08:45 am
Dillweed of the Day: China’s North Korea Booster
Zhang Yimou, the General Director of the Opening Ceremony, gave a long interview with Southern Weekend. China Digital Times was kind enough to provide a translation.
Most Americans have never heard of Zhang, but he was an internationally acclaimed film director long before he got the Olympics gig. Three of his films have been nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, and he’s won several honors at the Cannes Film Festival.
He’s also not unfamiliar with the ravages of totalitarianism. During the Cultural Revolution, he had to spend seven years as a manual laborer, and at first was denied entry to film school because he was too old. He only managed to get in by convincing authorities that he should not be penalized for his time “in the countryside,” as victims of the Cultural Revolution often call it. In 1991, one of his films, Raise the Red Lantern, was initally banned in China because authorities feared it was an allegory of Communist rule.
So you would think he would be sensitive to human rights.
Then again, maybe not:
I felt that we had two things added together, one plus one, that made such an impact. The first one is a human performance. I often joke with [foreign journalists] and say that our human performance is number two in the world. Number one is North Korea. Their performances can be so uniform! This kind of uniformity brings beauty. We Chinese can do it too. After hard training and strict discipline, Chinese achieved that as well. Like the moveble type cubes, they follow orders. . . .
I have conducted operas in the West. It was so troublesome. They only work four and a half days each week. Everyday there are two coffee breaks. There cannot be any discomfort, because of human rights. This can really worry me to death. Wow, one week, I thought I should have rehearsed it very smoothly already, but they could not even stand in straight lines yet. You could not criticize them either. They all belong to some organizations. ….they have all kind of institutions, unions. We do not have that. We can work very hard, can withstand lots of bitterness. We can achieve in one week what they can achieve in one month. Therefore our actors can give such a high quality performance. I think other than North Korea, no other country can achieve this in the world.
The second is our ideas and use of technology. The technology used very fresh ideas and really outstanding concepts. It is very hard to have both. They may have the technology and ideas, but they cannot have the same level of human performance. North Korea can have the same level of human performance, but their ideas are really backward, very sixties. So if you think about it, I feel that only China can have both. I am not kidding.
These foreigners who really understand, they saw our quality of performance, and they really believe that they cannot produce it. Even if his ideas and technology can make it, but his human performance cannot produce it to this level.
China: combining the technology of the west with the mindless repression of North Korea! Two, two, two great tastes in one!
Would it just be crazy-stupid human rights talk to call this guy a total schmuck? Oh wait, before I do, I need to take another coffee break. Maybe I’ll be lucky and it will worry him to death.
Congratulations, Comrade Zhang.
Not only are you the hero of the Opening Ceremonies, you’re also our latest Dillweed of the Day.
Photo: the wax version of Zhang Yimou from Madame Tussaud’s in Shanghai. Photo by Klaith Zhang via Flickr, using a Creative Commons license.
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