Channeling the Lady

Movie poster for The Lady

Last night I was invited to the Hong Kong premiere of The Lady, starring Michelle Yeoh as Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and David Thewlis as her husband Michael Aris.

The preview hosted by Amnesty International was shown at The Grand Cinema in Elements and many socialites were there as well as businessman Allan Zeman.

As we filed into the movie theatre late, there were a flurry of flashing lights as Yeoh, director Luc Besson had their pictures taken, and everyone else craning their necks to see what was going on.

Then the movie started late, as Yeoh and Besson went to each theatre to say a few words before the screening, that they hoped people would enjoy the film. Besson remarked that making the movie impacted everyone who worked on it profoundly and changed them.

One would think The Lady would be a dramatic story to tell -- a gentile petite woman who is unarmed goes head-to-head with the Burmese generals who have a shameful human rights record. I remember one news weekly magazine's headline of "The Lady and The Generals".

However, not many know the story of Suu Kyi and so this biopic tries hard to give as full a picture as possible, which at times was tedious and the dialogue a bit wooden.

It is told in a series of flashbacks that starts with her father, Aung San, a general promoting democracy who is killed in a massacre by rivals. Later we see Suu Kyi in Oxford, married to Aris with two young children.

One day she gets a phone call that her mother has had a stroke and she needs to go back to see her. And it just so happens when she goes to Burma students are massacred on the streets for protesting. It is then that others who still have great respect for her father, ask Suu Kyi to lead the country to democracy, much to the chagrin of the generals.

General Than Shwe was known to be extremely superstitious and regularly consulted a soothsayer. According to the movie the fortune teller advised him not to kill Suu Kyi as a ghost would be more difficult to deal with. As a result he did everything else in his power to try to limit the people's access to her, which eventually led to house arrest for a total of 15 years.

Michelle Yeoh plays the role of Aung San Suu Kyi

We also see the relationship between her and Aris. They both struggle with the long distance relationship along with her boys who grow up without her. We see Aris get his diagnosis for pancreatic cancer in 1997, forcing Suu Kyi into a very difficult position -- if she leaves the country she will never be allowed back into Burma again. They manage to go to Burma many times, making these scenes tedious, but perhaps are needed to help show her family her devotion to her country and how the people  depend on her.

In the end the movie gives some good background for people to understand the plight of the Burmese and highlight Suu Kyi's efforts and patience in waiting out the generals, hoping they will finally relinquish control.

For Yeoh this is a role of a lifetime -- she apparently immediately agreed to the script and set about learning Burmese. In the beginning she doesn't quite look like Suu Kyi, but towards the end, perhaps with less makeup, at certain angles she bears an uncanny resemblance. Thewlis and the two young actors playing her children didn't have much to work with script-wise which is too bad. The movie's style is one of few words, but one would think more dialogue may have been needed to express various emotions.

Nevertheless, hopefully The Lady will give the general public a greater insight into what's going on in Burma and follow its progress.

Towards the end Yeoh looks very similar to Suu Kyi

I remember when Aris was denied visas to visit Suu Kyi when he was dying of cancer, and was sad to hear he was never able to see her again when he died on his 53rd birthday in 1999.

In 2003 I interviewed some Burmese refugees in Vancouver; they were all holding out hope for Suu Kyi who was arrested after the Depayin massacre when 70 people associated with the National League for Democracy were killed by a government-sponsored mob.

And then in 2007, thousands of Buddhist monks came out to protest against the government. They marched to her house and despite being under house arrest, she made a brief appearance to receive their blessings.

I had hoped then that things in Burma would change, but it was not to be until last November when the authorities released Suu Kyi from house arrest. Her son Kim came to see her after 10 years of being apart. Amazingly this all happened while Besson was filming The Lady. Yeoh recalled watching the moment on television and saying while they were dumbfounded and amazed, they were optimistic but also worried about what would happen next.

The authorities seem to have changed things around for now and Suu Kyi has registered her name as a candidate for the upcoming elections in April -- will the government refuse to accept the results or finally allow the country's Lady to step up? We shall see.

Remembering History 40 Years On

President Nixon and the press corps in China

Earlier this week the Asia Society in New York showed a documentary about US President Richard Nixon's historic visit to China in February 1972 from behind the scenes, particularly from the point of view of journalists.

It's entitled Assignment: China -- "The Week that Changed the World", using Nixon's own words describing the event.

I just watched it last night on YouTube and it was so riveting I could not stop until it was over.



Narrated by former CNN China correspondent Mike Chinoy, the 58-minute documentary follows why Nixon wanted to go to China, and all the logistics involved in bringing over 80 journalists and technicians to cover the event live.

