Train wrecks and Chinese kisses
Written By: Due-East on August 14, 2007
2 Comments
| I was surfing Youtube yesterday and came across a great music video by a Chinese singer named Michael Wong (光良). It’s very sweet in its sentiment, and the song is nice, too, if you like romantic ballads. But about 2:45 into the video, there’s a kissing scene so awkward that it almost made me shudder. It’s a really bad kiss. It looks more like two trains colliding or like they’re engaging in some kind of facial shoving contest rather than kissing, and it’s about the most un-romantic thing I’ve ever seen (and I’m not talking about the fact that her nose starts bleeding during their kiss). Some people just aren’t good kissers, I suppose. |
| But when I think back to all of the Chinese movies I’ve watched over the years, I can’t recall a single good kiss in any of them. Pretty much all of the kisses I’ve seen in Chinese movies are of the clumsy face-crash sort. But I’m not sure why that is. I know that Chinese culture isn’t big on public displays of affection, so maybe it’s just that no matter how good the actors and actresses are, they just can’t get past the cultural taboo of kissing in front of dozens of people when they’re filming a kissing scene. Despite the fact that I haven’t seen one good kiss in a Chinese movie, I tend to highly doubt that an entire culture of people would be bad at kissing. That sounds too much like a generalization or stereotype to make me comfortable. So there has to be some other explanation for this. |
| I’ve never kissed a Chinese girl, and I’m not Chinese, so I can’t comment on the ugly on-screen kiss phenomenon and whether it reflects real-life kisses. Maybe someone reading this blog can help enlighten me. If you have a good idea as to why all on-screen kisses in Chinese movies stink (or if you know of a good one in a particular movie), let me know by posting a comment. |
Wow. I actually watched the video before I read your comments, and I was shocked at that scene. I replayed it just to make sure that it was indeed supposed to be a kiss? It looked like their only goal was to keep their lips touching, they did not seem to get into it AT ALL. It was so bothersome, that I felt embarrassed FOR them haha! I was like, whoa… this is a video which means they can do re-takes… why didn’t they? LOL! And then I read your comments and found it disturbed you just as much. hehe
I posed this question over at the LoveHKFilm.com message boards and got the following response from one of the moderators:
“As a Chinese, and as a giver and receiver of kisses, the best ones I ever received from other Chinese persons were Hersheys.
You make an interesting point. From personal experience and watching Chinese cinematic depictions of this type of affectionate display, I don’t recollect many unforgettable kisses that were super sensual and erotic on screen. The only ones that seemed convincing were in Asian porn and that was because there were some enthusiastic actresses putting their best effort into a convincing performance.”
He went on to say:
“For a very good scholarly study of Chinese culture and sexuality allow me to recommend the following. It offers some interesting historical interpretation and commentary about Chinese sexual behavior up to “modern” (17th century) times.
Sexual Life in Ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from ca. 1500 BC till 1644 AD. By Robert Van Gulik.
The late R.H. Van Gulik was a top-notch Sinologist. He argues that the three and a half centuries of Manchu rule as the last reigning dynasty totally screwed up what was once a relatively healthy attitude towards sexuality. Van Gulik suggests that the Qings introduced much of the prevailing puritannical outlook that the Chinese now seem to hold. From that it appears that the prudishness is also translated onto the big screen and TV.”
Interesting…I think I’ll avoid the whole porn genre and have to take his word for some of those comments.