Nostalgia 03/01/2024

Before I sat on the long-distance bus to Riga, I had just finished my short trip to Helsinki and Tallinn. I was even accompanied by my friend, who was intrigued by my alluring descriptions of the Nordic and Baltic sceneries and folklore. We spent a good time together, drinking fantastic local beers and vodka, struggling to find our beds in a hostel. But then she had to fly back to Paris for work. I found myself travelling solo again, which is the mode I have been accustomed to.

So let it be! Travelling solo to Riga, Latvia! Before choosing Riga as the final destination of my short trip around the Baltic Sea, I did not expect much. I knew Latvia is one of the three Baltic Countries along with Estonia and Lithuania. Since I have visited Estonia, why not continue to try this Baltic combo?

I also knew in Latvia they produce nice vodka, which is acclaimed by my alcoholic friend, as the best in the world; Russian and Polish ones even need to step aside. I also knew two NBA players from Lativa: Dāvis Bertāns and Kristaps Porziņģis. Porziņģis is much more famous and skilful, but I prefer Bertāns, simply because he played for the San Antonio Spurs. Nevertheless, I have no interest in visiting their birth cities or any other places they have been to. They are just a connection I strenuously built with Latvia that will give me more reasons to travel. I hope.

When the bus was driving in the countryside in Estonia to Latvia, I didn’t pay too much attention to the view over the window. It was sunny that day. The sun's rays projected through the foliage of the forests, onto the green fields that stretched into the distance. It was beautiful, but having watched it for three hours, I inevitably got bored. I started to check my moving location on Google Maps, to see how far I was to the border of Latvia. When the bus was about to run across the border, I screen-captured my Google Maps. Here I am, Latvia.





The view of Latvia was no different from that of Estonia — as I was jumping to this easy conclusion, the weather turned grey. I supposed it was a huge cloud, but it turned out to be a weather front from which a small bus couldn’t escape. Everything became gloomy and murky since then, except for some small colourful houses across the woods. The depressing feeling got even stronger when the bus was approaching the outskirts of Riga. Many groups of shabby buildings in concrete loomed beneath the viaducts of the highway. They were evidently inherited from the Soviet Union, not from the modern architectural experiment of Le Corbusier. This building style is not strange to me, because I grew up in this type of building, yet in China.

In China, when these buildings get old and corrupted, they will be repainted into high-saturated colours such as orange and yellow. I used to think this way of rejuvenation was cheap and corny, but now I know at least they boost my morale. No building is more suffocating than a brutalism Khrushchevka in drab colours and being devastated by age.

Another evident architecture in the suburb was a rocket-like tower, the Riga Radio and TV Tower. I was surprised that it is the tallest tower in the European Union; what’s unsurprising, it was built in the Soviet Union period. It reminded me of the gigantic white tower in the anime “The Place Promised in Our Early Days” by Makoto Shinkai, even though at that time I hadn’t watched it but only knew its setting. I couldn’t help creating a lunatic story such as “aliens left their spaceship on the Earth which connects two worlds”. In the context of an apocalyptic wasteland, I found the existence of Khrushchevkas making more sense.



I got off the bus in front of a marketplace which resembled a warehouse. The rain became less heavy, so I didn’t take out my rainbow-coloured umbrella, which was given by my Dutch friend. I hesitated when receiving it, but she managed to persuade me that it was merely an umbrella. Functionality over symbolism. Nevertheless, I was a little worried about being mistaken as homosexual here, for I didn’t know how well the LGBT groups were received in Latvia.

My hostel was situated in the centre of Old Riga next to a rectangular square which, according to my poor knowledge, could only be found in low-land countries and Germany. I wasn’t totally wrong. I learned from Wikipedia that Latvia was under the influence of Prussia for ages before being ruled by Russia. So it was quite natural that the buildings here are German-like — I said so to save myself from the agony of being ignorant.

