A different kind of opera

Last weekend I attended a production of “Flower Girl”, an opera staged at the National Theatre by a North Korean opera troupe.

“Flower Girl” focuses on the plight of a Korean family whose fortunes were ravaged by the selfish behavior of a landowner and his family, saved only at the end by the glory of the revolution (i.e. the Marxist-Lenin communist revolution). Without a doubt, “Flower Girl” was designed to be a partisan, propagandist surrogate whose message was simple and easy to understand. By the time the opera ended, the only question left unanswered, as it seems to me, was how soon (or not!) the supposedly inspired audience would arm themselves and join the revolution.

According to the program notes, the opera was commissioned by and written in the 30s by Kim Il-Sung, the founding father of the DPRK and father of North Korea’s current leader, Kim Jong-Il. The Chinese public got their first taste of the opera through a film version of the opera, which was briefly released in the mainland in the early 70s and was well received. Since then, the opera has made various rounds in the mainland, playing mainly for small, strategically selected crowds (i.e. the PLA, young communist brigades etc.). It seems to me that while the opera has gained Chinese fans over the years, but because it has never been widely staged, it has never gained widespread prominence in the country’s psyche. Over the years, the opera has been reedited by and for its chief patron, the Kim family, probably to perfect its underlying proletarian and revolutionary messages. To me, such messages were unmistakable: the landowners are(were) evil, Jesus Christ offers(-ed) no helping hand, and the proletarian revolution is(was) every Korean’s ultimate salvation. The surtitles would punch out verses upon verses that sing the virtues of proletarian values, all the while ripping apart property rights and capitalistic misadventures. I felt like a cliff-side rock, looking helplessly as rapturous waves of such messages soldiered towards me in an endless repetition, finally engulfing and obliterating me, as if obliging me to accept its imminent and inevitable victory.

Politics aside, the opera was, strictly speaking, not an opera, because the main singers were given microphones to sing with. Unusual in an opera, a non-acting choir located on both sides of the orchestra sang not only the chorus, but more significantly the part of the heavenly voice seeking to explain everything to the audience — for example, who to blame for all the poor people’s plight (the landowner) and who to get credit for saving the poor (the revolution). Without a sliver of a doubt, Kim Il-Sung was to live vicariously and eternally through the united voice of the choir –an arrangement that, in itself, was a fitting, if not accidental, metaphor. Operatically, it was somewhat difficult to pinpoint exactly where “Flower Girl” would fit. The music was comprised of a chain of short tunes, each of which was tonally structured like a romantic aria, but each also woven with more sincere philosophical discourse and less floral sentimentality. “Flower Girl” is, thus, as it seems to me, Wagnerian in its content but romantic in its delivery. The singing was superb, despite the horrifying presence of the microphone. The production direction was amply satisfying, especially a prison scene whereby prisoners, understood to be locked down by the autocratic class, thumped through the prison ground as if they were laboring mindlessly in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. In the end, I was convinced that the mezzo soprano (the protagonist) and probably a few others could have sung their entire roles without the help of any electronics. Another mezzo soprano (the protagonist’s mother) also sang superbly, and I found it somewhat tragic that her role was small and limiting.

The highlight of the evening was at the end, when I made my way to the orchestral pit and shook hands with a couple of musicians. I could hardly speak Korean (and I would assume they could hardly understand a word of Chinese –though I could be wrong), but I found no such need to communicate verbally. We exchanged smiles in a way that spoke a thousand words: theirs, being appreciative of a keen audience and the sincerity of those who chose to stay behind to greet and thank the musicians; and ours, being thankful for a lovely spring evening imbued with fine music, talented singing and, most importantly, the North Korean’s rare but priceless presence. For different reasons, the night was special to each involved. I couldn’t help but felt the urge to summarize the evening with a tinge of romantic sentimentality: that while the exchange of human warmth was a small gesture between a few men (and women), it was a giant gesture for all of mankind, in an act that verily shows how humanity by way of musical and facial proxy can transcend language, politics, ideology. No word needed spoken, for music and facial gestures cultivated the seeds of understanding and mutual admiration. That moment was, to me, the singularly most heartwarming and unique experience I have ever had in an opera house.

Saturday morning

It was an eerily tranquil Saturday morning in Beijing. As I strolled along one of the less-traversed streets in the Haidian district, I witnessed a peaceful layer of mist floating in mid air, as if persuading me into a slumbering repose.

It was 4:30am, and dawn was still more than an hour away. It seemed that my early morning jaunt was devoid of any purpose, just as my body and mind were drifting away amidst this enormous calmness. All that seemed ideal, well, until I got into a cab, in a moment that reminded me of my purpose: I was going to Tiananmen Square, not merely to witness the raising of the flag (officially at 5:52am), but also to be one of the first few to pay respects to Mao during the Tomb Sweeping long weekend in China.

