... as I think of humidity

天下女子有情，寧有如杜麗娘者乎！夢其人即病，病即彌連，至手畫形容，傳於世而後死。死三年矣，復能溟溟莫中其所夢者而生。如麗娘者，乃可謂之有情人耳。情不知所起，一往而深。生而不可與死，死可以生。生而不可與死，死而不可復生者，皆非情之至也。夢中之情，何必非真？天下豈少夢中之人耶？必因落枕而成親，待挂冠而為密者，皆形骸之論也。 (湯顯祖，牡丹亭的序言）


In the world, has there ever been a woman's love like that of Du Liniang's? After dreaming of her lover she fell sick; after falling sick, she was ever worse; until finally she painted her portrait to pass onto the world, and died thereafter. Having been dead for three years, she returned, having found in the midst of the gloomy void the object of her dream, and she lived again. To be as Du Liniang - only then can one be called a true lover.

Love comes from an unknown place, and once it arrives, it grows deep. The living may die of it, and through it the dead may live again. If one cannot die from it, if it cannot make the dead live again, then it is not love at its pinnacle.

Love in dreams - why must it be unreal? Is there a shortage of dream lovers in the world? Those who become lovers after their heads have fallen on pillows, or those who wait until retirement for it to flourish - for all of those, is it a matter of the body. (Tang Xianzu, preface to the Peony Pavilion minus a few lines)

--

Someday - SOMEDAY - I will get the hang of Ming drama. Not yet, however. I think I shall be starting with the more attainable, yet still beautiful, language of 孟超 this week. He's a little less dense. Still, characters almost quiver on the page - the beauty of his prose is really something, and the "higher [political] purpose" of his heroine doesn't hobble the language ....

”回鄉偶書“ 賀知章

少小離家老大回。
鄉音無改鬢毛衰。
兒童相見不相識。
笑問客從何處來。

"A Jotting on Returning Home" He Zhizhang, (Tang, 659-744)

I left my home as a youth; I return an old man.
My native accent has not faded, but the hair on my temples is thin.
Children greet me, but they do not recognize me.
Laughingly, they ask: whence comes this guest?

--

We translated this in my first ICLP wenyan class oh-so-long ago. I've resolved to start translating more: it'll be good for my Chinese, I enjoy it, and I have an easier time remembering vocabulary when I can link it something specific. I'm going to start this summer with 李慧娘, since I'm going to need a personal translation soon anyways ...

詠鵝 (駱賓王)

鵝鵝鵝
曲項向天歌
白毛浮綠水
紅掌撥清波

"Ode to a goose" (Luo Binwang, ca. 640-684, 一個”初唐四杰“)

Goose, goose, goose!
Curving your neck, you sing to the sky.
White feathers floating on green waters;
Red feet paddling clear waves.

--

Written, it's said, when he was 7; so, potentially younger depending on the calculation.

태극기 휘날리며 Taegukgi Hwinallimyo [Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War], 2004. Dir. 강제규/姜帝圭 KANG Je-gyu. Perf. 장동건/張東健 JANG Dong-geon, 원빈/元斌 WON Bin.

Christ almighty, I really need to back off the depressing movies. This one hit me harder than most for some reason. It shows a particularly awful, human side of war in a way that a lot of war movies don't.

In some respects a typical war film (blood, bombs, and gore galore!), complete with shaky yet precise Saving Private Ryan-style filming. On the other hand, it's (a) about the Korean War and (b) a South Korean movie about the Korean War, lending a somewhat different perspective to the whole bloody mess.

I found it absolutely heartbreaking and kept bursting into tears, even though the music was horrible, the cinematography drove me nuts, there was way too much hand-to-hand combat, the plot was so ... over the top in so many ways. It was so awful and so heartbreaking on so many levels at so many points.

I am using 'so' too much, but really, it's all a bit much to process.

I shouldn't have left you alone back then

The music was really awful, though. Truly. Like, belonging to a bad Lifetime movie awful.

Cidade de Deus [City of God], 2002. Dir. Fernando MEIRELLES and Kátia LUND. Acted Alexandre RODRIGUES, Alice BRAGA, Leandro FIRMINO, Phellipe HAAGENSEN.

The other side of gritty slums; not "cheerful" (I use that term extremely loosely) like Tsotsi. Probably because the violence here is exquisitely lovely in some respects, but it's still extraordinarily violent.

