Word: li
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...Kicking and Screaming "Emotion in Motion" [Feb. 6], on Jet Li's latest kung fu film, Fearless, ought to have noted that no matter how hard the moviemakers tried to make Li's character seem intelligent, even philosophical, they could never mask the mindless violence the film embodies. It's hard for any thinking person to imagine that the movie continues the grand tradition of filmmaking, when all we see is a kung fu gorefest on the edge of lunacy. There should be a new rating for movies like this one: B.D., for brain dead. Johan Adam Wong Selangor, Malaysia
HONG KONG Local celebrities Deniso Ho and Li Xiao Ran covet pastel shades of Christian Dior's Addict Pearl Shine lip gloss...
...Though Li has rarely returned to her homeland since her departure a decade ago, the best stories in this volume, written in her flawlessly pure and limpid prose, fully capture China's wrenching social changes. In "Extra," Granny Lin finds she has been "honorably retired" from her state-owned garment factory?which means the plant has gone bankrupt and Lin won't be getting her pension. She's lucky enough to find a new job as a maid at one of the posh new private schools sprouting outside Beijing, but it's not long before Lin discovers...
...Like the author herself, Li's characters seem free to reinvent themselves only when they've left China behind. In the title story, a retired scientist named Mr. Shi goes to the U.S. to visit his newly divorced adult daughter and discovers, as he hears her speaking to a man in English over the phone, that she has become someone else. (When he finds out his daughter's new boyfriend is from Romania, Mr. Shi tries to stay positive: "At least the man grew up in a communist country.") In their reborn American selves, father and daughter achieve a level...
...Li, who now teaches at Mills College in Oakland, California, is already deep into her first novel, and she's looking to broaden her subject matter beyond China. That's good for her, but a loss for readers hungry to understand her changing homeland. Li is an invaluable resource. China's post-Tiananmen generation has produced precious few serious authors, and virtually none who can write with Li's fluency in English. It seems that exile has become a requirement for China's most honest writers?the country's only Nobel prizewinner, Gao Xingjian, lives in France?but Li...