The cab driver was soundly sleeping inside his cab along the curb, before I woke him up by knocking lightly on his door. He woke up, and signaled to me that, whatever good dream of his that I just smashed, he was nevertheless ready to do business. When I told him that I was going to Tiananmen Square, he lifted his head slightly, in a moment of acutely heightened alertness, as if he was not just ready for business but awakened for a purpose. As he started his car and slowly drove off the curb and onto the main road, he asked me, with a solemn but serious tone: “when does our flag go up today?” (“今天我们的国旗是几点钟升啊?”)

It was this reassuring first person plural, “our”, that made me feel I wasn’t too delusional into believing that waking up at 4am to watch the national flag was a serious yet superbly cool idea. The 20-minute cab ride in a hibernating Beijing was accentuated by a nice conversation between me and the cab driver about Mao’s politics (idealistic), his place in modern Chinese history (undisputedly secure), and what we thought might happen during the Olympics (probably some isolated protests around the world, but droned out by the spectacle and the media frenzy dedicated to the Event). Sensing that he was probably a Mao fan, I promised him that I would dedicate (and I did) a bouquet of flowers on his behalf at Mao’s Mausoleum.

The day was cloudy, and the flag raising ceremony was not much different from another one I saw back in October (though that one happened later, around 6:30am). The crowd was noticeably larger –probably because most, like myself, was going for both the flag raising ceremony and a visit to Mao’s Mausoleum (for the symbolic tomb sweeping). Not long after the flag was raised, and definitely before 6am, there were already hundreds of people lined up in front of Mao’s Mausoleum (it officially opens at 8am). By the time I got in line (I was sidetracked by photo-taking in and around Tiananmen Square) there must be at least a thousand folks ready to get in. The Mausoleum opened a little after 7:30am, ahead of time (probably to adjust for the increased number of visitors during the Qingming Festival), and I got in just before 8am. Seeing Mao (or just the prosthetic Mao) was surreal, not merely because of the earlier cab conversation but because I was there during the Qingming Festival weekend. It was an unforgettable experience to see how patriotic countrymen, some traveling from faraway provinces and others with small children in tow, went in droves to pay respect to a man who singlehandedly founded the modern Chinese psyche, much of which is attributable to Mao’s voluminous poetry and general writings.

The enormous crowd also made me wonder what Mao would think of modern China as it exists today: the first thing I saw after leaving Tiananmen Square was a two-story KFC, which would probably be visited by many of those hungry tomb sweepers but to me also represents the kind of foreign commercial invasion that Mao by and large detested. Some of the folks in the crowd probably even love some of the modern extravagance and excess that were once thought to be capitalist vices. Some of these folks walked into Mao’s Mausoleum wearing the Vuittons and the Guccis of the world in a stratified society where the rich holds considerable influence, economic and political. Is that the China that Mao envisioned? I certainly didn’t see Mao rolling in his grave (or on the Mausoleum bed), but are some of these Gucci-totting visitors (or the modern Chinese in general) ready to revert back to a share-all society steeped with Mao’s proletarian values?

Localization of Sam Walton’s Vision

Strolling down the aisles of a Walmart in the U.S., one would find not only a gazillion different products and agricultural produces, but cooked items ranging from sliced pepperoni pizzas to grilled chicken salad in Cajun dressing. But at the end of the day, all items sold are unmistakably targeting at the American taste.

When I first heard that Walmart has a presence in China, my first reaction was whether they would know the Chinese consumer well enough to do well here. My experience at two Walmart Supercenters in Shenzhen (allegedly two of the most profitable Walmart locations anywhere in the world) and here in Beijing confirms that Walmart has done their homework before investing here in China.

Here in China, Walmart “localizes” by filling shelves with products and produces that are distinctly Chinese: dried sausages stuffed with duck livers and fat, pigeons cooked in sweetened soy sauce, pork knuckles braised with star anise, aromatic ginger and peppercorns, pickled radishes and cucumbers, and, you read it correctly, live turtles, bluntly labeled to reflect its eventual destiny not in an aquarium but at the dining table. A Walmart here is imbued with a fragrance that is unmistakably raw, but also very Chinese. Instead of seeing chicken meat modularized and prepackaged into frozen, brick-like constructions, a Chinese Walmart goes so far as to allow the shopper to see the rawness of a chicken’s skinning and frenching, in ways that would probably raise a few eyebrows with PETA in the U.S. In a sense, this rawness brings honesty to what we eat –that what we eat were once living animals and plants, not merely goblets or slabs of proteins or cellulose with a bar-code and a USDA nutrition tag.

