From Chungking Express to In the Mood for Love

I loneliness

      Loneliness seems to be an eternal theme of Wong Kar-Wai's films. After watching Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love, I feel that everyone is lonely in his or her own little universe. Loneliness is unavoidable at all times. These two films just tell us that how we grow up with loneliness in this wild world and how we walk away from the young dream like Chungking Express and walk into the reality as In the mood for love.

            A lyric of a Chinese song goes: This is a season of love, people are shameful for being alone. However, we often do not know what loneliness really means until two people are in love together. Especially after we get used to someone’ company, the emptiness due to his or her departure can never be replaced.

     Therefore, Wong Kar-Wai Chose different forms to show how loneliness exists in our life, either dreams or reality.

     Chungking Express’s Chinese name is Chungking forest. Actually, Chungking is a city in the southwest China and some also say it refer to the Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong. It gives me an image that some lonely people living in a city surrounded by forests.

The characters in the film met and fell in love with each other dramatically in Hong Kong, a huge forest. Cop 223, the leading man in Chungking Express is eating pineapples with an expiration date of May 1st, wondering whether there is anything which would never expire in the world. He keeps running, telling himself that running vaporizes the water from his body so that he will not cry. His behavior is a weird, just like every young man may act after breaking up with their lover.

When the days are young, we care about nothing but love. We are sentimental and so easy to feel lonely. We travel around the whole city just in order to find some warmth and comfort. Youth is indeed a beautiful dream.

In terms of In the mood for love, it is closer to reality. Its Chinese name is called Floral Times, which is the same as an old and classic song of China in 1930s. It is absolutely romantic to me.

The leading actor and actress both are in the mood for love at their floral times. The man finds the woman living next to him attractive and she also feels the same way as him, but they cannot really love for some reason. Knowing their spouses have betrayed them, they agree to keep their bond platonic so as not to commit similar wrongs.

Their ending may be not perfect, which is similar to many people in the real world. Wong Kar-Wai used his genius to make this simple tale resonate with audience. With time going by, their floral times also never come again. After the elegiac tale of doomed romance ends, we can only feel the loneliness of reality.

      Wong Kar-Wai captures the core of the film with the beautiful slow-motion scenes where they are walking up and down the stairs in silence. That mesmerizing scene also shows the loneliness of characters. Even though they are not in solitude, audience cannot stop to feel their complex emotions beneath the peaceful surface.

Everything will eventually come to an end. Every period of love will be expired. Only loneliness can be everlasting.

II He/She

 One of the distinctive marks of Wong Kar-Wai’s films is the real and unique characters. From Chungking Express to In the Mood for Love, we can find the changes of ourselves when we are growing up.

      Cop 223 in Chungking Express is an absolute freak. He does not believe that his love was expired so he keeps eating his ex-girlfriend’s favorite canned pineapple, saying weird words that others cannot understand.

     "Every day you have opportunity to meet and pass so many people. You may probably know nothing about them, but they may become your friends one day."

     “When we get closest to each other, the distance between me and her is only 0.01 cm. 57 hours later, I fell in love with this woman.”

      Every day we interact with all kinds of people and we can influence someone's life unconsciously. The next minute whom we will meet is a maze. Will we fall in love with him or her? We may be surprised to find that the monologue of this lonely man should be the same as ours. 

      The mysterious woman whom 223 loved was a drug dealer. She lived in this city jungle with disguise, using changeless wig, sunglasses and raincoats to deal with day and night, rainy and sunny day.

     "Don't know when to start, I became a very careful woman. Every time I wear a raincoat, I would wear sunglasses. You will never know when it will rain and when the sun will rise."

      I cannot help to thinking about people living with disguise just as her in the city.  Life make us gradually become very careful people, learning to use a mask to deal with all the uncertainty in life. There is no knowing that when do we lose our genuine expression, which may be the cost of growth.

       Cop 663 is just an ordinary man, eating at the same tea restaurant every day and buying food in “Midnight Express” every night. At the same time, he is a rejected lover and talked to everything in his house to express his sadness after breaking up. Suddenly, a girl fell in love with him.

       She is a short-hair girl with deep crystal eyes. She always dances along with the music California dreaming while working. In her dream filled with sunshine, she slips into his house quietly and changes his place little by little. Until the day he meets her in his house, he finds his heart is changed by her as well. Here their love story begins.

       Many people may have the same experience like her, falling in love with somebody secretly. Neither do they care whether he or she knows their love nor do they require a perfect result. Love just makes people feel alive.

