Kung Fu Films Bond Us Amid COVID-19 Lock-Up

It was reported in the Independent on March 17, 2020 that a White House official referred to COVID-19 pandemonium as “kung flu”. As a movie fan, I strongly believe that Kung Fu flicks occupy its well-deserved canto in the global entertainment scene. Such xenophobic slur is an admission that Chinese kung fu indeed has great cultural influence in the American society.

The present enhanced quarantine period imposed by the Philippine government made us glued to classic martial art motion pictures courtesy of Celestial Movies Pinoy, a 24/7 Tagalized movie channel which offers, among other presentations, classic and blockbuster kung fu movies.

Watching kung fu shows with my 15 year-old daughter Sophia in this lock-up seems an endless happy bonding moment between us, father and daughter.

While every father-daughter bond is inimitable, there are things that solidifies us especially in turbulent and anxious times like this in the middle of coronavirus. In me and my youngest child’s case, it is also something that originates from China (actually Hong Kong): Kung Fu movies. Allow me to share you one of our favorite films from this genre.

The King Boxer was released in 1972 and directed by Chang-Hwa Jeong. The movie has a historical significance since this is the first kung fu movie to receive wide distribution or showing in America. According to some movie historians, this movie perfected the formula of the Shaw Brothers that captured like virus the imagination of the moviegoers. The movie is a revenge drama, it’s a story about two competing martial arts schools, it’s a tournament film, and it’s also a patriotic film about heroic Chinese kung fu fighters resisting dishonorable and murderous Japanese karate experts. This Lo Lieh-starred film’s other title is Five Fingers of Death. It inspired the creator of Marvel’s comic book series Iron Fist and later became a Netflix series.

This and a couple of dozens more kung fu movies bonded us together during this lock-up but we are still looking forward for a movie she already seen without me by her side.

It is titled Come Drink with Me which is according to what I’ve read is not actually, in strict sense of the word, a kung fu movie but an epic wuxia (sword play) masterpiece directed by King Hu released 6 years before the King Boxer. Come Drink with Me is greatly considered by many as one of the greatest Hong Kong films ever made. Set during the Ming Dynasty, the movie stars Cheng Pei-pei and Yueh Hua as warriors. Celestial Movies Pinoy will surely play the movie again, hopefully towards the end of this period of quarantine or in one weekend in the future. She loved it because the lead actor there is a woman.

When all of these subside, when this pandemic is over, after a year or so, may this daughter and father tandem be able to visit Avenue of Stars along the Victoria Harbour waterfront in Hong Kong. The world's showcase of kung fu artifacts and memorabilias.

Our fathers are our ultimate heroes. The ones who always guide us. Kung fu movies were part of my childhood and by introducing them to her, I gave her a portion of my existence as a human being. There is something special in a father-daughter relationship, whether we believe it or not.

For they will seek a part of us in every special man they will meet along the way in the future…  

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Photo: Kung Fu Kingdom. com

References: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3052830/hong-kong-martial-arts-cinema-why-king-boxer-1972-aka-five

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-us-white-house-racism-reporter-latest-a9407141.html

Chess and Coping-Up with Corona

The local government units should stop sending health professionals to the checkpoints, the pharmacists, doctors, nurses and midwives.  The checkpoints should be manned by security people and the BHWs, the Barangay Health Emergency Response Team or BHERT or the so-called non-medical manpower. Those personnel in the checkpoints could easily facilitate or direct the people who have medical conditions or suspected to be having certain health issues. The health professionals will be outright exposed at the checkpoints and that is bad.

Like in the game of chess, the medical manpower are your key and powerful pieces. They have the power and moves that could well protect their co-equals (read: fellow health professionals in hospitals) and the King (read: patient; health measures) in the middle game or end game. When things come to worst, the immediate attendants of patients become patients themselves. That is a zugzwang, as what the chess players would call such situation.

True change in health care systems through the implementation of rights-based approaches to health must start with a reflection upon this present predicament the world is facing and must harness the existence and visibility of the health profession.

As every chess player knows, we cannot afford the virus to checkmate us or allow its pawns or thorns reached the last file and get promoted.

Sending the health professionals away from health facilities may exhaust them, and be tired enough to face and keep on the latter part of the war. Sending them to checkpoints discriminate them in a way.

At least as far as I am concerned as a fan of chess.

While in quarantine, my little chess player, Sophia, is polishing her games through the net. As what my good friend and her mentor Mr. Emmanuel Asi puts it, we must now adopt the chess master’s patience. Mr. Asi hopes that that those in the frontlines value patience in every stations they are deployed.

The great chess master Bent Larsen said: “Lack of patience is probably the most common reason for losing a game, or drawing games that should have been won.” This is the call of the time for our present-day heroes in the battlefields.

