Natasha Richardson and "The White Countess"

I will always remember Natasha Richardson in the James Ivory film “The White Countess”, based on the screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, who is perhaps most famous for his novel “Remains of the Day”. Portrayed as a destitute former Russian aristocrat reduced to work in a night club to support her family in exile in Shanghai in the 1930s, Natasha Richardson was positively convincing in conveying a sense of regal beauty humiliated by poverty in exile. Her in-laws, who were also former Russian aristocrats somehow could not wake up to the fact that they were no longer a privileged class, were so heartless as to abandon her when they finally had a way to leave Shanghai for Hong Kong. Natasha Richardson’s mother, Vanessa Redgrave, played one such relative in the movie. Although they lived in abject poverty in Shanghai, they would not stop talking about the good old days back in Russia, when they carried lofty titles, had numerous servants, played the piano, and went to ballet. To some extent, they were like the forlorn Southern plantation owners who lost everything in the Civil War, and yet could not accept that life was forever changed for them.

The tragic and untimely death of Natasha Richardson reminded me of this movie again. She herself was from an acting dynasty, and she did continue the family tradition of acting. However, she had always given people the impression that while artistic and intelligent, she was not so full of herself. She made a smooth transition from a “legacy child” to a true working actress. An accomplished cook, she was known to host great dinner parties at home, besides raising her two sons and maintaining an active acting career. Her husband Liam Neeson was from a working class background in Northern Ireland. She was refined, but also down-to-earth. In a nutshell, she was genuine “royalty” but never carried herself like one.

I often find myself with a very bad habit – a habit of attributing my behavioral tendency (especially the bad ones) to my own family. When I watched “The White Countess”, I could not help thinking about my grandparents. I do regret not learning more about their lives when they were still alive. Now that they are gone, I find that my memories of them always give me a sense that I have something to live up to. Both of them came from very privileged families at the beginning of last century, and they both went to Europe for their education. Their families and acquaintances consist of many famous names in politics, economics, science and literature. Perhaps they were the last generation of aristocrats before the Communists took over in 1949. My grandparents themselves were pure university academics. The limited memories I have of them are full of their references to their days abroad in Europe, their friends and colleagues who were inevitably intellectuals, them listening to operas on vinyl records , my grandmother smoking a Moore cigarette and drinking brandy, and my grandfather reading some books in some foreign language. – I felt like a completely awkward, uneducated and unrefined village girl, every time I went to my grandparents’ place. My mother raised my sister and me by herself, whereas my grandmother had nannies to raise all her kids back in her time. I always found my grandmother a bit intimidating and disapproving of me. By then, my grandparents lost most of their wealth already, but I still felt that somehow I did not belong to this family, for I possessed none of the skills and traits of this intelligentsia class. Chinese intelligentsia back then were like the Russian aristocrats in the sense that they would never talk about money, or the importance of money, despite having lost almost all of their money. They would have loved to get the old life back, but they would not stoop so low as to go actively after money in some “lowly pursuit”. – That is the snobbery I have inherited. I even wrote in the acknowledgement section of my PhD thesis that I hoped to live up to the expectations of my ancestors, which I certainly have not, since I eventually left science. – how ironic! I would occasionally find myself thinking about whether I would meet the approval of my grandparents or not, even though there is no way that they would know or care!

It must be that sentimental nostalgia that I have inherited, against my better judgment!

How Transient Life is

Tonight I was shocked to read about actress Natasha Richardson’s death from a skiing accident. Unlike old age or terminal illness, which makes one more or less prepare for it, death from accidents is especially hard to accept.

