Shots fired! I tend to agree with Brian’s clear-eyed, full-hearted take on why the YOMYOMF YouTube channel feels like a watered-down version of the take-no-cultural-prisoners approach that we’re used to, though I do think there isn’t quite enough “there” there to take a proper pulse yet. Because broad generalizations lead to drawing definitive conclusions, which people much smarter than me keep telling me is how we ended up with the latest Pew findings.

It’s probably worth keeping in mind, though, that the YOMYOMF channel is more than just a movement: it’s an advertisement for a movement. And advertisements are meant to be slickly produced, long on literal and metaphorical pyrotechnics, and short on actual substance and heft. Now, you could certainly argue that the social media echo chamber creates a real need for instant gratification, and there are few things more instantly gratifying (at least among many, if not most, of our 2nd gen Asian American peers) than seeing YouTube A-listers ingratiate themselves to crude shtick masquerading as wafer-thin slices of cultural commentary. That irresistible mix of sincerity and irony = total strategery! Which is par for the course these days with building an entertaining, critic-proof brand: be sure to wink with your audience, not at them (they’re your brand constituents!), and don’t let anyone know what you stand for unless it’s some unassailable cause like Free Tibet.

Branding yourselves as the ambassadors of a new Asian American identity that’s inherently loud, proud, and in charge of its own image (for once) can be even more volatile: there’s a reason the YouTube advertising model is going the way of shared revenue and sponsors — YouTube is banking on the fact that the content producers know a thing or three about the smartest, most practiced ways of reaching their subscribers. One of which is to usually not piss off other potential sponsors.

At the same time, I definitely have my reservations about the diminishing returns of the creative model as well. KevJumba’s episodes (the aforementioned SAT skit and the strip pole competition with Harry Shum Jr)  feel a bit out of place, precisely because they deal in a warmer, more chillaxed aesthetic, where the Keynote graphics and voiceover effects actually feel like strengths, and not outtakes from an internet children’s show. Does that reveal some kind of weird nostalgia for YouTube 1.0 and the bedraggled (in some cases, literally) singer-songwriter on my part? Perhaps. But does a mock-glowering Sung Kang and Randall Park being Randall Park (Free Randall Park!) really constitute a bananapocalypse? Or is the YOMYOMF channel simply setting itself up for a soft landing before the training wheels get taken off?

As the saying goes, your mileage may vary. But to me, there’s an even simpler explanation. The KevJumba videos, and to a lesser extent, the idea for a curated short film series, breach the gap successfully because they’re willing to indulge some kind of aspirational arc, no matter how downright hokey it is or may appear to be. Sure, “aspiring” to be a pole dancer or a SAT savant is Kevin Wu’s not-so-subtle way of poking fun at Asian American stereotypes but as Brian pointed out, probing around the complicated forces that go into creating an identity in the first place can certainly make for both interesting art and instant (not to mention commodifiable) gratification. If the YOMYOMF channel wants to truly start a bananapocalypse, it should sell Asian Americans on a movement whose impact can be measured with more than just subscriptions.

1. No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson (Directed by Steve James)

Many have argued that Steve James (of Hoop Dreams fame) fails by not trying to set the record straight about Allen Iverson, one of this generation’s most polarizing, mercurial hoop stars. They would be missing the point. No Crossover is first and foremost about the the discussion of race when it revolves around faces without identities, words without meaning, circumstances without context.  As for AI himself, he remains an enigmatic symbol — is he a tragic hero felled by society’s hypocritical, parasitic ways, or an insensitive, immoral thug? If you answered neither one, then this is precisely the film for you.

2. The Two Escobars (Directed by Jeff Zimbalist and Michael Zimbalist)

No documentary in the series takes wider aim at the mark than Jeff and Michael Zimbalist’s The Two Escobars — and with good reason. A multilayered narrative connecting drug-ravaged Columbia in the early ’90s (The Kosovo next door: reads one titillating NYT headline) to the rise and fall of drug lord Pablo Escobar, along with his spiritual better half, Columbian soccer hero-turned-goat Andres Escobar, Two Escobars doesn’t take too many bold stylistic risks — but when the stakes are this high, it only takes the lightest of touches to tip the scale toward cinematic gold. It’s easy to take umbrage with the notion that sports can be the panacea for an ailing society, but in the case of The Two Escobars, it’s more than that — for a country hoping to find ways to forgive and forget, soccer is the only way out. Try telling that to the family of Andres Escobar, though.

