Word: wan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Daily Life in the Forbidden City by Wan Yi, Wang Shuqing and Lu Yanzhen (Viking; $75). As the Son of Heaven moved through his palaces, the Hall of Luminous Benevolence, the Gate of Divine Prowess, there was everywhere beauty to behold. The Palace Museum in Beijing has assembled a sumptuous record of this quotidian splendor...
Meet Me in St. Louis lacks the main asset of the 1944 film, Judy Garland, while shouldering its burden, the wan, uneventful plot. It seeks not only happy endings but also happy beginnings, happy middles, happy everything in between. Yet its charms include six songs from the film plus eleven more from the same team, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane; a Disneyesque confection of Victorian houses; ice skating on a real-looking pond; a trolley that moves; and a lighted-up 1904 World's Fair...
Although George Bush's personal ties with China date back to his years as head of the U.S. liaison office in Beijing (1974-75), the President seemed as unsure of the situation as anyone. Bush met with an old tennis-playing crony from his Beijing days, Wan Li, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. Afterward, Bush issued a cautious statement that appeared both to back the students, by saying that the U.S. encouraged the worldwide growth of democracy, and to encourage the government, by vowing that he was committed "to expanding normal and constructive relations...
Meanwhile, Wan, 73, cut short his visit to Washington (canceling a tennis match with the President), ostensibly for reasons of health, and headed home. But instead of returning to Beijing, he landed in Shanghai, where he was put up in a guesthouse outside the city -- possibly under house arrest. On Saturday a statement was read on Chinese television saying that Wan Li supported Li Peng -- dashing the hopes of protesters that Wan would convene an emergency session of the National People's Congress to consider Li's removal...
What do these increasingly fantastical scenes mean? The audience may never be quite sure, but one thing is certain: playwright Tina Howe, overpraised in the past for her wan Wasp tone poems (Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances), has infused new energy into her work. At the same time, she has sustained her gift for hinting at profound meanings in humdrum moments. To Howe, the eternal in life is clearest in its ephemerality; the memories that haunt us to the end of our days are of the most ordinary, and thus revealing, events...