Estoy bien y tu?

Summary of Everyday Life In The Modern World

The novel is also an excellent portrait of Gold Rush San Francisco, depicting the poverty, prostitution, and racial hatred with horrible clarity. The novel details a San Francisco fraught with racial tension between the newly arriving Chinese and the Americans, often erupting into violence and murder. What is interesting is the hatred possessed by the whites of the Chinese ghettos and prostitution rings -- things which they themselves had a part in creating. Particularly horrifying is the life of the Chinese prostitute, both objectified and villified, living short lives filled with terror.

The other girls in your line of work started losing their hair at eighteen, their teeth at nineteen, and by twenty, with their vacant eyes and decrepit faces, they were as good as dead, silent as dust.(2)

The anti-Chinese attitude is further examined by the narrator's voice, which presents the story as a collection of imaginative detail gleaned from historical fact. As a fifth-generation Chinese immigrant, the narrator of the novel explores the parallels between Gold Rush era prejudice and the modern world with its neo-Nazi hatred running rampant on talk shows

Set against the background of the Japanese occupations of China, the Communist-Nationalist struggle, the White Terror of Taiwan, and American engagement in the Vietnam War, this extraordinary novel recounts the story of two women — Mulberry and Peach — who are really one. Mulberry is a young woman who has fled the turmoil of postwar China to settle in the United States. Unable to forget the terrors she has witnessed or resolve the conflicts between her new life and her old, she develops a second personality: the fearless, tough-talking, sexually uninhibited Peach. While Mulberry clings to her cultural and ethical roots, Peach renounces her past to embrace the American way of life , with a vengeance. . These two women — both in flight — speak to their readers through an innovative narrative structure, combining journal entries, interior dialogue, letters, poetry, and myth.

Told through the eyes of a young refugee woman, Mulberry and Peach offers a rare perspective on the difficulties of immigrant experience and on the upheavals of contemporary China, where the book was banned upon its first publication in 1976. In a unique narrative that is at once humorous and fierce, highly original and deeply affecting, , Hualing Nieh presents an unforgettable portrait of the pain of cultural dislocation and the anguish of psychological disintegration

The "Two Women of China" of this novel's subtitle are one and the same: Mulberry is a Chinese woman who has witnessed the major upheavals of twentieth-century China before fleeing to the United States in the 1960s, while the defiant, "Americanized" Peach is her "liberated" alterego borne of a traumatic past.

Nieh presents Mulberry/Peach's story in four sections. In the first part, while China is suffering from the final attacks of the Japanese invaders at the end of World War II, Mulberry is a teenage runaway stranded with other refugees on a boat caught in the rapids of the Yangtse River. A few years later, she is trapped in Peking with her fiance and his dying mother as the Communists surround the city. In the late 1950s, Mulberry is imprisoned in an attic in Taiwan, hiding from the authorities who are seeking her husband on embezzlement charges. And, in the final section, she has emigrated to the United States, where she is being pursued by the INS and haunted by her other identity, Peach.

Mulberry's plight is, at best, bleak, but Nieh manages to balance an astonishing sense of humor with the description of the calamities and isolation faced by her protagonist. Hauntingly written and beautifully translated, the novel can be read on many levels: historical and cultural allegory, political satire, a treatise on the immigrant's schizophrenic experience, a commentary on Eastern and Western sexual mores and gender identity. As a bonus, Sau-ling Cynthia Wong's discerning afterword amplifies these and other themes and provides useful background for understanding the novel, but (fortunately) "Mulberry and Peach" will be immediately accessible to any reader.

