17 October 2014

Recensione film: Il Matrimonio di Tuya (2007) di Wang Quan'an, *****

Testo italiano di seguito

Synopsis

Tuya is a young woman in Inner Mongolia (part of China) who lives with her paralyzed husband Barter and their two children. They are semi-nomad shepards and live off their sheep. Tuya can't cope with the hardships of providing for her family alone and is persuaded to divorce Barter and re-marry, but on the condition that the new husband will have to care for barter as well.

Review


Tuya is a strong woman, realistically attached to her land and her family, and especially her husband. She works hard to feed them all. But she is also an idealist, because she thinks she can bypass love by marrying another man who could then provide for all of them barter included. She tries with two suitors, but it is clear that Barter can't accept being sidelined while his beloved Tuya belongs to another man.

It is a film on the absolute value of love, which can lead to self-denial and masochism, even suicide, but can't accept compromises.

An intersting film on life in Inner Mongolia, now part of the People's Republic of China, where pastoral traditions mix with the modernity that comes with integration into China. The movie is a Chinese production and the characters speak Chinese, not Mongol.

Testo italiano

Sinossi

Tuya è una giovane donna della Mongolia interna (parte della Cina) che vive con Barter (il marito paralizzato) e i due figli in una zona semidesertica. La loro fonte di sostentamento è la pastorizia. Tuya però non riesce più a reggere la fatica e le responsabilità. Accetta quindi di divorziare e risposarsi ma solo con un uomo che si prenda cura non solo dei suoi figli ma anche di Barter.

Recensione

Tuya è una donna forte, realisticamente attaccata alla sua terra e soprattutto alla sua famiglia, compreso il marito Bater, restato paralizzato in un incidente, ed i figli. Lavora sodo e porta da mangiare a casa per tutti.

Ma anche idealista, perché pensa di poter scavalcare l'amore per poter assicurare al marito semiparalizzato un futuro sposando un altro uomo che si prenda cura di loro. Ci provano in due pretendenti, ma per motivi diversi Bater non può accettare di stare dietro le quinte mentre la moglie crea una nuova famiglia con un altro uomo.

È un film sull'assolutezza dell'amore, che porta fino all'autolesionismo e persino al suicidio per non fare compromessi.

Anche un bel film sulla vita della Mongolia interiore, parte della Cina, dove la cultura pastorale tradizionale si mischia con la modernità portata dall'integrazione con la Repubblica Popolare Cinese. Persino la lingua mongola viene ormai parlata mischiata al cinese.


18 September 2014

L'arrotino, l'ombrellaio

Sono nel mio appartamento a Roma, sto scrivendo. Sento passare per strada l'arrotino, da anni sempre la stessa registrazione, me lo ricordo almeno dagli anni ottanta. Chissà se è sempre lui? La voce che esce dal megafono elettrico non è cambiata.

Arriva in strada, annunciato dal megafono applicato sulla macchina. Si ferma, aspetta che scenda qualche cliente. Fa il suo lavoro e procede per la prossima strada. Così da decenni. Non so se sia una cosa buona o no. Da una parte è un segnale di arretratezza. Dall'altra, a Roma è impossibile trovare artigiani, operai, elettricisti, idraulici e immagino(non ho provato) arrotatori di coltelli. Una chiamata per un riparatore di una cucina a gas o uno scaldabagno costa 60 euro fissi più tempo di lavoro e parti di ricambio. L'arrotino è meglio!

"Donne è arrivato l'arrotino e l'ombrellaio, arrota coltelli, forbici, forbicine, forbici da seta, coltelli da prosciutto. Ripariamo ombrelli. Se avete perdite di gas, noi le aggiustiamo, se la cucina fa fumo, noi togliamo il fumo dalla vostra cucina a gas. Abbiamo i pezzi di ricambio delle cucine a gas. Lavoro subito, immediato."