       However, reality also makes people be different. Just as the couple in In the mood for love. They are not as young as the characters in ChungKing Express any longer. They have their own spouses and they know that they are not supposed to be together.

       He once asks her: “If I have one more ticket, will you go with me?” Then he regards her silent as rejection and goes to Singapore alone, leaving her to continue her boring life in Hong Kong. I am thinking if he could be a bit more firm and brave at that time, would the ending be different?

 III New Wave

      Cinema is a visual language and director is the one who creates it. Wong Kar-Wai is indeed a great director for he has successfully developed his own sense of cinema. We can feel his special atmosphere and the mood of Hong Kong in these two films.

      New wave films are not stick to one pattern. They often convey a kind of strong local emotion, reflect the reality of society and make audience think about themselves. Wong Kar-Wai is a good representative of Hong Kong new waves. The style of his films is very indebted to the style of the French New Wave in the early 1960s, with the great use of the available lighting and mobile, hand-held cameras, extraordinary plot, the full use of music and so on.

      Love, loneliness, charming music, unique camera techniques, and particularly the surprising stories combine to make an amazing deviation from the standard Hollywood movie. Chungking Express is full of interesting characters brought to life by the film's excellent cast.    Moreover, it is filmed in impressionistic splashes of motion and colors, which creates romantic atmosphere. The music stands out especially as the song California Dreaming comes to be symbolic ideology of the characters' desire to be free and fearless. Audiences all are lost in the infectious music, flying to the dream land California. Moreover, the storytelling is based on the long complementary monologue, which makes this film be poetic.

As for In the Mood for Love, the plot is simple as well as the storytelling. The dialogues between the characters are always few words probably because the eastern emotions of the characters are beyond words. Mrs. Chan’s beautiful Chinese dresses, the classic music, and the overall dizzyingly romantic atmosphere of this film evokes a nostalgia feeling, taking us back to the 1960’s Hong Kong. Especially Mrs. Chan changes more than 20 tight and delicate cheongsams, which not only shows her graceful figure but also bounds her emotions.

Eventually, all these elements in these two films combined in a perfect way under the direction of Wong Kar-Wai, giving audiences the feeling called love.

My video ~

Here is the link of my video - how to maintain long distance relationships. Hope you enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmrGmL6Metk

In-class Writing: contrast of conversational styles

During my teenager time in my family, I have limited freedom to do what I want. I always say to my parents: "I want that doll!" "I want to watch that TV show!" "I'd like to go travelling with my classmates." And their reply is like "Well, it depends on the results of your test." "No way. You need to do your homework first!" However, I will not be upset about their rejection. On the contrary, I will keep saying things like "Please let me go travelling with my friends. I promise I will finish all my homework in advance and get good grades in the exams!" "Please let me buy this and I will do whatever you want! "
The conversational styles of me and my parents are so different. I keep sending my requests and desires to them, asking for permission. And then they raise many conditions that I have to fulfill, indicating their authority and power. For a imaginary child like me, I always have so many dreams but I have to rely on my parents to achieve them. After all, I am just a obedient child. Their words and actions can determine all my happiness and sorrow.

Argumentative Essay

        How to Maintain Long Distance Relationships 

He Haiyun Sea

52639407

People’s relationships, nowadays, are experiencing “globalization” as well. There are a growing number of lovers who are separated by thousands of miles. Long Distance Relationships (LDRs) have become increasingly common phenomena (Guldner, 2003). In fact, the best estimates suggest that in the USA, there are 3,569,000 married persons who live apart for reasons other than marital discord in 2005. Besides married couples, as many as 75% of college students report having a LDR, and 35% of college students are in LDRs at any given time (Stafford, 2005).

Generally speaking, these long distance relationships are due to social, environmental and economic factors such as participation in military activities, studying abroad, increased opportunities to work overseas and the emergence of online relationships. With the development of new communication technology, we can get in touch with people by various ways such as telephone, e-mail and social networks, etc. It seems that these electronic devices shorten our distance but geographic separation still remains an obstacle in relational maintenance (Merolla, 2012). According to a study by The Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships, the rates of break-up of people in LDRs versus proximal relationships over 3 months are respectively 37% and 21%. How to maintain LDRs has become a puzzling problem. And here are some typical fragments of LDRs.