It shows how transient and vulnerable life could be. After all, she died from an injury incurred on a BEGINNER’s Trail at a ski resort. I find myself literally shudder at the thought of going skiing again. The winter of 2001 was when my passion for skiing was at its peak. I must have gone skiing in New Hampshire and Vermont five times that winter alone, while living in Boston. To this day, I would still mention one ski trip I took with a friend. She was just starting to ski then. As a teacher, I was a very bad and impatient one. Instead of making her stay at the bunny slope, I was very cavalier about taking her onto a longer trail, reassuring her that the trail was really easy and it would be all “green” from beginning to end. Then half way through the trail, I realized that there was no more “green” trail left – we would have to go down a “blue” trail in order to go down the mountain. Sensing that the truth would freak her out, I decided not to tell her. Since she’s so tense and so focused on her skis, she never had the time to read the signs to realize that she’s on a “blue” trail. All she said when she reached the top of this “blue” trail was, “are you sure that it’s still green?” – to which I mustered all my lying power and said, “yes, it still is green.”

I skied to the bottom of the hill, and waited for her. She must have fallen a hundred times, as she was so nervous about going fast that she would fall down deliberately every minute – of course in reality she was going as slow as a snail. I know that the slope must have looked vertical to a beginner. I could not help laughing a little bit at the time, when I saw her whole body tense up, making a little turn only to sit down again, over and over again. She spent most of the time falling and getting up, as opposed to skiing. But her skiing improved dramatically after this trip and she’s probably a better skier than I am today. I thought that it had to do with my brutal way of teaching – which is equivalent to throwing someone into the water without any life jacket to teach him to swim. When Michael and I returned to the same ski resort a few weeks later, I pointed to the trail that we went down. He was positively surprised that a beginner could actually ski down, even if it included falling down many times. He said that he was quite amazed that she believed my lie that it was a “green” trail.

Now that I read that it’s possible to die even on a beginner’s slope, I shiver at the thought of how close I was to be a murderer, if my friend had suffered a fatal accident as a beginner on that treacherous “blue” trail.

We all take life for granted, until it’s taken away from us. Youth is wasted on the young, and life is wasted on the living.

Home Sweet Home

It is perhaps human nature to appreciate something only when you are about to lose it, or worse yet, only after you have lost it. For years, I took our home in San Diego for granted, without giving it much thought. Now that we are about to leave San Diego, suddenly I find myself wanting to savor for one last time the many things that are associated with “home sweet home”.

There is no question that it will cost me a fortune to find in Bay Area something similar to my Spanish villa style house in terms of condition or neighborhood. Still, as I was showing our house to some prospective tenants yesterday, I found myself lamenting the fact that I hardly went to our swimming pool or Jacuzzi, rarely went down the exclusive trail down the canyon to see the waterfalls, or to simply walk around and enjoy the beautifully (and I shall add, expensively) landscaped neighborhood.

So Michael and I went down the canyon trail today after breakfast. It’s a fairly cool morning, with the sun coming in and out from behind the clouds. It was raining a lot earlier in the month, but it has not rained in the past week. As a result, the canyon is all lush with vegetation, but the trails are mostly dry already. As I paused to take a break (after all, I am weighing already a whopping 124 pounds due to the pregnancy!) while going down the canyon, I looked around, and could not find better words to describe the view other than that sentimental Hollywood movie “How Green is my Valley”.


Once we got down to the bottom of the canyon, we started seeing people biking, hiking, jogging or horse-back riding. For people who don’t live in our community (our hefty HOA fee covers this keyed access to the canyon), they have to park their cars at the end of this long trail and hike for an hour at least to get to the waterfall. When we got to the rocky part of the creek, we heard torrents. To my pleasant surprise, the water took on this utterly beautiful green color due to the vegetation growing in the creek. While San Diego is known to have a desert-like Mediterranean climate, we are very lucky to have in our back yard this canyon reserve park in almost complete wilderness.


After getting back from this hour-long hike, I sat down to drink my ginger-peach tea and eat the grapefruit grown in our garden – these little things never seemed to catch my attention before, but somehow I am mentally recording all these events now! While Bay Area does boast great outdoors even on the peninsula (with the beautiful Portola Valley hills, Woodside area, Half Moon May and Crystal Springs Reservoir), it’s not possible to have those in the backyard while having a 15-minute commute any more. I looked around our house, which is sure to be trashed by tenants (who will take better care of it than I), and wondered what it would look like if we ever come back to San Diego many years later…

