Notes from a fascinating world.
The world is like a bazaar, full of interesting odds and ends, and I've been exiled into it. This is my all-over-the-map (literally and metaphorically) attempt at capturing some of the world's many wonders.
 “Did you see the new ‘Wolf Warrior’?” A middle-aged woman asked me last year when I was again in China, when the film was still showing in theaters. I said no, and she could hardly believe it. “Aiya!” she said. “When the flag came out at the end, I just felt so good, you know? Felt awesome. So proud.”
You don’t have to actually see “Wolf Warrior II,” or even the trailer, to know what to expect. The poster, or even the title alone, tells you that it’s going to be a bombastic action movie. By the time I had this conversation with this woman, though, I also knew a couple other things about the film: first that it presents a nationalistic (to the point of jingoistic) view of China and especially its military, and second that it was already the highest grossing Chinese film of all time. I had little interest to see such a film. But then someone pointed out to me that perhaps I ought to, if only from a sociological point of view, the better to understand the contemporary Chinese psyche. Then the other day I discovered that it was on Netflix. And I thought, well, all right, but only for research purposes. I wrote about Jin Yong or Louis Cha earlier this year when the first installment of an English translation of one of his novels was published. Two weeks ago, Louis Cha died in Hong Kong at the age of 94. As one commentator put it, the cultural cachet of Cha’s works in Asia is comparable to the combined impact of Star Wars and Harry Potter. His books sold perhaps 300 million copies worldwide during his lifetime, and that’s not counting the millions of bootleg copies that must have circulated during the same years — after all, his books were banned in Mainland China until 1984. Anywhere in the world where there are readers of the Chinese language, there are fans of Jin Yong, including just about everyone in my family. And yet, his New York Times obituary is perfunctory. And the South China Morning Post, the paper of record of Hong Kong, carried an op-ed by one of his English translators on why he’s never been popular in the West.  Titles of Jin Yong's novels written in his own calligraphy.  Dred Scott. A few years ago I published a law review article.
Hardly anyone read it, not least because it was on a subject that at the time seemed barely worth discussing: birthright citizenship in the United States Constitution. And yet that subject is now suddenly a hot button issue in the news. Specifically, I was tracing a connection between the birthright citizenship guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment and the “Natural Born Citizen” clause in Article II. |
AuthorWriter, traveler, lawyer, dilettante. Failed student of physics. Not altogether distinguished graduate of two Ivy League institutions. Immigrant twice over. "The grand tour is just the inspired man's way of getting home." Archives
March 2020
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