Set in a Rio de Janeiro suburb not entirely unlike the Soweto of Tsotsi; potentially more orderly.

The cinematography was fabulous. Screens later; it's a film that deserves it.

The Devil Came on Horseback, 2007. Dir. Ricki STERN, Anne SUNDBERG.

Interesting documentary, I watched it with jencallisto after our great adventure of dropping the dog off, having an appallingly large breakfast, and then taking a five hour nap.

More later. It was on Darfur. I have a penchant for these depressing topics these days.

Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro, trans. Edwin McClellan (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1957).

Howard S. Hibbett wrote a positively infuriating article entitled "Natsume Sōseki and the Psychological Novel" in a 1971 volume we read parts of last year; in his view, Sōseki is a brilliant example of Japanese problems with "modernity" (i.e., malformed child, simply not ready for it, and so on and so on). I've been curious to actually read some of his novels since; Kokoro (心; literally heart, but the translator says "the heart of things" is the best way of rendering it in English) was my first go.

It deals quite deeply with the nasty impulses of humans, as well as the loneliness and isolation people often feel, even (especially) in the middle of a modern metropolis.

Some interesting historical "stuff" in here. It was written in the first years of the Taishō period; its subject matter is set during the last years of the Meiji. The cross-section of young/old, country/city etc. is something to behold. Quite personal in feel.

War/Dance, 2007. Dir. Sean FINE, Andrea NIX FINE. THINKFilm.



A powerful documentary, even though it's too slick in many ways - too gorgeous, shots too slow - it's still powerful, and I'm not at all convinced that the goal is (as the Variety critic stated) to make the Western audience feel better about " genocide and global negligence." I mean, really? Even if things do seem too scripted at times, I find it hard to fathom that someone could feel that much better about the situation in Uganda after hearing a 14 year old boy say, regarding the time he and other children abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army were ordered to kill a field of farmers with the farmers' own hoes:

"Those farmers did nothing wrong. We killed them for no reason. They died a sad death it hurt me in so many ways. I've never even told my mother that I was forced to kill people."

Yes! I feel so much better about the upheaval and violence in Africa. After all, he enjoys playing the xylophone now, doesn't he? And he's even quite good at it! Of course there are uplifting aspects. At its core, it's offering a little slice of hope. The film follows 3 Acholi teenagers who live in an isolated refugee camp called Potango, in northern Uganda, as they prepare to compete with their classmates at the national music & dance competition in Kampala, the country's capital. It's wonderful to see children and teenagers who live in cramped conditions with traumatic pasts and uncertain futures hanging over their head enjoying music and dance.



Heaven forbid.

I'm not at all convinced that the fact that the film seems overproduced in some aspects takes away from those traumatic stories; it makes it just that much worse in many respects. I'd love to know what a non-'sugarcoated' documentary looks like in some of these reviewers eyes. And I say that as a confirmed cynic and pessimist.



Ce n'est pas parfait; but so few things are, documentaries especially. But I don't know - music got my grandmother out of the coal fields of West Virginia; I suppose I don't find it so ridiculous to think that teenagers in much worse positions might find it a powerful escape (certainly figuratively, and perhaps literally) as well.



(The soundtrack was fantastic; I really wished they hadn't mucked about with slow motion during the school's performance in parts, because it was pretty spectacular on its own)

Tsotsi, 2005. Dir. Gavin HOOD. Starring Presley CHWENEYAGAE, Terry PHETO, Zenzo NGQOBE, Kenneth NKOSI.



I think this is the first South African film I've seen - well, African period. Set in the Soweto slum near Johnnesburg, it's violent, moving, and alternately quickly & slowly paced (based on the only novel by playwright Athol Fugard, published in the '60s). It's got a certain meditative quality to it; the director says he was hoping to capture in a feature film the novel Tsotsi, which features a lot of Tsotsi's own thoughts on what's going on.

It's a simple story - a 19 year old thug finds redemption after committing a violent act & winding up with an infant in the process of said act (whoops). The turn doesn't take much time, which is the first thing that indicates that perhaps this isn't going to be full of GRITTY REALITY!!!, though it's got grimy stuff galore - from shanties to people taking bullets in the brain. But despite it being predictable, I was still a touch weepy by the end.



