(cross-posted at the paper tiger)…

No, I’m not referring to the Bush Administration’s fall-back strategy for coping with the indictment of Scooter Libby and all the suddenly pointing fingers at the lies and deceptions underlying the hollow rationale for the invasion of Iraq. Lots of other blogs out there doing a brilliant job of that (and might I recommend Booman Tribune and firedoglake as places to go for your latest installments of “Scooter Goes to Jail”? Part Two: “Turdblossom’s Fitzmas Present”).

I’m referring to last year’s indy film by first-time director Alice Wu. Now, I work in the film industry and am well-aware of the dynamics that control what films get made and why – one of the reasons that I’d rather read and write novels, to be honest. But occasionally, exceptions come along, and in the case of this one, I can only shake my head in admiration and wonderment.

“Saving Face” is, first, a film about Chinese Americans. With no white people. Well, that’s a big no-no. Second, it’s a film about Chinese American lesbians, which, even given the popularity of girl on girl sex in certain lad-ish circles is still a bit of a commercial stretch. Third, half the film is in Mandarin! Lovely, proper Mandarin, in the case of Joan Chen, always a boon to us aspiring Chinese students. But you gotta figure that market is also somewhat limited. And did I mention the part where this was the director’s first script and first film? That Wu’s previous job was as a software geek at Microsoft? That she quit her job and gave herself five years to get her film made? And along the way, encountered attitudes like these?

”They had me meet with a lot of people in Hollywood, mostly Asian-American studio executives, which I hadn’t honestly known existed,” Ms. Wu said. She also hadn’t anticipated just how often she would be asked to consider changes that struck at the very heart of the script everyone seemed to like so much: Couldn’t Ms. Wu make her characters white, so maybe the young doctor could be played by, say, Reese Witherspoon, and Ellen Burstyn could be cast as her mother? How about making the love affair heterosexual? Did she have to direct as well as write it? It was advice Ms. Wu declined to take.

(from an unlinkable May 29, 2005 NYT article)

The only part of this I have any sympathy for is the caution about giving a complete novice director the helm. God knows there have been far too many inexperienced directors who’ve cost studios tons of money because they don’t have a clue what they’re doing. That applies to some pretty well-known directors as well (*cough* let’s just say he’s not “money” *cough*).

Anyway, “Saving Face” is a charming dramatic comedy that’s been compared to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and “Bend It Like Beckham.” I haven’t seen the latter film but can say that it’s a much better movie than the first, even with what I feel is one dramatic misstep (which since I don’t want to drop a spoiler, I’ll decline to go into here). The film is about a young doctor in NYC who does not know how tell her very traditional family that she’s gay (and in love with a ballerina, no less). Add to that her widowed mother’s mysterious pregnancy (she declines to identify the father). Kicked out of her Flushing-based parents’ house, Mom moves in with daughter, redecorates the apartment in proper Chinese fashion and holes up watching bad Chinese soap operas (are there any other kind?). Will mother and daughter remain enslaved to tradition and misery? Or will they risk opening themselves up to real love?

Now available on DVD. I urge you all to rent and watch, if for no other reason than to support a tenacious filmmaker who stayed true to her vision and somehow got it done, and in fine style. But I think you’ll enjoy the film too.

Because in 2008, there simply aren’t going to be enough beds, unless you want to sleep in a hostel or flophouse dormitory. Or a park bench.

Beijing is not planning to construct new hotels for the 2008 Olympics, even though a quarter million foreign visitors are expected for the world’s largest sports event.

Officials are not losing any sleep over where all the foreigners are going to stay, since there are nearly 490,000 beds throughout the city, the Xinhua news agency reported.

That impressive number is arrived at by counting absolutely everything the city’s hospitality sector has to offer, including one-star hotels and hostels of varying quality, according to the agency.

Even so, there may not be enough beds to go around, as domestic visitors plus the normal tourist inflow will boost demand in 2008 to 550,000, Xinhua said.

