Tuesday morning’s screening of Farewell My Concubine was overall a very emotional ordeal for me. The heart-wrenching disciplining scenes of the children were not only stirring up sympathy, they also reminded me of my childhood in Taiwan. My childhood in the capital city, Taipei, meant that competition was fierce. Everyone was pushed by the teachers, parents, and peer-pressure to perform at nothing less than our best at school. If we did not meet expectations, we are almost guaranteed a punishment of some sort -and not only from our parents, but our teachers as well.
See, Taiwan’s education (and much of how the society functions, really) is based on a negation system. Using punishment to deter us from making mistakes or falling short of requirements isn’t uncommon at all. In fact, that is how we learned to thrive in the competitive environment. You are to be nothing but the best (or at least the top three). We count marks on our exams by subtracting the number of wrongs from the would-be perfect score, which I thought was always faster than adding all the rights together, which the teachers here do. So while it was warming to see the kids deal with their unreasonable training and punishment with humour, the odd familiarity also brought forward heart-ache for their loss of innocence and an imposed maturation (but perhaps only in determination and discipline).
Another big reason that I was totally absorbed and invested emotionally in the film was that my dad was a performer of Peking Opera. Or at least I’ve seen pictures of him doing so. I have never actually heard him talk about it -it was in his college days, and I didn’t find out until we were sorting through pictures to put in his memorial slideshow. So for a good chunk of the film when Deiyi and Xiaolou were performing, I was picturing how my dad would’ve looked and sounded like if he was on stage. It didn’t help that I was bawling my eyes out at my missed chance to discuss with him -and especially him!- about this interesting and long-standing art of our culture. Then I shed some more tears for missing him dearly.
It’s going to be hard for me to detach myself from this film emotionally and talk about it logically… especially with a familiarity and a certain sympathy to the two main characters’ childhoods, I’m having a hard time seeing this as a “modern queer” film.
Where's My Dime? 