Some Taiwan trip details!

1. I got to see the Nana movie on the airplane!!!! Longer report to follow, but general notes are that it looks very weird because everyone is 3D and Japanese, as opposed to manga-style!

2. Jet lag is now hitting, and I just realized that I'm taking the red-eye to Houston tomorrow. Good lord.

3. I saw Fearless when I was in Taiwan (a Jet Li martial arts movie on Huo Yuanjia), which wasn't Oscar-quality any way you look at it, but had fight scenes and wasn't about a subject that was too depressing. It was also interesting because it's a highly, highly fictionalized biography of Huo Yuanjia and how he was famous because he defeated some Western boxers or fighters or some such in combat during the 1910s, when China was under much foreign occupation. It's very nationalistic, and it's very odd to see the large, brawny Caucasians being thwarted by small Jet Li and people in Qing dynasty-style clothing cheering while the Europeans and Americans in somewhat period clothing are basically scowling and villainously twirling their mustaches.

There's also a subplot in which of course the Japanese are teaming up with the Europeans and Americans to defeat Huo Yuanjia (probably because Japan was the only non-Western country to also occupy China during this time), but Japan is Asian and is thus portrayed as slightly better. The Japanese gambler plotting against Huo Yuanjia is dressed in Western clothes and is Ev0l, but Huo Yuanjia's martial art competitor is Japanese and dressed in a gi and etc. And he is portrayed as very honorable and later tells off the gambler for being un-Japanese.

Anyhow, it is nationalistic in a much less subtle way than most US movies I've seen seem to be... though I may be watching totally different demographics, given that I don't watch movies like The Patriot. It's also odd seeing the West villified so much and so openly after watching movies with less open racism of a sort (the Magic Negro, the Mystic Asian, etc.).

4. Manga has moved on without me! What a concept ;). Aka, I realized I was hopelessly out of date while visiting assorted comic book stores. KareKano is finished! Angel Sanctuary is finished! HanaKimi is finished! Good Morning Call is finished! (these are all series I was reading back in high school) Also, One Piece, Bleach and Naruto are incredibly popular in Taiwan. Sadly, Saiyuki doesn't seem to be, and I couldn't find Saiyuki Gaiden anywhere! And I only got one Minekura artbook, and I suspect there just isn't that much demand. This makes me sad.

On another note, Nakajo Hisaya (the mangaka of HanaKimi) has a new series out called Sugar Princess. I also wanted to get the manga of Genji Monogatari and something that looked like the Onmyouji series, but I had already gotten so many books that I didn't.

I also spent a lot of money on Yazawa Ai's new postcard collection for Paradise Kiss because I am a complete sucker and want all Yazawa Ai art. They are beautiful postcards, and I really need to scan them.

5. In knitting news, I went to a Taiwan knitting store and ended up with more yarn, because I have no willpower whatsoever. I also got a Japanese knitting magazine and a Chinese knitting book! The Chinese one will be especially neat, because it's all circular sweaters knit from top down, which makes me extremely, extremely happy. And it was cheaper than most knitting books here. However, this means I will need to learn knitting in Chinese. Also, the charts are very different from the charts that I'm used to, but that will be interesting to pick up as well.

I spent Chinese New Year with my uncle's family (my dad's brother), and his wife's mom (technically totally unrelated to me) was the one who had first taught me to knit. So I brought my crochet over, and she had entirely forgotten that she had taught me and obviously inspired an obsession ;). But the fun thing was that she was teaching my cousin to knit, so the three of us sat in a room, and I gave my cousin advice too, and we all played with yarn. Yay generational craftiness!

6. I got to go shopping with my aunt and my mom for groceries in a traditional market. Meat everywhere. Fish everywhere. Pretty veggies. One of the first places I went to in Taiwan when I moved here was a traditional market, and as a kid, it scared the hell out of me. They were selling frogs! To eat! And there was gross raw meat everywhere! And live fish!