The president knew the pictures of the historic visit were critical to its success which is why he and his aides mostly planned the itinerary around TV journalists, much to the annoyance of print reporters such as Max Frankel of the New York Times and Stanley Karnow of the Washington Post.

This was also the first time the vast majority of the journalists accompanying Nixon went to China and didn't know much about China, let alone what to expect at all. The United States and China were in a cold war period, where hardly any American reporters were behind the bamboo curtain at the time. As a result the cultural and political differences were great.

Several of them, including CBS' Dan Rather, Barbara Walters of NBC and ABC's Ted Koppel recall what happened during the trip, along with Nixon's former aides and even a former official from the Chinese Foreign Ministry who is now living outside of China.

Some of the memories gave insight into the details involved in the trip, others funny ancedotes. The journalists remembered how they wore long johns to keep warm, but inside buildings the heat was so hot they were sweating so much. But because there wasn't any laundry facilities, they started to stink very early on the trip.

They were constantly followed by minders and one of the photographers was working very late hours to get his pictures processed in his makeshift darkroom in the hotel bathroom. His minder had to stay up the same time as him, and so the photographer remembers coming out of the bathroom at 5am with his latest pictures in hand and his minder was sprawled on the floor.

Another remembered how fascinated another minder was at watching how live TV production was done with several cameras and a producer calling the shots. After it was all over, the minder said he now understood how all these things worked, but was still unsure about what "f***ing audio" meant.

Many of the journalists recalled their frustrations at having events manufactured with regards to regular citizens, including meeting some people in the park playing in frigid weather in February. But perhaps their greatest annoyance was that Nixon's meetings with Chinese officials including Chairman Mao, were shrouded in such secrecy, even the White House aides could do nothing to help them cover the negotiations.

But for Nixon it wasn't about the final communiques, but the pictures of him in China beamed live to the US. The events were choreographed so that Americans would be having their breakfast and watching their president establishing diplomacy with a communist country half way around the world.

Assignment: China helps collate everyone's memories together of this historic event 40 years later and surely the documentary will become an excellent historical piece later as many of the journalists who were there are now getting on in their years. Their recollection of their visit is still vivid -- a testament to the fact they knew they were making history.

Joke of the Day: South China Seas

China and Japan are each claiming the Diaoyu Islands are theirs.

A joke circulating in Chinese cyberspace gives an ingenious solution:

Diaoyu Islands belongs to which country? Answer: Bring a laptop computer there. If you can open Twitter, they belong to Japan. If you can't open Twitter, they belong to China!

【钓鱼岛属于哪个国家？】答：带台电脑去钓鱼岛，如果能打开twitter就属于日本，打不开就属于中国！

Now why didn't I think of that.

Feeling Swarmed

The full page ad financed by some angry people

Today's Apple Daily carries this full page ad featuring an image a locust, representing mainlanders flooding into Hong Kong.

It says, "Would you like to see Hong Kong spend HK$1,000,000 every 18 minutes on the children of non-Hong Kongers? Hong Kongers have had enough!"

The "anti-locust" ad was financed by internet users who raised more than HK$100,000 in less than a week.

"[Mainlanders] have already crossed our bottom line," said Yung Jhon, who refused to disclose his real name and was the organizer of the fund-raising campaign. "Why are mainland mothers flooding in to take up resources in public hospitals, getting our benefits and social welfare? Why do mainlanders... refuse to follow our rules and order? We can't accept that."

Web users coined the term "locusts" to describe mainlanders who consume resources in the city, from delivering babies here for residency, and splash out on property or luxury brands.

Meanwhile culture critic Jimmy Pang Chiming said the hostility reached a critical point and welcomed the ad. "It not only shows Hong Kong has freedom of speech, but also shows mainland leaders just how serious this cultural clash has become," he said, adding that the dispute reflected resistance towards mainland culture. "Hong Kong people do not want Hong Kong to become mainland China."

Denny Ho Kwok-leung, associate professor at Polytechnic University's Department of Applied Social Science said the ad indicated the tensions between locals and mainlanders would not end soon.

He also warned Hong Kong's government to maintain rule of law and freedom of speech. "It's very important to stick to the principles because if they cannot do that, people will lose their faith in the system, and Hong Kong will collapse in no time," he said.

There is also local resentment of more companies using simplified Chinese to attract mainland customers.

"We hope the authorities can pay attention to this worsening cultural clash," said Yung who claimed to be in his 20s and in the construction sector. "Now we will see if the government really listens to the people's voice."

We're watching to see what happens next.