Please Vote For Me

a Look At The Future of Chinese Cube Dwellers

An interesting film to say the least. Surprisingly enough Please Vote For Me provided an insight into the middle class Chinese mind and their opinions of their "communist" government. The three kids who were selected to run for class monitor, all appeared from the same social status. Evoking the observation that only a middle class life style allows for one's child to go to school. This aside, the parents were an interesting cross section, one was a single mother (of the girl) and worked at the local TV station. Another family's bread winner worked for Wuhan's (the city where the story took place) police force. And the final family had parents working in cubicles in middle management positions. Also the take at politics was interesting as well, the parents were extremely involved in their children's lives, in all three cases writing their child's speeches for them (an insight of their opinions of democracy). The father who worked for the police force was particularly cunning, he not only paid for his kid to lead his fellow classmates on an all expense paid field trip on the local monorail, but also paid for candy/coloring book packages, in order for his kid to buy the election. So a sincere dedication to spreading the corruption of politics and for his son to win. Another interesting angle was the parents seemingly blase take on the communist government while the children were doing numerous nationalistic and patriotic drills. This could be due to the level of capitalistic growth that is occurring in China during the parent's life time, which caused an indifference amongst the parents for their communist government. Meanwhile the government appears to be attempting to reinforce the government's role in the lives of the children. All and all Please Vote For Me shows the strengths present in China's youth and the leanings towards a more democratic government.

a Monorail

Please Vote For Me

Going In:

a 21st Century First Step Towards Democracy

The film, Please Vote For Me, is about a democratic experience in a communist Chinese school. Funny plot right? The whole thing takes place with three third graders running for class monitor. The film is done documentary style, which should make for some interesting viewing. Unlike in the two previous Mongolian films, this one is set in an urban setting, to be specific the city of Wuhan. Typically the position of class monitor is appointed by the teacher (think Mao appointing agricultural ministers), but with modern China flirting with democracy (and fully embracing capitalism, but that's another matter entirely) the teacher selected three students to run against one another in a mock democratic election. Again this should make for some interesting viewing.

a Map Of China

Mongolian Ping Pong

Coming Out:

a Believer In Ping Pong Diplomacy 

one Chairman Mao

After watching Mongolian Ping Pong one is filled with a bit of wonderment, the idea that a solitary ping pong ball, something incredibly mundane in my neck of the woods, would provoke a quest for knowledge and an attempt at returning the ping pong ball to it's rightful owners. The main character, Bilike, discovers a ping pong ball floating down the local stream. This small ball of plastic, appears to invoke a quizzical reaction from Bilike and his two friends, Eroguotu and Dawa. They then take the ball to their grandmother, who thanks to the mystical beliefs present in that neck of the world, says it's a magical pearl. The boys tend to disbelieve this statement and take it to their local Buddhist Monastery. This scene is quite comical with the Buddhist monks not having the slightest clue about the small white plastic ball. Since these monks are the highest educated guys on the Mongolian steppe, one assumes ping pong is not a highly exported sport. The breakthrough comes from when one of the boys sees the game of ping pong being played on their newly acquired television. The broadcast is from a Chinese station, thus allowing yours truly to bring in a global connection. Modern China has seemingly always had a love affair with ping pong, as it was Chairman Mao's favorite game it quickly became China's favorite game. Having a dictator (kind of like a parent forcing a kid to play soccer) forcing them to play ping pong, the Chinese found that they were a ping pong powerhouse. In fact they were so cocky that when President Richard Nixon challenged them to a ping pong match, they accepted and in the process opened up trade with the United States, the first time since Mao took over China in 1949. So needless to say ping pong is the national sport of China, and the ping pong ball is the national ball of China (instead of baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet think ping pong, moon cakes and motor scooters). As such the boys attempt to venture the thousands of miles to the capital of China, Beijing. This venture goes horribly wrong forcing the boys to turn for home and get whipped by their worried to death mothers.  So the moral of this movie is, finders keepers.