By the time we leave San Diego, I will have lived in this house for almost 7 years, which is the longest where I will have lived in a place. Although I have lived in Beijing and Cambridge, MA longer (16 years and 9 years, respectively), I did not live in one place for that long. My mother still lives in the same place where I lived from middle school to high-school. But it’s been so many years since I left home that it definitely is no longer my home. In Boston, I was a student and lived like a student most of the time, staying first in the dorm and then a tiny one-bedroom rental place, while spending most of the time away from home. Definitely the little apartment never felt like home. So it’s really this house – the first house that I have bought in my own name – that I genuinely call my home, in an area where I felt like that I just moved in for 7 years until I am almost about to leave. It is difficult to describe that feeling of feeling like a stranger or outsider for so long, until suddenly you are about to leave, and you realize that you are after all quite familiar with the place that you really know about it as much as other San Diegans! – And I never considered calling myself a San Diegan!


When it comes to what one calls home, for those who move around a lot, it could be a real challenge. While I was born and raised in Beijing and my nostalgia should be mainly reserved for Beijing, I must say that today’s Beijing is so completely changed that it might as well be a new city. – It’s impossible for me to even find my own ways around anymore. Boston is where I spent a large part of my formative years, but because I was constantly moving from one place to another (Harvard to MIT to Genzyme to McKinsey), I never had a sense of “permanence”. Besides, as a college town, it is naturally a city of high turnovers in its population. My Boston years were like a very long transition period. So it really is San Diego where I can truly call “home sweet home”…

Photos copyright Michael Lin.

"Ah Q Spirit" and "Thinking Positively"

The other day, I was complaining to a very close friend about a few things in my life – as usual, she listened with patience, even though I knew that she did not think I had much to complain about. When her patience finally ran thin, she said, "it's very important to practice the Ah Q spirit, because we all need it. Your problem is that you don’t have any of it!”

For those who grew up in China, Ah Q is no stranger – he’s the loser protagonist in Lu Xun’s novel “The True Story of Ah Q” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Story_of_Ah_Q. To sum up “Ah Q spirit”, it is essentially about seeing the positive side in everything, including the most atrocious, the most miserable and the most unfair. In fact, even when Ah Q was sentenced to death for some minor crime, he still managed to feel good and self-delusional.

Ah Q is well-known for his “spiritual victories”, since in real life he’s a constant loser. By not facing up to the reality and deluding himself to believe that he’s successful, he was an object of ridicule. Lu Xun, the writer who was known for his absolutely intolerant sarcasm, used Ah Q as a metaphor to admonish the Chinese people not to feel good about themselves as their country was bullied, invaded and ruined by foreign powers.

Having been indoctrinated in school as I was growing up about the danger of not facing the reality, no wonder I have an aversion to Ah Q spirit, and constantly check myself to see if I am not seeing the reality as it is. Since I am always quick to complain about things (and very passionately often I might add), Michael has told me that I obviously do not practice the act of “thinking positively” enough. When I told him the Chinese version of “thinking positively” – i.e. Ah Q spirit – he could not help shaking his head and said, “you Chinese are so fatalistic.” “But isn’t it the same as thinking positively? See, Ah Q was thinking positively, hoping that something good might happen as he was dragged off to his own execution!” – I protested. “Well, maybe the major difference is that the western way of positive thinking is a very proactive one in that positive thinking is a premise for doing something, whereas the Chinese version is to be completely passive.”

Later, when I relayed this exchange to my close friend, she said that there was a reason why the Chinese way of positive thinking was so passive. For centuries if not millennia, the Chinese lived under completely totalitarian control without any power. It is in the Chinese mentality to put up with whatever hand is dealt them, because otherwise life would be miserable. By comparison, the concept of justice and demoracy – an entirely western European concept – made the Europeans much less tolerant of pure oppression. What prompted them to mount a revolution, or to migrate to the brave new world like America might have been considered really tolerable condition by their Chinese counterparts. But they decided to ACT, and do something to change their fate. No wonder the western “positive thinking” is always linked with definitive action.

