bezdomny ex patria

So I finally made it up to the chapter in my Classical Chinese textbook introducing Tang poetry. It seems a little ridiculous that it took me so long. 10 years in China, 10 years studying the language, right from the word “go” I’ve been curious about ancient Chinese literature and philosophy, and ever since the day in Changsha in late 1999 I found a surprisingly good little bookstore, I’ve been collecting various versions of mono-, bi- and trilingual editions of various of the classics. And finally I actually sit down and learn myself something about this poetry that is supposed to represent a high-point in Chinese literature.

Of course, all of my Chinese study has been done in my spare time, which does not help. And I’ve followed the usual process of burst of solid effort and serious improvement – plateau – burst of solid effort and serious improvement – plateau. But a quick glance at my blogroll and an observation of just how sorry a state it is in will show you that probably the biggest factor holding me back has been my own natural laziness and inertia.

Anyways, this summer, as soon as all the semester’s loose ends were tied up, I sat down and studied. I head over to the office at about 10am Monday to Friday, study through till lunch time, and many afternoons I’ve gone back to the office and put in another hour or two. It’s felt good. Why the office? Less distraction, and I’m already there for those odd occasions when a prospective student comes in for an interview, further minimising disruptions. And considering the absurd heat and humidity we’ve had to suffer through this summer – aircon that is not buring through my electricity.

And why Classical Chinese? I discovered quite some time ago, through one of the more useful comments to have been left on this blog, that considering Chinese writers often throw a little Classical flourish into their writing, learning a bit of Classical would help improve my reading ability. Also, see the first paragraph where I wrote “right from the word “go” I’ve been curious about ancient Chinese literature and philosophy”, and throw into the mix that I firmly believe literature is the highest form of art, and poetry the highest form of literature (actually, come to think of it, that rarest of creatures, good literary translation, is probably about equal). My reading level has been good enough for some years now to handle modern literature (I just need to stop wasting so much time online and start picking up the books and reading them), but Classical is a whole other story, and something I need to work on. And to me it makes no sense to learn a language without exploring at least some of the literature, and there’s no point exploring the literature if you’re not going to read the classics as well as the modern stuff. I am very glad that my French education included Racine and Molière as well as Sartre, Duras and Camus. At the very least, that allows me to say, “Well, I’m not such a great fan of Molière, but that may be as much to do with a clash of teaching and learning styles between the lecturer and myself.” That’s a million times better than, “Molière? Yeah, sounds familiar….” Likewise, I’m sick and tired of only being able to say, “Yeah, I’ve heard of Li Bai. He liked his booze, didn’t he?” At least now I have actually read three of his poems in the original and have an idea that I think I do actually like the guy. I’m a long way from being able to tell you anything intelligent about Tang Poetry (or any aspect of Chinese literature), but at least I’ve made a start, and that feels good.

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A few links for those interested…

Via this blog post I found a few things that may be of interest to those studying Chinese.

First up is Microsoft’s Engkoo. I’m still trying to figure it out myself, and the interface isn’t entirely cooperative with my eyes just yet (although I’m sure if I play around a bit, I’ll figure it out). Confused Laowai says that it “pulls examples from the internet!” I think that may be half my confusion. Worth a look, at least, anyways.

Second is Social Mandarin, which it seems Confused Laowai is developing. My first impression is that it’s a great gathering of Mandarin learning experiences, tips, and shared resources. I will definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

Thirdly, in a similar vein to this but without the scholarship, 35 Chinese anti-American propaganda posters.

And finally a note: I have no real excuses for the silence on this blog of late. I’ve had a post on my first experiences with Tang poetry planned for a while, but a series of interruptions combined with my own laziness (as in about 10% interruption, 90% laziness) have prevented it from being written. I’ll get on to it soon.

A few weeks ago a colleague asked me about the 把 construction. Her teacher and her textbook had explained enough for her to know how to use it, but the big question was “WHY?”. Under what circumstances and for what reasons does one use 把 to place the direct object before the verb? Unfortunately, the most I’d ever been told about this particular construction was that sometimes it just sounds better. My grammar book had nothing to add. We checked with another colleague with significant Chinese study experience, and he had nothing to offer, either, beyond that it was somewhat similar to the passive.