In the first case, Ms. A and Mr. B were lovers in college. After graduation, Ms. A went to study abroad and Mr. B started working in the city they once lived. They chatted with each other only twice or three times a week through Skype and did not have a fixed time. Here was a problem: they had little time to communicate with each other because both of them were so busy with their own business. And since their environments were quite different, they gradually found they had few topics in common. After a long period of time, they thought their communication became as dull as fulfilling a meaningless task. Finally, they chose to break up.

From this case, we can know when lovers are apart, it is vital for them to have regular and good communication. So my solution to this problem is that couples need to always keep in touch with each other and establish certain communication rules, such as set a regular time for communication. Telephone and video chat are both good ways to keep their passions alive when they are apart. And more importantly, they need to know how to be intimate through communication. They can share every little day-to-day event and their moods with their lovers. Besides using phones, they can also send e-mails, write diaries and take pictures, using anyway they can to express their emotions and also understand their lovers.

In the second situation, Ms. C and Mr. D, a married couple, were separated because Mr. D needed to work in another city for a period of time. Owing to his work, Mr. D had to attend lots of dinner parties, where he knew a pretty young lady. That lady showed her interest to him but he tried to keep a distance with her. However, the rumor of Mr. D and that young lady somehow took off rapidly and suspicious Ms. C heard of it eventually. Regardless of the explanation of her husband, Ms. C firmly believed that he betrayed her. After hundreds of quarrels, Mr. D could not stand that she did not trust him at all so they ended up with divorce.

From the story above, we can know that mutual trust and respect do play significant roles in maintaining LDRs. People in long distance relationships must grapple with trust issues to a greater extent than people in geographically proximal relationships. (Guldner, 2003) And trust is based on honesty, which is vital to every relationship. The longevity of LDRs often depends much on how honest they are with their lovers. Do you feel any one show interests to you? Do you think your lover spends too much time with others? Every small detail like this in life can be a time bomb which may destroy LDRs. So couples should always be honest with their lover and solve all the problems right away. Apart from that, people should also never make any random assumption about their lovers and so that there can be mutual trust and respect between them.

In the last case, Mr. E and Ms. F lived in different cities but fell in love with each other through online chat. The problem was they both had stable jobs, families, circles of friends in the cities they lived and neither of them could easily give them up. They kept their LDR for years but did not know when they could live together, like a normal couple. With time going by, they could not bear the distance any longer so chose to break up.

This case shows a key point of LDRs: a promising future that lovers can be together someday. If lovers will be separated forever and there is no end to their LDRs, it may be too difficult to maintain LDRs because they have nothing to look forward and their waiting seems meaningless. Therefore, my solution is that couples should decide earlier if there can be an end to the distance so that they will have a firm belief to be together eventually and all the waiting they have to do is worthwhile.

However, partners in LDRs still have to face the truth that their lovers are not by their side. No matter how advanced communication technology is, it can never equal to face-to-face communication. No matter how deeply they trust each other, they will still come across misunderstandings or even cheatings. Yet, it does not mean that maintaining LDRs is totally impossible or meaningless. In fact, if we see it from another perspective, it is a tough test to lovers. Once couples really go through it, they can find how precious their love is.
In reality, you will never know what your future may be like, and cannot stay with your lover in every moment of your life. So just in case of separation with your lover someday, you are supposed to learn how to deal with it. Here is a perfect example to illustrate the possibility of LDR. Aung San Suu Kyi, who chose to rescue her country instead of staying with her family, kept fighting for democracy in Burma and only saw her husband Michael few times for years. Tragically, after 10 years of campaigning to try to keep his wife safe overseas, Michael died of cancer without ever being allowed to say goodbye to his wife. Many people are touched by their great love story, which proves that even though couples are apart, their hearts can still be tied together.
To conclude, maintaining LDRs is an uphill battle, but it is still possible as long as you believe in the infinite power of love. If he or she is exactly the one you want, do not be afraid of LDRs. The best solution for this problem is always keeping regular and good communication with your lover, building mutual trust and respect as well as having a promising future in your mind. Besides, it also requires lots of patience, sacrifice, tolerance and understanding. Only in this way, can you closely connect your hearts together and successfully maintain LDRs.



References:
FAQs About Long Distance Relationships. Retrieved April 19, 2013 from http://www.longdistancerelationships.net/faqs.htm.

Frayn, R.(2011). The Telegraph. In The untold love story of Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi. Retrieved April 19, 2013 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/burmamyanmar/8948018/The-untold-love-story-of-Burmas-Aung-San-Suu-Kyi.html.

Gulder, G.T. (2003). Long Distance Relationship: The Complete Guide. JFMilne: Carona, CA.

