Visiting Balinese Dancer

I will never forget seeing Balinese dance teacher Ni Ketut Arini in action in her home dance studio in Denpasar in Bali, Indonesia. She was teaching nearly 40 young girls to do Balinese dance with gentle, yet firm hands, and a huge smile. It was like her voice could control this 3D orchestra–the small hands, hips, and eyes moving together in the tight studio. She will be artist in residence with Gamelan Sekar Jaya this spring. Her dance workshop is already fully subscribed but she will be in a performance on April 24 at the School of the Arts.

Incidentally, I’m not sure if you can see it but she is wearing an Obama campaign t-shirt. When I visited Indonesia in the summer of 2008, many people were excited about the prospect of an Obama presidency. Sadly, it appears from this article in The Hill that the warm feelings have worn away a bit since then.

We hope somehow to get word to President Obama about our Bali exhibition so that he may in turn tell Indonesian President Yudhoyono about the exhibition when Obama visits there later this month.

Shanghai Film Series: High Times to Revolution

Celestial beauty Gong Li in Shanghai Triad

This coming Sunday, the Asian Art Museum will be screening a double feature — Shanghai Triad and Two Stage Sisters — that provides a glimpse, both on and off the screen, of the violence and social injustice that lay behind the glamorous facade of “High Times” Shanghai and the heroic mask of Revolutionary China.

Shanghai Triad (1995) depicts the power struggles of the city’s criminal underworld through the innocent eyes of a young country bumpkin employed to serve the mistress of Shanghai’s top gangster. While sometimes considered one of Zhang Yimou’s lesser works, the film is quite compelling when seen in the cultural and historical context afforded by the current exhibition.

The film’s gang boss is based on Du Yuesheng, a native son who rose through the ranks of the notorious Green Gang to become the most powerful man in pre-Communist Shanghai. Don’t miss the hanging-scroll portrait of “Big-Eared Du” and fellow gangster “Pockmarked Huang” on display in the exhibit. It provides an amusingly self-reverential counterpoint to the film’s brutal portrayal. As for Gong Li, who plays the gang lord’s glorified sing-song girl, she looks just like one of those radiant “celestial” beauties depicted in Shanghai’s popular calendar art, several fine examples of which can also be seen in the show.

Shanghai Triad: portrait of a tortured artist

For me, the most fascinating character is the silent, but ever watchful, country boy whose dream of finding a better life in Shanghai becomes a cruel nightmare. I can’t help but see him as a surrogate for director Zhang Yimou. During the film’s production, not only was Zhang under intense government scrutiny because of his previous film, To Live (1994), but he was also on the verge of a breakup with his muse and lover Gong Li.

Seen in this light, the final scene of Shanghai Triad is a haunting metaphor for the intense powerlessness Zhang must have felt at that time.

Sunday’s second feature is an inspired choice to follow Shanghai Triad. While Zhang Yimou was censured for his portrayal of the Cultural Revolution in To Live, Xie Jin and his film Two Stage Sisters (1964) were actual victims of that mad era. Now regarded as one of the best Chinese films of all time, Two Stage Sisters was initially branded a “poisonous weed” and — except for select screenings to criticize the film — it remained unseen by the general public until 1979. For the crime of advocating the reconciliation of social classes, Xie Jin was denounced at a mass rally of more than 100,000 people. Although Xie himself survived the Cultural Revolution, his parents were not so lucky. His mother and father both committed suicide.

Two Stage Sisters: sisterhood is powerful

A revolutionary melodrama, Two Stage Sisters follows the personal trials and tribulations of two opera performers against the backdrop of China’s struggle for liberation. United during hard times, the women choose different paths once they achieve fame and fortune in Shanghai. One retires and marries a man she doesn’t love for the promise of a life of comfort, while the other awakens to the injustice around her and organizes the city’s female opera workers. Thanks to Xie Jin’s abiding humanism and emotional sensitivity, the film never succumbs to mindless didacticism or cardboard characterization. While certain scenes, such as the final conversation between the two women, are evidence of outside interference, the heart of the film remains intact: a personal love strong enough to weather the storms of life.

“Green water goes through numerous mountains”
[from the film's opening song]

Let me end by calling attention to the brief but incredibly moving performance by Shangguan Yunzhu as the film’s fading opera star. Shangguan Yunzhu was a popular actress during 1940s. (Look for her on the video monitor in the exhibit’s “High Times” section in a scene from the 1949 film Crows and Sparrows). It’s rumored that she had a brief affair with Mao Tse-tung which led to her persecution during the Cultural Revolution by Mao’s wife — and former film actress — Jiang Qing. In 1968, four years after her final role in Two Stage Sisters, Shangguan Yunzhu jumped from the window of her apartment building, the Normandie. Some say that her ghost, and those of the many others who also leaped to their death, still haunts the historic French Concession building.

Veteran actress Shangguan Yunzhu’s last goodbye

— Contributed by Dave Wells, who writes for Soft Film: Vintage Chinese Cinema.