As for me, who is obviously a product of both Chinese and western education, it is inevitable that I could sometimes be more Chinese, and at other times be more American in my philosophy. And Lu Xun’s language was just too visceral for me to ever consider adopting Ah Q spirit for the rest of my life. But I guess I ought to turn around to my western education, and practice more proactive positive thinking. For example, while I am lamenting the fact that I am getting heavier and therefore can’t easily go on trips any more, I should probably savor the peace at home, looking out of my windows to see the blooming spring flowers growing in the canyon. I just complained (again perhaps too loudly) to some friends that my life has been reduced to one of trivialities recently, due to the upcoming move and miscellaneous things that come with it (e.g. hiring an agent, looking for a house to move into in Bay Area, identifying a landscape contractor to fix the front yard, signing up a moving company, organizing the house and donating stuff that we don’t intend to move, going to the numerous scheduled doctor’s appointments for this pregnancy, and not to mention getting ready for this baby, etc). But maybe I ought to “think positively”, and be happy how I am becoming such an “accomplished housewife”! – Indeed this weekend I interviewed 3 prospective tenants, decided on the landscape design as well as the landscape contractor, went grocery shopping, cooked a few times, did laundry, cleaned up the house, and even went hiking several times. My brain, however, remained completely unchallenged and un-stimulated. I remember reading a biography of the architect/poet Lin Hui-yin, in which she lamented to her friend Wilma Fairbank (the wife of the famous Harvard scholar on modern China John Fairbank) that she was swamped by the numerous household chores that she worried that her life would eventually be consumed by one of wife and mother. I can so identify with that anxiety now! But I guess I ought to think “more positively”!

The Quest for Style – Inspired by Tan Yuan Yuan

When Michael and I lived in Boston area, we did take advantage of the famed cultural and intellectual scene of Boston. We went to Arts First at Harvard in April, Tanglewood in the summer, film screenings with directors present, plays and operas, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and of course the world-famous Boston Ballet quite a few times. Both of us decided that ballet was just not for us, as it was a combination of sub-standard components – often the music (with the exception of “Swan Lake”) is not as brilliant as other classical pieces, the orchestra is somewhat mediocre, the stage design not nearly as remarkable as the Met Opera, and the dancers themselves? – well, perhaps we were just not well-versed in ballet to truly appreciate them. They felt, well, kind of heavy and flat. To some extent, I almost came to the belief that ballet was not necessarily a great form for artistic expression.

Therefore, it was no wonder when I bought tickets for the world premiere of San Francisco Ballet’s new production of “Swan Lake”, Michael was understandably apathetic. Still, it had been years since we went to a ballet. And our shared spirit of “trying something new” made us at least believe in trying it once more with a different ballet company. And we had no idea what we would see.

The lead ballerina of San Francisco Ballet is the world-famous Tan Yuan Yuan – originally hailed from Shanghai. Slender, beautiful and passionate in person (I have since read more about her and watched a video clip of her interview), she made me believe that a true artist in ballet could absolutely convey emotion, just like a true artist in opera can. Her movements were fluid, light and effortless, making us almost believe that she was a swan in human form. It was the first time I was ever touched by the tragedy conveyed in dance movements.

Photo copyright Erik Tomasson

Helgi Tomasson was the one that discovered Tan Yuan Yuan when she won a competition in Paris at the age of 16. He recruited her to San Francisco Ballet when she was 19, and two years later, she became the youngest principal ballerina at the company. Tomasson’s new production of Swan Lake was picture perfect. I used to have the impression that ballet was kind of repetitive, mundane and tedious, despite the amazing athletic abilities of the dancers. Tomasson has the unique ability to keep the best of the tradition while making it more aesthetically appealing, through more elaborate choreography and better stage design. While Tan Yuan Yuan positively shined as the star, the other dancers were also beautiful, light and expressive. How should I describe the whole experience then, compared to the Boston Ballet’s performance of “Swan Lake” which made me feel like that I could hear their heavy footsteps (even when I could not) because they looked so heavy and un-elegant? – Ah, there is no other better word to describe it, but “style”. This production absolutely has the best style.

