Saturday, January 11, 2014

Jianbing After Middle Earth




Slow Saturday.  Lost something last night, or had it pinched.  Not quite sure.  Depressing.  Don Byas seems to completely understand.  I’ve been spending time with a number of new tenor players, as regular readers know.  I usually prefer the bop of the fifties to the more methodical bluesy tenor swing of the 40s.  If you put some different noteworthy 50s tenor players on, I could differentiate a good number of them without peeking.  But even though I’ve listened to Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young for years, I’d find it hard to discern the two. 

And so I’m thrilled that this Don Byas, who of course spans both the two decades, and more than 25 years as an expatriate in Europe is now, slowly becoming familiar.  He seems so remarkably mature and confident today.  I’m listening to a disc appropriately entitled “Paris Recordings 1946–1954.”  I’ve a version of “Lover Man” on that feels like a back rub or the trigonometry lesson I never really understood, explained effortlessly.  So glad to meet this truly 温文[1] gentleman on a Saturday when I need it gentle.



Picked up the latest Hobbit film last night, “The Desolation of Smaug.”  My younger one was very keen to see it.  We’d tried to get a copy about 10 days back but the local daoban joint didn’t have it in yet. Good pirating can’t be rushed.  And so I knew she’d be excited when she got up to know it was here. 

A few years back I read “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” to both the girls, aloud.  As I recall, I wouldn’t let them watch film version of the latter, which I hadn’t seen, until we finished.   And when we did, it was wonderful.  There were things that were missing of course, cherished things, like Tom Bombadil, but on the whole I seem to recall we were thrilled by it.  And if memory serves, it was generally lauded and won bouquet of awards at the Oscars. 

So like half the western world, I suppose, I was excited to see how Peter Jackson would render “The Hobbit” as well.  The first one ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”, was satisfying as you want so dearly to believe, but to be honest, it dragged.  I seem to recall reading A. O. Scott’s review after viewing it and thinking he was rather merciless, but I understood his frustration: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/movies/the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey-by-peter-jackson.html?_r=0   Whereas ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was a feat to pull off such a long tale in in three distinct movies, “The Hobbit” is ponderous when it is stretched into three subsequent films. Reading Scott's review at the time I recall he was frustrated that the one, novel had been cut up.  I defaulted to thinking that the novel was cut in two. 

And therefore it was with diminished expectations that I finally succumbed to my daughter’s pleading and rose and shone and popped the CD in.  No real difficulty suspending belief with this theme initially.  There they all are.  The very mention of the name of “Mirkwood” conjures up the map from the novel that I thumbed to over and over when I read it for myself as a kid.  And the elves are beautiful.  And the dwarves are cute and Gandalf is commanding and Smaug even on my laptop is certainly the most realistic dragon I’ve ever seen brought to life. 

But it drags.  Thorin is obliged to milk his quest for the Arkenstone with so many studied scenes of exaggerated pathos that I’ve lost the ability to care.  The introduction of a woman into the story is laudable.  The original, of course, had not even one female character.  But while this new elven warrior Tauriel, is every bit as rough as the boys, she is in the end, just a foil for formulaic romance.  And all the orcs but the leader are decimated like so many apples off a tree, every time the menacingly appear.  Accordingly they don't really introduce any meaningful tension.  And by the end of the film I realized that, this wasn't going to end.  There would be a third instalment, still to go.  Oh dear. 

I wasn’t sure who’d reviewed it at the NY Times this time.  Having panned the first instalment, would A.O. Scott would be summoned to do more rough housing on the this latest production.  No.  Instead we had Manohla Dargis at the ready for a review.  She was certainly kinder than Mr. Scott had been, rhetorically at least.  She seemed to find quite a bit she liked, but ultimately couched her commentary by saying Peter Jackson, the Director had tried but missed an opportunity:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/movies/the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-with-ian-mckellen.html  

Not sure how much internal consistency is benchmarked between the two reviewers over there at the paper of record, but where as A.O. Scott disparaged the film and gave it 2.5 stars, Ms. Dargis wrestled with what was exciting and exceptional, set against where it was wanting and gave it exactly the same rating. 

Back from the market just now.  I hit up our standard expat market that has been turned into a chain now, Jenny’s (Lu has turned to Wang), where you can reliably get most western goods, for a premium.  But my daughter wanted a jianbingguozi.  This is the traditional northern Chinese “Egg McMuffin.”  Flour is put on a griddle and spun to become a broad thin pancake.  Eggs, chives, spicy sauce are added, along with a piece of fried bread. Flip the cake, fold it into a square and you’ve got your jianbing.  These were staple fare for folks like me fifteen years ago in Beijing.   And even now, people have three wheeled carts with a griddle and the fixins to make jianbing on street corners in the morning, all over the city.



My wife, who hails from a neighbouring province would rather eat a handful of sand, than eat a jianbing off the street in Beijing.  I think they’re fine and I’ve never gotten sick, but, as Don Byas gently reminds me, I’m too old to fight about such things.  The family authorized jianbing joint is at the decidedly more Chinese supermarket than Jenny’s, over across the JingMi road: JingKeLong.  Jing is the charcter for capital, as in Beijing.  Ke is the character for customer.  And Long is the character for prosperity, bulging.  Inside the JingKeLong supermarket there is exactly the same set up as one would have on the street.  I join the queue, such as it is, and get my order in for three of them. 

For a moment it can feel like the Beijing that used to be, where going into a supermarket as a foreigner was an event for all the customers as if an dwarf or and elf were roaming about.  And indeed, at the JingKeLong, there is a bit more old fashioned staring and amusement.   But I’m quickly dismissed as irrelevant, which is as it should be.  I’d have to drive a few hours in any direction to really recapture that fundamental otherness from my memory, though it is certainly out there, where people who don't know, are curious as ever. 

Time to go eat some jianbing now that this is written.  It is something I’ll miss I suppose, when I’m not here, like I miss real New York pizza or real San Francisco burritos.  To night I'll settle for a "sanitary" jianbing and a glass of Pinot Gigot that wouldn't have been there in JingKeLong, but I’m grateful that Jenny had. 



[1] wēnwén'ěryǎ: cultured and refined (idiom); gentle and cultivated

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