Wowah! did a Chinese American women really just won best director?! That’s pretty cool.

I don’t know how Hollywood works, in tech, IMHO, it will be very rare for you to find such a young director as Chloe Zhao directing such an old talent like McDermott… But they make it work. I can’t wait to actually see the pic.

Honestly, the Oscar is so political. Right after the winning announcement, the American news started reporting how People’s Republic of China blocked news of this event and may be suppressing viewing of this year’s Best Picture, the same Nomadland directed by Zhao. It’s unfortunate that this artist has garnered such honor at such a time when Chinese Americans live in fear of being targeted for beatings because of their faces or names. The encouragement to stand up to bullying and to be great Americans is empowering and does liberate as.

Her acceptance speech referencing 三字经, though translates to “3 letter classics” is actually a fairly modern, maybe at most a millennium old. The collection of Chinese wisdom in three-character triplets is written for childrens’ early childhood education. This document is surely controversial: “is that Confucian? ‘Cos we’ve been hearing that the Confucian Institute is a spy and propaganda agency of P.R. Of China, is she here to disseminate subliminal support for communism?” One might overhear… One could also question the provenance of various bits of this extremely abbreviated cliff notes. “Was it really at birth of human? Or was it at creation of human (like in the time of Eden) that humans were kind?” A more erudite person may be heard inquiring. (But for her, it was probably taught as she speaks it, at birth, because communists are not Christian, duh)

But above all those evil noises, she finishes her speech with flourish. What a wonderful award event!

Btw, McDermott’s wolf howl and best actress speech was also very unique… People might interpret her “I like to work…” spiel as meaning that she felt that she did the work to deserve the award of the Best. But from the trailer, it seems that this is a line from the movie, maybe she wasn’t being arrogant, there may be a real message here about nomads and other bigger social issues. I look forward to watching the movie to find out.