22 May 2014

Recensione: Il mappamondo con la Cina al centro (2007), di Margherita Redaelli, ****

Matteo Ricci in Cina
Sinossi

Confrontarsi con la Cina: una sfida dei nostri tempi? L'impresa non è nuova se già quattrocento anni fa Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), gesuita e missionario, vi riuscì con risultati sorprendenti, utilizzando tecniche di gestione della diversità culturale che hanno ancora oggi molto da insegnare.

Il libro analizza il contenuto di queste tecniche e la ragione del loro successo. Rintraccia le idee filosofiche e scientifiche della cultura occidentale che Ricci divulgò in Cina e mette a confronto per la prima volta i suoi scritti con i classici greci e latini ai quali faceva riferimento. Si fa chiaro, allora, che la cultura umanistica del Ricci, ricostruita qui attraverso nuove ricerche d'archivio, gli permise di farsi mediatore tra due grandi civiltà.

Tra i tanti contributi del gesuita alla società che lo ospitò, spicca quello geografico. Infatti Ricci produsse la prima carta geografica del mondo per l'imperatore Ming, ed in questa carta la Cina appariva, come è logico, al centro.

clicca qui pervedere il mappamondo in dimensione originale
Il mappamondo con la Cina al centro di Matteo Ricci
Recensione

Originalissimo libro di una studiosa italiana su uno dei più importanti contatti tra Europa e Cina al tempo della dinastia Ming. Ricci era un gesuita ma anche un uomo di scienza e come tale fu accolto ed apprezzato alla corte di Pechino. Curioso che, mentre Ricci insegnava geografia ed astronomia in Cina, a Roma Giordano Bruno veniva messo al rogo e Galileo obbligato a rinnegare la propria scienza.

La parte più interessante del libro è la seconda, che racconta del Ricci in Cina. La prima, forse troppo lunga (62 pagine) è sulla sua formazione in Italia.

Contributo centrale del Ricci è il metodo dell'inculturazione tramite il quale egli si integra culturalmente nelle alte sfere della civiltà cinese senza però cadere in trappole sincretistiche. Ricci non solo imparò il cinese, ma studiò il confucianesimo ed il buddismo per trovare punti di contatto tramite i quali perseguire l'opera di proselitismo.

Il libro contiene anche ricche appendici documentative. Quello che purtroppo manca è una descrizione più dettagliata della vita del Ricci in Cina, dei suoi problemi quotidiani, dei suoi contatti con la corte imperiale.




Trovi qui in questo blog la mia bibliografia sulla Cina.

You can read an English bio of matteo Ricci here.

05 May 2014

Book review: Journey to Yesterday (1950), by Silvia Baker, **

Muriel, by Silvia Baker
Synopsis


"One of the charms of travel" says Silvia Baker "is that you move in time as well as space. Weary of today, we can escape to half-mediaeval countries like Spain and Cyprus, or to enchanted islands in the Pacific or the Caribbean which are not spoilt as the tourists proclaime them to be."

Few are the fortunate people to whom the opportunity to sampre those charms is ever given. But to read about them is hardly, if at all, less satisfying, when the narrator is as observant, unconventional and witty as SIlvia Baker.

The two paragraphs above is what I read in the fron flap of the book's dust jacket while browsing the shelves of Daunt books, my favorite second hand travel book shop in London. I should have known better than trusting someone who can make such trite remarks but I decided to buy the book.


Polynesian girl drawn by the author
Review

Disappointing. She does provide lots of anecdotes about her trip to the Pacific, but her observations are mostly superficial and inconsequential. They are so disorganized that one is left with nothing in the end that helps understand those countries and peoples.

Anecdotes and personal experience of a writer are not interesting in and of themselves except perhaps to his mother, but they might be interesting to a broader public if they are placed in the right context and help understand the object of the narration. Well you won't understand much about the countries Ms. Baker visited by reading this book.