3. Once Brothers (Directed by NBA Entertainment)

I’ve already waxed plenty poetic about this Vlade Divac-narrated documentary, so I won’t do so here, except to say: fellas, love is always having to say you’re sorry.

4. Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks (Directed by Dan Klores)

For those of us who were raised on the NBA on NBC (every Sunday!),  we know that it wasn’t exactly an aesthetically pleasing brand of basketball played by the Knicks and Pacers during their storied rivalry. That said, Patrick Ewing choking, Reggie Miller stroking, John Starks emoting, and Spike Lee, well, being Spike Lee adds up to freeze frame heaven, as well as the perfect reminder that, no matter what all the stat gurus tell you, professional basketball today is undoubtedly the better for it.

5. Guru of Go (Directed by Bill Couterie)

The tragic, untimely passing of Hank Gathers hangs like a spectre throughout Guru of Go, but ultimately, it’s a film about taking unconventionality to its very limits. Paul Westhead and his runnin, gunnin Loyola Marymount teams provides a fascinating look at what happens when sports transcends structure and chaos rules — the fans win. Besides, it has the ultimate cornerstone image — a right-handed Bo Kimble offering a salute to his fallen teammate in the form of a left-handed free throw. If that’s not cinematic, I don’t know what is.

Dear Yao,

I know it hurts right now. Once again, your feet, those feet that have giveth us fans so much, have taketh so much away. There will be time for condolences, time to burnish your off-the-court legacy once more, with words befitting of a king among men, ever-so-proud in defeat, ever-so-humble in victory. But now is not that time. Right now, it’s time to get angry.

You see, I’ve been a fan of yours ever since you came into the L, full of the burden of expectations and the doubt of not living up to them. You were as schoolboy-crush-awkward then as you are dignified now, taking slow, lumbering, tentative steps on the floor in your first time seeing action on national television, like a soldier in combat without his rifle. You allowed Stephon Marbury, of all people (Starbury!), to cross you up while you crumpled to the deck, legs splayed out like Bambi, in that scene when he slides around the ice — with his head spinning and spinning and spinning — and for a breath-defying moment, I wondered if it might be in your best interest to just stay there. I could already hear Sir Charles chortling in the studio, making jokes about ineffectual Orientals; see the word “bust” forming smoke rings in the air; register the laughter of my roommates who I told more times than I could count, “you’ll see. Oh, you’ll see.” I could feel my ears burning, partly out of embarrassment, but mostly out of anger. Anger that you were being mocked, because it was I that was also being mocked — it was my credibility as a basketball fan going poof! in that very instant.

And then, a not-so-crazy thing happened. You got up. Played a few foul-plagued moments that were unremarkable, but not nearly as humiliating as the first moment you stepped onto that floor. Then, you proceeded to do what many players do once they’ve overcome the nerves and the jeers and the mental exhaustion of preparing their whole lives for a great first impression only to have that hope dashed into the parquet floor — you got better. Exponentially so, in fact. You recorded a 20 point game against the Lakers, where you didn’t miss a single shot or free throw, and made the Chuckster look like an ass (and kiss one too). A few games later, you devoured the Mavs to the tune of 30 points and 16 boards with low-post moves that were positively McHale-ian. You even started to find your groove as a passer, throwing behind-the-head darts and no-look, one-hand grenades like you’d been studying archival footage of Bird and Magic. I couldn’t believe my eyes — or my ears, for that matter. Pundits were lauding you as the greatest international discovery since Dirk. The next great big man of the decade. Finally, a worthy successor to Hakeem, and someone with the class and dignity of a global ambassador, designated by the league, but perhaps destined by some higher, unseen force.

I don’t know what hurts more — the knowledge that for your first three seasons, you were a paragon of good health and durability (playing 72, 82, and 80 games consecutively) or that during those years, you never had the personnel to compete for anything resembling a title. Or maybe it’s the oft-repeated notion — true or not — that the Chinese national team just wouldn’t stop pounding your fragile feet into the ground, offseason after offseason, year after year of futility on an international stage. Who knows — I’m a sucker for tragic narratives.