Somehow, I can’t imagine the type of tourists who can afford to travel to Beijing for the Olympics being delighted with staying in a 1-start Chinese hotel. (I’ve seen a 2-star hotel in China, and don’t even want to think about what a 1-star would be like. Shudder.)

Ueber-wimp Kristof takes back his asinine comments about Fitzgerald, but continues to wear blinders when it comes to the broader implications of Plamegate. He’s spot-on, however, in insisting that Prince of Darkness Cheney start offering some answers.

“If Mr. Cheney can’t address the questions about his conduct, if he can’t be forthcoming about the activities in his office that gave rise to the investigation, then he should resign. And if he won’t resign, Mr. Bush should demand his resignation.”

So I’ll give this column a “B”; after reading Frank Rich, it becomes even more obvious that Kristof has no right to an op-ed column.

Time for the Vice President to Explain Himself
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 30, 2005

I owe Patrick Fitzgerald an apology.

Over the last year, I’ve referred to him nastily a couple of times as “Inspector Javert,” after the merciless and inflexible character in Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.” In my last column, I fretted aloud that he might pursue overzealous or technical indictments.
But Mr. Fitzgerald didn’t do that. The indictments of Lewis Libby are

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From Donxi magazine’s press release:

Dongxi is a China-wide magazine gratuitously publishing words, thoughts, ideas, lists, letters, reviews, poems, translations, short stories, images, photos and artwork.

Submissions must be sent by e-mail to dxzine@gmail.com….

Subscribing is easy. E-mail us a postal address (and preferably a submission) and all future issues will be sent upon publication….

Dongxi strives to represent the widest range of of voices and opinions in China today, but contributions racist, sexist, homophobic or overwhelmingly political in nature will be subject to critical consideration by the editorial board.

While this is still in its infancy, it sounds promising. The creators describe themselves as “three non-Chinese nationals spread between Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou with ten combined years of living and working in China.” They tell me they are willing to pay for good contributions. Please consider sending them a submission.

Just so all of us remember who we Americans decided to make king of the world….

To be posted every three months or so, lest we ever forget.

Scooter’s Scandal is the topic of MoDo’s biting new column. Read it and then argue that this is only about Libby and an insignificant lie to a grand jury.

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Who’s on First?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 29, 2005

WASHINGTON
It was bracing to see the son of a New York doorman open the door on the mendacious Washington lair of the Lord of the Underground.

But this Irish priest of the law, Patrick Fitzgerald, neither Democrat nor Republican, was very strict, very precise. He wasn’t totally gratifying in clearing up the murkiness of the case, yet strangely comforting in his quaint black-and-white notions of truth and honor (except when his wacky baseball metaphor seemed to veer

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This sounds like a positive step in something that’s long overdue.

A senior Chinese tourism official began a key visit to Taiwan Friday that could help revive the island’s beleaguered tourism sector and ease tensions between the longtime rivals.

Shao Qiwei, director of China’s State Administration of Tourism, was to inspect Taiwanese tourist facilities at the head of a 66-member delegation on a 10-day visit, in what is widely seen as a prelude to including the island on a list of approved tourist destinations for mainland Chinese.

But for any decision to take effect, Taiwan’s government will have to agree to opening its doors to the visitors.

Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949. While there were more than one million Taiwanese visits to the mainland in 2004, visits by Chinese to Taiwan have been severely limited, ostensibly because of Taiwanese concerns over potential spies or saboteurs.

Earlier this year, China dusted off a proposal to expand the number of its tourists visiting Taiwan to 360,000 a year — more than 10 times the current level.

At the time Taiwan spurned the offer, saying it needed further study.

Since then, however, the government has come under heavy pressure from Taiwan’s beleaguered tourism industry, which views the Chinese market as a key element in its future growth.

With only three million arrivals in 2004, the island lags far behind Asian neighbors like Thailand and Malaysia in drawing foreign visitors.

Taiwan really has to get its act together in becoming more tourism friendly, and in recognizing the importance of Chinese tourists. Malaysia, Singapore, HK and Thailand (and China) are practically obsessed with building up tourism, and rightly so, as it’s a relatively easy way to boost businesses and growth. Unlike these other countries, Taiwan borders on being tourist-hostile, with a lot of important signage in the airport in Chinese only and precious little promotion of its attractions.