On p. 34 she writes that "Tahiti is a kind of convent. You escape appointments, situations, anxieties, panics. You relax." Then on p. 71 we are subjected to the tiring litany of "until ten years ago, Tahiti was an Earthly Paradise", as in ... it is no longer one now (she writes in 1940). Reminds me of Gauguin who about forty years earlier fled Tahiti for the Marquesas because he thought they were spoiled and overcrowded then. It was always better ten years ago, and even better twenty. Please give me a break!

We do learn a few tid bits of interesting in formation, such that in Tahiti when a woman has no children she can ask a friend or sister who has several to give her one, especially a daughter, as she can help with the house chores.

A few pretty drawings by the author complement this book.

Btw her name is spelled SIlvia in the book, not Sylvia.

My always growing list of books on Polynesia is in this blog.


Buy the book in the US here




In the UK buy it here

01 May 2014

Books and Films about Music around the world

I am proposing here a list of books and films about the music of the world. I hope these books can help a traveler understand the countries concerned.

BOOKS

Zhu Xiaomei: The Secret Piano (2012). A harrowing story of music and love in China during the first decades following the 1949 Communist Revolution.

Cook, Nicholas: Music, A Very Short Introduction (1998) by Nicholas Cook.


FILMS

Adlon, Percy: Mahler on the Couch (2002). Mahler, Freud, Gropius and Klimt set the tone for a return to the Belle Epoque.

Cellar Jones, Simon: Eroica (2003). A dynamic narrative of the day music changed forever.

Girard, François: The Red Violin (1998). Centuries of Italian history through the eyes of a ... violin!

Ichikawa, Kon: The Burmese Harp (1956). A Japanese soldier at the end of WW II finds a new life in music.

Kurosawa, Kiroshi: Tokyo Sonata (2008). The power of music when the going gets tough.

13 March 2014

Electrician in London

Sono a Londra da una settimana e ho bisogno di un elettricista per riparare alcuni interruttori nell'appartamento in cui abito. 

Non si riesce a trovare un elettricista. Quello del costruttore che ha da poco terminato la palazzina cancella un appuntamento all'ultimo momento. 

Alla fine Anna, un'italiana che vive qui da un paio d'anni, mi manda Ken, un volontario dice lei. Non capisco bene cosa voglia dire, ma prendo un appuntamento per il giorno dopo. 

Ken viene fa il lavoro e se ne va senza volere un penny. Insisto ma mi dice che non può accettare denaro perché è in pensione e non ha più la licenza. Proprio come in Italia... Alla fine accetta una bottiglia di vino!

01 March 2014

An Italian actress in London

Celeste is a 29-yo Italian artist who has been here a couple of years. She is from Puglia and tried a career in Rome but as so often the case there were too many insurmountable obstacles for her to have a chance. So she moved to London and now works at a major theater in Soho. She has adjusted to life in London effortlessly, her English is excellent and she is quite flexible in adapting to the environment.

Their budget being limited, she and her boyfriend usually share a house or an apartment with other students or young couples. She tells me that she met many good and interesting people, but had several problems with muslim families. She has been repeatedly insulted by their men for wearing a skirt above the knee (inside her own house!). Her boyfriend has been accused of assault for having the temerity to enter the shared kitchen space while the Bangladeshi wife was already there cooking something or other.

The Bengali couple called the police who came and immediately realized the young Italian man had done nothing wrong but advised them to find another accommodation without muslim roommates as these episodes were all too common.

28 February 2014

Drive to London

Today I am driving to the UK for a couple of months. It's a test stay, to see whether it might be a good idea to move there later for a longer time. Probably not for good. But then again nothing is for good.

I arrive at Le Shuttle terminal in Calais and I am surprised that my number plate is immediately recognized by CCTV and I am welcomed by a screen that reads "Welcome Mr. Carnovale". All I have to do is push a button and pick up a hanger that is printed out and the access bar lifts to let me through.

Moments later I am sitting behind my wheel of my car, engine off, parking brake on, inside a train car with few small windows and a rather depressing feel to it.

But in about half an hour I am on the other side of the English Channel. Very convenient.

