This word will take me back to China in too few hours:
飞机
FEI JI
Airplane
(Goodbye, America, for another little while. It’s been surreal, but wonderful. And don’t call me Shirley.)
This entry was written by , posted on October 27, 2009 at 2:58 am, filed under chinese, language, travel and tagged airplane, chinese. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Further dispatches from the Hawaii International Film Festival:
HIFF is renowned for its promotion of Asian-American films, as well as American indies with Asian content, and this year’s selection is quite exciting. Two films that have impressed me in particular, both of which have also getting (well deserved) mad awards and press on the festival circuit this year–Made in China and Children of Invention.
Made in China is not, as the title immediately suggests to many people, a profoundly depressing documentary about Chinese factory workers (!!!), but rather a hysterical American-produced comedy about an oddball American entrepreneur on the loose in Shanghai.
Following his lifelong dream to invent novelty products in the tradition of Groucho glasses and slinkees, Johnson (Jackson Kuhne) travels to the motherland of all knick-nack production: good ol’ Zhongguo. What ensues is an always entertaining, often sweet, incredibly original film and one of the most unique American indie comedies I’ve seen in a long time. I may be a teeny tiny bit biased, since this film is about an American (yep) who travels to China (ah-huh) to start a business (mm-hmmm) and encounters a bizarre, inexplicable, frustrating, but sometimes magical world (yeeesh) and I can identify with the story just a smidge, but this is genuine and funny story that also sheds great light on the perils and pitfalls, but also triumphs, of life in China.
The film definitely has the stamp of an American indie comedy, but doesn’t lose itself in superfluous quirkiness. The film has was a huge hit at SXSW this year, winning its Grand Jury prize, which is super exciting for the film and especially for first-time director Judi Krant.
On the other end of the American indie spectrum is Children of Invention, a moving film that shows the American neo-realism movement at its very best. Directed by Tze Chun, the film tells the story of Raymond and Tina, two Chinese-American children who have to fend for themselves when their single mom, Elaine (Cindy Cheung, fragile and startling as a woman who struggles to keep her family afloat) finds herself trapped in a dangerous marketing scam. The film is certainly socially conscious and a powerful immigrant story, but it also shows great heart and prowess as a cinematic work. I was deeply impressed by Tze Chun’s ability to coax such confident and honest performances out of Michael Chen and Crystal Chiu, the respectively twelve and eight-year-old actors who play Raymond and Tina. Children of Invention has had an amazing festival run this year, from Sundance to winning the Puma Emerging Filmmaker award here at HIFF
Children of Invention has definitely garnered comparisons to So Yong Kim’s Treeless Mountain, which was released earlier this year. While the content of the two films is somewhat similar (both present partially autobiographical accounts of Asian/Asian-American siblings abandoned and left to their own devices), I was more struck by the similarities of each film’s calm, graceful pacing and assured storytelling. This films beautifully embody not only the current American neo-realism movement, but also the sophistication and global awareness of today’s American indies.
Seeing MIC, Children of Invention, and even Treeless Mountain, and meeting the fantastic director, producers, and actors who worked to make these films so compelling, gives me enormous faith in the future of American indie cinema. The remarkable ingenuity of these films more than makes up for their minimal budgets and I find it fitting that both the films incorporate themes about invention and innovation. Just as MIC’s Johnson longs to be a novelty inventor and Children of Invention’s Raymond and Tina make and sell toys and inventions to finance their dreams, so do these filmmakers who, even when the odds are stacked against them, rely on great invention and improvisation to create great work.
This entry was written by , posted on October 22, 2009 at 6:41 pm, filed under Uncategorized, adventures, art, film, travel and tagged children of invention, hawaii international film festival, hiff, judi krant, made in china, treeless mountain, tze chun. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
ALOHA! THIS IS A TAXI.*
(As promised…)
Greeting from the Hawaii International Film Festival, where life is really really difficult. Having to choose between going to the beach and seeing movies is harrowing, you guys. Harrowing.
HIFF has proven to be a great festival–really well organized. congenial, and teeming with young, enthusiastic, international filmmakers. I feel very luck to be here, and not just because I got to go surfing yesterday.**
I have seen some great films, including the festival opener–the Korean drama Mother, in which director Bong Joon-ho provides yet another sterling example of how contemporary Korean films can blend dark humor and complex sadness like no other cinema.
