Lost in a Mysterious Bamboo Forest...

Deep in the heart of China, a young and dashing American (yours truly), along with his beautiful Chinese girlfriend (Dai Li), find themselves lost in a mysterious bamboo forest in Yi Yang, Hunan. Luckily, someone sent our intrepid explorers a text message, guiding them back to civilization...

A few months ago, Dai Li and I took a day-trip a few hours outside of Changsha to explore a bamboo forest in a small town called Yi Yang. Upon reaching the edge of the forest we wandered for maybe ten minutes before we found ourselves lost deep amongst the bamboo, engulfed in shadows, and surrounded by the whispers of ancient China. There was bamboo in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Stalks as thick as my legs shot up hundreds of feet in the air. A faint smell of dew, and the nearly inaudible sound of beetles and spiders scurrying amongst the thin leaves, toyed playfully with our senses. This is the China I had always envisioned while living in the states. It was stunning. Yet sadly, there were no kung fu battles or rampaging pandas in this forest. I guess you can't win them all...

Quentin Tarantino Messes Up

No one doubts that American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is a cinematic prodigy. You'd be hard pressed to find an auteur who has as much love and respect for the silver screen as he does. Usually his movies are overflowing with obscure cinematic references and tributes. This man does his homework and generally doesn't make mistakes. But, while watching Kill Bill 2 this weekend with my dearest Dai Li, I found that the golden man of pulp cinema isn't as infallible as he seems.

At the beginning of the awesome scene "The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei", the scene in which Beatrix Kiddo goes to the Sichuan province in China to study with a kung fu master, Dai Li yells, "Hey! They don't speak Guangdong hua in Sichuan!" She was right, Pai Mai wasn't speaking Mandarin, he was speaking Cantonese (called Guangdong hua in Mandarin), which also explains why I couldn't understand much of what was being said. In fact, the actor playing Pai Mai, Chia Hui Liu, is from Hong Kong where most people speak Cantonese rather than Mandarin. I assume that while Chia probably speaks a bit of Mandarin, Tarantino had him speak his native tongue so he wouldn't butcher the pronunciation. Still, the Chinese person I was watching the movie with didn't buy this, and neither do I.Mandarin Speaking Skills: 1, Tarantino's Film Veracity: 0