Each Walmart location seems to cater to a slightly different crowd, e.g. the Walmart in Nanshan, Shenzhen has an older crowd while the Walmart in Zhongguancun, Beijing has a younger, college-educated crowd. In any case, seasoned shoppers would guardedly stand next to mountains upon mountains of geometrically stacked produces and juggle with each item on the stack until they find and isolate the best ones that pass their touch and nose tests. Little kids would at times stray away from their distracted parents to munch on bite-size samples at food counters. The occasional first-timers would try, without success, to haggle with Walmart associates over prices. All that, on top of raised voices projected by associates across counters and wrecking sounds generated by shopping carts slamming into each other, form the basis of an improvised, locally-performed symphony of sounds and vibrations. I also can’t help but hear, on top of my head, cash registers ringing and Walmart shareholders laughing all the way to financial freedom.

To breathe and experience Seoul like another (local)

I don’t know how to begin describing my visit to Seoul, for it fell well outside of my normal travel paradigm. Unlike previous trips, I neither defined any goals (e.g. to visit a physical place of interest, or to eat at a well-known establishment), nor immersed myself with the destination’s culture and history (e.g. by consuming related reading materials). My unpreparedness was compounded by two not-quite-insignificant factors: a language that is completely foreign to me; and, since it was my first visit to Korea, the lack of any prior experience to fall back on. Finally, I know not a single soul, other than a friend who now lives there.

All that, however, didn’t amount to a blatantly pathetic oversight, because I did plan on experiencing South Korea not through the polished lens of popular recommendation but by my intuition and improvisation. My (true) plan, conjured up as I was aboard my short flight from Beijing to Seoul, is two pronged. While my friend was at work, I would spend as much time as possible walking the streets of Seoul and soaking up the city’s aura and energy. While he was not at work, we would spend time at places where locals would escape to and deflate the day’s pressure.

After breezing past immigration, the first thing that came to my mind was to turn on my mobile phone. I was not expecting any calls; nor was I ready to make one. Instead, I was eager to find out, and be gratified by, the beauty of 3G’s ubiquity across different 3G standards. (Prior to 3G, a GSM phone from China or Hong Kong would not work in South Korea.) When I saw those four bars of salute (i.e. signal strength) lit up next to a 3G icon on my Nokia 6280, I beamed with unspeakable elation, not least because the techie in me has just jumped out in full force but because, over the years, I have been championing the ideals of cross compatibility in 3G (my cellular provider operates exclusively under one 3G standard, while SK Telecom operates another). With all the Jockey Club’s bet spreads and Yahoo! Finance’s stock quotes suddenly available to me through my 3G connection, I was too preoccupied to pay any attention to the rolling hills and calm waterfronts that galloped past me as I was bused from the airport to Seoul’s city center.

By the time I realized that my data roaming bill was getting obscenely enormous, I was already in the city center, at a stop just between City Hall and Deoksu Palace. A bit about Deoksu Palace: dating back to the 15^th century, it is a walled compound of palaces that has served many a royalty of the Korean Empire. Decorated with groomed and forested gardens, the compound’s palaces capture the brashness of the Empire’s past glory while its manicured gardens define the more subtle, refined essence of the aesthetic past. Today Deoksu Palace is surrounded by a countless number of concrete high rises, including, most visibly, the Imperial Palace Hotel which stands, at more than 20 floors and merely four traffic lanes away from the Deoksu Palace, as though it was seeking to outshine its namesake forebear. When I turned into the side streets that radiate from City Hall, I discovered a plethora of sensual stimulants: simmering pots of soups would effervesce a potent, gritty smell of cooked meats and a more subtle, delectable bouquet of blossoming spices. Hunks of pork and beef, grilled and slightly charred over choice charcoal, would emanate the rhapsodic aromatics of cooked animal fats and proteins. The most extraordinary, however, was brought forth by a middle-aged man who, standing outside what seemed to be his proprietary used-book store, would charcoal-grill a fat slab of squid, seasoned with salt flakes and little else, over a small, make-shift stove. When the grilled squid was ready, the man, with his stentorian voice, would make dinner calls to his neighbors. Upon his and his neighbors’ insistence, I tried a piece of his masterpiece, which turned out to be a genuine pleasure as the squid retained much of its impeccably fresh juices just as the charcoal heat worked magic to provide a smoky surface flavor. My only other thought at that time: if only I had a cold beer handy to wash it all down. Anyway, these small but amicable side streets would eventually merge into larger streets where larger buildings would dominate. These imposing concrete monsters were bustling with energy as office types shuttled in and out of the revolving doors while jumbotrons flashed endlessly into eternity. As if there wasn’t enough emotion, psychedelic fractals were projected onto facades of many of these big buildings, where they danced merrily to the music of pedestrian and automotive traffic.