Then it occurred to me that a few years ago a college friend of mine got into a discussion on what constitutes the essence of each famous city. Since he and I both went to Harvard and MIT for college and graduate school, we naturally started with Boston. Despite its image as the most “European” city in the US and names like Boston Symphony and Boston Ballet, we both agreed that it is a city with a “quest for knowledge”. After all, this is the city with the best-known institutions, and many more prize-winning scientists than artists or musicians!

So how about the other cities? – We gleefully went down the list, and tried our best to capture each city with just one word. New York is the city with a quest for money; Los Angeles with a quest for looks; London with a quest for sophistication; Paris with a quest for romance; Singapore with a quest for identity; Tokyo with a quest for technology; Shanghai with a quest for modernization; Las Vegas with a quest for vulgarity; San Diego with a quest for comfort, etc.

And San Francisco is a city with a quest for style – that style that cannot be bought with money, but does require the backing of money. It is not the richest, nor the most beautiful, but it is undoubtedly obsessed with style. Think about it – this is the biotech and high-tech hub of the United States. While other areas (like Boston and San Diego) boast big and vibrant biotech clusters, they cannot compete with San Francisco Bay Area on the “style” of the companies. Genentech is the coolest biotech company in the world; Apple (thanks to Steve Jobs) built its reputation on stylish products; and of course Google is the internet darling. One just has to go on the campus of Google to realize what a unique and cool experience it is. You almost have to obtain a hyper-active brain just to be able to absorb everything that’s around you on Google’s campus. It makes you want to start a company of your own, but more importantly, it makes you want to start a company that is as cool as Google.

Now that I am moving from the city with a quest for comfort (i.e. San Diego), I will have to leave the most beautiful and convenient weather for periodically cold and foggy weather of Bay Area, not to mention the older conditions of homes, much more congested traffic and overall much higher living expenses of Bay Area. But Tan Yuan Yuan’s performance under the brilliant direction of Helgi Tomasson made me happy about the move…

The Joy of Renting

Due to my reluctance to spend any time finding a furnished place to stay during the week (as I have been commuting back and forth between San Diego and Bay Area), I looked at just one place available as a sublet and decided to accept it. That was July 2007. Now that I am finally about to finish my stay there, I have to say that even I myself am impressed with my own endurance. But I also learned the importance (once more!) of dealing with sensible people in my life, if I have the choice. There are enough people that one cannot reason with out there! We cannot avoid a lot of them in our lives, but when we have a choice (like in the case of renting a place), we would be wise to avoid them.

The apartment is actually in a very nice location, surrounded by million-dollar homes in the most upscale part of San Mateo. But the apartment is old and run-down. The woman (I will call her Nancy) who has been renting it for many years from property management appears not have a very steady job. She is subletting it furnished because she wants to keep the lease for an eventual return while she pursues other interests and does not have anywhere else to move her stuff.

To start with, when I moved in, the place was filthy and smelly – I had no experience dealing with a sublet and did not realize that when I was told that the place would be ready and clean, it might not happen! I called Nancy, who was upset at being bothered, and told me how she really did not have time to deal with it. A cleaning lady finally showed up, who apparently had been drinking too much coffee or alcohol or both. She spent most of the time on the phone, agitated in a way that scared the living delight out of me, arguing with someone. Finally, when she was off the phone, she told me that she was on the phone with Nancy, because Nancy was paying her too little for cleaning up a very dirty apartment! – I already paid Nancy $500 in advance a cleaning deposit, with the idea that it would be cleaned before I moved in. When I asked the cleaning lady how much she was paid, she told me that she was only offered $50! I got on the phone again with Nancy, who went into a frenzy calling the cleaning lady unprofessional and complaining once more that she really did not have time for this. The cleaning lady left, and I had to sleep in the dirty apartment for one night, before another cleaning person was sent in the next day to clean up.

