Monthly Archives: April 2012

Arrival

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When we first arrived in Shirazi, a rural village my SIT Kenya program stayed at for 10 days, it was chaos. About 100 villagers swarmed around my classmates and me as we got off the bus, excited to inspect their new sons and daughters. Us wazungu (the Kenyan term for white people/foreigners) lined up, and our director called out the name of a host, and then a student. “Fatima,” he called, “and Eric.” I looked over and saw this old woman walk towards me. She would be my mama.

As we had been told to do, I went in for a hug. In Kenya, though, people hug the opposite way we do (going to the right instead of the left). As I hugged her, about 95 villagers laughed hysterically. Apparently I was doing something wrong–it was a great welcome to the village. My academic director handed me my mosquito net and 2 gallons of water. Things had just gotten real.

Mama and I walked about 5 minutes till we got to our house. It was a mud house with a roof made of palm tree branches. She showed me my room–it was clearly the master bedroom, and the only bedroom. It took up about 1/3 of the house.

After putting my stuff down in my room, she gave me the traditional African welcome of fresh, hot tea. In 95 degree weather. As I sat in the darkness of the house sweating and drinking my hot tea, Mama and I tried to communicate. But couldn’t. She spoke no English, and I spoke very limited Kiswahili. We sat there silently, staring at each other. Without a smart phone to look down at and pretend you’re texting, there’s no out during awkward situations. You just have to deal with them.

Then Baba (my homestay father) came over. He was an 81-year-old man, the elder of the village. Of course I only found this out a week into the homestay due to our communication barriers. Meanwhile, we smiled and stared.

Dinner came a little after. My mama was in the room next to me, leaning over the fire preparing something. I asked if I could help, but was told no. Men, she explained, were not allowed to be in the kitchen or help with household duties. For me, a boy who had grown up believing that all work should be shared between men and women, and that sitting while someone else is working for you is wrong, I felt almost as if I was betraying my values by not helping. But this was her house, not mine. So I sat still, trying to be culturally sensitive but feeling uncomfortable about doing so.

When dinner was ready, Baba and I sat on a mat on the floor. Sitting on the mat was a challenge, though. I was wearing a kikhoi, basically a man-skirt (we were told to buy clothes to make us look like culturally appropriate, but looked ridiculous both to us and to the villagers). I wore spandex underneath my kikhoi to make sure my inability to manage my kikhoi wouldn’t lead to more socially awkward situations, and had to learn from how my father sat down the proper way to sit without exposing yourself to the world.

Mama put a giant metal platter down in front of us with coconut rice and chicken. And a bowl of water next to us. Baba passed me the water, so I washed my hands. Both hands. Then he gestured to start eating. And I did. With both hands. Woops. Being overwhelmed, I naturally forgot that, in rural villages, it’s culturally taboo to eat with your left hand. Wipe with the left, eat wit the right. Baba stared at me. I got the hint.

As I started eating with my right hand, I dropped rice everywhere. Baba had this awesome balling technique down where he’d roll the rice and then eat it. I couldn’t seem to do it, so I just kept making a mess. Baba then pointed towards the chicken and grunted. I guessed I should have some?

I picked up a piece of chicken meat, and as I did so, I suddenly became aware of my surroundings. Sitting on the floor next to me was a live chicken. Not one, but 7. And about 10 chicks. I was about to eat their brother. Or father. Or mother. Who knows. All I knew is that I could feel their eyes on me. I’ve never been a vegetarian before, but I’m used to a separation between my meat and its production. Baba grunted again at the chicken, insisting that I take a bite. After all, eating chicken was a rare occasion in the household—it meant killing one, removing the family’s ability to get eggs. I took a bite. The chickens kept looking.

Baba and I ate as much as we could, and then Mama took the dish off the matt and called in my four sisters. She split whatever was left of Baba and my meal with them. From that point on I tried not to eat a lot, as I felt like the more I ate directly decreased the amount of food for everyone. Mama wasn’t okay with my doing this, though, and would often insist that I keep eating until she thought that I was full. Only then would she stop insisting that I eat, and take the food for herself and the girls.

