Author: Zhi-Juan Guo

As we entered the movie theater, we found, to our mild surprise, that it was a full house, and we had to choose among the few side seats that were left.

There is always a sort of excitement in a full-housed theater: we all came here for the same thing, we all came here to be entertained and get lost in a story, and we all, by our presence, compliment each other’s choice. It has a vague feeling of a temporary community, it has a vague feeling of socializing.

“Tell me a story”, it’s said in old times (perhaps even now), it’s the custom of the Arabs to entertain guests at tea houses by telling them a story, hence “One Thousand and One Night”.

故事 gùshì, is the word for “story” in Chinese. 故: old, ancient; 事, affairs, incidents, therefore Chinese understand “story” as ancient affairs and bygone incidents.

The lights turned off and the story began. Indeed it’s about bygone times. One feels it’s such an innocent and simple time. The woman in the movie is a lady and always wears dresses and hats (such beautiful dresses and hats too!) to frolic about on golf course lawns and country houses. Inside these elegant houses, there is carpet on the floor and a maid in the kitchen. The man is, of course, a knowledgeable gentleman who wears tall hat and tailcoat.

The script is well written. One sees a well-educated writer behind the lines. But how easy he has had it! It’s entertaining entirely for entertainment’s sake. There is not the self-consciousness and awkwardness of the current age that one must be aware of social problems and world politics and the environment. The movie is from the late thirties, The Great Depression was yet to end and the Second World War was looming ahead, yet there is not a whiff of it in the movie.

It’s almost like a fairy tale for adults. We know that it’s not true. We know that life cannot be so light and fanciful and loaded with fun. Yet we are willing, as long as we stay in the dark theater in front of the bright screen, to believe it.

电影 diànyǐng is the word for “movie”: electric shadows. Truly, this one, this old romance (it’s called a screwball comedy in the introduction) is a shadow from the past cast on the electric screen. These ladies and gentlemen, for better or worse, if you look around in the world now, are no more.

We walked out of the theater, both feeling elevated.

“New York audiences are certainly very engaging, very invested.”

“I had a good laugh. I do love Katherine Hepburn.”

Later when I watched an interview, I took an instant liking to her. She comes in the studio like a master (I mean the master of herself, the master that has no other master but herself). She holds herself like a master. She has the confidence, frankness, and openness of the ones that have caught the fish: the triumphant ones, the ones that have done what they wanted to do with their life, the ones that have remained true to themselves.

It makes one admire her strength. But it’s not that she has no fear. It appears that she is keenly aware of her flaws and disadvantages. She was often told she was not good enough in her earlier career, and the word she uses frequently during the interview is “petrified”.

One could well imagine that she must have much pressure (also given the nature of the profession) from the public. She is not conventional. She is not docile. She is a woman and she wants her own say and she wants a career. By going against the public, one involuntarily does violence against one’s own self.

When I looked up the character for “fear” 怕 pà—on the left side is the heart radical, on the right side is the character for “white, blank”, one’s heart goes blank when one is in fear—when I looked up the character 怕, it says it originates from the meaning “doing nothing”.

So that’s “fear”, that’s being “petrified”: one’s heart goes blank, one does nothing.

It’s not that the triumphant ones, the ones that have succeeded, have no fear. It’s that they learn to be free from fear, they refuse to sit and do nothing under the influence of it, and they learn to push on against the stream.

高兴 gāoxìng is the word for “glad” in Chinese. 高 means “tall” as you could see the character is one box on another to build up the meaning of “tallness”. 兴 “excitement” could be understood as, vividly, the hair standing up on one’s head as one gets excited.

One of the things we love about children, pets, and animals is that they cannot lie and they are very obvious and physical, they understand things in the simplest manner. The cat, whenever he comes close to rub his head against my hand, purrs. As someone who is new with cats, every time I hear his low groan—it’s like he is saying “I am so happy I am so happy I am so happy”—I feel vaguely flattered and enormously satisfied. It is nice to know that you have made some creature so happy merely by your presence, merely by touching it. It makes you so content in yourself.

The Chinese interprets “gladness” in a physical manner too: your person becomes tall and your hair rises up. Indeed, the body and the mind are one, and if we pay closer attention, it’s not necessary that this person says he is happy and that person says he is sad, because it’s all already written in their persons. Walking on a street in New York City, or for that matter, a street anywhere in the world, it’s so interesting to watch people as there are so many different kinds (and the city has something that brings out the best and the worst in a person, that it pushes one to a corner and makes one savage at times), so, it’s easy to see who are the happy ones and who are not.

开心 kāixīn, another word for “glad”, literally means “open heart”. Indeed, one’s heart is open at the moment of joyfulness.

幸福 xìngfú, happy, happiness, as in the sense that the object for all people is “happiness”, as in the sense of “the pursuit of happiness”. 幸 means “luck”, as we all would readily admit that “luck” plays a role in the affairs of this world. 福 which character you would most frequently encounter if you visited China during Chinese New Year, means “fortune, happiness”. On the left of this character is the radical for “pray, worship”, and on the right “one mouth has field” (a person that has land).

I remember, about a decade ago in Shanghai, the westerners, the Europeans used to express their open-mouthed astonishment at the, at that time popular, Chinese standard for ideal romantic partners. The man has to be “高，富，帅”, “tall, rich, handsome”; the woman “白，富，美”, “white( fair), rich, beautiful”.

“But what about love?” “What about the compatibility of personalities?” “What about, in short, looking into each other’s eye under a starry sky?”

They demanded.

Well, well, what can I answer? All in good time.

And, who can separate “happiness” from “fortune”? Pride and Prejudice tells us in its famous opening that Mr. Bingley is “a single man in possession of a good fortune”, and we are duly informed, indeed more than once, this or that gentleman has how many thousand a year. Jane and Elizabeth, we are sure, will not fall in love with their footmen; nor Bingley and Darcy with their kitchen maids: be they ever so tender and gentle and kind and equipped with all the good qualities in the world.

Even now, if we look around, if we look closely, is there much difference? Can we blame them? It is a truth we all know in our hearts that poverty is hideous, that happiness needs its foundation.

If only, every one of us is given equal opportunity to achieve it.