The coronavirus is likely to reshape architecture.Wario is the central antagonist of the Five Nights at Wario's, and the most recurring character.Meet the high-finance mogul in charge of our economic recovery.Trump is helping tycoons who have donated to his reëlection campaign exploit the pandemic to maximize profits.A pregnant pediatrician on what children need during the crisis.It is not too late to ask what they really want. We should look to students to conceive of appropriate school-reopening plans.To protect American lives and revive the economy, Donald Trump and Jared Kushner should listen to Anthony Fauci rather than trash him.“And, getting older, I feel like it’s easier on the joints.” ♦ “It’s more of a noncombative feeling of poetry in motion.” He laughed. “The medicine guy said, ‘I suggest you do less kung fu and more meditative work.’ The gardening motions with the hand tools I use are similar to the martial arts-the posture, the breathing, the relaxation.” He looked contemplative. “A few years ago, I did this documentary”-“Secrets of Shaolin with Jason Scott Lee”-“at Shaolin Temple, in China,” Lee said. “Blueberries-they’re kind of fickle.” He continued on: mamaki tree, curry-leaf tree, mulberry bush, Hapu’u tree ferns, rainwater-fed reservoir. “I’m trying a new strain of taro,” he said. (Others did, too “Mulan” ’s eventual release was streaming only.) He recovered, and the family returned to Hawaii indefinitely-“The kids can run around”-and, now that his energy is back, he’s gardening again. In the spring, when “Mulan” was supposed to come out, he went to London for the première and came back with Covid. In recent years, he and his family have lived in Singapore, and then in San Diego. Here’s some of my old tomato trellises and stuff.” Lee’s garden is overgrown. It’s kind of a pain in the butt, because it grows so rapidly up here. “This is some Kahili ginger, yellow flowers in bloom. “There’s a very specific, lilting birdsong here”-of the finch-like ’elepaio-“and I fell in love with that.” He headed toward a greenhouse. “It’s up in the rain forest, yeah?” he said. Lee went outside: bright-blue sky, lush vegetation. “After a while, it becomes a part of you,” he said. Other big roles followed: Mowgli, in Disney’s 1994 live-action “Jungle Book” (“Baloo hit me in the chest with his snout”) Aladdin, in an “Arabian Nights” miniseries a kindly Hawaiian surfer (“So, you’re from outer space, huh? I heard the surfing’s choice!”), in Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch.” His relationship with martial arts has continued. But he learned, and in “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story,” from 1993, he flickers between easy, enthusiastic grace and oiled-up action-movie intensity. “I didn’t even want to attempt it.” He also didn’t do martial arts. Then, in 1992, producers asked him to star in a bio-pic-of Bruce Lee. “He just jumped off the screen.” Later, in his own career, opportunities were limited: bit parts on “Matlock” and “The A-Team,” after-school specials. As a kid, he went on, “going to the movie theatre was always a special luxury, not an everyday or even a monthly occurrence.” Asian-Americans in prominent roles were rare, with a key exception: the kung-fu master Bruce Lee. He grew up on Oahu, in a family of seven his parents are of Cantonese and Hawaiian descent. “Hawaiians aren’t given land very readily, so we have to buy it back,” he said, smiling. Lee, fifty-three, and his family live on a twenty-five-acre mountaintop farm he bought the property two decades ago, after a cousin alerted him to it. He got me immersed in the land and what the haka were about.” Like the Maori, and the Hawaiians, Böri Khan knows something about imperialist land grabs: that’s what he’s trying to avenge. “It turned out he was an old friend of mine,” Lee said. Caro (“Whale Rider”) is from New Zealand, where much of “Mulan” was filmed, and for inspiration she sent Lee to a master of the Maori warrior dance, the haka. “In contrast to the animation, where the bad guy was a big, hulking monster, we tried to make him very sinewy, sharp, cutting, with a purpose,” Lee said. In the new movie, directed by Niki Caro, Mulan (Liu Yifei) has a female enemy-warrior-mentor (Gong Li) who says things like “Stronger together” and can turn into a flock of birds. In the nineties, “Mulan,” full of sweeping vistas and inspiring songs, was a breakthrough of sorts: a mainstream American movie fuelled by girl power and focussed entirely on Asian characters, even if one, voiced by Eddie Murphy, was a wisecracking dragon named Mushu. Jason Scott Lee Illustration by João Fazenda
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