OK, so it's trite and calculated in parts, but worth viewing - it won Best Foreign Film at the '06 Oscars & it's nice seeing film from somewhere outside of my area (most people's areas, I suspect). I loved the fact they used a mix of languages - Afrikaans, the blended creole of "Tsotsitaals," a bit of English.

Chweneyagae was quite powerful as the lead & the cast was really good, especially considering it was the first film for several of them.



"You're being asked to forgive a lot," is what Hood says during the commentary over one of the deleted scenes. And you are; but it's ... oddly believable somehow, even though it nags at you that it's all a bit too pat. Really, sometimes it's nice to not be whapped upside the head with too much gritty reality. (As an aside, the soundtrack is pretty good, as was the cinematography). I mean, even the canine who makes an appearance gets the short end of the stick (I had to go hug the dog); leaving with the slightest hope of redemption isn't the worst thing in the world.



I'm beginning to think I've seen too many old silents - I'm more than willing to suspend disbelief for many marginally believable 'real life' plots.

苏州河 Suzhou he [Suzhou River], 2000. Dir. 娄烨 LOU Ye. Acted 贾宏声 JIA Hongsheng, 周迅 ZHOU Xun.





My god, wrong film to pick on a night where I was supposed to be working. On the plus side, the Korean film I watched was 'peppy' as far as not-terribly-cheerful Korean films go. It all seemed very ... Chinese (yes, I just essentialized Chinese culture). Or perhaps I've just been spending too much time with Chinese ghosts of my own.

I was not a fan of the frenetic camerawork at the beginning, since I was starting to feel ill, but it's nice to see the underbelly of Shanghai again - the camera was growing on me by the end. I thought it well put together, generally speaking; I'd certainly watch it again. It had a certain je ne sais quoi.

Funny that Suzhou was once the font of beautiful women, beautiful culture, beautiful poetry.





It made me miss the rain in Taipei, and the people at my 全家.

A few more thoughts: after having a few days to meditate on it, I almost wished I hadn't sent the DVD back to Netflix so quickly. Certainly not a perfect film by any means - and it perhaps echoes some classics without really improving on them - but I really liked the way it twisted back on itself over and over again. I liked the narrative flow - not the most unique setup, but the way it was put together.

Lou Ye is probably famous for films that really toe the line (and sometimes go right over them); the '06 颐和园 Yihe yuan [Summer Palace] about the Tiananmen Square incident of '89 landed him in a significant chunk of hot water for the politics and the sex. There are some incredible scenes that make you go 'Whoa - how did they manage that?' In any case, Suzhou he is extremely tame in comparison, but cause something of a stir when it first came out. It's the fact that these envelopes are getting pushed on a global stage (for we certainly have plenty of films in our library that really push the envelope, but aren't getting trotted out at Cannes etc.) that makes it all so interesting.

( + a few screens )

봄여름가을겨울그리고봄 Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom [Spring, Summer , Fall, Winter ... and Spring], 2003. Dir. 金基德/김기덕 KIM Ki-dŏk. Acted OH Yeong-su, KIM Young-min, SEO Jae-kyeong, HA Yeo-jin, KIM Jong-ho.





Yes, woquinoncoin, I finally watched it, years after a copy was leant to me (that's one well-traveled DVD).

Screenshots coming soon-ish; truly gorgeous film. The setting - a floating monastery on a lake that was artificially constructed a looooOOOOoooong time ago to take advantage of the mountains surrounding it. A really quiet, meditative film, full of lovely bits here and there. I liked it a lot more than the last Korean film about Buddhism I watched (아제 아제 바라 아제 Aje Aje Bara Aje).





Really familiar sounding arirang at the end.





I'm coming to the conclusion that the camera just loves the Korean countryside. Even in films like Seopyeonje, where one gets the distinct impression that the filmmaker is trying to emphasize some of the gritty, grimy, icky parts, the wild mountains still sparkle with ice and even the more desolate countryside has a certain something. Spring is no exception; it lavishes even more attention on the surroundings, which are practically characters in their own right. My beloved Chihwaseon is a love letter to a variety of areas; this is a love letter to a little man-made lake surrounded by impressive mountains on every side.

Perhaps this has something to do with the creation of nongmin ('peasant') as a category, and more than that - the location of an authentic Korea - in the colonial period? I'm not sure I've ever seen another national cinema that makes the country such a star.

It makes me long for somewhere that is not 'perfect' SoCal.

