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September 07, 2005
Better than a department meeting?
On Wednesdays from 2:00-3:40 no students have class; department meetings are held. I usually show up at ours. Today Naomi and I walked into the office, plopped down on the black pleather couch and opened our Chinese books to do a little studying, since it looked like not much was going on (not that we ever really understand what’s going on). One of the Chinese English teachers was handing out little pink tickets. He came over and offered us two: a movie about the Chinese Communist Party was showing in the big campus auditorium. Naomi and I looked at each other, shrugged a “why not” and agreed to go: Chinese practice and a new peek into CCP propaganda.
Zhang Side (pronounced like “jahng sih-duh”) is named after the main character, a soldier in the Anti-Japanese War and bodyguard of Chairman Mao. Mao was moved by Zhang’s selflessness, and after Zhang died in a coal-mining accident, Mao memorialized him in a speech called “Serve the People,” exhorting the Chinese to give their lives for their country just like Zhang Side.
The theater was hypnotically warm; students, professors and retired teachers filled the thin wooden seats. Naomi and I followed along with much of the closed captioning (in Chinese characters); we watched as Zhang adopted an old dumb man as his father and a young dumb boy as his son (whom he taught to talk), helped a friend of his who went to jail reconcile with the girl he loved; advised Chairman Mao to get enough sleep; urged a wayward, harmonica-playing subordinate to return to camp. Halfway through the movie wooden chairs started clapping sharply as students and teachers left to go to class, or find something more interesting to do. At the end of the film – after Zhang’s death in the avalanche and Mao’s speech in his honor – we got up to go, feeling inspired to do we-weren’t-sure-what; an older teacher asked if we understood Chinese. “Some,” I replied. “You are also Party members!” he said, and laughed.
| By huzzlecoo | 06:48 PM
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