Work Around

I found out that the young twenty-year-old man was not a fellow guest at the Lily Pad Inn as I had assumed. On our way back from the market he and I had a chance to talk at length which was a little tricky because his English was so-so (and my Chinese is non-existent).

He was a civil engineering student who had just graduated from Beijing University. In the fall, he was going to be entering graduate school. For the summer he was volunteering at the Lily Pad Guest House. While he didn’t getting paid, he did get free lodging and three meals a day. He did whatever the owner of the inn needed from carrying in large bottles of water to keeping the three computers in the lobby operational to sweeping out the courtyard. He found this particular opportunity on a Chinese website that matches young people looking for just such an opportunity with various inns and hotels across China. It was a cheap way for him to see and experience a part of China for the summer that he had never seen before.

He and I found out that we shared a common interest in Chinese movies. With the use of his Blackberry and an on-line translation site, we were able to have a pretty robust conversation about the Third-wave of Chinese cinema. Occassionally it took some effort for one us to figure out which movie the other was talking about because movies titles –even after translation- are often different in Chinese than in English. The Chinese movie “My Mother and My Father” becomes “The Way Home” in English.

Of all the Chinese movies I have watched, “To Live” offers the most frank assessment of the dark years surrounding the misnamed Cultural Revolution. I rightly assumed that this movie is banned in China, but I thought that I would toss it into our conversation. Once my young friend figured out what movie I was talking about (thank you www.IMDB.com), he said “Yes, I have seen this movie.”

He went on to explain that using his internet computer savvy he had done a work-around and managed to watch this banned movie on-line. He said that all of his friends had seen it as well. Wow. I was surprised.

Despite the government’s attempts to control their country’s narrative, the younger generation is using new media to gain a fuller picture of their nation’s recent past.I would have loved to have delved deeper into what this young man’s thoughts were on China’s journey over the last 61 years, but alas we were hindered by both of our linguistic limitations.