In 1990, Beijing Olympics opening ceremony director Zhang Yimou (張藝謀) had a rare and affecting starring role in A Terra-Cotta Warrior, a fantasy about a Qin Dynasty general pursuing the love of his life over thousands of years.
In the final scene, the latest incarnation of the woman he adores, played by Gong Li (鞏俐), visits the terra-cotta warrior exhibition in Xian as a tourist. Eternally waiting for her among the statues is Zhang — and the credits roll.
This week saw new allegations by the Dalai Lama of a massacre of Tibetans, placing the Olympics under new pressure for providing cover for a government that will not change its terrible ways.
But it was Zhang’s comments to the Chinese media this week that deserve comment here. Given what has happened in the lead-up to the Games, his words have showed him up as a terra-cotta warrior for “rising China” — a man as politically ossified, obnoxious and enslaved as any of his compatriots.
When the creators of the opening ceremony were named, director Steven Spielberg took the heat, largely from actress and Darfur activist Mia Farrow. She warned Spielberg he might become the next Leni Riefenstahl, one of the most talented artists to aid the Nazi regime, for lending the Chinese credibility.
For Spielberg, a Jew who has invested years of his life and money documenting and recreating the horrors of the Holocaust, this was no small accusation. Yet when he had the sense and decency to withdraw, the spotlight — and Riefenstahl tag — did not encumber Zhang, presumably because his Chineseness exempted him from considerations of morality.
This week, basking in his success, Zhang revealed a glimpse of the philosophy that girded the spectacle.
Based on his experiences directing operas in the “West,” Zhang mocked labor rights and the troublesome nature of human rights in general, while gushing on the superiority of the Chinese spirit: “We can make our human performance reach such a level, through hard and smart work. This is something many foreigners cannot achieve.”
For Zhang, it turns out, comparisons with North Korea are a source of pride.
It is likely that Riefenstahl never predicted that the rise of Germany’s National Socialists would set off a chain of war and slaughter on a scale that would turn her into an eternal villain of the industry.
Zhang, on the other hand, is a man all too familiar with China’s modern history of repression, and was himself victimized by the state. He knows that the state and social oppression he depicted in films like To Live continues, though in refined form, much more selectively and with the tacit complicity if not full support of the nouveau riche. Yet he rationalizes suffering as a thing that dignifies his compatriots.
As the Chinese government reaps the propaganda harvest of this Olympics, Zhang is bound to suffer for it outside his country. His personal and artistic agenda sits too easily with the trashing of principles others have defended over countless decades: human rights and freedom from government oppression.
In the context of a country with poor labor protections and widespread abuse, Zhang’s puerile statements on the nature of Chineseness — there is national virtue in bitterness, weakness in individuality and justification for exploitation — deserve to be widely known.
Film festival organizers stunned by Zhang’s casual stereotyping of “Westerners” (probably code for all foreigners) may care to think twice before inviting China’s leading propagandist to their events. Acclaim for Zhang from the “Western” film industry, it seems, offers no insurance against 5,000-year-old prejudice.
The EU’s biggest banks have spent years quietly creating a new way to pay that could finally allow customers to ditch their Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc cards — the latest sign that the region is looking to dislodge two of the most valuable financial firms on the planet. Wero, as the project is known, is now rolling out across much of western Europe. Backed by 16 major banks and payment processors including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Worldline SA, the platform would eventually allow a German customer to instantly settle up with, say, a hotel in France
On August 6, Ukraine crossed its northeastern border and invaded the Russian region of Kursk. After spending more than two years seeking to oust Russian forces from its own territory, Kiev turned the tables on Moscow. Vladimir Putin seemed thrown off guard. In a televised meeting about the incursion, Putin came across as patently not in control of events. The reasons for the Ukrainian offensive remain unclear. It could be an attempt to wear away at the morale of both Russia’s military and its populace, and to boost morale in Ukraine; to undermine popular and elite confidence in Putin’s rule; to
A traffic accident in Taichung — a city bus on Sept. 22 hit two Tunghai University students on a pedestrian crossing, killing one and injuring the other — has once again brought up the issue of Taiwan being a “living hell for pedestrians” and large vehicle safety to public attention. A deadly traffic accident in Taichung on Dec. 27, 2022, when a city bus hit a foreign national, his Taiwanese wife and their one-year-old son in a stroller on a pedestrian crossing, killing the wife and son, had shocked the public, leading to discussions and traffic law amendments. However, just after the
The international community was shocked when Israel was accused of launching an attack on Lebanon by rigging pagers to explode. Most media reports in Taiwan focused on whether the pagers were produced locally, arousing public concern. However, Taiwanese should also look at the matter from a security and national defense perspective. Lebanon has eschewed technology, partly because of concerns that countries would penetrate its telecommunications networks to steal confidential information or launch cyberattacks. It has largely abandoned smartphones and modern telecommunications systems, replacing them with older and relatively basic communications equipment. However, the incident shows that using older technology alone cannot
RSS