( + lots of screens )

It occurred to me last night that I don't make enough soup - and I invariably wind up with tons of left over veggies from making other recipes that either get thrown away or rot in the veggie drawer until I remember them. And soups are great for using up random veggies.

I used too many egg noodles - next time, I'll up the amount of broth, decrease the amount of noodles, and up the spices. But it's a nice basic recipe to play with & very nummy, both straight out of the crock pot & for leftovers.

( Recipe after the cut )

Los Angeles Ballet, 'Director's Choice' (Prodigal Son, An American Camelot, Stravinsky Violin Concerto), Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 7 March 2009.

Totally worth the drive. This company seemed a lot more ... something than the City Ballet, probably because they have a lot more funding (this was obvious enough based on the program & also the fact that one person underwrote this series of performances). It also seems (from reading dancer bios) they are really picking a particular type of dancer - not an impression I got from City Ballet. Still, I really enjoyed the performance on Thursday & enjoyed this performance, so it's all good.

In any case, this was an interesting lineup - two Balanchine ballets & a light, jazzy 'world premiere' (e.g., late '50s inspired tutus, soundtrack of Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald). Prodigal Son is probably Balanchine's most famous story ballet, created when he was a wee slip of a thing (25) for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (the last season à Paris, as it would turn out). The music is Sergei Prokofiev, who was so incensed over Balanchine's portrayal of the Siren that he refused to give him any royalties; scenery & costumes by Georges Rouault. Based, of course, on the Biblical story of sin and redemption.

Shockingly modern - and I can see why Prokofiev, who apparently envisioned a 'demure' Siren, was most disappointed by the 2nd part. It's frankly sexual and absolutely enticing - I thought Melissa Barak in the role of the Siren was just brilliant. I can only imagine what 1929 audiences would've thought as the Prodigal Son and the Siren wound themselves around one another.

It's not something I'm dying to see again, but it was certainly very interesting & well-danced. The 'drinking friends' were tremendous as well - it's a funny and witty ballet in many respects, though I'm not sure I really got all of it.

Actually, one thing I noticed in this performance that had been bothering me at the performances on Thursday (But I couldn't quite articulate) was makeup. It was well-executed here - and even though I was further away from the stage, I had an easier time picking up on subtle facial expressions. Eyes disappeared into a black haze on Thursday.

The Violin Concerto was done for the '72 Stravinsky festival; it was in a similar vein to The Four Temperaments - practice clothes, lots of playfulness with bodies. The end was really wonderful. I think that's why I like Balanchine so much - there are always points where you sit up and go 'Oh, cool'. I can't imagine having an eye that good, but it's a real treat to see it on stage. I'm not crazy about Stravinsky (at all), but Balanchine makes it tolerable and the piece even grew on me by the end. Similar to the Hindemuth on Thursday - not something I'd want to listen to on its own, but it all worked.

I'm actually glad they stuck Jennifer Backhaus' An American Camelot in the middle, because it was really fun and light and jazzy (as was the intent) - the dancers looked like they were having a lot of fun. The costumes were great (late '50s inspired; the men were in white button downs, partially unbuttoned, skinny ties, and suit pants), and the set simple - the lights were hanging 'lounge lights.' Pretty cool ....

There were some minor annoyances not related to what was happening on stage, but I'm glad I went & splurged for the good tickets - and I'm really looking forward to La Sylphide in May (and more Balanchine from City Ballet, also in May!)

City Ballet of San Diego, 'Just Balanchine' (Serenade, La Source, The Four Temperaments), Birch North Park Theatre, 5 March 2009.

I will forgive the City Ballet a terrible (really) website - as in, they don't actually tell you what specific things you'll be seeing until your tickets arrive - because their performance of three classic pieces of Balanchine was really a treat. I suspect Balanchine himself would've taken a dim view of the weight of some of the dancers, but overall it was a lovely performance.

I was especially taken with Serenade, a signature NYCB piece that is set to Tchaikovsky's Serenade in C Major. La Source recalls Romantic ballets, with lovely light footwork and little vignettes of dance (the costumes here were especially fantastic). And The Four Temperaments - while I wasn't crazy about the music - really illustrates the wickedly modern nature of many of Balanchine's pieces.

Really a visual treat - the fact that these were storyless ballets allows for a lot of really neat visual effects that would be hard(er) to enact in, you know, Swan Lake. I could've sat and watched several performances of Serenade quite cheerfully, just to watch how the bodies worked together.