"COVID-19 cannot defeat chess,” said NCFP executive director Cliburn Orbe. “Our chess will continue despite the COVID crisis. We will show the world that chess is above all other sports because it can also be an e-sport played online," according to Philippine Star article last March 20, 2020.

Chess tactics, indeed, could also help us combat this pandemic.

But the chess players should also heed to precautionary measures from health experts: "Do not touch your face!" This habit of chess players is a no-no in this turbulent time of the pandemic.

"Of course we touch our faces. That much is clear,” Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the No. 6-ranked classical chess player, said in French in an article published at the Wall Street Journal in April 22, 2020. “We have habits while playing that are impossible to break. Thinking with a hand on your chin or on your forehead is a reflex.”  Keep safe my chess playing friends!

COVID-19 for sure taught humanity, those into chess or otherwise, that we have bad habits to break for our own survival...

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(Photo: CTTO)

The COVID-19 Nightmare and the Mangyans

I once worked for and with the Mangyans of Occidental Mindoro and even from the confines of my comfortable home today, I can’t help thinking about them with regards to the recent global outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. This includes Berto, the Tao-Buid tribesman and the unidentified Fufuama (tribal elder) sitting next to him as shown in the picture above. 

While the mainstream local governments are busy with all their efforts to “flatten the curve” of the drastic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the already marginalized, geographically isolated and disadvantaged population of IPs are again apparently being neglected and abandoned, here and maybe elsewhere.

With the full implementation and the legal fruits of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act or the RA 8371 is still to be fully enjoyed, the indigenous political structure they have been aspiring for still cannot gain equal opportunities as they have in the dominant civil authority or government. This ecologically-fragile island is home to more or less two thousand individual IPs and I believe that it is imperative that any government response to the pandemic should address the needs of all Filipinos, including our IPs, the Mangyans.

The most needed act of immediate and impactful relief to indigenous peoples/indigenous cultural communities (IP/ICCs) is by way of emergency relief in the form of food supply, specifically rice. Next is sustained health interventions in line with defeating this dreaded COVID-19.

This tragedy and health debacle that the world face today further isolated our brethren IPs from total human progress the rest of the modern world could offer. Because of the enhanced quarantine strictly implemented from the smallest sitio in rural areas of the country, to exclusive villages of the elites in the urban centers, the Mangyans cannot go to town and sell their produce, handicrafts, animals and crops to earn a living. They also cannot work as daily wage earner in the nearby barrio. The situation of hunger is more distressing than the virus itself.

May I earnestly appeal to civic organization and welfare institutions to please find ways to help the Mangyans by way of establishing a wide network of mission partners towards this end. This must start from religious organizations who have Mangyan ministries, the LGUs’ Mangyan affairs offices, the M or PSWDOs, the tribal Filipino organizations in coordination with the NCIP and your respective IPMRs. I just do not know.

But at the height of this emotional and invisible devastation, the Mangyans just stayed foot, waiting what will happen next. This virus caught them flatfooted and their totally livable customary practices are being affected.

The Mangyans are now at risk and isolated more than ever. They are extremely susceptible to disease not only because of lack of health interventions from the government solely aimed at them and their situation. The Mangyans, especially those in the wild are unaware of what is happening in the world because they have no means to see or understand to look beyond the global window. God forbids, if the Mangyans get infected, their whole tribe could easily be infected and decimated by COVID-19.

Nothing is heard of from National Commission for the Indigenous Peoples or NCIP on this note. Seldom in the news we can read about COVID-19 and the IPs and how it affects them. Such absence of anything from the commission would not flatten the curve of the pandemic, ever.

A human rights-based approach in regulating this pandemic is imperative aside from welfare-oriented ones. This cannot be against the rule of law and human rights protection. This is not Martial Law, the previlege of Writ of Habeas Corpus is still in effect. A certain top official of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) should know this.

I cannot imagine how these IP/ICCs will go against COVID-19. Our public health system is truly frightening, especially when the weakest among our brethren have nothing to buy essential commodities in this time of COVID-19.

With or without the risk of COVID-19, the IP/ICCs are experiencing lack of water access, poor health conditions, and malnourished children making them particularly susceptible to a COVID-19 outbreak. The immediate thing we could do is to give them food and nourishment to capacitate their immune system. If cases would start in the IP areas, with such vulnerability, a real catastrophe will fall upon them. It will create havoc in their communities. With that, the Mangyans will be erased from the face of the island.

I am saying this taking the risks of being branded as alarmist and/or conspiracy theorist.

Pray with me that this may not happen…

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(Photo: Occidental Mindoro Getaways)