 Fae Myenne Ngs' second novel 

Steer Toward Rock is a genuine narrative predominately centered on Jack Moon Szeto, a hard-working butcher living in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the 1960s. Jack’s personal history is saturated with depressing events: His mother sold him off at an early age and his adopted father, Yi-Tung “Gold” Szeto, snuck him into America to unlawfully establish him as his son. In return, Yi-Tung commands Jack to work off his debt and enter into a marriage to a woman he doesn’t love. Despite Jack’s grim past, he meets and soon falls deeply for Joice Qwan, a vivacious character guaranteed to win over the hearts and libidos of most male readers. Though many of Jack’s confidants try to steer him away from seeing Joice due to her unorthodox lifestyle, she eventually becomes pregnant with a daughter they name Veda. However, Joice’s sublime spontaneity and inspiring nature eventually beckons Jack to seek Joice’s hand in marriage, but she declines later on in the novel. Working through his life’s ordeals, Jack enters the Chinese Confession Program where he unleashes his true identity to the U.S. government. This leads to both his deportation and the fierce retribution sought by Yi-Tung. It’s here where the reader is taken on the proverbial rollercoaster ride which rises high and dives low, often careening left and jerking right. This novel will unquestionably satisfy the literary psyche of any enthralled reader.

This semester, we read a lot of works about immigrants, and I do love the books because I could feel the struggle in them; love, identity and contradiction between old and new are very attracive to me. The following information is summary of Bone. I hope you can all enjoy it.

The children of immigrants have often been called upon to translate for their parents. Their ability to switch from the language of their parents to the English of their birthplace makes them the bridge between the customs of the old world and the expectations and demands of the new. Not only are these children faced with a generation gap, but they must also cope with a cultural gap. This enormous responsibility can become an overwhelming burden. Fae Myenne Ng's first novel, Bone, confronts and explores this responsibility and burden. Ng, who grew up in San Francisco, is herself the daughter of Chinese immigrants and in an interview explained the title of her novel: "Bone is what lasts. And I wanted to honor the quality of endurance in the immigrant spirit."

Bone relates the story of the Leong family which has recently suffered the death by suicide of the Middle Girl, Ona. Ona committed suicide by jumping off the M floor of one of Chinatown's housing projects--she left no note; and although the police reported she was on downers, there was no apparent cause for the suicide

The novel is narrated by "The First Girl," Leila Fu Louie, Ona's half-sister and the eldest daughter in the Leong family. Lei's attempts to come to terms with her sister's death, and thereby her own life, lead her to muse about incidents from their childhood and the everyday circumstances of the present. The story unfolds in a series of stories that move from the present into the past.

In Bound Feet and Western Dress, what interested me was that it mentioned Chang Yu-I had done fortune-telling several times. The result revealed that marrying early was good for her. Besides, fortune teller also said that her elder sister should get married after twenty five ages. Consequently, when she was fifteen years old, her mother forced her to get married with Hsu Chih-mo even though the fortune teller said that this marriage was not appropriate. Finally, she divorced with Hsu Chih-mo at twenty one ages. Furthermore, Chang Yu-I and Hsu Chih-mo was the first divorced couple in China. She complained that why her mother did not obey the fortune-telling result. Because, her elder sister married with a pretty rich man at that time and it seemed that her sister’s marriage was fairly happiness. Her mother also regretted that.

If Chang Yu-I had not married with Hsu Chih-mo, everything would have changed utterly. In addition, the fate of everyone would be totally different, inclusive of 林徽音, 梁思成, 陸小曼, etc. Nevertheless, the fortune control human or human choose the fortune is worthy to discuss. 

The author, born in China in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion, tells the story of her tumultuous life: her arranged marriage to a poet who treated her cruelly and ultimately abandoned her; her flight to Germany where she educated herself and became a teacher; and her career as the first woman vice-president of a Shanghai bank. This memoir was written for her Chinese American grandniece, a Harvard student who sought to know the background of her own conflicting identities.

"Chuang Hua finished Crossings in 1968 -- a time of rampant social and artistic experimentation. She played with style and language to tell the modernistic story of Chinese becoming Western. A fascinating read." --Maxine Hong Kingston

"Chuang Hua's themes -- crossing cultural barriers, crossing parental and conventional strictures, searching for a center within oneself from the past that is ever present--are not limited to Chinese-Americans: rather, they are universal concerns." --Amy Ling, from the Afterword

When it was first published in America in 1968, Chuang Hua's evocative novel Crossings was completely unheralded and quickly went out of print. Years later it would be widely recognized as the first modernist novel to address the Asian-American experience, its deeply imagistic prose--marked by spatial and temporal leaps, an unconventional syntax, and unanticipated shifts in plot--as haunting as the writing of Jane Bowles