I'm going to see their version of Apollo in May. Which - if I hadn't happened to attend this performance - I would have had no idea was on the schedule, since 'Myths and Magic' tells me nothing. Harrumphumphumph.

ビルマの竪琴 Biruma no tategoto [The Burmese Harp], 1956. Dir. 市川 崑 ICHIKAWA Kun. Starring 三國連太郎 MIKUNI Rentaro, YASUI Shoji. Nikkatsu.



I must admit, before settling down with this film, I was somewhat delighted to see the directors given name is the same character as my beloved 崑曲. Appropriate, then, for this film, or so I thought, what with the way it begins & how lovingly nostalgic the soundtrack is.

A beautiful, haunting film - I can't get too worked up about the fact that the director wasn't dealing with Japanese war crimes.




I started to cry when they showed the company after surrender with a pet monkey; it made me think of Papa's company in Luzon, and their pet/mascot "Jerome."




More later perhaps. Excellent, excellent film; the director did a color remake in the 80s, I think.

( + screens )

Paragraph 175, 2000. Dir. Rob EPSTEIN, Jeffrey FRIEDMAN. Telling Pictures.

Well, that was some heavy sledding.

This documentary concerns the Nazi persecutions of homosexuals under the auspices of Paragraph 175, which criminalized male homosexuality in Germany. Very few men who were arrested and imprisoned (or sent to concentration camps) survived at the time the film was made - of the 10 assumed to be alive, five were interviewed for this film.

It does in many respects what a good documentary should do. A really complex picture emerges - the lines are blurred in many cases. It isn't simply a recounting of victimization, and the most painful parts, the great tragedies, aren't (necessarily) in the concentration camps.

It's really quite gripping and extremely powerful, in great part because it's not trussed up and glossed over, complexities aren't smoothed out, and all the interviewees emerge as individuals.

Some of the musical selections were overdone, and the hippity hopping from archival footage and story to story could've been done better. Still - despite these issues - it's worth watching.

Dansaren [The Dancer], 1994. Dir. Donya FEUER. SVT Drama.

Interesting documentary on the Royal Swedish Ballet, one of the oldest troupes in Europe; focuses primarily on a young ballerina named Katja Björner (who is now a first soloist with the Ballet after some time spent in Amsterdam with the major Dutch company - something we see a bit of at the very end). A bit frenetic, and bounces all over the place from rehearsal to performance clips to competitions to the place where shoes were made (I'd, ahem, be happy to watch a (short) documentary on that, actually).

Ballet doesn't transfer well to TV, at least I don't think so; the reason this is reasonably successful is because it focuses on individual parts: ankles, arms, hands, toes. There's a spectacular sequence at the end of a pas de deux from Romeo & Juliet which works precisely because we only get little bits of a whole - a look, the sweep of an arm, the delicate look of the pas de bourée couru. It's lovely, ephemeral, and a hell of a lot of hard work.

Interesting documentary with interesting camera work, but geared towards a niche audience, bien sûr. The music is mostly culled from (shockingly enough) ballet scores; pretty effective. I really liked the Russian religious chants, though, that accompanied a few scenes - quite effective and adaptable to several different contexts.

I miss going to the ballet. I ought to think about getting season tickets somewhere.

La Haine [Hate], 1995. Dir. Mathieu KASSOVITZ. Acted Vincent CASSEL, Hubert KOUNDÉ, Saïd TAGHMAOUI. Canal+.

Amazingly stylish film. The director apparently had a showing of stills from the movie, which doesn't surprise me.



'It's about a society on its way down, and as it falls - it keeps saying, so far, so good ... so far, so good.'



La Haine was finally released in the US on DVD in '07, and I signed up for Netflix in part because they had this film. One of my young French professors showed us La Haine - I remember sitting in a darkened auditorium-style classroom (smallish) and watching it for the first time. Watching it all these years later, and knowing how it plays out didn't matter much - it still made me feel the same way. The movie anticipates the violence, disenfranchised youth, rioting, chaos that would crop up in France in recent years.



The film, shot in spectacular style in black and white, follows three friends from "le banlieue": Vince, the angry, tall and lanky Jewish guy; Saïd, the scrappy, streetwise, funny North African; Hubert, the quiet, thoughtful African boxer. It's a powerful meditation on France in the mid-'90s (and France today), poverty, friendship, violence. The film follows the friends from the aftermath of a riot - driven by the severe beating one of the young banlieue residents receives at the hands of the police - to Paris and back. Kassovitz is a talented director (and an actor himself) and the actors work brilliantly together. Cassel in particular has been in quite a bit of English language stuff, and was also the bad guy in Le Pacte des loups.