Shanghai Dumpling Destination

The steamed dumpling known as xiao long bao, described so evocatively by Olivia Wu elsewhere on this website, is synonymous with Shanghai, and for generations of Shanghainese eating xiao long bao was synonymous with a visit to one particular establishment, the Nanxiang Mantou Dian (Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant). Here, in the historic Yu Garden area of Shanghai, in a second-floor dining room overlooking the nine-turn bridge and the mid-lake teahouse of blue willow China pattern fame, whole feasts are made from nothing more than stacks of dumpling-filled bamboo steamers, accompanied by small bowls of a thin soup.

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Somewhere a Shanghai garden grows

"Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden" during installation.

Shanghai has been up a little more than a week, long enough for a number of media reviews, blog posts, and general discussion points to emerge. One piece that seems to elicit particular comment is Zhang Jian Jun’s installation Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden (2009).

Down in the shadowy basement and back halls of the museum services division, this is known affectionately as the piece with the bricks. Not just your garden variety red clay bricks, but some 3,000 antique grey bricks taken from the remains of buildings dating to the high-times of 1920s Shanghai, recently demolished to pave the way for new construction.

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Your Weekend Plans

And because this is San Francisco, your weekend starts now.

You have just Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to catch the Swinging Chinatown exhibit at The Old Mint.   A colleague and I took a walk through the beautiful decrepitude of the old building last Monday and were enthralled by the stories of the performers and artists responsible for changing the way Asian Americans were perceived.

A group from Creativity Explored was in the museum today, probably in part because of this great show at the 16th Street gallery.  The opening is tonight, but I can almost guarantee there won’t be Shaolin monks in the Mission, because they’re all at tonight’s MATCHA!.

What else is going on this weekend that I’m going to miss?

Meanwhile, in the frozen North

We’re all swept up in Shanghai’s opening weekend, but I didn’t want to wait another moment to congratulate the fantastic design team that is Meomi (aka, Vicki Wong and Michael Murphy).  When I first got word that they were responsible for the Vancouver Olympics mascots, I was doubly happy.  Firstly, because I’m a huge fan of them as illustrators, and secondly because this represents a savvy design move on the part of the Olympics.  Click over to Meomi’s Olympics flickr set and you’ll see what I mean.

We try to keep their Octonauts series in the museum store, but I’m expecting their books to sell out as quickly as Oliver Chin’s Year of the Tiger books did for our Lunar New Year celebration last weekend.  Obviously, I am powerless when confronted by the charms of a cartoon Sasquatch.

The Other Shanghai: 凱蒂貓

You have been given entry into the exclusive province of museum installation; as our guest, you are witness to the realization of years of planning and much strenuous labor.  An air of expectation is palpable, as always, in the fleeting days  preceding an exhibition.

What awaits us is a land at once imaginary and real–Shanghai the concept, the dream–and its rise from a divided, shanty-filled port to innovative megalopolis.

But I want to talk about something you won’t see in the exhibition.

Shanghai’s Hello Kitty House was one of the first images to turn up while I was doing research last year, and although I’ve yet to find anyone who has actually stayed there, I’m willing to believe the place exists.

Thanks to the encyclopedic nature of the internet, I later discovered that the Shanghai subway’s #6 line is also known as the “Hello Kitty Line,” distinguished from other lines by its decidedly femme details (it makes more sense when you see it on the map).

Shanghai represents an imaginary place for me–I’ve never been, but whenever friends return I hear that I’d love the place.  Much in the same way early mapmakers set a course over paper without having seen a land’s shores, I’m doing the same to Shanghai.  Curators and couriers bring us the proof of another world, and we piece together the idea of a place.

I can’t wait to see what the ephemeral city holds for us.

New Year, Old Gift

image courtesy of ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

As much as I’d like to give you red envelopes stuffed with cash (for the whippersnappers, of course–red envelopes are traditionally given to those younger than yourself), I’m a little broke right now.

Instead, for your Lunar New Year gift, I will give you the first Chinese feature-length animated film, Princess Iron Fan (Tie Shan Gong Zhu).

This 1941 film by the pioneering Wan brothers came out of the Xinhua Film Company, a feat in itself, as Shanghai was under Japanese occupation at the time. Xinhua may have been one of the last of the Shanghai studios to hold out against occupying force’s business interests, but was eventually merged with Japanese-controlled studios.

The details of the film are charmingly Fleischer-esque, and for those familiar with Chinese epics you’ll know that film is based on an episode from Journey to the West. When the film was screened in Japan, a young Tezuka saw it and it influenced him greatly.

Here’s a preview on youtube–but you can watch the film in its entirety at the Internet Archive.

We hope to see you all for this Sunday’s Lunar New Year Celebration!

Shanghai update

Whew! Our first week of installation for Shanghai is over, and week two is about to begin. All of the objects have arrived safely and the galleries are beginning to really take shape. The exhibition crew has been busy condition checking artwork, hanging paintings, dressing mannequins, and dealing with all of the assorted surprises that emerge with a project of this complexity. Here a few behind the scenes images from the past week.

A detail of the neon tube components of Shen Fan's installation "Landscape—Commemorating Huang Binhong—Small Scroll."

Call for Artists!

(From left): AHSC  poster winners Imani Chapman and Dave San Pedro. You could be the next winner!

Call for Artists for the Asian Heritage Street Celebration POSTER CONTEST! Read more