Mongolian Ping Pong

a Forrest Gump

Going In:

I'm having a bit of a Forrest Gump moment coming into this film so I should show a picture to get off this tangent. All right I feel better now, time to focus on the Mongolian version. The movie Mongolian Ping Pong is set upon the backdrop of the vast Mongolian steppes. The story supposedly revolves around a boy who discovers a ping pong ball and from that discovery a quest ensues. Again, the setting leads me to believe that the kid lives out in the Mongolian "boonies" (now I think that most of Mongolia would be classified as "boonies" to an urban westerner like myself). But this rural setting allows the normalcy of a ping pong ball in western life a mythical, almost magical meaning to a run of the mill ping pong ball. Again the cast is predominately Mongolian in ancestry (again they look eerily related Genghis Khan), and unlike The Weeping Camel I have a feeling that this movie is going to be a bit more like a "traditional" movie (in the western sense), here's to learning more about the magic that is contained (if one looks hard enough) within a ping pong ball.

a Ping Pong Ball

The Weeping Camel

Coming Out:

a Television



a Flock of Sheep



a D Volt Battery



After watching The Weeping Camel one comes to appreciate the people who inhabit that corner of the world. That corner of the world being the Gobi Desert, one appreciates the determination and can-do spirit that imbues the people who live there. The Weeping Camel in particular follows the life of some very rural inhabitants, one gets the feeling that even in Mongolia these guys live out in the preverbal "boonies". Alas the Mongolian desert dwellers seem a hardy bunch, living in a building that further research determined was a ger, a domicile used by the Mongolians since the times of Genghis Khan. Just by looking at the faces of the actors in the movie one can see the very near relation some of them must have to the men who ran the Mongolian Empire. Another intriguing aspect was the relative proximity that the family lives to their livestock, it appears that their assorted livestock (camels, sheep and goats) are their main source of income as when Dude goes into town his younger brother frames the price of a television in terms of number of sheep. The most surprising story theme of all is the relationship the rural family has with their camels. Their herd of camels seems to be of the upmost importance, both financially and spiritually as the story focuses around the efforts of the family to attempt to get a camel colt (like horses right?) to suckle on his mum who decided that she doesn't want her offspring to survive for whatever reason. The family (which is surprisingly multi-dimensional, with grandparents, parents and children all living in the same commune like environment) even sends their young children out to go get a muscian and what looks like some D volt batteries. The settlement seems a tad far away, but in the Gobi Desert who's going to bother a couple of youngsters out on a mission, kind of like the America of yesteryear. The purpose of their Lord of the Rings-esque quest is to get (besides batteries) a musician who will performs some sort of bonding ceremony between camel mum and calf. This musician guy comes out to the "sticks" on the back of a motorcycle, already making him one cool dude, he then performs a ceremony that at it's end the mother camel, who had rejected her offspring to accept her offspring as her own and allow the little camel to suckle. All in a days work for a motorcycling, music playing, camel bonding nomad. Oh and just as an aside, camels look a lot like tauntauns from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, just saying.

a Tauntaun

The Weeping Camel

Going in: The Weeping Camel

a Camel

With a knowledge of Mongolia which mostly dates back to the ancient Mongolian Empire under the Khan's, a look at modern Mongolia sounds slightly intriguing. Below is a map of modern day Mongolia, (greatly reduced from the glory days of Genghis Khan) where the movie was in fact actually shot. It was released in 2003 by the National Geographic film department and appears to have native Mongolian actors acting as Mongolians. If the title of the film has any indication of what is to come I should probably research camels as they comprise half of the title, and by osmosis half of the movie. Camels typically inhabit deserts as they have no predators there and are seemingly designed to live in deserts. Camels can survive large stints of dehydration and rehydrate quite quickly, allowing them to travel from oasis to oasis looking for food. Camels are, like us, omnivores and thusly can eat both meat and vegetation making their monicker of "caravan of the desert" a true statement. And after several strenuous minutes of Google searching "Can camels cry?" this minute old question remains unanswered. And with that I now head into the film, knowing a little more and expecting a little less.

a Map of Mongolia