Ju Dou (1990)

So, the crowd gathered for Restaurant Week (at a place where the food was okay but not fabulous), and then adjourned to Starbucks. This time, no one was expounding on crazy theories about how he wanted to find a girl from a rural village in China with what he thought of as "traditional values" (i.e., stand by your man no matter what) -- a view which was actually a little scary given that these thoughts were apparently triggered by the movie Ju Dou.



For those unfamiliar with the story, Ju Dou stars Li Gong as Ju Dou, a young woman who lives in a rural village in China. Lacking money, education, transportation, integrity and guts, Ju Dou is trapped in a marriage with an evil, abusive older man. So she hooks up with a young man in the village, an employee of her husband, and the two lovers set up shop (so to speak) under the same roof as the cuckholded husband. They conceive a child together, who is wongly attributed to the husband. This "love child" grows up to be as evil as the husband, and he ultimately kills his natural father, thus sabotaging any last hope for happiness for Ju Dou.

To my way of thinking, the only "traditional value" that Ju Dou had in this movie was beauty. She lacked fidelity, courage, honesty and just about every other virtue I can think of as desirable in a spouse.

Moving on to happier topics. John (pictured below) was a chemistry teacher for decades at LaGuardia High Scool. He thought he was marrying one of his own kind (i.e., another teacher), but ended up married to the "enemy" -- his wife eventually crossed over to the dark side and became a principal! His wife has also retired now, so that source of friction has been smoothed over. Pictured with John is Carolyn, whom John and his wife took under their collective wing 20 years ago when she was a student teacher... and they mentored her so well that she left the teaching profession entirely. Oh well.