When I got into the hostel, I was received by an Asian-looking receptionist with a discernible Russian accent in her English. Her presence made me feel at home, given at that time, I hadn’t been able to go back to China for three years, due to the expensive flight ticket and the absurd confinement policy. According to this policy, upon my arrival in any of the three designated big cities, such as Beijing, I will be locked into a hotel room for two weeks. Two weeks later, if I return to my home city, I will be locked in another hotel room for another week. Only after this twenty-one-day detention can I move freely in my home country. Luckily, this policy was abolished when the invincible COVID-19 finally infected almost all the Chinese.

My bed was in a wooden container. Looking out of the window, it was still raining. I hesitated between two options: lying on the bed and watching some silly videos; or going outside without any plan. Since it was only one o’clock pm, I went to the square that could be seen from my room. It was not the biggest one amongst the others, but there was a cathedral on the far end and a solemn building around the corner whose front reminded me of a bank. I couldn’t be sure, because I couldn’t read Latvian! But the next minute, I was stopped by a stout man who kept his head low. He said something to me, which was intelligible, but not in English. It was in German: he asked if I could give him one euro.

So the first local I talked to (other than the receptionist), was a beggar. This situation had occurred to me once in Krakow, Poland; but that time the Polish beggar spent five minutes to make his petition clear. Of course in English. Upon hearing my rejection, he grumbled a lot before getting lost. But this time, I really wanted to give this Latvian man one euro, but I happened to have no coins with me. I replied with a simple“Nein”, whose tonality seemed too harsh as a refusal. As I struggled to formulate one more sentence in German to express my regret, he already walked away.

Then I went to see the most popular tourist attraction in Riga (according to Tripadvisor) — the city hall of Riga. Luckily it is near the river, so I still had other things to do after visiting it. To my surprise, the Daugava River reminded me of the Yalu River between China and North Korea. I thought of two characteristics they have in common. The first is that they both have a steel bridge across the broad river, which is also similar to those in Cologne and Düsseldorf; the second one is the deserted view of their opposite river banks, where factories are more discernible than other small buildings whose true functions remained unknown. But for the record, the view of North Korea across the Yalu River was definitely more sorrowful.



Having nothing to do in the downtown, I decided to have a lunch. Due to my tight budget and the unexpected inflation in Baltic Countries back then, I went to a buffet restaurant. I took something like fried chicken legs, grilled vegetables, and of course boiled potatoes. They were tasty, but I didn’t know if they were the food that local people would actually cook and eat. So in the evening, I went to a local restaurant that serves Latvian food. But what I saw on the menu didn’t differ from the German food, so I merely ordered a juicy pork steak. When the waitress took my order, I could feel her despise: That’s it? That’s all you have ordered? Later on, she threw the bread basket on my table— I mean, threw. But I didn’t say anything, because losing my temper would only make me a more pathetic loser. Fifteen minutes later, the food was eventually served. It wasn’t terrible, or impressive; it was just a meal. After having finished the last crumb of bread, I hailed the waitress to check, and it took her another ten minutes to arrive. When she ripped out the receipt from the POS machine, her poker face was even more deadpan.

It was around eight o’clock in the evening when I finished my dinner. The rain finally halted, but the sky remained grey. I went back to the square next to my hostel, having no further plans at all. When I arrived, only ten people were walking by. I shook my head and then opened my eyes again, but the view didn’t change a bit. I was for a minute engulfed by a sense of loneliness. I shouldn’t be feeling like this. I always felt at ease in such a silent surrounding. I decided to take another stroll in Old Riga. I did find something more. I found out with sheer joy that Belgian pubs were quite numerous. I suddenly knew what I should do that evening: have a nice beer. So I walked back to the square.

As I was about to turn onto the road to my hostel, a sound of a cello reached out to me from the distance. I stepped back to see where it came from — it was from the cathedral on the far end of the square, from a man, who put his bonnet on the ground while playing. I was drawn nearer and nearer to the cathedral as the solo playing became more lacrimoso. Or was the music itself really lacrimoso? I didn’t know much about cello works, so after having ruled out Bach and Elgar, I had no idea at all. I had music identification software on my phone, yet I hesitated to get closer to pick up the sound because I had no coins except a bank card. I started to look for ATM machines on Google Maps, but the closest one was four hundred meters away. Would the musician remain there on my way back? Was it appropriate to give him ten euros, which is the smallest bill from the ATM machine? My mind became more messy with the cello playing. Eventually, I stood still in the middle of the square, watching that musician with his back to me fifty metres away, playing cello. There was another audience, who was much closer to the musician. I saw him lowering his body to the bonnet. His action even made me more ashamed to step any further. Muxin once said that music is fragile in the wind (outside), but I opposed that the wind has definitely brought coldness and desperation to it. Having stood there for ten minutes, I found myself unable to hear it anymore. It was too sad. So I began to move my feet in the direction of my hostel, even though I found myself halted every five steps until the music became inaudible.

