Last Friday, we went to Club Passim in Cambridge, MA to see Vienna Teng. Going to see and hear Vienna is always a delight. She is an exemplary human being in many ways. An inspiring artist, a humble person, in search of excellence.

Allow me to tell you why. My first encounter with her was a moment of serendipity – my friend Herman asked me whether I wanted to go see a concert a few days before the weekend. Being in Philadelphia at the time, the invitation came at the right time as I had an urge to visit New York City, so despite knowing little about who would perform that night, I decided to go, visit NYC, hang out with my good friend and open myself up to the chance of good music. Little did I know I would be blown away.

It was in a small venue, and the concert was really a sample of a few artists who all would play a few songs and tracks. After a few unnoticeable tracks, this Asian looking girl took stage, started to play the piano and blew my friend and I both away. Breathlessly listening, I occasionally would stomp my friend and he would nudge back saying “I know”. . I went back home, ordered all her CDs on Amazon (friends making fun of me), and started looking into her background, fascinated by this human being. It turns out she is Asian-American, Taiwanese descent, grew up in California, and what caught my interest: got a degree in Computer Science at Stanford, even went to work briefly for Cisco but in the midst of the dot.com boom, decided to pursue a career in the arts. Perhaps I saw some semblance of that in myself – who also briefly pursued Computer Science (but never finished it) and instead turned to study China Studies instead. In her, I see someone to aspire to. After last Friday’s concert, I am even more inspired. Here’s why.

The concert last Friday was my third, and while she has always been a great performer, her confidence and conviction made me think she really took it to the next level. Her passion, her singing skill, have all been there before, but seeing her how comfortable she was in a setting where she had not planned a specific order of songs to sing, but was taking requests from the audience, experimenting with some tracks while at the same time exuberating enjoyment, comfort and confidence left me wondering how I can ever reach such heights.

I’m really impressed with how she seems to be quite a humble, down-to-earth and perhaps even introverted person, who nonetheless enjoys interacting and talking with the audience, telling us little bits and pieces of insight behind every song, while making jokes about herself. But how also once she is about to sing a song, becomes an intense performer who takes pride in her work – it’s quite a stunning transformation. 

I think her performance for me exemplifies the virtue of ‘excellence’ the way Hannah Arendt has described it. Excellence, necessarily a public act, caring for what you care about, to incessantly improve yourself, because you take serious what you do, but also tremendously enjoy what you do. To measure yourself against others, not because you want to be better than them, but because you want to be a better person. To make a difference in the world through this pursuit of excellence. 

She mentioned briefly during the concert what her feelings were with regard to her being an Asian-American. How she never thought of herself as an Asian-American artist, but just as an artist. How others look at her and see her as such, but that she herself refused to be cast in a category. That perhaps people should like her work because for what it is. 

To me, as an Asian-European, that is incredibly inspiring. It might be ironic, because she doesn’t think of herself as an Asian-American, but in the process becomes a role model, precisely because she refuses to “play that card”, to be reduced to a single adjective, even thought that might come with many benefits: the first Asian-American artist! being the biggest fish (in a small pond)! Instead, she wants people to measure her, and she measures herself, squarely in the larger public of all creative artists.

Which leads me to the end of this post: in requesting songs from the audience, I could not resist requesting a particular song (that nobody else I think requested that night): a song sung in Chinese. I was considering for a brief second whether I should yell “Green Island” in English or “Lu Dao” in Chinese, deciding for the latter. Great was my satisfaction and intense my enjoyment when she sung the song to cap the night. And what a night it was. (I recorded most of the songs that night in pretty good quality, leave me a comment if you are interested in hearing them).

Sparrow is the latest movie by acclaimed Hong Kong director Johnnie To. In many ways, I feel he is the heir to the throne John Woo has built up over the years: their oeuvre have been quintessential to the definition of modern day Hong Kong cinema, stylish and macho. From Hard Boiled and the Killer now to PTU and Triad.

Sparrow is a departure from his signature work. It is much more lighthearted, slow paced (in a very good way) than most of his movies. Kelly Lin plays a super sensual and mysterious woman that threads all the characters in the movie (the usual suspects in Johnnie To movies: Simon Yam, Lam Ka Tong..). But while it is perhaps conventional to describe a movie in terms of its plot and the actors that carry this plot, it is more fitting to assign Hong Kong, the city, as the subject of the movie and the main fascination the director falls in love with. Mostly shot in areas of Hong Kong totally familiar to me and very dear and near to my heart, the movie allows the characters to roam around Hong Kong’s most sensual places; places of beauty, of contrast, of a nostalgic past versus a hypermodern capitalistic present, of the dried seafood sold in Wing Lok Street, to the stairs in Sheung Wan and Central and all the little shops on and around it, to the morning breakfasts and get-togethers with your buddies in the cha chaan teng in Wanchai. The willow trees hanging over Hollywood Road that have been there since my childhood, and probably the childhood of my parents. The Sang Kee congee shop where I had so many meals that warmed my heart.

Did I tell you that the soundtrack is awesome too? Made by Xavier Jamaux and Fred Avril, it conjures up the sense of fantasy, of a place where little encounters of magical moments are sprinkled around wherever you go, never knowing when they will come to you. The breeze of a late-night stroll when you walk along a quiet road during a lazy and warm fall evening.

I enjoy being in Boston a lot – and one of the reasons is the presence and close vicinity of the Harvard Film Archive. It’s a treasure trove for rare, obscure, foreign, or otherwise hard-to-find movies.