 Western box office and reviews

The British reviews for Memoirs of a Geisha were generally mixed. The New Statesman criticized Memoirs of a Geisha 's plot, saying that after Hatsumomo leaves, "the plot loses what little momentum it had and breaks down into one pretty visual after another" and says that the film version "abandons the original's scholarly mien to reveal the soap opera bubbling below".The Journal praised Ziyi, saying that she "exudes a heartbreaking innocence and vulnerablity" but said "too much of the characters' yearning and despair is concealed behind the mask of white powder and rouge".London's The Evening Standard compared Memoirs of a Geisha to Cinderella and praised Gong Li, saying that "Li may be playing the loser of the piece but she saves this film" and Gong "endows Hatsumomo with genuine mystery". Eighteen days later, The Evening Standard put Memoirs of a Geisha on its Top Ten Film list. Glasgow's Daily Record praised the film, saying the "geisha world is drawn with such intimate detail that it seems timeless until the war, and with it the modern world comes crashing in".

In the United States, the film managed $57 million during its box office run. The film peaked at 1,654 screens,facing off against King Kong, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Fun with Dick and Jane. During its first week in limited release, the film screening in only eight theaters tallied up a $85,313 per theater average which made it second in highest per theater averages behind Brokeback Mountain for 2005.[International gross reached $158 million.

Overall, the American reviews were mixed. Illinois's Daily Herald said that the "[s]trong acting, meticulously created sets, beautiful visuals, and a compelling story of a celebrity who can't have the one thing she really wants make Geisha memorable". The Washington Times called the film "a sumptuously faithful and evocative adaption" while adding that "[c]ontrasting dialects may remain a minor nuisance for some spectators, but the movie can presumably count on the pictorial curiosity of readers who enjoyed Mr. Golden's sense of immersion, both harrowing and esthetic, in the culture of a geisha upbringing in the years that culminated in World War II".

The film scored a 35% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 54/100 on Metacritic, meaning "mixed or average review."

A powerful story of one woman's displacement between cultures and traditions -- a landmark in Asian-American literature.

At the center of Crossings is Fourth Jane, the fourth of seven children whose recollections of an oppressive yet loving father, Dyadya, are collaged with her constant migrations between four continents. Suffering from a domestic torpor occasionally enlivened by ritualistic preparations of food for her foreign lover, Jane's displacement only heightens the remembrance of what she has fled: a breech of the familial code; a failed romance; and further in the past, the desolation of war as "bloated corpses flowed in the current of the yellow river." Spare, lyrical, Taoist in form and elusiveness, visually cinematic, tender and sensual, Chuang Hua's powerful narrative endures as one of the most moving and original works of literature in the history of American letters.

The film, set in Japan during the Showa Era, tells the story of Chiyo Sakamoto (portrayed by Suzuka Ohgo as a child, and by Zhang Ziyi as an adult), who is sold into a life of servitude by her parents when she is nine years old. Chiyo is taken in by the proprietress of a geisha house, Mother (Kaori Momoi), where she works to pay off the debt of her purchase and the soiling of a silk kimono owned by a well-known geisha, Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), which Chiyo was blackmailed into defacing by another geisha, Hatsumomo (Gong Li).

諜對諜的劇情隨處可見

但這次色戒裡面更是有男女情愛方面的因素為大

王佳芝愛上了易先生

那易先生有愛上王佳芝嗎?

上次聽老師講解之後

我深深覺得易先生是愛她的

只是他更愛自己而已罷了

所以他才會為了保全自己讓她被處死吧

所以或許愛 裡面還是有一點自私的吧?

作者在本書闡述了很多他對於關於愛的看法

我覺得對我們其實很有幫助

畢竟台灣的教育並沒有好好教導我們兩性的相處問題

而作者也在本書提及性愛既存在於性的結合之中

更主要地存在於感情的和諧之中

愛是信心和勇氣的行為，誰沒有信心和勇氣，誰就沒有愛。

這點我還蠻贊同的 :)

以前的禁書真的讓我見識到了為什麼是禁書

書中著墨了很多關於性愛的方面

但還是老話一句

我們要以藝術的眼光去看待這本名著XD

其實在羶腥的性愛背後

我讀到了更多更多女主角放縱背後的悲哀無奈

究竟身心靈的愛情如何獲得也是大家想知道的問題

1. Discuss the issues of class, heir (son), orgasm, and industrial revolution in the second part of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in your blog