While my friend was at work, I would use all sorts of improvised body language to communicate with local folks to overcome my language barrier. I must admit I took pleasure relishing the fruits of the most minute communicative success, fully knowing that I would experience something entirely different if my friend, a native, were around and allowed me to fall into the conversational background (imagine being a Robin to the Batman, i.e. always there but never quite able to claim any achievements as one’s own). It would take me nearly twenty minutes to get my order right at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, where I relied on finger-pointing and hand gesturing to tell the chef what I wanted to eat (by the way, my meal, which included fried rice with salted shrimp and kimchi, was delightful). One of my most memorable moments was spent at Sky Bar, a well-known drinking establishment in Gangnam that was unmistakably pompous and stylish. I was attracted to the joint because of its bird’s eye view of Gangnam and of the beautiful folks that adorned the place (surely I was superficial but, after all, I was on vacation). I was also attracted by its atmosphere, in which soft Korean ballades, played through Sky’s impeccable sound system, helped to smooth out (or perhaps blend with) the ruffles generated by a bartender’s mixer. I also had a few great conversations, one of which was with Hae Jin (慧珍), a bartender with big, sparkling eyes and a rubicund visage. Her flirtatious, feisty manners betrayed her inward sincerity – despite her limited English vocabulary, she was patient enough to communicate at length with me, often at loss over (the lack of) word choice but never faltered, and essentially became my first Korean teacher and my trusted, breathing guide book. What intrigued me in our conversation was this rhythmic oscillation between frenzied spontaneity and cold stillness –something that mirrored a side street’s vibrant sensation juxtaposed against the tranquil repose of an ancient palace. Also, as awkward as it may sound, Hae Jin also implored me to experience teenage authenticity by visiting a “DVD bar” where, originally designed for friends to rent and watch DVDs, teenagers nowadays would go and make out in privacy (I took her recommendation, sans the making out). She also convinced me to check out an exhibit at a vocational training school in the more industrial side of town. Helmed by her friend from high school and some other graduating students in industrial design, the exhibit was a mind-blowing experience as it amply disproved any notion that Asians always copy and never know how to create.

When my friend was finally not at work, we covered the city, checking out bars, restaurants, clubs, noraebangs (karaoke joints) as though I have been living in Seoul since time immemorial. My friend also took me to MTL, which is a “talking bar” in Gangnam (and a stone throw away from his house). In these “talking bars”, the bartender makes drinks for you, and for you only until you either decide to leave or run out of money. In other words, each bartender only handles one client at any given time, although a number of friends may go to such “talking bars” and engage an equal number of bartenders. The idea is such that the client gets to engage and talk with the bartender without the fear of losing the bartender’s attention. While one has to work hard to catch a bartender’s attention (and certainly as it was the case with me, to catch Hae Jin’s attention at Sky), a bartender at these “talking bars” is ready and willing to talk (again, at least until one either decides to leave or runs out of money). My bartender was a twenty-something college student with a porcelain face and slightly bulging eyes who hoped to enter into a career in beauty care after finishing design school, in a year’s time. She told me her life stories, in broken English and with my friend’s sporadic (and obviously alcohol-influenced) translative help. She also asked me about my life, although she seemed lost the moment I punched the two dreaded words: intellectual property. In any case, based on the way she groomed and handled herself, I had little question that she had all the aesthetic talent and mental toughness to do well in what she aspired to do. These “talking bars”, as I was told, are mainly designed for the working men of Korea who are too macho and proud to talk small talk with their wives at home but otherwise want to do so with somebody, even if they have to pay for it. Furthermore, it seems to me (though I may be wrong) that this format of “bartending” is very unique to Korean culture and not commonly, if at all, found in other countries. As far as I understand, although the clientele is predominantly male and these bartenders are predominantly female, such talking bars strictly forbid unseemly, immoral transactions beyond drinking/talking and are not, at least in principle, set up for men to “pick up” bartenders. Nevertheless, this makes me wonder whether the proliferation of these talking bars highlights a social ill in South Korea –that, because Korean men would generally prefer spilling their hearts to a stranger at a talking bar over talking to their spouse, there is something inherently missing in the typical Korean spousal relationship. I have tried seeking an answer to that question, but most people I have spoken with, including many of my Korean friends, have not formed any solid opinions in respect of such a warped social dynamic.

Attending an exhibit at a vocational training school or listening to a beautician talk extensively, albeit in broken English, about her career was not what I would plan to do in any other ordinary course of visit. But there was nothing ordinary about this visit. When I left South Korea, I didn’t bring with me any photograph of me standing in front of one of those luscious palaces that would prove my visit. Yet, by doing what locals do, I have breathed, lived, and experienced a South Korea in a way that was very raw, yet, at least as it seems to me, honest and authentic.