{"id":126,"date":"2007-08-07T19:34:04","date_gmt":"2007-08-08T00:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/08\/07\/stuck-elevator-the-super-heroic-stationary-journey-of-ming-kuang-chen-in-opera\/"},"modified":"2007-08-07T19:45:22","modified_gmt":"2007-08-08T00:45:22","slug":"stuck-elevator-the-super-heroic-stationary-journey-of-ming-kuang-chen-in-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/07\/stuck-elevator-the-super-heroic-stationary-journey-of-ming-kuang-chen-in-opera\/","title":{"rendered":"Stuck Elevator: The Super-Heroic Stationary Journey of Ming Kuang Chen (in Opera!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ming<\/a>Ming Kuang Chen — the Chinese deliveryman who was stuck in an elevator for more than three days in 2005 — has apparently become quite the muse for creative artists. A movie script is in development, I’ve heard. I have a whole chapter in my book wrapped around him. And he also has been the solo character of an opera called “Stuck Elevator: The Super-Heroic Stationary Journey of Ming Kuang Chen”<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0which played in Seattle in June of 2006, and is further development. Byron Au Yong is the composer and <\/font>Aaron Jafferis is the librettist. <\/font><\/p>\n

Carolyn Li of The Northwest Asian Weekly (where the photo at the left of Xike Xin as Chen is from) writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the show, the character of Chen sings a song called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Disappear\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while he waits in the elevator. He ponders why no one has found him, when he will be missed and how he exists only because his wife and son need him. <\/font>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think viewers will relate to Chen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emotions and hopes and have a deeper understanding of the hardships and risks people still take to live and work in this country,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said the show\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s costume designer, Michelle Kumata, a fourth-generation Asian American. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I relate Chen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story to my grandparents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and great-grandparents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 stories of their struggles immigrating, working and surviving in the States in the early 1900s, and the difficulties with culture, racism and language,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story shows that not much has changed in the present day.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I actually snuck into the security office to see what was wrong with the security cameras — if anything. They were all completely functioning and you could look right into the elevator he was in (among\u00c2\u00a0 a dozen cameras and some were a bit dark). The hourly “security guards” with the clip-on ties didn’t look so incredibly diligent. I did notice that they were eating fried chicken wings and fried\u00c2\u00a0rice from\u00c2\u00a0the local Chinese\u00c2\u00a0take-out.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0What I like about the opera is that Ming is wearing a similar jacket, dark blue with and white stripes, as Ming himself was that day.<\/p>\n

Again. It’s interesting to see how delivery men are invisible, as I’ve observed before.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ming Kuang Chen — the Chinese deliveryman who was stuck in an elevator for more than three days in 2005 — has apparently become quite the muse for creative artists. A movie script is in development, I’ve heard. I have a whole chapter in my book wrapped around him. And he also has been the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-fujianese"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2pydS-22","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}