What Have We Learned from the Movie Avatar?

I’ve been struggling for weeks to put something “on paper” since I watched Avatar.

What started catching my interest was its use of the prototype of the rock formations in Zhangjiajie, a place that you’d only see in Chinese brush painting.  Since I had just visited this beautiful fairy-land in October 2009, I wanted to see how it was interpreted/presented in a Hollywood movie.

From Chinese Brush Painting to Avatar – Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, China

When I visited Zhangjiajie in November and wrote the blog post in December of 2009, I was only in awe of the natural beauty that my eyes encountered – the unique rock formation, the mist, the forest, and the Chinese brush paintings that kept on coming to mind. 

So wait, the "South Heaven Pillar" that I saw through the viewfinder of my camera became the floating Hallelujah Mountain in the movie Avatar?  And little did I know that the government was this quick to cash in on the fame of this Hollywood 3D movie and changed the mountain’s name to “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain” in an official ceremony yesterday. 

Does this mark the milestone of Hollywood having a hand in the Chinese traditional art?  Imagine how the paintings will be having descriptions of fishing boat, willow, stream, …, and Avatar.  This truly is a manifestation of a global village that we live in.

Now, feeling having missed the history by just one step, I regret not looking hard enough for the alien Na’vis behind those misty thick woods.

Walking into Chinese Brush Painting – Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, China

First Comes First - A Confession

I have a confession to make. 

I grew up in China.  But I did not start being serious about traveling and getting to know the various regions of the country until more recent years. 

So when I came to the US at a young age, my knowledge about the country was very fragmented.  At the time, I did not realize that.

Leaving the Old and the Slow

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I could not sit and watch China’s seemingly slow modernization process and took an “expedited” approach.  I arrived in an airplane at a country that’s half a globe away from where I was born, a country that was widely considered the best country in the world.  After all, impatience seems to be the trade-mark of young people.

So, one can imagine how happy I was to leave China and everything associated with it.  Who would need to understand the  culture, history or the literature from thousands of years ago?  After all, we are moving at the speed of motor vehicles, airplanes and space rockets.  I was happy to not be bothered by anything old and slow…