Another two hours' drive and I am in London. I always loved London as a tourist, let's see what it's like to live here for a couple of months.

In the evening a friend invites me to dinner at "Il salotto", an Italian restaurant run by Giorgio, entrepreneurial Italian who came here to renovate buildings and instead found himself opening a restaurant in the City which serves top notch Italian food and wines. On the first floor (the second floor for Americans) there is a men's clothing store! Giorgio says this is their passion. Not sure it will be economically viable, real estate is so expensive in the City.




12 January 2014

Bibliography: books and films on South Africa

Books on South Africa

Mason, David, South AFrica, A Traveler's History (2003)


Films on South Africa

Invictus (2009), by Clint Eastwood. How a president used a rugby match to make a nation.

The Gods must be Crazy I and II (1988), by Jaimie Uys. A funny but serious rendering of the plight of the Bushmen.

10 January 2014

35. - 10 Jan.: Ending with a big bang, see you soon again South Africa

My last day in South Africa, at least for this trip. I am in love with this country, I am sure I'll be back ASAP.

Breakfast with smoked haddock, fresh fruits, omelette and cereals. My last hyper-protein full international breakfast this time around in South Africa. I am going to miss it. Petrus is free this morning, every one else went shopping at the Waterfront. He kindly offers to take me around town. So I have a 30-seater bus all for myself for one last round of exploration.

He has been much more than a good driver. He gave good advice and feedback and offered good insight into the new South Africa. He told me he remembers the days of apartheid, when he was brought up to look down upon his black and colored mates, it was normal then. What changed his views was service in the army, where he had a black sergeant giving him orders, and especially work, where he could see how white, black and colored drivers would work well together, support each other and really had much more that bound them together than a different skin color.

I ask him to go and see something that could give me a bit of a view of how ordinary Capetonians live. He proposes a couple of markets, which I think is a great idea. Whenever I travel I put markets at the top of my list of priorities.

We first head to the Greenmarket square. It's a huge square with many souvenir stands and some interesting flea market sellers. I am looking for a Springbok T-shirt and find a few that fit and are reasonably priced, but Petrus has a sharp eye and spots some defects in the shirts, better buy somewhere else.

We then move to Grand parade square, famous, among other reasons, for it is here that Mandela spoke to the crowds after his liberation in 1990. Many day laborers hang around hoping for a job. Unemployment in South Africa is high but somehow the country still need foreign labor for the most menial jobs. Unskilled workers from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and elsewhere keep making their way to this country in hope for a better future.

I later walk into a supermarket to look at local cost of living: 1 kg minced beef 50r, 1kg pork chops 45r, 500g pack of pasta 9 r, 1kg premium chicken 32 r, cheap for me, not so much for an average local salary.

I notice a pick-up truck with a trailer trailer full of glass, apparently there is money to be made in collecting empty glass bottles he sells for recycling.

Later to the Springbok experience, where fans can buy all kinds of paraphernalia of the famous rugby team.  A life-zide simulater even allows to simulate passes. This time I can shop for real green and yellow jerseys. Petrus confirm still true as before that rugby is mostly white and soccer mostly black. He says this is not because of any discrimination, but simply because whites are better at rugby while blacks are the best soccer players. The important thing should be that South Africe fields the best team in each sport, no matter the color of the players' skin. Other blacks I have talked to told me they think rugby still a racist sport and told me that the youth league has lots of blacks but rhen only whites selected for national team. Hard for me to verify.


At noon, Petrus is kind enough to drive me to the SIgnal Hill noon gun again, and this time I can prepare myself and get the perfect shot of the shot!

Sunny day for a farewell and it is time to drive to the airport. Petrus has a day off tomorrow.  He plans to spend it with his daughter who lives wirh hia ex wife. Perhaps he'll take her to Hermanus to see the colony of seals.He is going to spoil her, and I can see his eyes shining with anticipation.

Good bye South Africa, see you soon again!