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liehtzu

liehtzu

About Me

Teacher of English in Asia. Have lived in Thailand, Vietnam, Bahrain, South Korea, and the UK. I write and do a little photography in my spare time.Some photography from travels in Asia and Europe:west sichuan provinceyunnan provincesichuan provincelitang town, sichuan provinceguangxi provinceguangxi provincelijiang, yunnan provincerural laosmekong river, laoshoi an, vietnamhanoi, vietnamlaostemple, north thailandgyeongju, south koreachungju, south koreanear jiri mountain, south koreawest mongoliawest mongoliawest mongoliawest mongoliawest mongoliawest mongoliaromaniaoscwiecim (auschwitz), polandromania

My Interests

Travel, film, literature, poetry, photography, music, writing, whiskey, women.

I'd like to meet:

People who step out of line.

Music:

Tindersticks, Mountain Goats, Afghan Whigs, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead, Nina Simone, Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Nat "King" Cole, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Eleni Karaindrou, James Brown, Edith Piaf, Sarah Vaughn, David Bowie, Jose Gonzalez, Marvin Gaye, Oscar Peterson, Talking Heads, The Smiths, The Cure, Sigur Ros, Arcade Fire, Ramones, Twilight Singers, Beirut, Jens Lekman, Iron & Wine, Scott Walker, Curtis Mayfield, Barry White, Isaac Hayes, Bill Withers, Pixies, UK Subs, Patrik Fitzgerald, Daniel Johnston, Lou Barlow, The Kinks, The Who, Bob Dylan, Arab Strap, Dog Faced Hermans, Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Lee Morgan, Al Green, Lou Reed, Velvet Underground, Van Morrison, Taraf De Haidouks, Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, The Clash, The Beach Boys, Bach, Beethoven, Sibelius, Franck, Debussy, Grieg, Satie, Schubert, Janacek, Smetana, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Rubbra, Takemitsu, Tsintsadze, Nielsen, Bruchner, Vivaldi, Brahms, Mozart

Movies:

Robert Bresson, John Ford, Andrei Tarkovsky, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, Frank Borzage, Victor Sjostrom, Edward Yang, Max Ophuls, Hou Hsiao-hsien, FW Murnau, Hong Sang-soo, Im Sang-soo, Im Kwon-taek, Bae Yong-kyun, Chris Marker, Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Max Linder, Lee Chang-dong, Park Kwang-soo, Bahman Ghobadi, Fritz Lang, Joseph von Sternberg, Naruse Mikio, Ozu Yasujiro, Mizoguchi Kenji, Alfred Hitchcock, Kurosawa Akira, Luchino Visonti, Terrence Malick, Imamura Shohei, Shinoda Masahiro, Ichikawa Kon, Jacques Tourneur, Todd Browning, King Vidor, Otar Iosseliani, Anthony Mann, Tran Anh Hung, Satyajit Ray, Nicholas Ray, Jia Zhangke, Ken Loach, Abbas Kiarostami, Jacques Tati, Jean Renoir, Jules Dassin, Jacques Becker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Gianni Amelio, Sergio Leone, Vittorio De Sica, Ermanno Olmi, Roberto Rossellini, Darezhan Omirbaev, Jan Svankmajer, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Theo Angelopoulos, Maurice Pialat, Koreeda Hirokazu, Lucian Pintilie, Miklos Jancso, Tony Gatlif, Keith Gordon, Wes Anderson, Jiri Menzel, Luis Bunuel, Victor Erice.

Television:

Threw it out the window.

Books:

Kawabata Yasunari, Tanazaki Junichiro, Mishima Yukio, Kono Taeko, Hayashi Fumiko, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Oe Kanzaburo, WB Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore, Orhan Pamuk, Jaroslav Seifert, Miroslav Holub, Slavko Mihalic, Jose Saramago, Ivo Andric, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Julio Cortazar, Arthur Rimbaud, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke, Forough Farrokhzad, Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Danilo Kis, Bruno Schulz, Nguyen Huy Thiep, Duong Thu Huong, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Slavko Mihalic, Tadeusz Rozewicz, Ingeborg Bachmann, Ivan Bunin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Osip Mandelstam, Henry Miller, Li Po, Po Chu-i, Wang Wei, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Basho Matsuo, George Seferis, Zbigniew Herbert, Mikhail Bulgakov, Paul Celan, Vasko Popa, Isaac Babel, Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, Boris Pasternak, Nikolai Gogol, Afanasy Fet, Nikolai Leskov, Paul Eluard, Gao Xingjian, George Orwell, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Anna Akhmatova, Henry David Thoreau, Patrick White.

Heroes:

BRESSON TARKOVSKY FORD OZU MIZOGUCHI LUBITSCH CHAPLIN CHAPLIN AND LINDER STURGES MURNAU HAWKS KEATONNARUSE SJOSTROM BORZAGE ROSSELLINI TATI BUNUEL HONG WEERASETHAKUL MAKHMALBAF HOUKAWABATA HAYASHI GOMBROWICZ HERBERT PAMUK STEINBECK CORTAZAR BACHMANN FARROKHZAD TOER POPA ELUARD WHITE

My Blog

Two Recent Korean Films

HAPPINESS (Hur Jin-ho) - Manipulative but effective weeper from the king of such movies. Hur pretty much created the blueprint for the Korean soap with his Christmas in August, though his endless stre...
Posted by liehtzu on Mon, 12 May 2008 10:02:00 PST

the lao the lao

With the glee of a naughty sprite I await my return to Laos for the new year. The gentle, terribly sleepy Lao people will rise from their torpor to enact the ancient ritual that is the water...
Posted by liehtzu on Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:55:00 PST

ah, so i have returned to the computer after all

like the hypocrite i am. but i am also thankfully spending less time on it. and now for some brief thoughts on the lao people for your enjoyment, dear readers.
Posted by liehtzu on Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:37:00 PST

On Listening to Doris Lessings Recent Nobel Lecture at 2:30 AM Last Night

We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the ...
Posted by liehtzu on Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:28:00 PST

Lord Byron

I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. ...
Posted by liehtzu on Sat, 08 Mar 2008 09:17:00 PST

Child in Mango Tree

With her, on the island. She's modest, quiet - too quiet, even. I can barely hear her. I listen to her, though, she has things to say in her quiet manner and if I don't hear it all I usually get the i...
Posted by liehtzu on Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:42:00 PST

"Professor of Literature"

He is the great solemn patriarch of the written word.   He guards the gates.   He is the bastion of taste against the whooping savage hordes.   He stands firm.   He peers out o...
Posted by liehtzu on Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:30:00 PST

William Butler Yeats

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUSI went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And mot...
Posted by liehtzu on Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:01:00 PST

George Seferis

INTERLUDE OF JOY That whole morning we were full of joy, my God, how full of joy.First, stones leaves and flowers shonethen the suna huge sun all thorns and so high in the sky.A nymph collected our ca...
Posted by liehtzu on Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:00:00 PST

Li Po

SOMETHING SAID, WAKING DRUNK ON A SPRING DAY It's like boundless dream here in thisworld, nothing anywhere to trouble us.I have, therefore, been drunk all day, a shambles of sleep on the front porch.C...
Posted by liehtzu on Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:59:00 PST