Hier is aflevering negen van Bureau Breuker over Peter Fleming en diens boeken over Mantsjoerije en Manchukuo.
Hier is de mp3 (320kbps):
Deze podcast gaat over Ch’oe Sŭnghŭi, de legendarische Koreaanse danseres die Picasso en Chaplin onder haar bewonderaars mocht rekenen. Naast de podcast ook een paar YouTube links: kijk hieronder voor twee filmpjes van haar in actie.
En hier is de podcastlink (zoals altijd mp3 320kbps):
Here’s a short text I wrote about Yi Aerisu, the singer of the first Korean pop hit during the colonial period. Her story is truly incredible. It’s in Dutch btw. Long live Google Translate.
This is a chapter from Modern Times: massacultuur in Korea, 1910-1945, the catalogue for an exhibition I organised a few years back.
the incredible story of Yi Aerisu
As a Dutch national who braved the vagaries of Dutch public transportation daily (not anymore! Now I just cycle to the institute. Life is good, to quote what was once called Lucky Goldstar, yes, Lucky Goldstar – I wonder how many marketing millions went into trying the erase the memory of Lucky Goldstar, btw, but that is an entirely different matter), I probably have a tendency to underestimate (and severely so)
I was just sent classified materials. 291 pages of classified, top secret data filled with numbers, analyses, tables, indexes. How do I know they are classified, you ask? Well, this here to the left is a dead give-away, the Chinese character equivalent of this immediately recognizable warning below:
That is what it would have said had this been a 70s spy movie.
If I had been a young man in the 1920s and had gotten hold of Manchuria, Land Of Opportunities (1922), I just might have bought myself a one-way ticket on a slow boat to Manchuria. In terms of opportunities, in particular investment opportunities, it doesn’t come much better than as described in painstaking detail in this book. Did you know for example that in 1920 1,955,464 gallons of lubricating oil were imported into Manchuria? Don’t ask me why. No, don’t. And that in the same year 52,508,400 pounds of perilla leaves were exported from Manchuria?
Here comes the unbreakable china doll to give you the kicking of your life! That is a fair description of this early Hong Kong/South Korean co-production made by Golden Harvest. Three Chinese students (Angela Mao as Yu Ying, Carter Wong as Kao Chang and Sammo Hung as Fan Wei)have practised Hapkido in colonial Korea for five years, but have to flee the country under increasing Japanese pressure.
“In 1592, the Japanese shogun Hideyoshi failed in his attempt to invade Korea (and later, China through Korea). This Hong Kong kung-fu thriller is loosely based on that historical incident. Since the real Hideyoshi is not an issue, and kung-fu is the star of the movie anyway, historical narration does not overpower the action. Basically, the movie shows the Koreans fighting the Japanese against all odds– but as everyone knows, that one Korean officer with the fast kicking feet, is going to whomp the heck out of anything that moves and single-handedly send Hideyoshi packing.”