I’ve also seen several films about Hawaii–Hawaiian history and statehood specifically, which I knew nothing about until recently. Pidgin, The Voice of Hawaii was screened last night at a sunset beach screening where both the sunset and film showed the best Hawaii has to offer. The film discusses the history and anthropology of Hawaiian pidgin or Creole–one of the last commonly-spoken “local” languages all around Hawaii.
Growing up literally as far away from Hawaii as one can possibly get in the US, I knew admittedly very little about Hawaii’s history and culture (apart from some hula and pineapple stereotypes), but I’ve gotten to know a little bit about the real Hawaii recently–the diversity, the development, and the concerns of Hawaiians as residents of a US state and a unique cultural area. The documentary State of Aloha, while slightly fragmented in narrative, also provides a compelling history of Hawiian statehood and a controversial movement to assert autonomy.
Though I’m essentially staying in a seaside Mall: the Vegas-Disneyworld-Japanese-tourist-Mecca neighborhood of Waikiki (Konichiwa Frat Boys and Japanese chicks wearing taffeta and pink Ugg boots!), I’m hoping to explore some of the older and/or more natural areas of Honolulu.
More to come later…but for now, let me also just say: facebook, avacados, blue skies, The Daily Show=America the Beautiful.
*Except not. Taxis are crazy expensive here. Everything is crazy expensive here.
**It was not what I would describe as a successful surfing adventure, per se, as much as frantic paddling and falling into the water excursion.
This entry was written by , posted on October 20, 2009 at 3:20 am, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I wrote this a while ago and forgot to post it. Just file it away under Strange Retail Experiences Are Things Best Forgotten.
When I first arrived in Beijing, I was agog to find that there was, of all things, an American Apparel store in this fair city.
I was agog not because I would ever underestimate Dov Charney’s plans for evil world domination, but because the central thesis of American Apparel is thus
a.) irony
b.) sex
The Napoleon of creepiness and leggings.
Suffice it to say that these things are not the central thesis of Chinese culture. In fact, they are kind of counter-intuitive to most facets of Chinese culture.
I decided to investigate:
It was all there. So strange, so florescent, so tight! The body stockings and sweatshirts and the vaguely bitchy salespeople and the dressing room mirrors that make anyone feel like the fattest, most repulsive person on the planet!
It was all there except…customers.
So, your average hipster Americano heads over the AA on North 6th and picks up a little number that says I lack imagination, but I can still earn the respect of my peers by appropriating the aesthetics of working class America to fit my svelte frame and obliterated gaze.
As far as I can tell, when a hipster Chinoise walks into AA, they possibly think: OOH! Gold leggings! I will wear these to work, which by the way is a respectable job and not stripping. WAIT, 600 KUAI FOR LEGGINGS WTF I THINK NOT.
This entry was written by , posted on October 12, 2009 at 9:32 am, filed under chinese, style and tagged american apparel, wtf. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The other day, I was at my friend’s house and happened to noticed that she had an email open in her inbox, the title of which was “Holy Shit! Midgets! We’re totally going to Kunming!!!”
I didn’t really want to pry.
But! It turns out that there is a real life dwarf commune in Kunming, China.
More Evidence
Apparently, the citizens of said commune live in little mushroom-shaped houses and dress up to perform for tourists. Either this is Chinese kitsch reaching new and horrifying heights, or a really sly stab at irony.
Is this an actual refuge for little people? A blatant tourist trap? A backwards attempt to glorify vertically-challenged Chinese while actually kind of exploiting them? Totally weird? Something that would probably only happen in China?
Yes.
This entry was written by , posted on October 10, 2009 at 11:00 pm, filed under Uncategorized, adventures, chinese, travel and tagged china, dwarf, kunming. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
And much, much more!
Well, to begin, this week’s word is: 电影节
DIAN YING JIE
Film Festival!
This is KaoKao, the mascot of the Beijing Film Festival. I don’t know what happened to his eye. He won’t tell us.
Apart from being my major reason for coming to Beijing, my work, my social circle, and one of the most fun organizations this side of a honkey tonk, the Beijing Film Fest is also a great community of people with a common goal: to bring great films to Beijing and to introduce the world to contemporary Chinese cinema. Translation of our film festival is actually 北京电影交流网 （Beijing Film Exchange Network), which says a lot about how the fest is viewed totally as a collaborative project, a great reason for people to come together and share ideas. In short, the Beijing Film Festival is totally my BFF (get it?! get it?!).
