Thanksgiving break, as usual, was largely unproductive, despite the pronounced lack of things available to do in Wichita for a girl my age and temperament. I can’t say no whenever my mom asks me if I want to watch “just one more scene” of the current Chinese movie of the month, whether or not I have an open book in front of me that I am poring over like the diligent scholar that I am. Yeah. And the movies of course are twenty five hours long on average, and this particular one that I was watching - “Hoang Chau Cat Cat” (sp? eh, who of you reading this would know anyways), the Princess of the Popular People - was in three parts, with six VHS tapes each. Not to mention that you can’t just stop the tape during one of the zillion cliffhangers - you have to figure out what’s going to happen next, whether or not so-and-so will be beheaded, cast out of the palace, or sold to the Mongolians - frequent threats in these movies. They’re actually not so much movies as they are compilations of soap operas. Except no American soap opera you’ve seen takes places in medieval China and features lots of ass-kicking kung fu. (If I’m wrong, please drop me the name and the channel that would host such a wonderful program, and I will knit you a free hat).

One thing that occurred to me while watching the movie was how woman-centric most of the movies my mother watches are. I wouldn’t call them feminist exactly, and certainly never my mother, but considering the rep that Chinese culture gets for oppressing women at every opportunity, it was a bit refreshing to see portrayals of women that were quite empowering. Women not only excel at kung fu, they are experts and run martial arts schools. They fight back when attacked, sometimes even when wearing impossibly unbalanced shoes (as was the fashion during the dynasty in which “Hoang Chau Cat Cat” takes place). There’s no doubt they live within a patriarchal society, through and through, especially in the movies about royal dynasties (which my mother particularly likes) - everyone, even the Queen, kowtows to the King on pain of death. Yet the King, though all-powerful, is not without faults. He’s easily manipulated by sinister First Wives (why is it always the First Wife who is evil?) and unscrupulous viziers. Luckily, he’s also easily manipulated by the good wives and concubines, and at times even the plucky, good-hearted handmaidens that wait on him or work in his kitchen.

HCCC in particular is pretty cool, in that the protagonist is an orphaned girl (played by a ridiculously pretty, doe-eyed woman), who helps her friend get to the palace to meet the King. The friend turns out to be an (illegitimate) daughter of the King, but surprisingly legitimacy doesn’t matter much - all she needs to convince the King of his own blood is to produce a flowery scroll with the poem that he had written her mother, swearing to her that he would send for her to come to the palace to be one of his wives, before he went into battle and promptly forgot about said promise. Through a zany mixup, in which the orphan is shot with an arrow by the Prince (who later falls madly and passionately in love with her), the orphan is confused for the lost Princess.

We learn more about the orphan, that she knows enough kung fu to get by and defend herself, that despite being uneducated and rough around the edges, she has a heart of gold. She breaks into a house of a particular judge which she detests (my mom didn’t say if they told why), and interrupts a girl committing suicide. The girl is the detested judge’s daughter, and is about to be married off the next day to a man she does not love, sundered forever from the man she truly loves, and has decided to hang herself. The orphan leaps forward, cuts the linen the girl is using to hang herself, and works out something with the girl. Then the movie cuts to the wedding day, in which the orphan is posing as the bride - made easier by the fact that Chinese brides do not remove their veils until after the vows are consummated. She then goes about her original business - stealing the judge’s gold and treasures - and escapes by flying over the roof, heavy bags of jewels and trinkets and all, the judge’s guards pursuing her to no avail.

Much later, after lots of wacky Chinese soap opera plot development, the orphan, the Princess, and their band of followers flee from the Palace and roam the country side. Every time they stop in a town, they intervene in some local matter or disturbance, like a rag-tag band of superheroes. In one of the earlier villages on their journey, they come across a huge crowd, gathered around a girl tied to a stake. The villagers are about to burn her, because she is pregnant and unmarried. The orphan leaps into the middle of the crowd and begins a series of passionate arguments to save the girl - “it takes two hands to clap, just as it takes two to make a baby. Why kill the woman, and not the man who did this to her?” The others join her, though their arguments fall on the deaf ears of the bloodthirsty crowd. Then the orphan’s group proceeds to kick everyone’s ass. Awesome.

I guess I’m hooked. Even sane people get hooked on normal soap operas after a matter of hours, and in total, I think I’ve accumulated sixty or seventy hours of Chinese movie watching time since my mom showed me the first one. It’s a nice way to bond with my mother, and to learn a little Vietnamese to boot. Should the Vietnamese government suddenly revert to a monarchy again, I will certainly know how to address the king - “Wang Tung!” - and so forth.

Since I was so busy bonding with my mother and watching awesome low-budget double-digit-hour Chinese movies, I didn’t crack open a book once when I was home. Leaving me in the same situation I was before break, minus a few potential days of production - 2 research papers due next week, a paper for a class I never go to due on Thursday, a story to write and also submit by Thursday, five finals to study for. Oh, and seventy billion hats to knit by Christmas, because for some insane reason I have decided to knit hats for everyone this year. So…when is the next break?

Imagine this: you’ve decided to adopt a new puppy. You’re an animal lover, so you don’t want to go to a breeder or pet shop or anything, but straight to the humane society to pick up a dog, and thus save it from the chance of being put down. Economical, no? You approach the humane society volunteer at the front desk and, in a fit of bold, compassionate naivete, tell her that you want to look at the saddest, most hopeless cases, the dogs that nobody else wants and have little chance of leaving the wire mesh of their cages before the ends of their unmourned lives.

The worker’s eyes light up quickly, and she jumps up from her seat eagerly - a little too eagerly, you reflect later - and announces that they have “just the dog for you.” She hurries into the backroom, perhaps to get the transaction overwith before you’ve had a change of heart, and emerges with a tiny thing wrapped several times in a dirty, smudged towel. From deep within the folds of the towel, you hear a muffled noise that sounds more like a horse’s whinny, perhaps, or the bray of a donkey. You barely hear the woman as she explains that the dog in question is blind and has a few “other issues” that might make him a little difficult to manage, but that with time and love, these issues can be overcome. Your suspicions spring to alertness at this mention of issues, and you stop the woman midsentence - “Show me the dog.”

The worker does not appear offended at the look of aghast horror on your face, as she’s surely seen this expression several times during her service at the shelter. “I know he’s a little daunting to look at,” she says, in profound understatement, “so, if you’re still interested in your offer - and he is one of our most challenging cases, and has little hope of being adopted into a loving and caring family, as you may imagine - you can take him for 48 hours and see if you’re up to it.”

You look skeptically at the animal, who alerts every primal instinct within you to run out to your truck, grab the shovel in the back, and put the thing out of its obvious misery. Yet the woman’s words plant the seed - “challenge” - within your mind, and you may be a little offended by her questioning of your ability to look past physical appearances and give love to this thing, surely the humblest of God’s creatures. And as you stand there, he pokes his pitiful little head out of the towel and gazes forward with his milky blind eyes - and briefly, you see the dogness inside him. Not the monster that you initially saw, nor the hellspawn that will scare schoolchildren and neighbors later on when you take him out for walkie, the grim spectre that will drive the man you now love to pack his bags and leave. There is a dog inside that unlovable husk of scars, warts and teeth. And then you realize that this dog, this humble beast, will be more of a companion to you than the fluffiest pampered show poodle, the most well-trained Lassie, the cutest clueless Shih Tzu. This dog alone is capable of the purest loyalty.

So R.I.P., ugly dog. Until the day you rise again to haunt the dreams of terrified children.