It's a violent film - violence is absolutely pervasive - but it is wonderfully funny in parts, so smart, so sharp. There is an innocent quality to some of the hijinks. And the violence never seems pornographic.

There's not much to say - this is a film that needs to be watched. It reminds me of a more lyrical version of American History X (no slouch in the power department itself). It's a subject that deserves to be talked about - a film that deserves to be talked about and watched for quite some time.

Be forewarned that some of the subtitles are atrocious & they are 'acculturalized' for a non-French audience (e.g., a minor character nicknamed 'Astérix' (the famous French comic book hero) is redubbed 'Snoopy' in the subtitles). The French in the film is extremely rich, and it does loose something in translation.

( +8 screens )

Please Vote For Me, 2007. Dir. 陈为军 CHEN Weijun. Steps International.



Chen Weijun has done some incredible work, most notably the powerful To Live Is Better Than To Die (2003), about a family in an AIDS village in Henan. This short documentary is ostensibly lighter fare (and there's something reassuring about knowing the three charming kiddos vying for position of class monitor aren't going to die as you watch), but the subject - a 'democratic' election - is pretty heavy when juxtaposed against the political reality of modern China.

Well, in theory at least.

Really, this is a short, (reasonably) charming documentary - despite the third graders asking the film makers in the beginning, 'What's what? Democracy? What does that mean?', the three selected to run catch on to the game of currying political favor quite quickly. The ups, downs, underhanded tactics, and lots of boisterous kids (and their parents). And crying. Lots and lots of crying.

A nice slice of (pretty well off) life in Wuhan, Hubei. This, I think, would be useful to show in some class contexts if you could get away with it - it paints a different picture of 'Chinese life' than I think many people would expect.

Larissa N. Heinrich, The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body between China and the West (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).

A tremendous book on a fascinating subject - Heinrich also does a brilliant job of incorporating a variety of disciplines into a cohesive whole. Is it history? Literature? Visual cultures? History of science? Art history? And so on and so on ... It's all of them, more or less.

Of course, no work is perfect, but I really enjoyed the engagement with a variety of (secondary) literatures and the clear way she moved from topic to topic. The underlying question is 'How did China get to be known as the dongya bingfu ('sick man of Asia')?'. The 'answer' - or one part of it - is a complex picture. Heinrich looks at Qing medical texts, the collaboration between renowned Cantonese portraitist Lam Qua and Peter Parker (paintings that span a wide range of pathologies, and incorporate a number of various tactics) to create paintings for use in China and abroad, the development of medical photography, and finally - the impact on literature (specifically, Lu Xun) and the later reformers and radicals.

This is a fascinating way of getting at some of the very complex East-West (sometimes East-East) relations of the nineteenth century, which provide some of the most startlingly grotesque (in a really cool way!) images. Not unlike the idea of the "tragic flaw" (which is imprecise at best, and purposely mistranslated and deployed inappropriately at best), bodies of medical knowledge pass back and forth through language, culture, history, and so on.

The Lu Xun bit, while interesting, did seem a bit out of place, but on the whole the book flowed quite well. Immensely readable; I really admire the tact with which she handled such a subject, and the way in which she wove together a number of different disciplines in a very natural way.

Ending with Lu Xun, Heinrich has this to say about the famous epiphany scene in the autobiographical short story "Fujino sensei" (in A Call to Arms), which recalls Lu Xun's medical training in Japan (a type of training, she argues, that made him privileged in terms of knowledge compared to even other educated Chinese):

... Lu Xun came, in short, to identify with microbes.

The seminal event depicted in this scene was therefore not Lu Xun's decision to give up medicine for literature, but rather the unexpected superimposition of the metaphysical body onto the scientific one, the cognitive merging of the represented scientific body, for the very first time, with an identifiably Chinese self or body. Combined with the various subtextual and overt reflections on human anatomy and racialized knowledge about it that permeate Lu Xun's other works, the visual epiphany depicted in this infamous slide scene represents the birth of the Chinese body at the metaphorical level and in the modern context - a prerequisite for literary modernism that is not to be mistaken for the birth of modern Chinese literature itself. (156)