Perhaps one of the most exciting things about working at a film festival, however, is that you get to go to other film festivals. And film festivals are rarely held in crappy places. They are often held in awesome places LIKE HAWAII WHERE I AM GOING TO THE HAWAII INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL NEXT WEEK.
So, I’m excited. The HIFF is the premiere film festival for Asian cinema in the US and…um…I like Asian cinema. A lot. I am completely psyched to see, among other films: MADE IN CHINA, MOTHER, and many other that have been burning up the festival circuit and/or just haven’t made it to bootleg DVD yet. I am also just a teeny tiny bit excited to see VISAGE, which I may actually just die after seeing especially if any of the following members of the cast and crew are in attendance: My boyfriend Tsai Ming-Liang. My other Boyfriend for the ages, Jean-Pierre Léaud. Everyone’s favorite cougar: Fanny Ardant. Jeanne Fuckin’ Moreau! Am I the only person totally geeking out right now…?
Anyhow, I’ll be in Hawaii for about a week seeing movies and taking names (well, probably business cards…) and this blog will temporarily be transformed into something like “Aloha! This is a taxi*.” In any case, I am not going to the festival merely to loll about and stalk famous directors, but actually to represent and promote a Chinese film called INVISIBLE KILLER （无形杀) which I’ve been working on the promotion and international distribution of for several months now. I promise a much longer post about ‘Invisible Killer’ and many subsequent postings on the goings-on in Hawaii, but for now…please excuse my gloating and glee and geekery.
*On that note, it seems worth mentioning that I don’t really taxis that often in Beijing. I have a glorious bike named Master And Commander (MAC) and I have an inexplicable fondness for the Beijing subway and its daily bouquet of unbelievable body odors. Oh well.
This entry was written by , posted on at 11:34 am, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Due to my crippling fear and loathing of technology, I’m not normally one to geek out about web design. The bloc site We Live in Beijing, however, has a cool, eye-catching layout and a multi-functionality that combines elements of facebook (may we who live in China continue to mourn this loss…), twitter, and any clever news and events source. The site contains especially great previews and reviews of the Beijing music scene, as well as pithy little articles on dating, travel, sex, and all that makes up Beijing life.
Fuck yeah! These guys are all over the China music scene…I have no idea who they are!
While the site is funny and informative and helmed by style-conscious Norwegians, does somehow lend itself to certain stalkerish habits.
As much as we facebook-stalkers of bygone days might have longed for the ability to see who’s been visiting our profile…be careful what you wish for. On weliveinbeijing.com, a member can not only see who’s been visiting their profile of late, but also what any given member is currently doing. If Klaus is looking at Zhang Wei’s profile, I know. If Ning is contributing to a forum entitled “Don’t Marry a Foreign Man,” I know. This is weird and awkward, but just seems to just encapsulate a larger truth about life and love in Beijing: this is a city of creepsters.
Within the expat community, it kind of makes sense. When you have people coming from all directions and cultural backgrounds, you’re going to get some signals mixed and some wires crossed when it comes to communication between and among the sexes. But…also, this seems to be a breeding ground for desperate, tactless losers. New York is not exactly a cathedral of chastity, but I’ve never felt so grossed out when I go out to bars and such. Men have no problem eyeballing you in a way that’s not exactly, um, subtle, saying totally inappropriate shit, and touching you within minutes of meeting you. Mostly it’s harmless and non-aggressive, but sometimes it’s best to signal your friends, do the Wolverine thing with your keys between your fingers, and grab a cab.
I’m not trying to be a puritan here, but the extremely explicit advances and general forwardness, excessive hair gel use, and Chinese dudes’ totally unironic use of the phrase “baby girl, I wanna get wit you” has caught me a bit off guard. (Maybe I’m just used to hanging out with socially-idiotic hipsters for whom eye contact is a notch too intense for bar banter.) To address the social networking thing again, I’ve only just joined weliveinbeijing, but I already have a mailbox full of totally weird messages from men I have never met, none of whom feel compelled to actually spell out the incredibly complicated and lengthy word Y-O-U. From the fairly innocent (What u do? Where u frum, girl?) to the more forward, (”i wish to know u better and be a good friend. you feel it. i feel u. give me cell phone.”…On this one, I couldn’t tell if this person wanted to have sex with me or steal my cell phone.), to the plain inexplicable (”u have a good profile. i like ur name. it mean tree.”) I am fairly certain that there is no language in the world in which my name means “tree,” but that’s one way to get a girl’s attention…
Of course, not all of Beijing is swarming with creepsters, but there’s a fair bundle in the land of of the 10 kuai beer, uninhibited nightlife, and social networking that practically begs you to stalk other people. Until I figure this out, I’ll be going out in my habit, Wolverine costume, and telling all inquiring minds that my name is Tree.
