House

The cause of the dearth of posts here recently is that Qian and I just bought and moved into our first house. Anyone who's gone down that road before knows that the preparation and execution of finding the right house, moving out of the old apartment, and getting into the new place is all-consuming. Between my job and all of that house stuff, blogging has fallen by the wayside.

Although I've been busy with life, I'm still engaged with China and still have things to write. I'm hoping things will settle down soon and I'll get some posts up soon.

In the mean time, I have a couple Chinese movies upon which I want to comment quickly.

First, Raise the Red Lantern 《大红灯笼高高挂》directed by Zhang Yimou is incredible. I found it to be just as good as the other Zhang movie I saw recently, To Live. It's the story of a concubine in the early twentieth century. The story is laid out very delicately and is executed with great passion. The cinematography and setting of the movie are still etched into my mind a couple weeks after watching it. I highly recommend it.

And then second, In the Heat of the Sun 《阳光灿烂的日子》is one of the most bizarre movies I've ever seen. Qian and I watched since it was one of the only movies she hadn't seen from the list that was recommended in the comments section of this blog a few weeks ago. It's about a group of rebellious youths during the Cultural Revolution. It is very avant-garde. I appreciated watching this more than my wife did (she hated it), but I'd have a hard time recommending this one.