But here’s what I do know: you deserved to have been much, much angrier about it. Angry that so many fans labeled you “soft” or lacking a killer instinct when you were willing to do anything, try anything, to be truly, one-of-a-kind great. Angry that you had a hotdogging lead guard in those early days who was terrible at making entry passes, and a coach who didn’t make any adjustments. Angry that when you did finally get a bonafide star, he suffered debilitating injuries of his own — that is, when he wasn’t busy throwing you (and his other teammates) under the bus. Angry that your Willis-Reed moment in the playoffs against the Lakers didn’t have a storybook ending, like all the other Willis Reed moments that we remember. Angry that people seem to easily forget — even now — that you were dominant (yes, I know the meaning of dominant in a basketball sense, so shut the fuck up stat heads) that same year, a legitimate MVP candidate, when there wasn’t a single man on earth that could guard you one-on-one. (Just ask Joel Pryzbilla)

Had you actually been angry, no one would’ve faulted you for it. I’ve been around the world, Yao, and, everywhere, people revere you. They talk about how you are one of the great sports personalities, warm and sincere and an underrated source of locker-room quotables. That China deserves to have a hero like you, and that the NBA might never, ever see as great of a spokesman for the game. And they’re right. You are all of those things, and no one can begrudge you for them. But before you leave this game that you love so much, I want you to remember — even if it’s just for a little while — that it’s okay for you to be angry. Because you’re not a martyr, you’re a fuckin competitor. As tough a sunuvabitch as there ever was. Let others continue to make excuses for you. Let them say that bad luck and freak genetics conspired to put you at a disadvantage. You might be bowing out gracefully now, but who’s to say that someday, when all this is in the rearview mirror, you won’t tell all the apologists and fairweather fans and media lapdogs and government bloodsuckers to go (politely) fuck themselves?

I hope that day comes. Because when it does, I’ll tell everyone what you’ve always known, even when felled by a simple, routine crossover — that anger would simply have to wait. That it’s not the size of the man in the fight, but the fight in the man who chooses to size up no one but himself.  Leave it others to gawk at your accomplishments without ever appreciating them. It’s what people do with peacocks.

Well, you’re not a peacock, Yao. You’re a lion. Let them hear you roar.

Yours,

Chi

An Expo salute of sorts, in the Huffpo. Yes, it’s been a sloooow couple of weeks. But fear not — the breach will return, as brazen and bonkers as ever.

Editor’s note: We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled VIFF programming soon, but first, an appreciation of ESPN’s excellent Once Brothers…

Like every other self-abusing sports junkie, I watched ESPN’s latest 30 for 30 installment, the Vlade Divac-narrated Once Brothers, with one eye glued to the screen for awesome archival footage of European bball in the ’90s (it’s faaaaaantastic!), and the other twitching nervously at the mention of “brotherhood” or “Friends 4ever.” Amy Winehouse told me that tears dry on their own, but I’m pretty sure that if I didn’t make a conscious effort to wipe them off my face, there would’ve been some permanent stainage. Besides, the last thing you want to tell your friends is that Vlade Divac made you cry.

There’s a lot of breachy subject matter in Once Brothers — starting, perhaps, with the idea that the Yugoslavian national basketball team was once a world superpower on par with America’s Dream Teams. And they did it their way — instead of dominating foes by way of overpowering athleticism at every position (see: the 2008 Redeem Team) or brutish intensity and first-world intimidation tactics (see: the 1994 Dream Team), the Yugloslavian team possessed a far more clinical, cerebral synergy.

Divac was the long, lithe pivotman always keeping defenses guessing by making the extra pass that would lead to the score, or slithering his way to the basket to toss in some unorthodox-looking scoop shot. Drazen Petrovic, meanwhile, was the team’s most indomitable player, a long-range bomber with a trigger so quick, he’d catch everyone off guard — including his own teammates. Before Toni Kukoc became an afterthought on the later years of the Bulls dynasty, he was a magician trapped in a point forward’s body — manufacturing his own passing and driving angles. And Dino Radja would do the yeoman’s work — gobbling up rebounds or being the recipient of all those extra passes. On a team full of mercurial talents, he was Ole Reliable — predictable, fundamental, and quietly lethal.

Of course, Once Brothers is only peripherally about the unappreciated greatness of European basketball in the ’90s. (Thanks again, American jingoism!) Its main concern is what happens to the friendship of Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic, two men on opposite sides of the Yugoslav wars, and how mercilessly the roles of hero, martyr, and pariah can change in an instant.

