Yogurt in the Face

Everyone I see, I tell them I am studying shufa (書法, Chinese calligraphy). I am eating in the vegetarian restaurant above 7-11 across the street from the university, and I get into a conversation with the lady sitting next to me. I eventually ask her if she likes shufa, and she says that she had to take it as a kid, just like everyone else.

My friend Chin asks me how I am doing, and I tell her that I am really into shufa. She tells me there is an exhibit of modern Chinese calligraphy at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. So, last night, I meet her there.

I am like a kid in a candy shop. The beautify and variety of the shufa is overwhelming. We have two hours to view the exhibit and it doesn't feel like enough time, but I comfort myself, saying it just means I can come back and see it again next week with another friend. Each piece is like a new friend that I want to get to know better.

Besides the shufa exhibit, there is live jazz downstairs and a bookstore with lots of books on shufa. Oh my, shufa, books, and live jazz, all in one place. I am already in heaven, and possibly the only way they could make it better would be to fly in some friends from the US and some premium sake (清酒), and I think the beauty would just about overtake me.

Chin and I walk slowly through the exhibit. There are all the main styles, regular (楷書), clerical (隷書), running (行書), grass (草書), and seal script (篆書). Some are large, some very detailed, some which look like classical scrolls from two-hundred years ago, some looking like abstract expressionist paintings. I make a joke to my friend whenever we pass one I really like: "That one would sell for a lot of money in the States."

After we see the exhibit, we make our way to the exit, but we still have thirty minutes before the museum closes and Chin wants to check out the first floor exhibit of contemporary works. We take a stroll around the wide-open space filled with mostly abstract modern paintings and a few sculptures. There is a large cube near the entrance of the exhibit and people are going in, so we walk over to check it out. Inside, a few people are sitting a watching film shorts on a screen.

We watch a short film in which there's a little boy, maybe he's three or four, playing with his Mom. The boy is jumping on her, and she tries to kiss him, and he calls her a "lech" (色狼). It is very playful.

In the next short, the screen shows a close-up of the face of a young Taiwanese kid against a blank wall. She's probably in sixth grade. She is smiling slightly. Suddenly, something white, like paint, or most probably, yogurt, gets splashed in her face. She flinches a bit, but is still smiling, and doesn't move. One after another, Taiwanese kids are shown, waiting to get this white yogurt thrown in their faces.

We see about forty or fifty kids. I wonder, who is throwing yogurt in their faces? Don't kids get enough "thrown" in their faces already? But then, of course, I realize that it's a film. The director says, "I'm going to throw yogurt in your face. Here, wear this white shirt, and before we throw the yogurt at you, don't move too much, and after, don't move that much either. Just let us film you, okay?" At least that's what I imagine.

One after another I see the kids waiting for the yogurt, then getting it in the face, and then their reactions. You see a girl, completely serious, sad, staring at the camera. Suddenly, she get's it on the upper cheek and her eye. Her eye shuts for an instant, but, then she opens it and she is still staring at us, still sad and serious.

Another kid, a boy, is looking tough, his eyes defying, his lips a little pursed. His facial expression says, "Come on, I dare you." He gets it on his hair and forehead, and then after two seconds of recovery, he is back to being tough.

In contrast to tough boy, there is the scared girl. Before the yogurt even hits her cheeks, she is wincing, and after you can tell she is not very comfortable.

And then the kids who make me smile, the kids who are holding back laughter the whole time. I think there are many kids like this in the film. One boy can barely hold himself together. He hasn't lost it yet, but I turn to Chin and say, "He's going to crack up when he gets hit." Sure enough, he loses it and is laughing hard after the yogurt begins moisturizing his prepubescent skin.

I am very moved by all this yogurt throwing. By the kids who, at ten or twelve years old already have to fight the world, who wear a "tough" mask they learned from Dad. By the kids who are completely resigned, who make no movements before, during, or after the whole ordeal. And all those kids laughing, they move me, too.

I realize that by the time we're ten, or more accurately probably, five, we've developed a "stance" toward life. Do we embrace that "yogurt", laughing? Do we decide to be tough guy or victim, or stoic? I watch these kids faces and I can see their whole lives unfolding, I can see what they'll look like when they're fifty. Life is short.

A recorded announcement says the museum is closing and we need to leave, and I get up, still holding back my tears. Maybe for the kids in the film, maybe for all of us "kids".