Long Distance Relationship Tips: Making It Work. Retrieved April 19, 2013 from http://www.essortment.com/long-distance-relationship-tips-making-work-37290.html.

Merolla, A. J. (2012). Connecting here and there: A model of long‐distance relationship maintenance. Personal Relationships, 19(4), 775-795.

Stafford, L. (2005). Maintaining long-distance and cross-residential relationships. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

In-class Writing: A letter to Dylan

Dear Dylan,

I agree with your critical ideas about the problem of idealized virginity of women. I also feel that idealized virginity is a tool to keep women in their place through my related study in college. The tradition and moral code of society always tell women that virginity is a sacred gift a woman should reserve for just the right man. However, why there is not such a rule to restrain men? The different social expectation towards men and women actually indicated a fact again: the inequality between men and women in terms of sexual behavior. You know this fact well so that you chose such an extreme way to bring this problem to the public and to make a satire like this.

I totally understand and support your point of view but I don't agree with your behavior which selling your virginity on the Internet because it's a too extreme form aiming at making people think about the problem in depth. After all, you are just a 22-year-old girl. You don't need to truly sell your virginity due to this reason. Women's sexual liberation doesn't mean prostitution. It just requires us to look at this problem in a more open and just perspective.

In-class Writing: Things that make you mad

He Haiyun Sea


52639407

I have to admit it that I am a sentimental animal. There are always countless things making me happy or mad. For instance, being isolated by others makes me mad. Meeting irritating people makes me mad. My group mates do not do anything in group projects makes me mad…… Thousands of scenarios come into my mind. However, most of these causes are external factors, which I cannot control. Actually, the thing making me mad the most is that I have procrastination.

How can I fail to control myself! I do not know since when, procrastination has been everywhere in my life. Because of it, I am often late for my class or appointment with friends. There are always a pile of dirty clothes in my room but I just cannot find a right time to deal with them. What is more, I always fight for my assignments or tests at the last-minute time before deadline, just like what I am doing now. Procrastination can be disruptive to our life. And solving this problem can obviously benefit not only me but also people around me. My friends can see my changes and probably they can also learn from me. Hopefully, procrastination can really walk away from our life in the future.

Descriptive Essay

Back to my wonderland

He Haiyun Sea

52639407

I can already feel it before I come into my room. It is such a familiar feeling, which is full of years of my moments and memories in this wonderland. My big soft bed in the middle of the room as well as a lovely cat toy on it greets me with warm smiles, “Welcome home!”

I could not wait to hop into my bed right away and stretch out my arms and legs which are as heavy as stones in this cotton cloud comfortably. I take a deep breath and the subtle lavender scent from my comfy pillow flies into my nose as I am lying in a beautiful large lavender land. The delicate texture and smooth touching of the cotton bed sheet from my fingertips are still the same as the ones years ago. The limpid blue and green lines on my bed sheet make me fall into a fresh and cool sea. I close my eyes, thinking about the countless happy, sad or weird dreams I once had in this cosy place.

A refreshing breeze blows in this lazy afternoon, making the half-closed white thin drapes dance. I can smell the fragrance of flowers and grass outside, hear the songs of birds and feel the gentle wind on my face. As sunlight pours in through the windows and shining on my small tatami, I can even see the golden dust dancing merrily in the air. The mildness of sun from the tatami drifts all the way from the glass of windows, through the sheets and then to my warm body. I am engulfed by the fragrant flavor of sun, humming a tune, “I want to take a ray of sunshine and never leave home.” All the fond memories come back to me again like a flood.

My wooden desk is in the left side of the tatami and my white metal bookshelf sits quietly on the opposite corner, witnessing the passage of time through the years. Most of the books on the bookshelf are old ones bought before high school because I rarely purchase books now. I walk in front of my bookshelf and wipe away the 10 meters of thick dust out of those old books. I can still think of the story behind every book when I see the name and cover of it. They are precious memories of my childhood and teenager life. However, I may have different feelings if I reread them at the moment. Time has changed and I have also been changed by time unwittingly. I can see that little imaginative girl, who is satisfied and cheerful in the world of books, read voraciously at the wooden desk in the sun. Yet, I cannot be that girl any longer.

Time always flies away like an arrow. All the things will gradually fade away and slowly disappear some day, without a trace. It is like today, I am away from home and miss my tiny wonderland from a distance. Life passes like a dream. I hope I can collect all the cherished memories in my wonderland and go ahead to live a regretless life.