.  A local man took the seat before me.  He sat down, and then looked directly behind to stare at me, the foreigner, as it were. 

 

This sort of thing happens so often that I am loathe to mention it.  Passing this on to other Expats, I would get a sarcastic "big deal!" reaction.  As well, I have already written about this sort of thing once already in this entry.  And yet the recollection stays with me and I don't know why.  I guess it is because I have been here so long that I do forget how remarkable I can seem to the locals.  And it seems remarkable to me that I can not be aware of it -- being so stuck in my own world that I wonder why I bothered traveling  halfway across the real globe to be in this place.

Bad timing

Every once in a while, a Wuxi person will muster the courage to come and speak to me in English.  The right thing for me to do is of course to engage the person in conversation and take an interest in them.  This can be a problem if I am listening to a podcast and if the timing is all wrong.

Monday about noon, I was waiting for a bus listening to a history podcast (topic: the Middle Ages).  It was raining and the stop was crowded, and I chose to stand off to the side.  A woman quietly asked me something.  I answered her but I probably spoke at a rude volume because I was listening to a podcast.  I then clumsily tried to turn off the player.  She asked me what bus I was waiting for and so I got it into my head that she thought I was lost -- something about me standing alone must have made her feel that, or so I reasoned.  If I had had a little more time, I would have made things all right.  I quickly had it in mind to be polite to the lady.  But then my wife phoned.  That took a few minutes to deal with.  And then my bus came.  And so I had to leave the lady with the feeling that I hadn't done right by her.

Hopefully, I will see her at the bus stop again, and have a proper conversation.

My Toque, or Beanie, or Knit Cap

I bought the thing at a Seattle Seahawks game played at Husky Stadium so many years ago.

Monday Musings

Woman's Day

Really, it is some United Nations holiday, so one has to wonder what is the point.  But it is Woman's Day in China, and I do have something to talk about with the students at my English Corner this Monday afternoon.  Many students will know about it -- more than knew about the Olympics being held in Vancouver.

 

Crosby's Goal

I obviously haven't been trying hard enough because I still haven't yet seen the highlights of the Canada-USA gold medal hockey game.  All the links I have tried won't allow me to see the video.  The sights that could, like NBC,  tell me that international viewers cannot access that hockey game's video.

 

I suppose I will have to buy a DVD of the game if and when I go back to Canada.

 

Tony's scared of girls

All these pretty girls want to kiss Tony but he doesn't want anything to do with them.  When a stranger says "hello!" to him, he will quickly turn his head.  However, he has no problem saying "bye-bye!" to them.

 

It is like saying a nice friendly "good-bye!" to the bogey man.

 

 

Tony's Pee Pee Ploy

Currently, Tony knows to say "pee-pee!" or "poo-poo!" when he has got to do his business.  But he has figured out that he can say those dreaded words for other purposes, like when he just wants to play with the taps in public restrooms.  Sunday evening at Yu Pai Fu Hao, a restaurant on Wuxi's Zhongshan Road, Tony had to go to the bathroom every five minutes -- he was bored sitting at a table.

 

Tony's Pronunciation

Tony has picked up the Wuxi habit of adding "a" to the end of everything he says.  He now calls me "Daddy-a!".

 

A Reminder

Visit Tony Kaulins in China

Rain, Snow, Sun

Long Johns and Toque

In February, Wuxi experienced a warm spell and I was thinking I could put away my long johns and beanie till November.  But a week of rain and a little snow has me wearing long underwear and a scarf again.  Yesterday, I even wore a knit cap in class while teaching.

To ensure comfort is prudent.

Learning to read Chinese Characters

I see that there are characters that I will always recognize; and that are characters I will only recognize in context, like when I read the same passage over and over again.

How do things work?

Yesterday, the salon class topic was that.  I saw how much I was ignorant of.  Best I could do was point the students to this site.

Tony takes a nap

A week of preschool has given Tony an afternoon nap habit.  Jenny tells me that  this weekend at home, Tony has, at the preschool nap time, taken his doll in his arms and walked around the house, yawning.

Visit here for more about the Tony boy.

Wuxi Tony Update #545: Bedtime for Tony and his father

Bed Time