Last weekend and this weekend, they are showing a retrospective of Edward Yang and Wu Nien-jen, two of the pioneers of the Taiwanese New Wave. I have long had a huge admiration for Taiwanese cinema and Edward Yang is no exception. His movies, besides maybe Yi Yi, however, have always been incredibly hard to find. I always thought it was the definition of irony that his most widely acclaimed movie, Yi Yi, who is so quintessential Taiwanese, was not distributed in Taiwan itself. Maybe it has by now, but when I was in Taiwan from 2001-2002, the movie won awards everywhere but my classmates at the National Taiwan University could only see this movie by downloading it.

Three nights ago, I saw Taipei Story, which is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Ozu’s Tokyo Story, although the Chinese title (qingmei zhuma) translates more accurately as a proverb that refers to the kind of friend you have that you have known since childhood. In that sense, it’s a strongly nostalgic word that captures the appreciation for a shared history between you and your friend – all the things you have gone through together, the good times, the bad times, the way you dealt with adversities together, the successes you enjoyed together. This mixed sense of nostalgia and appreciation is explicated layer for layer for layer in this wonderful movie by Yang, who casted another Taiwanese New Wave director Hou Hsiao-hsien as his main protagonist. HHH plays a former Little League baseball star who is now wondering what happened to a world where his role was so clearly defined but now has changed so much, leaving him behind. It’s a critical look at the success of Taiwanese economic development – underscoring the social costs that often come with economic growth spurts (this, however, is not a necessary outcome. For a brilliant argument on why economic growth has to take into account and include social and political growth as well, see Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom).

Last night I saw another wonderful movie by Edward Yang, That Day on the Beach. I won’t summarize the story here, but it’s a wonderful story that plays with narrative structure and weaves a web of relationships between fascinating characters that portray the richness of human life in all its glory (and not so glory).

In short, I’m extremely grateful to be in a place and position where I have been able to see these movies that have been almost impossible to find these days. Edward Yang and Wu Nien-jen also just skyrocketed to my list of directors I have a deep admiration for – not that it wasn’t there, but being able to see their earlier works in full glory, something I haven’t been able to do before, confirms and underscores my admiration for them as persons who have a deep passion for what they do, have a admirable understanding of the oh-so important nuances of human life, care about the world around them and seek to share this through their work.

We decide to go to the cafe I just mentioned to her. We stroll along the street, turn into another alley and find ourselves staring in front of the large window of the cafe. I open the door for her and follow her in.

We sit down. The cafe has high ceilings, with a little staircase that goes up to a smaller floor, that serves as a kind of loft. Looking at the menu, she orders a Blue Mountain coffee, I opt for the stronger and coarser Mandheling. Having ordered, a bit unsure, we look around, half-casually. She looks gorgeous.

“Have you been here before?” I ask her. She looks at me with her big black eyes, just briefly, and lightly shakes her head.

“I am glad we are here. Even though you will be leaving soon.” She says, while looking at me.

Unsure how to respond, I look down and glance her briefly in the eye. A faint smile.

And then all of a sudden, I feel like I am a million years away, as if the present turned into a memory, and I find myself missing her, reminiscing this very moment. You wonder if that is how you are going to feel, once you really have left.

“I’m glad I met you too. The moment is kind of unfortunate, what with one month before I leave. But at the same time, I am grateful that we did meet.”

She kept looking at me, during the whole time I said those three sentences.

The coffee arrives, and a whirl of smoke emanates from the two cups of black liquid.

Adding one sugar, we stir and take a sip. A rush of warmth courses through my body.

“The coffee here is great!” She beams. I smile.

—

It’s one of those rare encounters that you will come across once every so many times in your life. They are brief, but leave a strong impression. In our darkest nights, we suddenly remember and cherish them dearly, at the same time wondering where she is, how come you had almost forgotten about her, and what if .. ? The brevity of the moment is similar to the sudden dead of a person in her youth: forever young and beautiful, etched in our memories, with yet so many unwritten tales now only left to our imagination.

Three Times – Movie Review – Stylus Magazine

There isn’t a better filmmaker than Hou Hsiao-hsien working anywhere in the world right now.

It is hard to argue with the above, and perhaps I would rate a few others in his class, like Ang Lee, Wong Kar Wai, or even Ann Hui, but Hou Hsiao Hsien (affectionately HHH) is definitely one of the most outstanding, if not the best, filmmaker these days.

My favorite movie of his is still Dust in the Wind but Three Times, his latest one, is high up there. Seen during the New York Film Festival in an amazing setting (thanks James for the tickets) – the movie breathed emotion, feelings, with an intensity – as if, a first glance of the world after years of being in coma. Struck with silence, beauty.

The first part bleeds nostalgia. Driven by a pair of songs like Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and, in particular a favorite of mine, Rain and Tears, one relives a past where – because nothing much happened – you live so much more aware and feelings are so much more intense. Resonating, still, and desperately grasping onto it. A time of friendship, camaraderie, growing up, deciding life. Critical juncture – choices that will set the structure of your future – but back then, it was just your gut guiding you. The lightness of being.

Two times; the second part. Set in the time before the Japanese take-over, shot in black and white, silence. Not until then do you realize the mediated world we live in, cinematic experience overthrown – equilibrium of senses off guard. It ironically feels more unmediated, by mediating it in a silent movie. The conjuring of images, sounds in your head – dialogues, intensity of speech, voice. Very, very, impressive, HHH. Show us why we care, why we should care, and show it good.

Catch it in the cinema if you get the chance.