Passion strikes again

I haven't been doing much at Intrepid Media lately, save for one relatively short piece about The Golden Girls that I posted in the gallery a little over a week ago. That piece wasn't too passionate a piece, but rather an attempt to exercise my column writing muscles. Today, after reading about a group of American athletes passion struck me like a ton of bricks and I went right to work.

I've been sitting back and watching all the stuff coming out about China in the midst of its preparation for the Olympics, and in the shadow of scandals surrounding Chinese made products. Newspaper and magazine articles, photo essays, blogs and opinion columns have all been talking up a storm about China. My observation so far has been that almost no one has anything good to say about the country, save for those writing pieces of the travel variety. This bothers me to no end.

When I read about a group of American cyclists who'd arrived in Beijing wearing masks, my observation period ended. Since I've never been to China, I can't say just how bad the smog and pollution are, but I can't help but find it incredibly rude to get off a plane wearing a mask anywhere short of an epidemic outbreak site. It's rude, it's ignorant and just incredibly presumptuous. Suddenly, all my observations of the media's far from objective coverage of a country everyone says is a mystery, yet enough is known about it to point out its faults materialized into a piece full of passion and plenty of oomph.

I titled the piece "China. The Black Sheep" and posted it in the gallery. I am having trouble reaching the Intrepid Media web site right now, so I am unable to provide a live link, but look for the piece in the gallery at intrepidmedia.com. I hope you find it a good read.

It took much work to get my message across the right way, and it took much editing for it to be what it is now. I must've spent three hours just getting the piece written out, and now it is out there for all to see.

In the meantime, I have been doing plenty of other writing; fiction and non-fiction. My excitement is building for my class, which is actually starting on Tuesday, August 19, and not the 18th like I said in my last post.

And that is all I have for now.

Another column

As the title of this post suggests... I've got another column featured on Intrepid Media. Check out A One-Sided Struggle. The one-sided struggle refers to the struggle between East and West, but focusing on China vs. Hollywood.

I took Pearl S. Buck's Pavilion of Women and compared the book to the 2001 movie version. My aim was to make a commentary about how the West refuses to accept the East, and how the East must struggle to let its voice be heard.

I am a bit late in making the announcement of this column being a feature, but even though it is not the main feature come Friday, you can always read it in the old features.

As always, thanks for reading!

Musing Over a Literary Gem

I am a huge fan of Pearl S. Buck, the author of the literary classic, The Good Earth, and many other masterpieces of literature.

I began my journey in discovering the abilities of this amazing writer years ago, when I borrowed The Good Earth from a friend. The subject matter of the book wasn't too enticing to me at first, but once I started reading, I became engrossed in not only the story itself, but the introduction to Chinese history and culture I knew nothing about.

At the time, all I knew about China was what any ignorant simpleton would know about such a faraway and foreign place... that it is where almost everything consumers consume is made, and where billions of people live under strict population control laws that favor males.

It's safe to say that Buck's The Good Earth was what opened my eyes to not only China, but the entire Asian world that is influenced in one way or another by China's ancient culture and wisdom.

Though The Good Earth is a literary masterpiece that stands all on its own, it is in fact the first volume of a three-part saga. Buck wrote The Good Earth to introduce us to the Wang family and its farming beginnings, and final climb to land ownership through China's political and social changes.

Sons, the second volume of the trilogy, is equally as good, and in fact, is perhaps my favorite of the trilogy. It documents the lives of the second generation of the Wang family; the three sons of Wang Lung, The Good Earth's main character. One son is a lazy, indulgent and womanizing landlord, the other a stingey merchant with nothing but money on his mind, and the other is a soldier hungry for power and conquest. They all abandon their father's and grandfather's love of working the earth, i.e., farming to pursue their own interests.

And finally, A House Divided is the third volume. It reincarnates the love Wang Lung had for farming in one of his grandsons, who despite seeing the western world and being trained as a soldier, returns to till the earth the way his grandfather did.

The Good Earth Trilogy is a perfect example of the circle of life, not just of the individual's life, but of the way everything goes in a circle and ends where it started. Wang Lung struggled to ingrain his love of working the earth in his three sons, and died knowing his sons did not love the earth he worked so hard to obtain and use. What Wang Lung failed to realize, perhaps was that the son so seemingly unlike him, was the one most similar to him. Wang the Tiger, the youngest of Wang Lung's three sons, was a soldier who rebelled against his lord to become a big lord himself, and like his father wanted nothing more than to ingrain his ultimate love of power into his own son. But the son Wang the Tiger wanted to be a soldier, loved earth more than power.

The genius of The Good Earth Trilogy, is that each book is a masterpiece all on its own, yet it's all connected like a big circle that spans three generations. It's a love story unlike any other... a love story between a man (any man) and his livelihood. That is something that translates into any language and culture, east or west.