Of course, it’s not passive, definitely active, but in terms of pure structure, the simple placement of the components of the sentence, it does bear some similarities.

And then today I cracked open my HSK Advanced textbook, and what did I see?

一、“把”字句 1, the “ba” sentence

说明 Explanation

1. 某一事物原不存在，后通过某种动作产生出来。表示此意义时，不用“把”字句。

Something that originally didn’t exist, after some action is produced. When expressing this meaning, do not use the “ba” sentence.

The wrong example it gives is “她把女孩生了”, which is wrong because the daughter wasn’t there at first, but was produced by her giving birth. It should be “她生了一个女孩”

2.“把”后的宾语应是确定的，或是说话的双方都已经知道的。

The object following “ba” should be definite, or both interlocutors should already know it.

And here the wrong example is “你把一本小说看一看”, which is wrong because which novel is not specified. “你把这本小说看一看” is correct, because we have one specific novel which both interlocutors know.

3. “把”后的动词必须是动作性动词，而表示关系、心理的动词，像“是、有、像、属于、知道、喜欢”等都不能用于“把”字句。

The verb following “ba” must be an action, while verbs expressing relationship or mentality, such as to be, to have, to be like, to belong to, to know, to like, etc, can not be used in a “ba” sentence.

And here the wrong example is “他把这件事知道了”, which is wrong because to know is not an action. This should be “他知道了这件事”.

4. 因为“把”字句表示的是某种事物由于某个行为而发生了某种变化，受到了某种影响，产生了某种结果，因此“把”字后的动词一般不单独存在于句中，常常带有表示“变化”、“影响”、“结果”的后附成分，至少要在动词后加“了”或后叠动词。

Because the “ba” sentence expresses that something has, through some action, been changed, influenced, or produced some result, the verb after the “ba” generally does not exist alone in the sentence. Usually it carries after it an element expressing “change”, “influence” or “result”, or at least needs a “le” or an additional verb after it.

Am I running into linguistic vocab that my dictionaries don’t know in that last clause? In any case, for “usually”, I think we should read “always”, as the book insists that a verb left hanging alone at the end of the sentence is wrong. Here is it’s wrong example: “他把杯子打”. Wrong because the verb is left hanging there with nothing to tell us the result of his having hit the cup. This time we get two right examples: “他把杯子打了” and “他把杯子打碎了”. The simple addition of “了” in the first right example indicates that something has changed, and the second right example tells that his hand moved, struck the cup, and the cup broke – plenty of changing things there.

5. 助动词、否定词要放在“把”字前，不能放在“把”字后的动词成分前。

Auxilliary verbs and negatives must be placed before the “ba”, and can’t be placed before the verb after the “ba”.

And here we get two wrong and two right examples, one each for auxilliary verbs and negatives. Starting with the auxilliary verbs, our wrong example is “我把感冒药应该吃了”, which should be “我应该把感冒药吃了”, as the auxilliary verb “should” needs to sit in front of the “ba”. And for negatives, our wrong example is “我把作业没做完”, which should be “我没把作业做完”, as the negative “没” – “haven’t”, needs to sit in front of the “ba”.

So there you go. It doesn’t solve the great “So why do we bother with this extra complication to Chinese grammar?” question, still leaving us with my old teacher’s “Because sometimes it just sounds better” as the best answer I have yet come across. But this is the most I have ever seen written on the subject, and it does give a lot more information about the circumstances under which one can or cannot use the “ba” structure. And on where to put your auxilliary verbs and negatives. And don’t forget to leave your verb hanging all lonely at the end of the sentence – it needs at least a 了, if not something a little more detailed, to indicate a change in state. Oh, and make sure the direct object is something specific or that both interlocutors already know about.

Is it bad of me to want to add a “给” in front of many of those main verbs? It’s a desire that’s especially strong with “我应该把感冒药吃了” for some bizarre reason.