Finally, after the place was cleaned up, I tried to wash all the dishes in the dishwasher. Five minutes later, there was soapy water soaking up the entire kitchen. I called Nancy again, who said that I ought to contact property management directly, even though I did not have a lease with the management – my agreement was to sublet from Nancy for $1500 a month. When I called, it started a long phone tag with various people. To make the long story short, I ended up staying at home several times to wait for the guy to show up, only to have someone come in finally (without apologies) and say that the dishwasher was too old to be fixed. They said that they would deliver a new one. When the new one showed up, I realized that it was not new – it was merely NEWER than the old one. The guy installed it and left. I started the dishwasher, and there was soapy water all over the floor again. I called again, and was told that they then did not know what to do! – After dealing with it for a while, I finally gave up.

Throughout the past year and a half, it was good that I always have a big and nice house in San Diego to return to, or else I would have been driven nuts by having to deal with people associated with this apartment. The rent went up a couple of months after I moved in, although that’s between property management and Nancy. Even though my agreement with Nancy was for a year at $1500 a month, I quietly decided to pay the new rent, simply to avoid having to talk to her by phone or e-mail. Then the rent from property management increased again, and this time, Nancy asked to split the increase between the two of us. I also agreed, because any disagreement, suggestion or complaint would lead to a very long and extremely unproductive string of phone calls or e-mails, with me having to spend more time dealing with her.

At one point, the laundry machine did not work, and I complained to property management, threatening to reduce rent if they were not to fix it soon. Their response was “our agreement is with Nancy, so we just go after her if you don’t pay the full amount.” – Just imagining having to deal with Nancy made me quiet.

Very recently, Nancy wrote me and asked me if she could take away the microwave. I was like, “in this dysfunctional kitchen, the only thing I use occasionally is the microwave.” I also took the opportunity to ask her to negotiate with property management to reduce the rent, since the entire rental market was going down. Now, that was a huge mistake. This started a long string of e-mails from her asking me why I thought so, and how her research had shown that other places with cheaper rent were all “lesser” places, etc, and how she did not feel comfortable doing it, etc. I then realized something really sad about people like her. While she clearly is tight with money, she’s also completely inept at saving money. She does not have any confidence or sense of security in negotiating with anyone, which explains the super high price of her lease agreement with property management, despite her financial status. You would think that people like her would become expert at getting good deals – actually it’s quite the opposite.

She then started talking about how she would have to pay the rent for another 2 months after my departure without living there (because she would not return from whatever spiritual retreat she was involved with until 2 months later), how she’s afraid of losing the place (on what grounds I am not sure), etc. She mentioned her son’s death again, which happened almost 4 years ago. A simple request for her to ask property management to consider lowering the rent turned into a long saga again with her, without her actually doing anything yet. I kicked myself for even bothering with her – women like her need to be avoided at all cost, even if it means paying more money!

But my patience was running thin. After more questions from her about how to approach property management to get them to lower the rent, I finally wrote perhaps a bit nastily, “I really don’t need to bother about your agreement with property management. We all have personal situations we need to take care of, and whatever problems I have in my life are my own and not yours. And vice versa. The only agreement between you and me was broken a couple of months after I moved in. I silently covered all the rent increases for your sake even though it’s against our agreement, despite this dysfunctional apartment. I would appreciate some gesture from you on my going beyond the call of duty.” – I did not know whether a stern email like that would lead to her getting upset (when she again had the sense that the entire world owes her), or her apologizing profusely (when she realized how unreasonable she was). This time, it was a combination of both!

Due to various factors, I have decided to rent a house instead of buying one in Bay Area starting from May 1 after we move the content of our San Diego home to Bay Area, but only reluctantly. After all, you never know who you will have to deal with in renting! But with everyone saying that property value would further go down, we decided to wait for a few months before seriously looking for a house to buy.

Since I do not want to stay in apartment complexes, I have to look at town homes or single family houses, which are often rented directly by the owners. I visited several places, and the experience was quite interesting. It’s not nearly as much hassle as buying a house, but one does encounter all kinds of people.

The first one was in redwood city, and the minute I walked in, I decided to walk out – it was too dark, and run-down. The owner is this old guy that did not seem to belong to the current times.

The second one was in Belmont, which is a very nice town house. But it’s got 3 floors, and I felt that it was a bit too “vertical” to be convenient.

