Pat
Flowers has a gentle grace for one of these Harlem Stride piano gents. This version of “But Not For Me” was
recorded in 1945, two years after his hero Fats Waller passed. Maybe I was just unduly influenced
early on by Teddy Weatherford and his “I’m going to commit aggravated assault on
these keys” approach when I first began this investigation into this school of
playing last week, but as his name suggests, Mr. Flowers is dancing around ever
so sweetly. Born in Detroit
in 1917, he was apparently chums with the gent I featured a few days back, who
also had a gentle attack, the one David Lambert.
Catching my breath back in Beijing a few days on the
road. A number of folks hit town
today and I need to shift to “welcome to Beijing” mode. At least we have some blue skies and
reasonably temperate weather.
Heading to meetings in Shenzhen with a suit on was no fun. The ‘heat of things to come.’ My first meeting there, I pleasantly
demanded the young lady figure out how to get the air-conditioning. Beijing remains temperate and dry.
As expected, the Vietnamese people did not take kindly to
being taught a lesson in elder brother opportunism. Dozens of foreign owned factories were torched in protest
near Ho Chi Minh City. The Chinese Foreign Minister protest and told Vietnam to come to its senses. But what did they expect? Ironically the protestors greatest
damage was done to factories owned by South Koreans and Taiwanese.
Anti Chinese sentiment is never far below the surface in
Vietnam. This is precisely the
sort of escalation that lead to the Boat People exodus out of the Cholon in the
late 1970s with the cut your nose to spite your face response by the Chinese to
teach China lesson that backfired and which they do not seemed to have learned
from. Interestingly, not unlike
China, the other reform oriented Communist Party in the neighborhood, is
concerned that protests in the streets, can cut both ways and lead to
anti-Party sentiment and calls for greater democracy, particularly if the
government looks weak.
The Philippines meanwhile has issued new official protests
to China Inc. suggesting that new construction is happening on one of the
atolls. China has thus far remained silent on the matter. But taken together the activity this
month suggests a new, more assertive strategy, to lay physical claim to territory
and dare other countries to do something about it. This may be efficacious to a point, as ownership is usually
the better part of the law. But do
the Chinese leadership really believe their rhetoric and do they know when to
stop? For now, ASEAN is still
fractured and not willing to speak as one. But this highly visible activity will surely drive many
complicated neighbors together into a coalition of the annoyed. All China would need to do is make a
physical play for the Spratlys to bring Malaysia and Indonesia into such a
“coalition.” One hopes China has a
sense of where to stop, pause and think, free from the high-octane vapors of
their own rhetoric.
On a lighter note, my stepson, who moved from Shandong to be
with our family in San Francisco, when he was fourteen or so and who now lives
in Tokyo, shared with this link to a new TV show called “Fresh Off the Boat”, a
comedy about a Chinese family adapting to life in the U.S. The story of immigration of just
about anybody to the U.S. remains 万古长新[1]
While some of the gags are predictable and the mom’s accent
sounds more Korean than Chinese to my ears, it is mirthful and one can imagine
a few gut laughs pending.
Appropriately my stepson pointed out that “minus the white dad, and the
restaurant, that was us”, which isn’t far off. Later it occurred to me that I had meanwhile subjected my
daughters who moved to China as little ones, to some hall of mirrors version of
otherness in the opposite direction.
I’ll show them the trailer and see if they want to try to write a
treatment for “Fresh off the Plane.”
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