Chinese tourists have been a goldmine for Hong Kong, no matter how much the Honkies hate the Mainlanders. In every way, the current cold-shoulder policy Taiwan has shown to Chinese tourism is self-defeating and dumb. It’s time to grow up. And it’s also time to have regular, affordable flights between the ROC and the PRC. If I take one of the very few direct flights from here to Shanghai, a three-hour or so flight, it’s an obscene $800 USD! If I go via Hong Kong, it’s less than $425 but it takes me all day. Please, do everyone a favor and enter the modern age.

As usual, the Powerline wankers are leading the spin with this typically asinine headline: “Indictment Paints Grim Picture, But Only for Libby.”

As if Libby were in a vacuum. As if Cheney and the others had no idea, and had no say. As if yesterday’s indictment of Libby is the end of the whole episode and absolutely no one else is in the prosecutor’s sites. (If so, why not say so and wrap it all up; Fitzgerald is very straightforward..) Are Assrocket’s readers so dumb that they can actually believe such nonsense? Haven’t they noticed the investigation is open, and Libby’s trial could catapult all sorts of embarrassing information into the public eye?

The sub-spin is, well yes, perjury is very, very naughty, but it’s not really that bad and the fact that no one was indicted for outing Plame is proof the administration did nothing wrong until Libby lied to the grand jury.

All I can say is, not so fast. The show hasn’t even started; we’re still listening to the overture and the fat lady hasn’t begun to sing. The VP’s chief of staff indicted: it is simply unprecedented, and the ripple effect will shake DC to its roots. And as for Rove, he’s as much in the woods today as he was last week. I suspect we’ll be hearing very little from Turd Blossom in the days ahead, as he’s going to be very, very preoccupied.

That’s according to Apple Daily reporter Kin-ming Liu in a rather startling op-ed piece in the WaPo.

But perhaps nothing better illustrates the myth of “one country, two systems” than the way Beijing halted democratization in Hong Kong. According to the Basic Law — Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, drafted by Beijing — the “ultimate aim” is to elect both the chief executive and the entire legislature by “universal suffrage”; the earliest possible times for this would be 2007 and 2008, respectively.

But now Beijing has played its trump card — its power to interpret the Basic Law — by proclaiming that the relevant clauses didn’t mean what they said. The Tsang administration released an election proposal last week that suggested only a few meaningless gestures that amount to a slow inching forward. I have come to believe that I will not see true democracy established in my home town during my lifetime.

This should come as no surprise to those who can see through the tremendous social changes of the past two decades to discern the true nature of the Chinese regime: It remains a dictatorship, intolerant of democracy. Beijing issued a white paper last week reiterating its Orwellian definition of democracy: “China’s democracy is a democracy guaranteed by the people’s democratic dictatorship.”

It’s not Tsang’s fault that Hong Kong is not yet joining President Bush’s global community of democracies. I think he does his best to defend Hong Kong’s interests. But he faces one daunting obstacle: He cannot go beyond the point at which Beijing says no.

When Bush visits China to see President Hu Jintao next month, he could do a great service to Hong Kong by reminding Hu of the promises made in that Joint Declaration two decades ago, and by urging him to give more freedom to Donald Tsang to run Hong Kong.

Eight years after the Hong Kong handover, I miss the British. Oddly enough, I didn’t like them when when they ruled Hong Kong as a colony. But when I look back, I recall life as seeming more promising in those days than what we are facing today. And we are still a colony.

Emphasis added, but just about every line could be emphasized.

About his suggestions for Bush – don’t expect Bush to do any such thing. Shrub leaves it to Bad Cop Rummy to rattle the saber, while Bush, always carrying water for big business, continues to kiss Hu’s butt.

Via CTD.

A dawn of a new era as KFC goes from grease and sugar to fiber and Vitamin C.

What’s the fun of eating at KFC if you can’t feel your arteries hardening with every bite?