Sad stories

Some movies are sad in a shameless, manipulative way that's unintentionally funny, like Love Story and Titanic.  Then there are movies that earn tears honestly.  Like this anime Grave of the Fireflies, about two doomed orphan kids in wartime Japan.  Or some of the Italian movies directed by Vittorio di Sica, like The Children Are Watching or Umberto D. (His The Bicycle Thief was so sad that I couldn't bear to see it again.)

Some sad songs get to me.  Like when I was twelve I heard this '50s song "Teen Angel," which made a big impression on me.  And there's "Red River Valley," the original country song. (Someone said that country songs are about "hurtin'.")

When I was researching my Ph.D. thesis about the Chinese treaty port of Chongqing, I encountered a really sad story.  Among some Chinese businessmen there was a practice known as "name-selling," in which they created a company that was effectively in their hands but had a foreigner as figurehead, for the real or imagined benefits of being a foreign business and being represented by foreign consuls.

There was one case in Chongqing of an English drunk on his last legs who became such a figurehead in return for enough money to live on.  After his death, the British consulate arranged his affairs.  His Chinese backers had put up a bond in his name, and the money was used to repay his creditors, who were lucky enough to get three-quarters of what they were owed.  The detail I remember is a list of his assets for selling off, including several dishes, mostly broken.

History is about people like this as much as anyone.