This post is written especially for Claire, but also for anybody else struggling with the vagaries of the evil 把 in particular, and Chinese grammar in general.

Update: I almost forgot: The textbook this comes from is 《HSK（高等）速成强化教程》An Intensive Course of HSK (Advanced), edited by 刘超英，龙清涛，金舒牛 and 蔡云凌, Beijing Language and Culture University Press, 2002.

Now that I’ve got that little lunchtime rant out of my system, here’s what I really wanted to blog about once I’d gotten the fuel into my system. Luqiu Luwei has another fascinating post on the subject of language, one that starts with bilingual education in Kashgar, then moves through Hong Kong and Singapore to the preservation of local languages.

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I was given a container of tea the other day. Inside the container the leaves were sealed inside a plastic packet, so I couldn’t see or smell them. The container and the packet contain no indication of what kind of tea this was. Indeed, the container simply bears the words “中国茗茶” and a poem in a form of calligraphy I find hard to decipher (maybe there’s a clue hidden in the poem, which I should examine more closely?), while the packet is even simpler, bearing the character “茶” and the English words “China tea”. So it’s tea from China. Very informative. And the friend who gave me this tea was no more helpful, as she had been given the tea by somebody who didn’t bother to tell her what kind of tea it was.

So I brought this tea home, and opened the packet to have a look. Dark green leaves, long and tightly twisted. A problem in our kitchen that I am trying to get fixed made it difficult to get a handle on the aroma. So I brewed a cup, and tasted it. A strong, mellow, dark, slightly smoky flavour took me back to Dunedin, where I had tried a tea with an unusual but vaguely Chinese-y looking name, a tea I had never seen in China in part because I had no idea if it really was Chinese, and if so, what its name would be in Mandarin. So today I googled it. Could I have been given a container of this? The leaves in the picture are very similar to the leaves in the mystery container in my tea cupboard, and the flavour is similar to what I remember drinking in Dunedin. Of course, it’s been 11 years (almost exactly to the day) since I last set foot in Dunedin… I really need a tea expert to help me with this, and I don’t have anything other than the internet and one unfortunately small and not at all comprehensive book handy. I can’t upload tea leaves for people to examine.

Anyways, from a Chinese study point of view, I now have something approaching an explanation for the odd-looking name “lapsang souchong”, as well as Mandarin names, which will also be useful from a tea buying point of view. Although, I would like to know why Wikipedia states “拉普山小種/正山小种” in Fukianese means “”smoky sub-variety.” I can’t see “smoky” in those characters. And the name “Fukianese”?

Following a link, as one does on lazy mornings when the internet is a series of unrelated tangents and the occasional rabbit hole, I came across this interesting little article. At the bottom is a small note attributing the original text to Skykiwi, but with no obvious link, so give me a minute to see if I can find the original…. Ah, after struggling with their super-slow loading and not overly cooperative search function, here it is.

Two minor linguistic points:

It did take me a while to figure out “约翰基” was John Key, New Zealand’s prime minister. Yes, I feel silly.

The Chinese rendering of “New Zealand” as “纽西兰”, apparently common in Hong Kong and Taiwan, has always bugged me for some reason. Totally irrational, I know, and it is closer to the sound of “New Zealand” than is “新西兰”, but pet peeves are never rational. I suppose it’s because all my Chinese has been learned on the mainland, and so “新西兰” just sounds “correct”, while “纽西兰” just doesn’t.

Anyways, the article states John Key is encouraging young New Zealanders to learn Chinese. His reasoning is that it would make doing business in China easier. He’s right, of course, and I have heard complaints that New Zealand’s business community pays far too little attention to language and culture when they attempt to do business here, meaning they’re much less successful than they could or should be. I would add there are many other reasons to learn Chinese, but hey, John Key’s a businessman, and on this point he’s absolutely right. And on the subject of teaching Chinese, he points out one serious problem:

他说，纽西兰现有的 2500个学校中只有89个开设中文课程，这实在有些少了。

He said that of New Zealand’s 2500 schools, only 89 had opened Chinese classes, which is really far too few.