I walked into a pub next to my hostel and ordered two glasses of local black beer. They were so good. It was only after getting drunk in no time that I suddenly realized I hadn’t eaten too much that night, otherwise I would have stayed sober longer. It didn’t matter. I managed to go upstairs to my bed and lay down. I knew a deep and heavy sleep was waiting for me.


03/01/2024

Some thoughts on The Boy and the Heron

Prologue

It was easy to conclude in the first 15 minutes of this movie that our protagonist Mahito, has been in a state of trauma that amounts to her mother’s death in a conflagration. Another consequential trauma is the fact that his father married her aunt, who looks like his birth mother, yet isn’t. 

Now we have had everything needed to develop a typical storyline of how a boy deals with the trauma of losing her mother. Yet as the story unfolds, it doesn’t quite fit my first conjecture of the story. I find myself overflown with its intricacy and seemingly abrupt plot-twisting, which makes my final conclusion shaky and incoherent. Here I break down the story into four parts to discuss what the true theme that Miyazaki Hayao wants to express.

Failed masculinity

The story takes place in an old Maison that belongs to the family of Mahito’s mother, where the members of the household are female. They are old and morbid, apart from the young and beautiful hostess, aka Mahito’s stepmother, Natsuko. In the scene where the old female servants make their first appearance, they are depicted like night animals who scattered after seeing someone more powerful coming. This depiction is even more enhanced when they swarm to a suitcase full of canned food, meanwhile, in the background, an old man is left alone dying on the floor. His death is only witnessed by another old man, not by the old ladies who are more interested in fresh food. Doesn’t it remind you of the scene of vultures or mice favouring fresh food over a cadaver? 

In such a gloomy place, Natsukor’s robustness and braveness are dramatically highlighted when she saves Mahito from the hazardous lure of the heron by shooting an arrow. Yet, we find soon later, that this bow was hung behind a man’s suit when she is sick lying in her room after that clash with the heron. Her room is sumptuous yet murky, which hints at the true cause of her “illness” —pregnancy. 

Right after this visit, Mahito is inspired to make an arrow to cope with the heron, because the wooden sabre he used was useless. But the curious thing is, this sober was broken twice: once it was destroyed by the heron; the second time it collapsed into crumbs as Mahito tried to take it out of the closet. 

Given the sabre’s evident allusion to masculinity, can we take Mahito’s twice-shattered sabre as a total defeat of masculinity, albeit premature, in reality, and in his subconscious? Wait, there is even a third defeat when Mahito’s father brandishes his real sabre to ferocious parrots flying out of the gate of the Underworld. He doesn’t manage to hurt any of them, for the parrots become benign in the real world. The masculinity failed again. It is evident throughout the story that masculinity is not the key to dealing with the main problem of this story, then what is it? The arrow? What does the arrow present?

The Heron

In the beginning, the heron is portrayed as a haunting and creepy animal who speaks with a human-like mouth that intermittently sticks out of his beak. His tentative has been to lead Mahito to a mysterious tower. Despite the mistrust and hostility towards the Heron, Mahito is guided to the tower but fails to enter because of the blocked entrance. Why does he fail? Let’s compare it with the second time when he succeeded. The only difference is that this time, Mahito was not only led by the heron, but also by Natsuko who disappears in the woods. He follows up and finds the entrance to the tower.  It is the desire to get his stepmother back that enables him to enter the tower. 

