Living color 鲜活的色彩

Reader question:

Please explain “living color” in “seeing Beijing’s autumn in living color”.

My comments:

Many people say Beijing’s autumn is its best of the four seasons. Trees turn yellow and red, plus every other hue in between. For a brief month or two, Beijing is colorful, colorful and bright, bright and vibrant, feverishly so.

Imagine someone from Guangdong Province, for example, visiting Beijing for the first time. Guangdong, of course, is green throughout the year. So someone from Guangdong visiting Beijing right now will be amazed at the bright, shiny colors of the trees here.

Oh, living color.

Seeing something in living color means seeing it in real life, seeing it showing its bright shiny colors and its vitality.

Living as in alive, showing life, as against being dead and lifeless.

Compare watching tropical fish swim in a fish tank with seeing some of them on the chopping board in a wet market, for example, and you’ll notice the difference.

Well, fish swimming in the fish tank or, best, in the sea are having a good time, showing their bright living colors literally. Dead fish in the market? Well, they are dead, lifeless and definitely not shiny.

That’s the difference between living color and the color of the dead and lifeless.

In other words, seeing Beijing in living color is experiencing it and that’s quite different from hearing about it or watching it in a movie or on television.

All right, here are media examples of people and things “in living color”:

1. The tournament seeped into their DNA early, a shimmering light and joyful noise that at once seemed an unreachable mirage and close enough to touch. It beckoned them forward, inspiring the first steps of a journey that became their profession.

Bill Keller and George McGinnis had parallel basketball careers in many respects. They led their Washington High School teams to the state championship in their respective senior seasons. They were voted Mr. Basketball, symbolic of being the best player in the state, and the passing years would confirm that opinion. They had standout college careers at Purdue and Indiana respectively, earning individual national recognition, and then joined forces on Pacers teams that won ABA championships.

They’re also in lockstep in the opinion that winning the state high school tournament was a highlight never to be exceeded. Keller did it in 1965, leading the Continentals to a 29-2 record. McGinnis did it in 1969, leading one of the greatest high school teams in the state's history to a 31-0 record. Now that sufficient time has passed to bring their basketball careers into perspective, the light and noise have not dimmed.

Keller and McGinnis will headline the next Hickory Night celebration at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Friday when the Pacers play Sacramento and Washington’s championship teams are honored. Several of their teammates will be on hand as well, players who were essential to the championships, many of whom had distinguished careers of their own.

Keller was joined in the starting lineup by Ralph Taylor, who also played at Purdue; Marvin Winkler, who played 20 games for the Pacers in the 1971-72 season; Trester Award winner Eddie Bopp; and Bill Rogers, who went on to play for Vincennes University. McGinnis’ teammates included Steve Downing, who became an All-American center at IU and a first-round draft pick of the Celtics in ’73; Wayne Pack, who played 21 games for the Pacers in the 1974-75 season; Louie Day, who attended IU on a football scholarship, and Jim Arnold, who also played collegiately.
Keller will fly up from his winter home in Florida and McGinnis will drive in from his home in Indianapolis, but they would go to just about any length to relive the memories with their teammates.

“There was nothing like it,” McGinnis said. “There was an innocence to it. It was something I grew up with that was ingrained in all of us. It was something we dreamed about, being able to play on TV one day. That was the biggest thing in the world at that time.”

Keller would agree. For both, the high school championship represented the culmination of a childhood dream.

Keller grew up watching the tournament on television, and then, around fifth grade, began attending it with his father back when the finals were a one-day event that filled Butler’s fieldhouse.

“He dangled that carrot in front of me, and it was something I wanted to be involved in,” Keller said. “I dreamed about it. I’d often go out and play by myself, and I’d put myself at the free throw line with a chance to win the state tournament. And whether you made the shot or missed, you’d laugh about it. You’d do that over and over.

“There wasn’t a day that went by as a kid that I didn’t put myself in the state finals. Especially at the free throw line. I had put myself in a situation to play in the state finals and maybe win the state finals with a free throw.”

As a sophomore and junior, Keller was one of the varsity letter winners from city schools entrusted with working the final four games as an usher. One of the duties was to hold the ropes after the game to keep fans from running onto the court and join the celebration. That required sitting on the edge of the court halfway through the final quarter, to be in position when the game ended. From there, his dream played out in front of him in living color, just a few yards away.