After dinner, my brother (I use “brother” loosely here, as I found out at the end of the week that he was actually my “nephew”) came over and took me to the dock. About 70 people were there, filled with excitement. I asked him what was going on in my broken Kiswahili. Apparently, a fisherman from the village had drowned 2 days before, and someone had just finally found his body. We were waiting by the dock for them to pull it out of the water so we could see it. Kids were everywhere. People were everywhere. They kept craning their necks, staring at the ocean to see the fisherman’s body. Luckily for me, turns out that the body hadn’t been found. Unluckily for me, it would be found the next day, and I would see it at the funeral.

As my “brother” and I walked back to our home in silence, I looked up to the stars above me. They were brighter and clearer than I’d ever seen. Being out of my element, being across the world from my family and friends and everything I had ever known, I could finally take a deep breath. This was why I had left New York City and Columbia for 4 months. These experiences that I would never forget, these people who I was meeting and forming relationships with, this culture that was so foreign to me that I had to adapt to, this language that I had never heard until 3 weeks ago. The beauty of the Indian Ocean, the opportunity to live with nature in a way I never had before. This was my time to experience everything. This was my semester abroad.

China Through Its Movies

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The cinema of China has a rich and troubled history that intrigued me even before I studied abroad in Beijing. In the past, most Chinese movies that have made it to the states have been lushly illustrated martial arts numbers (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero) or quirky Jackie Chan comedies. However, a number of lesser-known Chinese films have been shown in international film festivals and at arthouse theaters since the 1980s, and they offer much more compelling portrayals of Chinese people and events throughout China’s turbulent modern history.

During my semester abroad, I interned at a Chinese film distribution company and had the opportunity to learn more about Chinese cinema and issues of media censorship. Chinese cinema is often divided into different “generations” chronologically. Many of the extremely diverse films that have been made since the twentieth century have explored and captured the sentiments left by cataclysmic events in China’s history, particularly the Cultural Revolution. Their political overtones have led them to be banned by the Chinese government, even to this day.

Besides meeting locals and exploring hutongs, it’s also entirely possible to learn about China within the comforts of your own bed with a bag of popcorn and some juice. From the thick rich depths of Chinese cinematic history I’ve dredged up a list of Chinese movies that are not only great movies in and of themselves, but also formative films that capture pieces of China’s modern history:

Yellow Earth (1984) was one of the first films made after the Cultural Revolution and is considered the signature piece of the Fifth Generation of filmmakers. It was directed by Chen Kaige, and the cinematography is by Zhang Yimou—both of whom would become prominent filmmakers in their own right. The vast, parched landscape of Shaanxi province is the backdrop for the journey of a Communist soldier through impoverished villages searching for rural folksongs to turn into propaganda for the Communist army.

Farewell My Concubine (1993) is the only Chinese-language film to have won the Cannes Palme d’Or. Directed by Chen Kaige, it explores the relationship between two men in a Peking opera troupe and a woman who comes between them, and how the effects of China’s mid-20th-century political turmoil permeates their lives.

Raise the Red Lantern (1991), directed by Zhang Yimou, is one of the most iconic movies of Chinese cinema. Noted for its opulent visuals and sumptuous photography, it tells the story of a nineteen-year-old girl who becomes the new concubine of a wealthy lord, and the tension and intrigue that arises among her and the lord’s three other wives. The film was interpreted as a metaphor for the fragmented civil society of post-Cultural Revolution China and was banned in China for a time.

The Last Emperor (1987), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, is a biopic about the life of Puyi, the last emperor of China, from his early royal upbringing to the foundation of the early Chinese Republic, to his exile and eventual return. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director in 1987

Unknown Pleasures (2002) is a film about three aimless, disaffected youths growing up in China as part of the new “Birth Control” generation, fed on a steady diet of Western and Chinese popular culture. It is directed by Jia Zhangke, a Sixth Generation filmmaker widely lauded as perhaps “the most important filmmaker working in the world today.”