And on the subject of New Zealand’s traditional bad attitude to the study of foreign languages:

纽西兰商人已经在中国经商20多年。他一再强调，纽西兰人的确应该换换思路了。以前因语言相通，纽西兰人非常愿意和澳洲、英国人做生意，但现在必须明 白，纽西兰的未来在中国，在亚洲。

New Zealand’s business people have been doing business in China for 20 years. He continually emphasised that New Zealand really should change its thinking. Before, because of the common language, New Zealanders really wanted to do business with Australia, the UK and the USA, but now they must understand, New Zealand’s future is in China, in Asia.

I would say there’s a slight overstatement there in that I don’t think New Zealand’s entire future lies in China, or even in Asia. There’s plenty of possibility on the other side of the Pacific, in Latin America, too, and no reason why Africa should be ignored, and plenty of reasons to continue to trade with our traditional trading partners and the Pacific. But yes, New Zealand desperately needs a major change in its thinking, a thought transplant, perhaps, towards the study of foreign languages. We do need more people studying Chinese, and other Asian languages, and other global languages, and we do need our business leaders to start valuing linguistic and cultural skills much more highly than they traditionally have. Otherwise we might as well become Australia’s newest and weakest state, and give Tasmania somebody to look down on.

But it’s not all bad news: He goes on to point out that last year the number of people studying Chinese surpassed the number studying Latin for the first time. I should bloody well hope so! I see nothing wrong, and indeed much value in studying Latin, but I do think more people should be studying living languages than dead languages. We need a nation with good international communication skills, not a nation of linguists and classicists. I would also add that when I started my university studies, only two high schools in the entire country taught Russian. 89 schools teaching Chinese is far too few, but the trend seems to be heading in the right direction.

The article ends with EuroAsia director Kenneth Leong:

他认为，在中国早已经兴起了英语热，中国的商界精英很多都熟谙英文，但纽西兰人中懂中文的非常非常少，这明显会将Kiwi放在不 利的地位上。因此，无论从哪个角度出发，都是时候好好学学中文了。

He thinks the English craze broke out very early in China, and many of China’s business elite are good at English, but very, very few New Zealanders understand Chinese, which will clearly put Kiwis in a disadvantageous position. Therefore, regardless of which angle you start from, it’s time to start seriously studying Chinese.

Actually, in that last sentence, I’m not really sure how to work the “好好” or the repitition of the verb “学” into English. Any better suggestions than what I wrote? Anyways, many people will read that and say, “If they’re all learning English, why should we learn Chinese?” I guess the most obvious answer is that if you’re monolingual, you are completely at the mercy of your business partners and translators, you have no way of knowing what is being said or written in Chinese, you have no way of judging the quality or accuracy of the translations, you are totally denying yourself any chance to read all those little cultural subtleties you can read in your own people and therefore denying yourself a major chance for intelligence gathering (I mean, legitimate gathering of information for purposes of legitimate business, of course), you are opening yourself up to being cheated, exploited, and thoroughly ripped off. Whereas if you do learn Chinese, you are, as John Key stated, giving yourself a huge leg-up in understanding the market and the people you are doing business with, and also in safeguarding your own interests, and the more you learn, the bigger the advantage you give yourself.

I’ve certainly found that learning Chinese has made my job much easier, and the more I learn, the easier it gets.

Two more pieces not entirely relevant, but still distantly related to my last post: First is a post on Sinoglot about Teochow – a language I am most unfamiliar with. The second, via the comments on that Sinoglot post, is an article in the NYTimes about the changing language dominance in New York’s Chinatowns. I particularly like the final quotation:

“And now I speak Mandarin better than Cantonese,” he added with a chuckle. “So, Chinatown — it’s always changing.”

True enough, I guess. Still, it would be nice to see local communities changing with rather than being run over by the times. Still, I guess that’s the way history unfolds.