He watched Muncie Central and its future Mr. Basketball, Rick Jones, win in 1963, then watched Lafayette Jeff and its future Mr. Basketball, Denny Brady, win in ’64. From those experiences, along with the childhood fantasies he had conjured in his solitary hours with a ball and basket, it all felt familiar when he got his chance to play in the game ’65.

“The first time I went to the line in the state finals, I had been there many, many times – in my mind,” he said. “I wasn’t really nervous going to the free throw line, because I had been there.”

- For Keller and McGinnis, Memories of Winning State Never Faded, NBA.com, January 25, 2017.

2. A 61-year-old Arkansas man convicted of committing murder 25 years ago was sentenced to death Monday.

A District Court jury last week convicted Charles Conner of first-degree murder and two counts of sexual assault for raping and beating 23-year-old Beth Lynn Jardine to death with a claw hammer in 1985.

The jury of 11 women and one man handed down the death sentence after about four hours of deliberation.

Afterward, Jardine’s parents and one of her brothers, who attended every day of the trial and the subsequent penalty phase, said they felt justice was served.

“It is a relief,” said the slaying victim’s mother, Linda Jardine. “I still feel a little staggered by the evidence we saw in the trial. I think we knew all the facts of her death. But seeing them in living color was pretty shocking.

“I’m really thankful for the jury,” said the mother, whose testimony during the penalty phase brought at least four jurors and the defendant to tears.

- Charles Conner Nevada Death Row, MyCrimeLibrary.com, April 24, 2017.

3. The streets are full of protesters decrying police violence and challenging America’s legacy of systemic racism. Across Georgia, citizens lined up for hours waiting to exercise their hard-won right to vote in the face of obstacles thrown up by panicked state officials. Some of America’s biggest brands and institutions are scrambling to stay ahead of the seismic shift in public opinion around race and policing that’s happening under their feet.

All this is what legendary civil rights leader and current Congressman John Lewis would call “good trouble.” Lewis has devoted his life to advancing the cause of equality and social justice through nonviolence, and, on July 3, a new documentary celebrates that legacy with revealing new footage and an up-close look at John Lewis, the gentle man who has kicked up so much ruckus.

John Lewis: Good Trouble is a documentary directed by Dawn Porter for Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media in collaboration with CNN Films, Trilogy Films and Color Farm Media. The project is actually the combination of two proposed Lewis documentaries – one by Porter and Trilogy’s Laura Michalchyshyn, and one by Color Farm’s Erika Alexander and Ben Arnon – who decided to pool resources when they discovered they were working on the same idea. Amy Entelis and Courtney Sexton, who had recently executive produced the Academy Award-nominated, Emmy-winning feature RBG, about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, facilitated the development of the John Lewis project for CNN Films.

“The biggest reason I got involved in this project is because of John Lewis himself,” said Porter. “He’s such a towering figure, and I knew that by partnering with CNN Films, I’d be able to explore not only his past, but his present as well, that we would also have access to the archival resources at CNN Worldwide. John Lewis has consistently delivered a message of doing your best, being honorable, and respecting others for the past 65+ years. I think it’s really needed at this particular moment in history.”

...

Alexander said that resilience and patience represents the essence of Lewis’s character and his continued effectiveness as an activist and a legislator over a 60+ year career in public life. “We need to see him in living color, as the blueprint for how to triumph over adversity,” she said. “He doesn’t see setbacks, he sees obstacles to be overcome. We kept asking him if he ever gets tired, and he always says no. I hope that today’s activists learn from his persistence. His legacy won’t die with him; it will continue.”

The film itself does a good job reconciling John Lewis the legend with John Lewis the man. We get glimpses of Lewis in his congressional office joking with his staff, celebrating the victory of candidates he supported in the 2018 election, and, most powerfully, reminiscing in a very personal way when shown archival footage from his youthful days.

- Civil Rights Icon John Lewis Stirs Up ‘Good Trouble’ In Timely New Documentary, Forbes.com, June 11, 2020.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣 编辑：丹妮）