Word: mingly
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...Ming, his students like to say, is "half man, half amazing." But when he's breaking boulders with his skull or flying above ground upside down in a full split, that hardly does him justice. Even when he holds still (which isn't often), the 37-year-old Shaolin Temple fighting monk manages to look more mythical than mortal. He's got the face of a Xian terra-cotta warrior?acrobatically piked eyebrows, rampart-like cheekbones?and the kind of body that helps explain why kung fu is called...
Silence can be deafening in Tsai Ming-liang's films. The award-winning Taiwanese director will often have a character simply walk through a park, with no dialogue at all. His movies don't explain, they make the audience work for meaning. Though critics sometimes accuse him of pointing a camera at nothing, he clearly knows how to create something from the void. What Time Is It There?, his seventh film, is a visual feast on love, death and loneliness...
...that she, too, is a spy. In June she left for the United States and self-imposed exile. Yes, the big picture now is that China is open. But that can hardly be taken for granted. "For the moment, we are beginning a period of openness," says Tsai, the Ming dynasty historian. "But there is always a challenge: another group afraid of opening up, afraid of threats to stability...
...Zheng He's trials began early. He was born in 1371, during the first years of the Ming dynasty, to an Islamic family in what is now the western province of Yunnan. (His name at birth was Ma He.) When the Ming armies moved into the region to wipe out the last vestiges of Mongol influence, 11-year-old Ma gained the attention of a conquering general. He was taken back to Nanjing, where he became a page to a young prince, known as Zhu Di. He was castrated and destined for a life serving with other eunuchs...
...initial expedition, which began in 1405, he set out to find the deposed Emperor, Yongle's nephew, who was thought to have taken refuge somewhere in Southeast Asia. The voyage was also a chance for the young dynasty to show the world the power and capability of the Ming ruler. This was a China on the rise, a nation striving to return to the glory of the high Tang dynasty, when Chinese troops occupied territory as far away as today's Iran. Zheng He supervised the building of the fleet of "treasure ships," which assembled before embarking at the port...