As Divac recounts the events — detail by harrowing detail — that culminate, first in a friendship severed by the worst kind of politics, then in Petrovic’ tragically premature death, we’re reminded of our empty fixation with the narrative that dictates in sports, as in life, where there’s a will, there must be a way. Divac can’t fathom the fact that Petrovic is gone, because he always intended to patch things up with his longtime friend once the war blew over. Instead, death becomes the ultimate problem for which there is no solution.

It’s pretty clear to me that Divac made the film, not merely as a testament to his friendship with Petrovic, or as a thought-provoking document of the times he lived in (though it certainly is both of those things), but also to explore the meaning of grief. Because of that, some cynics might claim that Once Brothers is overly subjective — it’s seen through Divac’s eyes, and told through his perspective, and at times, he comes off as a man trying a little too hard to prove things about himself, to himself. But you know what? I’m totally okay with that. As someone who has also experienced the premature passing of a close friend, I know that feeling of helplessness when it comes to trying to articulate your grief in any productive or lasting way. Divac’s approach isn’t always dignified or exhaustive, but then, neither is any step of the grieving process.

Toward the end of the film, Petrovic’ mother talks about visiting his son’s grave, and being consoled by an elderly stranger. “You may have given birth to Drazen,” the man tells her, “but he belongs to all of us.” The “us” he’s referring to, of course, is Croatia, but he might as well have been talking about the audience too. Once Brothers is a remembrance of a fallen friend, a snapshot of history, and one man’s exorcism of his personal demons. But it’s also Divac’s way of telling us that in sports, as in life, where there is a will, there must be a way — to tell the stories that deserve to belong to all of us.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)

For many cineastes, a new Apichatpong Weerasethakul is nothing short of a spiritual awakening. That is, if you can actually manage to stay awake. Like many of his like-minded contemporaries — Tsai Ming-liang immediately comes to mind — Weerasethakul’s pacing is glacial, and his narrative tendencies are mostly obscured by long, meandering stretches where what is seen can hardly be believed. And yet, if you’re in the right mindset, there really is nothing quite as edge-of-your-seat scintillating as a Weerasethakul picture — where mythology is at the root of all existence, and your consciousness is piqued by the notion that all things in the universe hold their own unique life force.

If that sounds like it would translate better in text than it would film, that’s because you haven’t fully succumbed to the ease at which Weerasethakul melds the supernatural, the phantasmogorical, and the material in Uncle Boonmee. And he does it with such an unhurried grace and simple, skeletal beauty, you might almost be better off closing your eyes, and allowing rapture to overtake you. Superlatives aren’t enough to describe Weerasethakul, because what he does is create new sensations and construct new film vocabulary altogether. Late in the movie, there’s a karaoke scene that sounds too good to be reasonably considered karaoke anymore. The same could be said about Weerasethakul– he’s too damn good to be reasonably considered just a man who makes movies.

[Check out part 2 of our capsule reviews of VIFF films (Hahaha, The Fourth Portrait, I Wish I Knew, Don't be Afraid Bi!, Sandcastle, Single Man, Icarus Under the Sun, Good Morning to the World!) at Asia Pacific Arts.]

[Check out part 1 of our capsule reviews of VIFF films (Winter Vacation, The High Life, Seven Days in Heaven, Cold Fish, Crossing the Mountain, Pinoy Sunday, Red Dragonflies, The Drunkard, R U There?) at Asia Pacific Arts.]

I Wish I Knew (Jia Zhang-ke, 2010)

Editors’ note: It was just one of those days at VIFF 2010, where the poutines were fresh, and all the films were tiger-good to dragon-great. So much so, in fact, that they deserve pullquotable blurbs that even Peter Travers would be jealous of.