The third one was in Foster City owned by an old couple – their sense of smell must be all gone, as again I could smell the staleness of the carpet the minute I walked in.

The fifth one was in San Mateo, which made me believe that I would surely sink into a depression if I were to move in, for more reasons than one.

The sixth one was in Foster City again, owned by a semi-lunatic Cantonese woman, who immediately told me that she broke up with her boyfriend last year, and how she’s trying to save money etc . She said that she travelled for work often, which would make paying for this town home a waste. I instantly saw Nancy's face, and realized that it would be suicidal for me to deal with an Asian version of Nancy, despite the fact that the place was kept very clean and it was bright, spacious and modern.

Now I am keeping my fingers crossed for the house I am about to rent…

Musings on "The Reader"

While I am a fan of the actress Kate Winslet, I do not always want to see her movies, as her choices occasionally do fall out of my area of interest. This year seems to be her year, as she’s winning awards for her performance in the movie “The Reader”. Finally I decided to watch it in the theater, and I was duly impressed. (Warning: plot spoilers ahead.)


Michael Berg had a big secret, which the movie seems to suggest as the reason for his aloofness throughout his life. Michael first met Hanna in 1958, when he was fifteen, she thirty-six. The two had a summer long love affair, dictated by Hanna that their encounters would begin with him reading novels and plays to her followed by lovemaking. Michael next encountered Hanna in 1966, when Michael, now a law student, attended the Nazi war crimes trial of five female former S.S. concentration camp guards, one of whom is Hanna. Through listening to the testimony, Michael comes to the realization that he is in possession of information which could save Hanna from a life in prison, information which she herself is unwilling to disclose, due to her shame. The other four female S.S. concentration camp guards claimed that Hanna was their leader and wrote the incriminating document that indicated a clear intention to not let the Jews out when the building was on fire. Hanna desperately protested that she was not the leader and nor the one that wrote that document. But then the court asked to see a sample of her handwriting by presenting a pen and a piece of paper, she froze. That was when Michael remembered the many small things that did not catch his attention during their summer love affair – Hanna was illiterate. She could not read or write! Faced with the humiliation of revealing this secret, Hanna said, “there is no need. I wrote it.” As a result, while the other four guards got very light prison sentences, Hanna got life in prison. Michael thought about convincing Hanna to tell the truth, but changed his mind and never saw Hanna before her sentence. Years later, he started sending tapes of his own recording of those books that he used to read to Hanna. With these tapes and the books from the prison library, Hanna finally learned to read. After twenty years in prison, Hanna was about to be released. While prison might have been the last place Hanna wanted to be when she was on trial, she now could not bear the thought of living outside of the prison – she committed suicide instead, and left all her money (she had very little money of course) to the girl who survived that fire, who now had grown into a middle-aged woman, living in opulence in Manhattan.

So what are we supposed to learn from it? Even people who have done terrible things could be gentle and loving to others? What is justice really? – Hanna’s ignorance led to her taking a job as a prison guard, because it’s a job that would not reveal her illiteracy to anyone, but she paid so dearly for it afterwards. Those other four female guards were certainly more evil and conniving, and yet they got away with light sentences, leaving Hanna to shoulder the blame for all. History is indeed ironic. It was not a coincident that Hanna’s cell where she hanged herself in the end was contrasted with the luxurious penthouse apartment of the Jewish woman who was the little girl surviving the fire.

What I find most disturbing is the part that Michael decided not to even persuade Hanna to tell the truth that she’s illiterate, which would automatically lighten her sentence dramatically to perhaps below even what the other four women got. After all, she was a victim of the other four women guards too! I talked to my husband (whose name is also Michael!) about it, and he said that it was the right decision, because Hanna made it clear that she would rather stay in prison forever than to reveal her illiteracy in public. Granted, it made her look stupid by choosing the “worse” fate, but only she could be the judge, even if the entire world thinks that she’s crazy to do so.

