Somewhere
up above Wuhan. Broadcasting on
the Air China in flight entertainment is a Chinese youth comedy of sorts. It looks even dumber than “Tiny Times”
which was certainly the most vapid thing I have sat through in a theatre in
recent memory. My daughters loved
it. Granted dumb movies are more
painful in a foreign language and dumber still if there is no volume
whatsoever. A young girl has
fainted and the young boy has brought her to what must be his hip apartment to
rest and recover and then, half awake, off screen, she proceeds to take her
clothes off, throw them around the room.
Her shirt lands on a light and her bra lands on his head. Ha ha.
As usual I am doing a poor job of ignoring it all. Heading
through the airport today I had on something I’d synched up which a friend had
recommended, the other day. I’m
not precisely sure why he’d sent on this particular disc by Ms. Asha Bhosle, “Jani
Mhane Deva” but I’m glad he did.
Light, soaring vocals, catchy, Bangra-like accompaniment, if I hadn’t
known otherwise I would have figured that this voice was that of Lata
Mangeshkar. Looking up Ms. Bhosle
who is known in India by the honorific Ashaji, it turns out that she is
actually Ms. Mangeshkar’s sister.
Born in Bombay in 1933, she began recording ten years later
and kept on for the next six decades, recording soundtracks for over
one-thousand Bollywood movies.
Twelve-thousand recorded songs are attributed to her, which has earned Ms.
Bhosle the Guiness Book record of “world’s most recorded artist.” Pausing, that is nearly
unfathomable. I pulled up the
digital calculator and if we consider 365 days, times six decades, that yields
21,900 days suggesting perhaps a bit more comprehensibly that she recorded on
average two songs a day, every day for sixty years. However you slice it, she was a busy lady, with a very well polished
voice though she never sounds 疲于奔命[1].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asha_Bhosle
This song, “Haath Nidhalawari” on just now, is dreamy and nearly all consuming enough to
drown out the annoying lad seated two seats over from me who’s seems to like to
accompany his destruction of aliens with onomatopoeic flourishes that are
quickly approaching Ashaji’s oeuvre in frequency. When my daughter, the Barat Natyam student heard what I was
playing on the ride over to the airport, she quickly yelled out “that’s Indian
music”, which I proudly confirmed for her. Even the most elemental movie soundtrack is rhythmically
entrancing and she wants to move.
Good collection of contemporary Chinese political analyses
in this article entitled “China Brief.”
The remarkable former SCMP columnist Willy Wap Wo Lam’s article within
was particularly helpful. Remarkable,
for among columnists writing in English he seems to have unique access into
what’s really going on behind the walls of Zhong Nan Hai and explains things
with blunt courage. Two
suggestions that are sensible, somewhat contradictory and counter intuitive: Look beyond Xi Jinping when analyzing
Zhou Yongkang’s downfall.
This takedown was set up collectively, and ahead of Xi’s consolidation
of power.
This, and that this recent strong-man consolidation of
power, will increasingly upset the delicate balance of CCP rule that had been
carefully, gradually solidified from Deng’s rule on. This begs the question, is Xi’s appearance of dictatorial
decisiveness something that has been orchestrated to appear decisive, on the
part of a CCP that believes the public wants a strong man, or is he indeed
forcing his own will and disrupting the collective leadership the Party has
historically crafted post-Mao? I’ve been asked to believe the latter but the prior seems to
make more sense. And if so, all of
this has been thought out, well in advance, suggesting that one-party rule,
entails just as many inefficiencies as any multi party state, with its
primaries and elections and institutional divisions of powers.
OK. Time to
power off. Quickly then, I noticed
during the obligatory China Daily, airplane read, that China has offered
qualified support for U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, which strikes me as
remarkable. ISIL is a rather
unpopular bunch.
[1] píyúbēnmìng: lit. tired of constantly running for
one's life (idiom); terribly busy / up to one's ears in work
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