I met this French diplomat,
Valerie Tehio on my last research trip. Valerie is a mixed race
Parisian married to a well-known Chinese poet and Tiananmen
dissident. My friend Mary Stephens, a filmmaker and Hong Kong
expatriate living in Paris, had introduced Valerie to me.
Valerie just happens to be in Paris on vacation and has
generously offered us her amazing apartment with maid service
for our entire stay during the shoot.
Our second camera Ajay and his wife Sarada is already at the
apartment when Cheuk and I come in from the airport. They had
come a few days earlier for a bit of sightseeing. I have also
arranged for Luz, a local interpreter, to meet us there. Luz
gets adjusted to our unorthodox ambiguous fluid working style.
She’s puzzled but, I think, pleasantly surprised. I remember how
Chris Doyle once said, “the Argentine mind works as rigidly as the
grid this city is built around” which sums up everything.
I take the crew down to Casa China on Viamonte. Chiang isn’t
around and I am getting a Havana déjà vu. He eventually appeared
from his apartment above the restaurant looking stressed out. He
seems to have aged about ten years since I saw him last. I hope
he’s OK. After lunch, we do a little warm-up interview with
Chiang in his courtyard as I had planned. Cheuk is interviewing
him in Mandarin. I’m a little disappointed with his lack of
passion this time around. Did something happen over the last
seven months during my absence? I hope it’s not because Cheuk is
pushing the issue of his wife too early.
We continue our interview in Spanish. The Chiang I met on my
last trip is resurfacing… perhaps he feels more emotional when
he speaks in Spanish, the language of passion… maybe not… as Luz
points out that his Spanish is actually abominable. Whatever the
reason, I’m glad his fire is back. He talks about his passion in
building Casa China and spreading Chinese culture to the
barbarians like it was his gospel mission. He makes references
to Hemmingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” as if it was his
Bible. Perhaps this has influenced his stoic solitude away from
family, away from love. He sees female companionship as a
liability… or time and energy that he prefers to put into more
pressing priorities in his life. I wonder if he truly believes
in this or is it merely a bitter old man’s way of dealing with a
painful past.
I had warned Cheuk about this strange Argentine ritual of
devouring a whole cow in one sitting and now he gets to see it
first-hand at Stephen Wu’s ranch. There’s probably enough meat
here to feed an average Chinese village… OK… I’m might be
stretching it a little. Chiang and Wu urge us to fill up, as I’m
getting nauseous with the smell of burning dead animal flesh
alone.
Wu opens Chiang right up with wine filling our bottomless
glasses. The old buddies badger back and forth about love and
mistresses, Chiang’s absent wife, the universe, the world,
liberation from woman and family entanglement. By this time,
everyone is pleasantly sloshed. But the drinking continues with
after-meal brandy as we walk around the huge garden picking at
fruits from trees. I’m glad we came out even though it is a
repeat exercise for me. Since I didn’t have my camera the last
time, I need as much footage of a loosen-up Chiang as I can get.
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