In the tower, Mahito manages to shoot down the heron with his handmade bow and arrow that is fletched with the heron’s feather. Thereafter the heron shows his human body under the feather skin — an ugly man with a gigantic nose. Why the real body of the heron is revealed in the tower? The first possibility is that the tower is another world, so the revelation of the heron emphasises the essence of the tower: an entrance to the Underworld. The second possibility is simply that it happened to be in this place where Mahito has the chance to try out his new weapon. Don’t forget, as the story goes on when Mahito needs the heron-man to turn back into heron so he can fly, the remedy is to fill the hole on the beak with the same material as his arrow. 

It's better for the doer to undo what he has done; Mahito has to repair what he has damaged with the very thing that causes the damage. Here the heron seems a malleable creature dictated by Mahito. Can we take a guess that the heron is no other than Mahito’s subconscious or detached psyche?

I developed this doubt when the heron presents to Mahito, the simulacrum of his birth mother lying on a couch, who melts down into the water as Mahito touched her. Yet, facing such an appalling scene, Mahito doesn’t get hysterical and behave traumatised(Yes, I am referring to Shinji in EVA). Why is he so indifferent? This is a question that awaits an answer. 

The heron’s action was later reproached by his master, who asked the heron to do nothing else than guide Mahito to the tower, to explore the underworld. So is the heron merely a minion of his master, who is later on revealed as Mahito’s great-great granduncle? Maybe not.

The Underworld

There are many magical and fantasy stuff in this world: ancient fish, ferocious pelicans and parrots, ghosts, fire and oval-like creatures. But what is this underworld’s essence? How do things work here? The first remarkable indication is that Mahito met a young robust woman who is no other than Kiriko, the old servant, who also got into the underworld with Mahito. In this world, she was still taking care of Mahito without any evident motivation, just like the little wooden statues of all the other old servants, who were laid around Mahito to protect him. They are still being servants. Another thing to notice is that Kiriko once asked Mahito to not touch the wooden statues of the servants. But Mahito touched them and even took away the statue of Kiriko, but nothing happened. 

Later on, we learn that this world is built by Mahito’s great-great uncle, who is also the master of the heron, and this conceptual world is on the verge of destruction. Yet, as the creator of this world, he leaves the fate of this world to Mahito, who has no intention to keep it. So in the end, everything is going into what Mahito wishes for. Everything happens so easily in the story. It is even fair to second guess if his great-great uncle is also a part of himself, let alone the heron. 

If everything was dictated by Mahito’s will in this world, can I conclude that this world works similarly to a fantasy, but it is not technically a fantasy? To verify this, we need to see how he gets along with his stepmother and his birth mother here. 

Mother 

Even though we know very early that the girl called Mimi is the sister of Mahito’s stepmother, which means this girl is Mahito’s mother; but it is almost at the end of the movie that we can be finally sure of this not-so-surprising fact. 

However, if we look back on the plot with this fact in mind, it is hard to understand how the birth mother can lead her son to search for his stepmother. Shouldn’t Mahito recognise her right away and forget about the stepmother? But the story didn’t go this way. As he called Natsuko mother, the world changes, all the white stripes are blown aloft to separate them. They are breaking a taboo, of forgetting who the real mother is. But Mahito didn’t regret it. He still wants to go back with her stepmother. 

Nevertheless, before coming back to the real world, Mahito asked Kimi if she wanted to go as well. Is this a genuine question, or merely a question out of courtesy and regretfulness? Just listen to what Mahito said, what an absurd excuse: what does it mean that she needs to stay here so that Mahito can be born; and she was born in the fire, so she wouldn’t be afraid of the conflagration in the far future? Is this story by now becoming that of “changing the present by going back to the past”? Of course not, we must believe this refusal is a way to make Mahito feel unguilty returning to his real world so that he can be with his new mother Natsuko. 

This is, in the end, what Mahito has understood from the book his mother left for him: What kind of life do you want to live? To live is to leave behind the past and to embrace the reality. 

Now we can understand why Mahito is so indifferent to a melt-away simulacrum of his mother. By that time he has begun to let her mother go. He doesn’t mind seeing her mother die again, just as he didn’t hesitate to go back to the real without her. 

Conclusion:

This story is about how a boy manages to accept his stepmother by forgetting his birth mother. 

01/01/2024