I Wish I Knew (Dir: Jia Zhangke, 2010)

Brian says: Jia Zhang-ke has made perhaps the definitive story of China in the 20st century (and beyond). Fractured into multiple legends, disparate faces, and personal and collective memories, Shanghai emerges as an enigmatic city of lives in transit — at once exemplary and exceptional of the modern Chinese experience.  Grade: A

Chi says: At once staggering in its scope and frighteningly intimate, I Wish I Knew is Jia Zhangke’s Gettysburg Address, his I-ching, and his “We are the World” all rolled into one. Whatever you thought you knew about Shanghai or China in the 20th century, rinse it all out, and prepare for your baptism by film.  Grade: A

The Fourth Portrait (Dir: Chung Mong-hong, 2010)

Brian says: Taiwan’s premiere stylist dazzles again with this superbly acted, and often intensely incisive drama.  Grade: B+

Chi says: Finely sketched performances and the ghosts of China and Taiwan’s shared history linger in this heartwrenching, majestically shot Taiwanese family drama.  Grade: A-

Hahaha (Dir: Hong Sang-soo, 2010)

Brian says: Hong Sang-soo meets Lubitsch in this predictably hilarious circus of awkwardness, but unexpectedly entertaining comedy of errors. As usual, women drink and men cry, but you’ll swear you’re discovering Hong for the first time.  Grade: A-

Chi says: Perennial prankster Hong Sang-soo shows the gentler side of barely functionial alcoholism, in the feel-good romantic comedy of the year! (by Hong’s standards, anyways)  Grade: B+

Single Man (Dir: Hao Jie, 2010)

Brian says: Horny 80-year-old men rumble, talk smack, and chase tail (of both genders). If only all Chinese movies about old farmers could be like this.  Grade: B

Chi says: A cross between Grumpy Old Men and Old School, Single Man is a testosterone-driven going-of-age story set in rural China. Octogenarian farmers with nothing to lose are every bit as crude and inanely fun as they should be.  Grade: B+

[Check out part 2 of our capsule reviews of VIFF films (Hahaha, The Fourth Portrait, I Wish I Knew, Don't be Afraid Bi!, Sandcastle, Single Man, Icarus Under the Sun, Good Morning to the World!) at Asia Pacific Arts.]

[Check out part 1 of our capsule reviews of VIFF films (Winter Vacation, The High Life, Seven Days in Heaven, Cold Fish, Crossing the Mountain, Pinoy Sunday, Red Dragonflies, The Drunkard, R U There?) at Asia Pacific Arts.]

Thomas Mao (Zhu Wen, 2010)

Subjectivity is the name of the game in Zhu Wen’s Thomas Mao and Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry, but Zhu and Lee use very different lenses to describe their worldview. For Zhu, the lines between artist and subject, time and space are constantly shifting, so the logic of his world has no hard or fast rules. Lee, on the other hand, is a bit more of a traditionalist, where identity is grounded in what can be seen, felt, or heard.

By description alone, Zhu’s film should be the one I gravitated towards. It has a farcical wuxia scene that plays genre conventions to the hilt; an obsession with the extraterrestrial; and an abstract asymmetry that keeps you guessing about the film’s deeper intentions. Mainly though, I was just distracted by the dilettantism of it all, which kept me at arm’s length throughout. And I didn’t care much for the interplay between the Chinese farmer/innkeeper Mao, and his guest, the German artist, which I thought exploited cross-cultural stereotypes with a little too much relish. But maybe I’m just being sensitive. Or shall I say, overly subjective?

Poetry isn’t quite the masterpiece that I was hoping for from one of South Korea’s best filmmakers (if Bong Joon-Ho is 1, he’s probably 1A), but it has a delicate, elegaic quality to it that saves it from the syrupy depths of Korean melodrama. Veteran actress Yun Junhee is especially luminous, and the various ways in which she comes to grips with her evolving subjectivity are both surprising and inevitable. Lee’s subjectivity is more tightly controlled than Zhu’s — moments of epiphany or redemption may come with the territory, but in the end, everyone must pay their dues.

Microphone (Ahmad Abdalla, 2010)

My third day at VIFF was the most exhausting yet, but also the most rewarding as a filmgoer. Three of the films I watched were utter revelations, and only one of them directed by someone who’s a household name. That’s the thing about global cinema: it nurtures some perspectives while challenging others. And it brings to life places you’ve never been to — and in certain cases, even the places you have.

