china

Abominable (2019)

A traffic light showing go
Last week I went with my parents to watch Abominable. It’s an animated film about a Yeti that is trying to get home to Mount Everest from a city in China. It’s a nice story and fun to watch.

I had one scene that sticks with me. After escaping the villains in an extraordinary way, Yi (Chloe Bennet) and Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor) wander into a bamboo forest. They have a deep conversation about grief and superficiality. It helps strengthen their relationships by sharing an intimate moment.

The imagery of that scene stood out to me. The calming shadows of the bamboo and the clean landscape around Yi and Jin was hopeful. It produced a classic image that centers the film in a reality beyond the animated excitement that occurs before and after.

I really enjoyed the film. It was a simple story but not simplistic. The characters were fun as they went on a cool adventure. Yi has postcards from her father who had died shortly before the story began. The postcards have a special meaning through the story. We don’t learn much about the father, but Yi loves him and was inspired by her father’s violin lullabies.

The traffic light is green for Go!

Know the “enemy”

It’s interesting to go to international English language newspapers.

With the Internet being borderless, you can learn things from different perspectives. Especially in war and conflict.

I’ve learned some of the enticements ISIS gives to get Taliban fighters to join it in Afghanistan. One is to “join the winning team.” Another is “the West hates Muslims.”

That Syrian media portrays Bashar al-Assad as hugely popular and well-loved.

When Russia was making bombing attacks in Syria, the Russian use of the Iranian airbase was controversial in the Iranian parliament. Iran has a constitutional provision that prohibits it from allowing foreign armies to deploy on Iranian soil.

Brazil is undergoing a political crisis far beyond the impeachment of the president. Due to corruption charges against many of its politicians.

The Palestinians are following proceedings in the International Criminal Court about crimes committed during the Gaza conflict by both sides. Israel rejects the court’s authority.

The local paper glossed over the players in a recent terrorist attack from Gaza. In Israel, a non-Hamas group claimed responsibility, but the paper said “Israel holds Hamas responsible….” so that the U.S. paper didn’t have to explain the messy details of the Gaza conflict where there are multiple actors.

The contrast between the Chinese culture and the U.S. culture was an interesting subtext of the Shanghai Daily. It seemed to me that even though China has over a billion people, the articles have a “small-town” feel to me. The local, small-town paper, The Star in DeKalb County Indiana has plenty of stories of conflict and disunity in the U.S.