初シェルダン、初洋書でしたが最後まで読めました。ハリウッドを舞台に繰り広げられる愛憎、きらびやかな世界の裏側で渦巻く人間模様が描かれていて娯楽作品として非常に楽しめました。まるで映画を見ているような感覚でした。予想がつかないストーリーに引き込まれシェルダンの世界を満喫しました。
Hard to believe, but not fifty years have yet passed since the offspring of mixed couples in Asia were still seen as an unwanted byproduct of the West’s perceived subjugation over the East. To be sure, racism and discrimination against westerners continues to exist in various degrees of blatancy all across a newly-resurgent Asia, but if the fashion and entertainment industries are anything to go by, one thing is certain: Eurasians, once consigned to a purgatorial fate worse than being born of the lowest classes, are now all the rage.
Kirsteen Zimmern's coffee table book, The Eurasian Face, features 70 photo-essays in celebration of Asia’s ever-expanding Eurasian nation. Hailing from the multicultural kingdom of Hong Kong, Zimmern confesses that, as a child, she used to chant "gwei lei ga, gwei lei ga!" (it’s a ghost!) at random Caucasian sightings despite the fact that she herself is partly of Scottish ancestry. Zimmern is now making reparations by granting her fellow Eurasians face time in the form of first-person profiles in which to share their stories.
They are not celebrities, but rather, extraordinarily-ordinary civilians of hybrid heritage who comprise Hong Kong’s increasingly kaleidoscopic population. Some are unabashedly proud of their genetics, such as Lawrence Matthews, the son of a Chinese model and an Englishman ("I think there is some jealousy from non-Eurasians...after all, Eurasians are widely known to be the best looking"), while others, like Chinese/German Lisa Rosentreter, who grew up in Manitoba “embarrassed that my family's staple starch was rice,” struggled with their ambiguous ancestry.
Stephen Fung, of Chinese/Irish/Scottish descent, recalls a butcher at Hong Kong’s wet market enquiring why he was so "funny looking". When told that it was Fung’s dad who was Chinese, “the butcher insisted on shaking my hand, saying that it wasn't every day that ‘one of us Chinese guys gets together with a white woman.’”
Cantonese/Irish Liam Fitzpatrick, a senior writer for Time Magazine who was born in late-60s Hong Kong, offers a more poignant reflection of his mixed-blood upbringing: “We were surrounded by a jeering mob of leftists, calling (my mother) a foreigner’s erohw and me her dratsab half-breed.”
Race seems to play less of a factor in these subjects’ lives than their upbringing, which is described in Zimmern’s book as “Chinese morals with western social habits.” Many are in favor of the Eurasian ethnicity being officially recognized as a domiciled community (“we always have to tick the 'Others' box when filling out forms”), while just as many do not, including Chinese-Brit Sarah Fung, who declares "it's as crass and patronizing as lumping Chinese, Japanese and Korean together because they come under the umbrella of "Asian."
As an aside, it is this photographer’s critical opinion that, to better study the “genetic legacy etched upon their faces,” the portraits would have benefited from studio sessions rather than candid snapshots. Another flaw is the choice of black and white film; skin tones are vital for visually discerning someone’s ethnicity, not to mention that B&W is negatively symbolic of exactly the sort of outlook which Eurasians seek to eradicate.
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Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People
I was really skeptical. Because, there is no Sheldon-special suspense in this book, the writing style is ok,though. However, you can consider it as a mere time-pass. I am disappointed.
料理講師・フィットネス講師・英会話講師の３本立てです。
どの女性もガードが堅いのですが、媚薬入りの飲み物飲んでから豹変します。
個人的には英会話編が良かったです。
帰国子女の講師に対し「乳首は英語で何と言うか？」等卑猥な質問や
講師の隣でチ○ポをいじったり。
「真面目にやらないなら帰ります」帰ろうとする講師を必死になだめて
媚薬入りお茶を「はい、どうぞ」
１０分後に「熱い」と講師。ベッドで横になると男がチ○ポを出します。
それを見ていた講師がこすったり咥えたり。
イラマのシーンが個人的にグッときました。
必死にチ○ポを欲しがる講師が愛おしく思えてくる作品です。
女性のキャラクター描写が秀逸で、逆境から這い上がる女性の強さを感じさせる。これは｢The Master of Game｣にも当てはまる。それに引き換え、男性陣はだらしなさが目立つ。ジョセフィンの不幸も元はといえばデビッドの裏切りによるものである。デビッドには事情があろうとジョセフィンからみれば裏切りに他ならない。自分の側の勝手な事情を言い訳にしてよりを戻そうとすること自体、虫が良すぎる。それでいて相手の側の苦労や受難を想像せずに一方的に相手を責めるのは道理に合わない。それ故に本作の結末はやりきれない。人生が古い映画の筋書き通りに進むものならば、不幸のヒロインは幸福になってほしい。
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