Word: gongli
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...which rightly earned condemnation from the Vatican, is the most recent chapter in a long litany of abuses perpetrated against Chinese citizens who try to form religious organizations outside of the government's tight and watchful scrutiny. Although much has been made lately of the suppression of the Falun Gong movement, Catholic and Protestant churches in China have also been subjected to the repression of the Chinese government while the U.S. has barely murmured in protest...
...Gong...
...Zheng (Li Xuejian), whose grandiose ambition to unify the states into one massive, centralized entity is both truly visionary and tragically misdirected. Though (debatably) well-intentioned, Ying Zheng resorts to more and more extreme acts of violence to achieve his goals. In protest of his increasing brutality, Lady Zhao (Gong Li), Ying Zheng's childhood friend and long-time lover, announces that she is leaving him. Ying Zheng manages to convince her that the bloodshed he has incurred is only necessary in creating a lasting period of peace--until it becomes obvious that he will spare no one and nothing...
...rest is a mess of slow-paced courtly intrigue and gory battle scenes, albeit gorgeously shot. Not even the radiant Gong Li, who too often proves the saving grace in other overly-serious cinematic efforts, is unable to rescue the titanic The Emperor and The Assassin from sinking under its own epic weight. In what should have been a stunning scene, Lady Zhao runs onto the corpse-strewn battlefield of her home-state Zhao to find the mass grave of all Zhao's children, massacred by Ying Zheng. At first incredulous, then hysterically digging up one small, blue body after...
...Karmapa's flight caps a year in which the authorities in Beijing are facing growing discontent from religious believers of varied stripe. Besides the challenge represented by the widespread Falun Gong sect, which was banned amid national protests in the summer, Beijing has faced continued resistance from Islamic separatists in its westernmost provinces, and earlier this week China's leadership set a collision course with the pope by engineering the appointment of three officially approved bishops to the Chinese Catholic Church over the Vatican's objections. The Karmapa's defection may be a blow to Chinese efforts to legitimize...