Ahmad Abdalla’s Microphone is set in Alexandria, Egypt, a place I’ve never been to, but will surely do so now on account of the wonderful independent music scene and bustling energy it depicts. Microphone finds truth in self-expression — whether it’s your own truth or someone else’s — but it’s also about rediscovering home, community, and oh yes, music that quickens my pulse just thinking about it. Heavy metal, hip-hop, and soulful ska (I know, sounds like an oxymoron, right?) pierce through a landscape of political and cultural complacency, police brutality, and generational rifts, not to mention our heartstrings. Abdalla’s Alexandria is viewed through the prism of a perma-tourist (he grew up in Cairo), but as one member in the audience astutely remarked, it’s the Alexandria that very few people have ever had the opportunity to know. Whether that holds true is impossible to know, especially for a total outsider like me, but it also speaks to the subjectivity of what an “insider culture” should look like. What it sounds like is another matter entirely — and the music in Microphone crackles with such a red-hot intensity that it transcends these fussy labels altogether.

Youthful exuberance makes way for the vagaries of youth in world-class auteur Catherine Breillat’s Sleeping Beauty. Delightfully elusive, bitingly droll, and a fascinating look at how shapeless our ideas of mortality and timelessness have become, it’s no more a reimagined fairy tale as Pan’s Labyrinth is a children’s fantasy. Breillat’s taste in a classical aesthetic belies her wickedly absurdist sense of humor, as well as an ability to empathize with the growing pains experienced by young women anywhere. Her princess is a marvelous reconfiguring of feminist ideals, and an open-ended question mark about the impermanence (and impertinence) of reality. Fairy tales are timeless because we want them to be, just as the young people in Breillat’s films can feel like time is either their best friend, or their worst enemy.

Wasting time creatively is practically an occupation for the bored young people in Li Hongqi’s riotous Winter Vacation. Proving that Chinese comedy can be ironic, detached, and wholly affectionate (eat your heart out, Feng Xiaogang), Winter Vacation provides bucketfuls of laughs amidst long takes that build the suspense for each exquisitely timed non-sequitor and wry putdown. But my favorite moments in the film — other than a disgruntled child who gets all the best insults and deadpan facial expressions — all involve an attention to detail that is masterful in its lampooning of cinema verite. I’ve never seen anyone in China inspect one kuai bills to see if they’re counterfeit (it’s a laughable amount of change) or peel all the leaves off of a whole cabbage before buying it (and then proceed to take the discarded leaves), but they’re the kinds of surreal images that ring true anyways — because in China and the rest of the world, what isn’t expressed is oftentimes as funny as what is. Li Hongqi understands that, which makes him my new favorite Chinese filmmaker by a country mile.

Masochistic-sex-as-metaphor-for-alienation is at the crux of this year’s Camera D’or winner at Cannes, Michael Rowe’s Leap Year, but that’s just a clever thematic ruse to disguise what the movie is truly about: the fate of today’s freelance journalist. Monica del Carmen contributes to a business periodical in the comforts of her own home, and by comforts, I mean a modest, sometime-roach-infested apartment in Mexico City, where the only tranquility she experiences is by living vicariously through the milquetoast couple next door, and where she gets her (non-sexual) jollies by making up stories about her life, otherwise known as the time-honored practice of “taking journalistic liberties.”

Ok, so that’s not really what the movie is about, but Leap Year is at its best when showing us del Carmen’s frustrations through the banalities of her daily existence. The world she lives in is so cruelly impersonal, unforgiving, and unrelentingly bleak, that self-reflection is no longer a choice, while self-mutilation becomes a necessity.

Freddie Wong’s The Drunkard has nothing particularly interesting to say about Hong Kong history, literature, alcoholism, or stream-of-consciousness writing, though it’s certainly not for lack of trying. Based on a seminal Hong Kong novel by Liu Yichang, The Drunkard can’t get out of its own way quickly enough, stumbling over clumsy, tin-eared dialogue, a killjoy of an antihero (his character, as written on the screen, can’t even make drowning in alcohol poetic or fun), and an annoying habit of overexplaining why Hong Kong culture is in the pits. Wong may have breached the gap between film critic and programmer (his previous professions) to filmmaker, but I’m far from convinced that he did so for the right reasons.

I was a fan of Zhao Dayong’s episodic, magisterial documentary Ghost Town, and The High Life — while less captivating and a bit more contrived — holds up pretty well for a fiction debut. Everyday folk in Guangzhou struggle to make ends meet, working odd jobs to stay afloat, and trying to salvage glimpses of humanity. Their success hinges upon some pretty arbitrary factors (this is China, after all) but Zhao allows levity and an affection for his characters — rather than broad moralizing — to guide his well-oiled narrative engine.