當時的階級制度非常地嚴重

因為階級制度即代表了你在這社會上的力量

所以Lady Chatterley 也才會因門當戶對這個原因嫁給了她先生

然後子嗣也尤其重要

從先生因為癱瘓而不能行房而要求太太與別人行房生下小孩就不難看出

我想或許是工業化地太快速導致人們價值觀扭曲

有太多黑暗面了

1. What are the differences between Wang Jiaorui (Red Rose) and Meng Yanli (White Rose)?  Which one do you prefer?  Why? 

紅玫瑰奔放自由而白玫瑰保守謹慎

我比較喜歡紅玫瑰因為做真正得自己沒有壓抑是很棒的

2. According to Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, explain the reason why love is an art (The Art of Loving pp. 1-5).

根據Erich Fromm就是 愛是需要許多因素才產生的
不是所謂的fall in love
而是需要責任 等等的

3. In discussing the theory of love, explain the reason why love is essential in the experiences of human existence (The Art of Loving pp. 6-32).

愛是連結人與人之間的關係

不論是親情愛情友情都需要愛

如果少了愛 人生可能沒有什麼值得高興的事情了

1. What is Zhenbao’s patriarchal ideology, i.e., his social standards on men and women, his different standards on male and female sexuality and his own double standards of true self?

在那個時代下的男人是不容易滿足的

譬如振保娶了熱情的紅玫瑰卻又認為她熱情過頭而又想著純潔的白玫瑰

娶了白玫瑰卻又認為她太呆板無趣而懷念起紅玫瑰的熱情

在故事中振保的猶疑不決個性就像是反映的在那個時代下的男人都帶著一些“男人沙文主義 ”

2. What are the significant meanings of “Red rose--free women” and “White rose—moral women”?

而人的內心本有著天使和魔鬼的兩面矛盾性

一種是無私自我奉獻的聖女

另一種是淫蕩無恥的妓女

前者無性而後者多慾

這應該就是本書想帶給我們的想法

1. 門當戶對的婚姻有何利弊得失？若無門當戶對，婚姻如何維持？

What are the advantages and disadvantages on equality of marriage? How to maintain the married life in terms of inequality of marriage?

 門當戶對的利是生活背景跟階級地位相當而且家族之間幾無反對聲浪

而弊則是可能不是彼此相愛而結下的婚姻 之後的問題可能會很多

無門當戶對時 婚姻應該從對彼此包容多一點 相互體諒不同生活背景的兩人

2. 如何尋覓契合的愛或婚姻（包括心靈的與肉體的）？

How to acknowledge the perfect match of love or marriage, including spiritual and physical one?

這種事情很難說

我想大概就是要多看多挑多選

當然也不是指濫情而是在道德範疇下的尋覓契合的愛情與婚姻

Ethan Frome is a novel that was published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in turn-of-the-century New England in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel was adapted into a film in 1993

Ethan Frome is described as “the most striking figure in Starkfield” --“the ruin of a man,” with a “careless powerful look…in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain”. Frome's wife is the “sickly, cantankerous” Zenobia ("Zeena"). He is her sole caregiver until her young and beautiful cousin, Mattie Silver, arrives to help with housekeeping. Ethan is taken in by Mattie’s youthful beauty and good humor, but his interest in Mattie does not go unnoticed by Zeena. In fact, when she realizes Ethan and Mattie’s mutual attraction, she plans to hire someone less attractive and to have Mattie sent away.

其實對於Ethan想帶著Mattie私奔一起去尋找自己的夢想

而拋棄Zeena

之後一連串的事情 他們倆選擇殉情 不過沒成功 Mattie卻癱瘓了

Ethan得負責起這兩個女人的生活

也不太可能去實現自己的夢想

我看了其實心裡一陣痛快

因為Ethan的態度一切都讓我覺得他是個負心漢

沒有責任感又沒良心的男人

最後還是只能留在農村生活並照顧一個生病的女人跟癱瘓的女人

或許這樣的結局也是種警惕吧!