Michael Berg clearly cared for Hanna. While he was horrified to learn of her callous behaviors towards the Jews, he certainly did not want Hanna to be unfairly punished. But at the same time, no matter how stupid he thought Hanna was (and she really was stupid) in hiding her illiteracy, he realized that there was no use convincing an adult (and a very stubborn one also) that she made the wrong decision. If someone (like Hanna) wants to be a tragic figure, the rest of us will have to let her, even if we care about her. It takes extraordinary endurance and strength to go through this trial and twenty years in prison, but all this was necessitated by Hanna’s extreme weakness and fear – fear of letting people know that she was illiterate! Surely all of us would choose to claim illiteracy (even if we are not!) in order to get out of a prison sentence!!! Imagine, just imagine if she could stomach the few minutes of public humiliation when she revealed her illiteracy in court – the rest of her life would have been so much easier and better. Instead of being hated for being a Nazi, she would be considered just ignorant and used by others. She might have even been given a chance to learn to read/write in the very few years of prison sentence she would have received. But for her, she could not see or imagine the green horizon beyond this first painful step of revealing her shameful secret – so she would rather live her life in prison (which in a way is perhaps more shameful than being illiterate)…

In our own lives, even if the stories are not nearly as dramatic, haven’t we all experienced great torment when we realize that we cannot make someone do what’s best for him or her, if we care about that person? Of course, in many cases, what is better and what is worse are really rather subjective and ambiguous. But in some cases (like in Hanna’s case), it was very clear what was best for her, but she refused that choice. If we happen to care for someone who would make such a choice, can we all simply let that person go down that pathway, without feeling a nagging self-reproach that we could have made a difference, if only we tried hard enough, at the risk of even being hated by that very same person…

Hanna’s tragedy did not stop only at going to prison for most of her life. In fact, her life proved a tragic point – human beings have a way to rationalize that their choices are the right ones, even if they are the wrong ones to start with. If Michael Berg asked Hanna if she regretted her choice after her twenty years in prison, she would have said no for sure. While prison life to many seems so atrocious, Hanna not only got used to it, but also could no longer live without it, when it’s her time to get out of the prison after twenty years. So she committed suicide instead, because death was less scary to her then than living in a totally foreign world. – Again, who is to argue with her that she’s wrong if that’s how she felt?

As I am writing this, I am expecting a baby boy. I care so passionately about a lot of things, that I have no doubt that I will care passionately for my son. A friend recently told me of his regret of letting his son make too many decisions on his own during his early teens, even when he was not wise enough to make all these important decisions. I reassured him that it was no big deal, and besides, what’s the chance of the teenage boy listening to him and following his advice anyways?

Still, after watching “The Reader”, I am now even more acutely aware of the possibility that I will see people whom I love do things that in my opinion (and often in most people’s opinions) hurt themselves dearly. But as long as they are adults, the best thing for me to do is to do and say nothing. If I were to attempt to change their minds, they would not only go out of their way to prove themselves right (which could hurt themselves even more), but also resent me for questioning their decision.

With my own son, will I be able to adopt this attitude when he’s grown up? After devoting so much time, energy and love to someone as he’s growing up, if he were to do something really bad and stupid for himself, I guess I will have to let him figure out himself. And he might never figure out either. After all, Hanna never regretted keeping her secret at the court, even though in reality, the people in the court thought worse of her as the author of that incriminating document than if they had discovered her illiterate – she herself decided that she could not handle that splitting second of public shame, so she’s willing to cover it up with a whole life.

Indeed, extraordinary strength and extraordinary weakness often go hand in hand. Were it not for Hanna’s extreme fear of shame, she would not have to endure so much. Perhaps to the rest of us, it’s obvious what we would have chosen instead, so that we are neither victims of extreme fear, insecurity or shame, nor do we need to resort to the extraordinary German pride, British stoicism or Chinese/Jewish discipline required to cope with such an awful situation.

Maybe to sum up what I have learned from “The Reader”, it is merely the following: don’t be a Hanna, but don’t object if anyone else wants to be, even if that person is dear to you. That translates into – live a good and smart life, but don’t object if others don’t, either for lack of intention or lack of wisdom.