There’s an interesting post at Luqiu Luwei’s blog that starts with a puzzling scene: She’s at a gathering of friends and relatives in Shanghai, they’re chatting, but something just feels odd:

…仔细一想,原来我们这些地地道道上海出生长大的人,在用普通话聊天…

…thinking it over, it was because these typical Shanghainese born and raised were using Mandarin to chat…

Pick all the holes in that translation you want, but I think the point is clear enough. And so why was this group of Shanghainese speaking Mandarin? There is nothing in the anecdote to suggest anybody from outside Shanghai was present. For the sake of the kids, it turns out, with whom they communicate in Mandarin.

Sidenote: Luqiu Luwei seems to use 普通话 and 国语 interchangeably.

So why are these Shanghainese parents only speaking to their kids in Mandarin? Ms Luqiu can’t seem to figure it out herself, but does offer two possible reasons. One is that the parents and teachers may be concerned that if they speak Shanghainese, the kids won’t get a solid enough grasp of Mandarin. Another is that it may somehow affect their ability to learn a foreign language. But this makes no sense, she says, when compared with the situation in Hong Kong, where the goal is for students to grasp two written and three spoken languages. Written Chinese and English, and spoken Cantonese, Mandarin and English, just in case anybody feels the need to ask.

She also points out the importance of language to culture, and local languages to local cultures, and ends her piece with this:

不敢想像,有一天,香港的所有电视台,电台,电影,还有所有的香港人,都开始不说粤语了,虽然我知道,我身边就有不少人希望有这样的一天,因为他们拒绝学 习粤语,甚至觉得,正是这种语言的隔阂,让他们觉得无法融入这个城市,做一个香港人.而他们把这些,归咎于这个城市透过语言来制造这样的疏离感.

I don’t dare imagine that one day all of Hong Kong’s TV stations, radio stations, films, and all the Hong Kong people, will all stop speaking Cantonese, although I know that there’s no shortage of people around me who hope for such a day, because they refuse to learn Cantonese, even feeling that this language is a barrier that makes them feel they have no way to integrate into the city and be a Hong Konger. And this they blame on the city for creating this sense of alienation through language.

我倒觉得,如果他们的思维能够掉转一下,先把自己当成香港人,把这个城市真正当成自己的家,那么,他们自然而然的会接受这种对他们来说陌生的语言,因为这 是这个城市的一部分,也是香港人这个身分的一部分.这样的道理,在其他的城市,甚至国家,都是一样.

Instead I think that if they can turn their thinking around, first think of themselves as Hong Kongers, truly think of Hong Kong as their home, they will naturally accept this language they find strange, because it’s a part of the city and a part of Hong Kongers’ identity. This principle is the same in other cities, even countries.

Y’know, I’m inclined to agree, especially with that last paragraph. I would add that it applies to expats, too. I’ve met too many here who simply refuse to learn even standard Mandarin. I’ve heard excuse after excuse after excuse. I’ve only met one expat in all this decade I’ve spent in China whose reason for not learning the language I respect (although I suspect there are others in similar positions)- his job meant he simply spent far too much time on the road at too irregular intervals for too irregular periods of time for him to sign up for lessons. But that’s a topic for another rant….

Like Ms Luqiu, I am puzzled as to why Shanghainese parents in Shanghai would not teach their kids Shanghainese. I can understand the two possible reasons she puts forward, considering just how much sheer ignorance about language there is out there – it’s one of the few resources to rival human stupidity in its abundance – but I agree that neither possible reason is valid. I like her comparison with Hong Kong, but I would say that it seems fair to me to assume that most people in this world grow up at least bilingual. I mean, look at the sheer number of countries around the world with multiple languages.

Which reminds me: When I was a student at Otago University, I had several friends from Singapore and Malaysia who expressed amazement that I was studying three foreign languages. I could not understand why they were so amazed, since they’d all been raised polyglots (English/Singlish/Mandarin/Hokkien seemed to be a common combination, although at the time I knew almost nothing about the Chinese language(s), so I can’t be certain).

I have also been known to point out to my students that many of them are at least trilingual, speaking their hometown’s dialect, Mandarin, and English.