This entry was written by , posted on October 8, 2009 at 11:07 pm, filed under Uncategorized, adventures, beijing, chinese and tagged creeps, dating, facebook, trees, weliveinbeijing.com. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
This is the best Chinese-English online dictionary in the history of Chinese-English online dictionaries! At the very least, you can amuse yourself by drawing dirty pictures in the “draw Chinese character” part and see what character your picture most resembles.
That is my public service announcement for the week.
This entry was written by , posted on October 5, 2009 at 11:57 pm, filed under chinese, language and tagged nciku. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
There are two basic ethnic groups in Beijing: Chinese people and everybody else.
Call them foreigners, 老外 (Lao Wai: a kind of slang expression that literally translates to “old outsider.” Perhaps a more updated and gentle way of saying “Foreign Devil.”), but when it comes down to it, you’re either A or B. Chinese or…not.
There are some gray areas (such as my friend who was born in Beijing to Chinese parents, but grew up in Canada, so is considered local by Beijingers, but not by the state), but mostly Beijingers are divided on their status of being homegrown or exported. There are some who would consider this lumping-together of non-Chinese people to be a.) wildly reductive b.) kind of racist and c.) totally bizarre, but I can’t imagine who those people would be. Maybe it’s a preserve the purity of the race (yikes) thing, but even children born of non-Chinese parents in China are not considered Chinese citizens. It’s notoriously difficult for foreigners, even those married to Chinese people, to gain citizenship or even obtain visas with really secure longevity. Considering China is increasingly becoming a major destination for West African and South East Asian immigrants, it seems that China may one day have to tackle the great rainbow-colored beasts of multi-culturealism, assimilation, and immigration policy! For now, though, in China (as in the world of reality TV fashion shows), you’re either in or you’re out.
The tide seem to be changing, though, and the idea of what is “Chinese” with it. Though Beijing is still a city notorious for brief stints by job-hopping foreigners, more and more so-called 老外 are making Beijing their permanent homes. These people are taking root, changing the cultural climate, and producing a new generation of Chinese children who don’t necessarily look or act like the Chinese of yesteryear. I’ve seen people–especially kids and teenagers–off all ethnicities chattering away in fluent Beijing-hua. This city is their home; they are, effectively, Chinese.
When people ask me what the big differences are between Beijing and New York, my obvious go-to answer is that what Beijing lacks in cultural diversity it makes up for in motorbikes. This may not be true for long, though, as a new generation of multi-cultural Beijingers take the reins. Maybe someday “foreigners” may not just be mere foreigners, but part of a real global city where the 老外is allowed inside.
This entry was written by , posted on at 11:13 pm, filed under Uncategorized, beijing, chinese, language, news and tagged beijing, foreigners, immigration. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I’ve been asked by a few people to post pictures of Beijing on this blog and I would oblige except that a.) I am a terrible photographer and b.) I never remember to take my camera anywhere.
Luckily, my good friend Domo Kun has come to visit Beijing from his home in Japan and has decided to document the experience! Inspired by both Katie’s Domo antics in the past (and general involvement with monsters and magical creatures*), as well as Amelie’s gnome, Domo has decided to share his photos from a recent shopping trip in Beijing. In the future, Domo plans to visit many exciting landmarks here in Beijing and also hopes to venture to other cities in China!
Domo is in the apartment, getting ready for a big shopping adventure!
Domo walks down a pleasant Beijing street. Skies are blue–an all-too-rare occasion here in Beijing.
Fruit! Domo salivates! He is partial to melons.
Domo is a kinky sort of fellow.
Domo is having a chat with these security guards. He admires their small turquoise benches.
Domo is tired. Time to ride home and feast on melons. Until next time, Domo reminds you to keep it so real it’s HD.
*I’ve just realized this totally makes her sound like Hagrid. She is not.
This entry was written by , posted on October 3, 2009 at 12:43 pm, filed under adventures, beijing, travel and tagged beijing, domo kun. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.