Aping a Beauty
By Ms. Wu March 13th, 2003
Greetings, dear Reader. Some may wander through the Zen garden and rake sand to find inner tranquility and others may meditate under the weeping willow by the creek full of cavorting fat carp fish. But I wax philosophic on the following photograph:
Who is who? For the discerning popular culturalist, s/he would correctly identify Lisa Ling, ex-co-host of The View on ABC as the one on the left; and Lucy Liu, the infamous actress known for portraying Ling, Dragon Lady extraordinaire, on Ally McBeal as the one on the right.
Perhaps Ms. Wu has sleep in her eyes, but for a great while, I was under the impression that these two women were the same person. They both seem to be popular with American mainstream culture and with mens magazines. A rather curious coincidence indeed that recalls an old Chinese folklore called aping a beauty.
Folklore notes a famous beauty named Xi Shi whose beauty was unrivaled in all of old China. Unluckily for Xi Shi, she also suffered horribly from an ailment of the heart and was often seen clutching her chest and wincing in pain with pinched brows. A neighborhood girl who did not know Xi Shis health condition misconstrued her wincing face and clutching bosoms for gestures worthy of imitating. So she began to walk about the village aping the beauty to ridicule and unfortunate results.
Now, I wonder, who is aping whom?
Til next time,
Ms. Wu
vinni says:
July 27th, 2007 at 10:41 am‘waxing philosophical’ would be a better adaptation of ‘waxing lyrical’.
cheers,
vjk
Tereza Sykorova says:
November 7th, 2008 at 7:39 amI think that Lisa Ling’s face is a little longer and she looks more like a mature woman while Lucy Liu looks more girly.
ale violetsky says:
February 17th, 2009 at 11:17 pmhi, ms. wu just a question, are you from hanna alberta?
boo boo says:
November 7th, 2009 at 11:29 pmwhere is miss wu? has she re tired?
floydo says:
June 14th, 2010 at 5:05 pmthe difference is, who would you have sex with…….
Xiao yun says:
August 10th, 2010 at 10:14 pmJust for general information; Xi Shi did not suffer from ‘an ailment of the heart’. The correct translation of that
term in the text (originally from the book of Zhuang zi), would be ‘heartburn’.
Aside from that, great story.
陈馨宇 says:
August 24th, 2010 at 11:57 pm在我看来，这两位是一个人，只是一个是化妆前一个是化妆后的效果。@_@好眼晕喔
curious says:
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:42 amHi, I just discovered this blog. Coincidentally, my parents are Chinese and my last name is also Wu, so people do call me Ms. Wu, but anyway, I’m wondering—is Ms. Wu (in this blog) a real person? I’m thinking that she is a fictional character.
deletist says:
March 1st, 2011 at 1:25 amThat made me laugh…i thought the same thing!
Marjorie says:
March 12th, 2011 at 10:02 amOMG!!! I’m not one of those non-Asian people who think they “all look same” at all, but damn if I didn’t also think these two women were the same person!
I really thought it was great that this actress had such a huge passion for current events.
I used to wonder how the heck this energetic lady managed to do The View, kick ass in Kill Bill, travel the world doing interesting stories and get captured by the North Koreans (oh wait, that’s the third one the sister of one of them, right?)
nonymous says:
February 28th, 2014 at 6:23 pmI don’t get it. How could people think those photographs are of the same person?
Chen Xinyu, I’d agree that heavily made-up and sometimes digitally altered photographs often used of celebrities makes it harder to identify them. If this was a before and after though, there would have been quite a bit of photoshop – their faces are not even the same proportion.
Hm, doing an image search suggests that someone has changed the proportions of these images slightly, perhaps this is what makes this particular image difficult for some?