I also totally agree with her points about the importance of language to culture and identity. New Zealand English has incorporated a lot of Maori words because many Maori cultural concepts have no possible English word to match them. Words like ‘mana’ and ‘tapu’ simply have too many implications to be translated neatly into one English word. New English words have been coined in New Zealand to fit concepts developing in New Zealand culture. Local cultural concepts need local words to express them. The same applies to every other dialect of every other language.

My wife speaks Yanqing dialect when talking to her family and standard Mandarin when talking to me and everybody else – well, English when talking to foreigners who don’t speak Chinese, and a mixture of standard Mandarin and English when talking to foreigners with a limited command of Chinese. I once had a colleague from New York who would speak with a mild New York accent most of the time. You could tell when she’d just been on the phone with her family, because her accent would suddenly be so strong you’d need a chainsaw to cut through it. Not long ago I met a Chinese man who lives in New Zealand who asked if we could please speak Chinese, as it felt too weird speaking English in his home country. Fair enough. Put any two people from the same place together and allow them to chat freely, and before long they’ll revert to their hometown’s dialect, regardless of what language the conversation began in. Why? Every aspect of language – accent, grammar, dialect, idiom, choice of writing system, even spelling – expresses something of the speaker’s (or writer’s) identity, both in relation to themselves and in relation to those they are communicating with.

What is a Shanghainese who can not speak Shanghainese? What is a Hong Konger who can not speak Cantonese? Or, in other words:

Why on earth would Shanghainese parents not teach their children Shanghainese?

and:

When you move to a new place, why would you not learn the local language?

Yeah, this one’s been brewing for a while….

Back during the May Day holiday, up at the farm, I watched Once Upon a Time in China/《黄飞鸿》 1, 2, and 3. I was reminded of a certain phenomenon I have noticed in the films of both Bruce Lee and Jet Li.

When we got back to Beijing, I noticed this short piece about Ip Man/《叶问》 2 (scroll down to 015: Ip Man and Chinese Nationalism).

And then I finally got around to watching Ip Man 2. And my wife remembered that good, old Scottish word “Sassenach” and used it to great effect.

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Or perhaps that should be Three Shots. I certainly think Three Shots would be a better English title than the official one. Still, I guess the official English title contains a reference to the films inspiration.

I was standing on the corner of that big, fancy mall on the northwest corner of the Shuangjing intersection waiting for my wife to finish sifting through overpriced clothes so we could go watch the film. I knew which of the buildings around me were old and which new- indeed, I remember when the spot I was standing on was a fancyarse lawn scarred with pathways leading into the sales office for the complex which was then little more than a hole in the ground. But somehow all the buildings looked the same age, as if the norwester had finally put the upstart new buildings in their place. It seems we have a habit of going to the cinema on blustery, dry, cold December days to see the latest blockbuster. Indeed, last time we’d gone to the cinema was almost exactly a year ago (indeed, we’re ony 3 days short), and the coldest December day in Beijing since 1951. That day we saw Feng Xiaogang’s 《非诚勿扰》. This time, when lzh emerged from the clothes shop, we wandered up to… oh, no “Wait, we’ve still got time, let’s go check out those discounted shoes first, you need new sandals for when we go to New Zealand”. grrrr. And it wasn’t any kind of shoes we bought, but a new pair of thick longjohns for me, me having discovered unfortunately late yesterday afternoon (when I really needed to be getting out of barbeque-reeking clothes and making myself respectable as presentable as possible) that the top half of my other set of thick longjohns was MIA. And then back to the cinema to see Zhang Yimou’s latest film, 《三枪拍案惊奇》/A Simple Noodle Story.

I have a love/hate/like/why can’t he get back to realising his full talent? relationship with Lao Zhang. I love his early work. I hate his martial arts epics. 《千里走单骑》/Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles was good, but not as good as his early films. 《三枪》 I don’t yet know how to rate.

I suppose I should note that the version we saw at UME Shuangjing was Mandarin soundtrack (obviously) with Chinese subtitles. Those whose Chinese is not up to following a film entirely in Chinese should either look for a cinema showing it with English subtitles or a DVD with more subtitling options than the cinema allows.

