The last two posts I wrote tackled some difficult topics. This one is much lighter.
“There is something that I love particularly about contemporary Chinese films, there’s often a very hopeful element, a belief that people can change, a belief in goodness. And then you have to really look to protect that, to guard that, and to see if anything doesn’t quite match that and eliminate that”.
This is a direct quote from a German-Austrian film director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. I have to thank my friend Morten for sending me a clip of an interview which is where the quote is from.
And I have to 100% agree.
The clip below is from a TV drama called ‘Wait in Beijing’ 我在北京等你. I’m grateful for having worked with some of the biggest starts on this project.
My character Anna is the landlord of the building in New York City and three of the main characters rent units from her. One of them is Xu Tian played by 李易峰. He is a lawyer and has his office in the basement of his uncle’s laundromat. His uncle Yun Fei is played by Wang Hui 王辉 .
Anna breaks her leg and hires Xu Tian to be her lawyer so she visits the laundromat often. XuTian asks her to teach English to his uncle Yun Fei and at the same time she is learning Chinese from Yun Fei. Anna makes many mistakes while learning.
In this scene, she thinks she is so smart and asks Yun Fei to say washing machine, which sounds like ‘xi yi ji’洗衣机 . But she gets it wrong by saying ‘xi you ji’ 西游记 which is Journey to the West. This is a super popular classic Chinese novel.
The plot revolves around Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who travels west to India with his four disciples, including the famous monkey king Sun Wukong, in search for holy scriptures. The monkey king is probably the most famous character in the novel.
That’s why Yun Fei responds, ‘so you mean I have to find you a monkey’?
Anyway, back to the main point.
Both Anna and Yun Fei change over the 46 episodes. They start to understand each other and are willing to learn from each other. They both change as people, they both have hope in finding a common ground, and in the end they fall in love.
Learning another language can be the first step in understanding another culture.
It's crucial for us to educate ourselves about different cultures. Only in this way can we truly understand, appreciate, and safeguard our collective world heritage.