This time, I had a lot of fun looking at all the stuff and admiring the pretty fruit and all the meat and live seafood. Also, my aunt is a cook, so following her around and having her explain how to pick the best pickled vegetables or fish or whatnot was quite fun.

I also helped make spring rolls for New Year's Eve dinner! And I learned how to kill crabs, yay?

7. I got to brush up on my Chinese a little more. I always forget it because I don't speak it much here, but thankfully, it seems like if I'm around people who speak it a lot, I pick it up fairly quickly. I am desperately hoping that my Japanese is also not permanently lost. But yes, this was nice, given that I am incredibly paranoid about my Chinese, because I swear, I always get laughed at for mispronouncing things and for having an American accent.

I think my mom is trying to encourage me positively, because she kept telling me that my Chinese was actually pretty good, comparatively. I'm not sure what it was being compared to, but it's always nice to hear (see above re: my extreme paranoia about speaking Chinese).

8. I got a book on shoujo manga! Alas, the book is in Chinese, so it will probably take me forever to read it. I almost wasn't going to get it because of the taking-forever-to-read factor, but I figured... shoujo manga scholarship! I'm not actually sure how scholarship-y it is, but when I flipped through, it at least had overviews of current series. I am not against manga from the 70s and desperately want to read them, but it's nice to have references and critical studies of things I actually have read.

I also saw a book on doujinshi and cosplay, but I ended up not getting it because reading one Chinese book a year is probably already very ambitious -_-;;.

Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre

Ehm, yes, this is the first time I've read this...

Anyhow! I actually knew all of the plot, having read Jenna Starborn (Sharon Shinn's sci-fi take on the tale) and The Eyre Affair. Mostly I was afraid that I would detest Mr. Rochester and thereby not respect Jane, largely because I completely failed to understand the attraction in either of the two books mentioned above. rachelmanija had also told me not to worry too much, because the book is more about Jane than the romance.

I really liked Jane. I wasn't expecting to, largely because the many romance takes on the story of poor governess meets rich employer, falls in love and is lifted out of poverty have left me cold. But I liked Jane's determination and her morals, I liked that she was never willing to compromise what she felt was right, even in the face of adversity.

In a romance (I shall compare this to romances, since this is probably the only gothic I've ever read), this would be termed "spunk" or "spirit" and make me roll my eyes and want to whack the heroine over the head. But Bronte characterizes Jane so that she isn't so much high-spirited as stubborn, and there's an underlying strength of character, even when she's head over heels in love with Mr. Rochester. I also like that Jane's aunt doesn't end up forgiving her, I like that Adele isn't a charming, adorable child who brings Jane and Rochester together, I like that Mr. Rochester's attempts to prettify Jane and give her expensive things is unambiguously disliked by both Jane and the narrator.

It's actually rather amusing seeing how many romance cliches Bronte subverts, even though she was writing a good many, many years before the contemporary romance industry was formed.

I still dislike Mr. Rochester, though not as vehemently as I expected to. At some points, I was even persuaded to like him by Jane! I forgave him for the incessant questioning of Jane in the beginning (I personally abhor being talked to like that, so he rubbed me the wrong way to start with) and grew to like him until he proposed to Jane. Then he drove me batty by continually attempting to remake Jane and force things on her that she obviously didn't want. Also, I seem to be completely not in tune with his angst, because the Big Revelation did not spark any sympathy at all toward his previously rakish behavior. But I fondly dislike him, if that makes sense.

And although Bronte and Austen are polar opposites in terms of romance and the level of emotion expressed, the characterization of the Reeds and the Ingrams reminded me of Austen.

I'm glad that the book was in first person POV and that it was so Jane-centric (I feel stupid saying that, given the book's title), but I was a little afraid that it would be extreme moodiness and angst and woe. But it really isn't. The elements are there, but at the core is Jane herself, sturdy, stubborn, small, plain, and in possession of herself.