First impression was that the volume knobs on UME Shuangjing’s amplifiers must have a Number 11, because the three shots that bring the opening credits to a close really were one louder. Or to put it slightly more directly: If those three shots hit you with such force that you wonder if somebody hasn’t just put three bullets in your forehead, then perhaps somebody should turn the volume down just a tad. lzh spent most of the film with fingers firmly planted in ears, and yet didn’t miss a line.

Based on what I’d seen on TV, I went in expecting some form of comedy, probably of the rather silly kind, some Lao Zhang’ed cinematic errenzhuan [that is perhaps the worst wikipedia stub I've ever seen, but at least it gives you a brief description], perhaps. I also did not have high hopes from the film, having heard that it wasn’t all that good. Second impression was that the expectation the TV promotional stuff had given me was right, but the comedy was good. I certainly would never have expected to see 饼 (Chinese pancake type thing) given the same treatment as one of those errenzhuan kerchiefs and spun around till it became a pizza base so huge it’d have the Kro’s Nest pizza chef putting three shots into his own head for shame. It was a lot of fun to watch, but at the same time not a total surprise considering that 3 of the 4 actors playing the noodle restaurant staff (Xiao Shenyang, Mao Mao, Cheng Ye, with Yan Ni the only exception) came up through Zhao Benshan’s errenzhuan circle.

Third impression was that this was most certainly a Zhang Yimou film. Only Lao Zhang could possibly make a desert look so incredibly lush.

There’s also something incredibly discordant about this film. It’s set somewhere way out in Northwest China along the Silk Road, but most of the actors spend most of the film in costumes more appropriate for an errenzhuan stage in Liaoning. Was a time when Lao Zhang was making Northwestern films with distinctly Northwestern vibes, but if you closed your eyes and listened only to the dialogue, you’d think this one was set somewhere on the black earth of the Northeast. Anachronisms litter the script like drug dealers on the streets of Sanlitun of a weekend evening. And I couldn’t help but feel those anachronisms hid a lot of knitting needle jabs at modern Chinese society.

Before too long, a certain darkness crept into the film. It acquired an undertone and atmospherics so black you’d swear it was filmed by a Kiwi. Lao Zhang’s lusciously filmed desert turned all gothic, with ever-passing stormclouds looming, threatening. Sun Honglei’s soldier turned into a psychopath who did everything possible to empty the noodle restaurant boss’ safe. Yan Ni’s 老板娘/Boss’ Wife was so keen to buy the Persian Merchant’s gun because she had suffered ten years of horrific abuse at the hands of the Boss (Ni Dahong). And the Boss is quite a piece of work: Abusive, with a penchant for cutting the fat baby’s face out of New Year paintings and forcing his wife to put her face in the hole as he quietly, calmly tells her off, then slams burning tobacco into the small of her back. Self-centred, manipulative, and tighter than a Scotsman’s arse. While the errenzhuan actors seem to spend most of the film on the errenzhuan level of comedy, Yan Ni’s Boss’ Wife takes a wild, bipolar ride between brave face, slapstick comedy, and Greek tragedy, with Xiao Shenyang’s Li Si desperately trying to figure out what’s going on and how he’s supposed to respond to it all. But can this 娘们唧唧的/Big Girl’s Blouse man up and John Wayne their way out of this mess?

All three shots in the gun sold by the Persian Merchant are put to very good use, with the second being sidesplittingly, laundryman’s-going-to-be-busy hillarious. But I’ll say no more than that the Boss’ Wife gets what she needs, but at a cost of Shakespearian proportion.

Beware, within this beautifully-filmed, light-hearted comedy are hidden a myriad of ragged shards of glass. But it’s a great film. Watch it.

Oh, and for the “Some People Are Just Too Damn Talented For Their Own Good” file: Xiao Shenyang sings the song that animates the final credits (the first of his songs which is not a pisstake of other singers?), a song in which all the dead bodies come back to life and join in the dance. It isn’t just that Xiao Shenyang can act errenzhuan and more widespread forms of drama, and sing and dance (uh… errenzhuan), but Sun Honglei also turns out to be a pretty decent dancer.