It’s getting cold. Well, to be fair, it was frigid and (government-generated) snowy for most of November, but temperatures have kind of leveled off to a season-appropriate chill. In any case, the temperature is going to continue to drop and then remain glacial for the forseeable future.
I am devising strategies to stay sane in all of this without hibernating or scorching myself on an electric blanket.
Survival tactic #1: Bright colors!
In the gray gloom of a Beijing winter, there’s a small comfort waking up to a bright orange bedroom. The Chinese seem to have embraced this concept with great vigor and I have encountered a countless collection of tangerine, clementine, and brightly golden hued walls in houses, restaurants, and hotels all over China. My apartment takes the (carrot?) cake, though. My roommate has situated our flat not only with orange walls, but orange curtains, an orange couch, and a charming array of orange throw pillows. Delightful. And citrusy.
Survival Tactic #2: Uniqlo Heattech Clothes
(This is probably the closest this blog will ever come to product placement, so please forgive me.) One arena in which Beijing has far surpassed New York is in its number of Uniqlo stores, which thrilled me when I first arrived here. Unfortunately, most of the Uniqlo stores here boast clothing more akin to 1990s Gap (tech vests, anyone?) and less like the sleek SoHo Uniqlo wares, but they do carry the heattech leggings and turtlenecks that allowed me to prevail through last winter un-frostbitten. I don’t know what “Japan Technology” means, but it makes me feel like I’m wearing robotic clothes, which is never a bad things. Overall, these leggings and shirts are thin and silky and keep me toasty. And the logo is partly orange, you guys.
Survival Tactic #3: Calming, wistful music
Winter is a season that boasts the delicate charm of looking out a window onto softly falling snow whilst wearing a thick sweater and smiling gingerly like a J.Crew model. Sadly, this charm has often worn its welcome out by February. I have found an effective way to revive romantic notions about winter is to seek out some sweet and gentle melodies to allay the murderous frustration that you haven’t seen the sun in days and coax a soothing sense of domesticity and coziness…and French-ness?
In 2007, I listened to Nouvelle Vague nonstop. Last winter, I took further gestures in deluding myself that my life was a French New Wave movie (starring Louis Garrel, apparently) and kept ‘The Dreamers’ and ‘Les Chansons D’amour’ soundtracks on repeat. This year, I have joined the huddled masses of Beijing expats in listening constantly to Au Revoir Simone. The dreamy quasi-electro folk trio (who are from Brooklyn, btdubbs, and not actually French) just played in Beijing and Shanghai and the onslaught of coverage in the expat media circles left us all clamoring to hear their new album, Still Night, Still Light. I’ve been hooked for weeks: their melodies are shy, but poised, soothing, wintery music. And while much of Beijing may have flocked to see the band at Yugong Yishan, only one person got to unexpectedly hang out with them at the airport the next morning because we were all going to Shanghai. So, go me.
Survival Tactic #4: Don’t go to 五道口 three days in a row! It’s really far away! And it’s cold! (I learned this valuable lesson this weekend.)
Survival Tactic #5: Good friends. Good movies. Fun work. A gentleman caller or lady friend to help keep you warm. Whiskey. Jiaozi. Vitamin C. Making plans for spring.
This entry was written by , posted on November 30, 2009 at 4:00 am, filed under adventures, beijing, chinese, news, style and tagged au revoir simone, beijing, uniqlo, winter. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
How high? ShangHAI!
Having never been to Shanghai before and eager to escape the Eskimo’s meat locker that is Beijing, I was thrilled when my friend Tao Yang invited me to wayfare around Shanghai for the weekend. We’ve walked miles around the old city, eaten the most unbelievable soup dumplings, and taken the requisite pictures in which Pudong Tower appears to be growing out of our heads (coming soon…).
As they say in Shanghai, 生活蛮好。 Life is pretty darn good.
oh RLY?! (lolz, by the way. Serious lolz.)
What I find so thrilling about Shanghai, apart from its reasonable temperature and welcome walkability, is the amazing cinematic quality of this city. Maybe it’s because my associations with Shanghai are all from movies (Admittedly, this is case with most places. My entire geographic knowledge of LA is based on the conversation Cher and Josh have in the car in Clueless.), but Shanghai’s reputation as a historic, romantic, dramatic city becomes strikingly apparent as you stroll through the old city. Shanghai has a charm (no matter how reproduced or manufactured, in some cases) that is rare in Beijing and the crowds of moter-bikes, low, stacked houses, and sprawling courtyards are more vivid and visual than any cinematic simulacra.
This Zhou Xuan is not the same as that Zhou Xuan…
This is a total film nerd’s dream*: We’re staying right on Suzhou River, have seen the Paramount Theater where the stars of the 1930s and 40s flocked, the 新世界 signs of old Shanghai, and seen the old gongyu (apartment) of many a famed Shanghai star, including Zhou Xuan. (It’s right beside the old residence of Eileen Chang, FYI. In case you were, you know, really curious about the proximity of residences of, like, famous Chinese women from the 40s involved in the arts…)
Zhou Xuan is looking fierce.
Maybe we’ve lucked out with exceptionally sunny weather, but the light has been soft and beautiful and hits the river and peeks through the clothes hanging out the dry everywhere in an incredible way. I’m certainly no photographer or cinematographer, but I’m all swoony over this light.
It’s all very touristy and fun and the perfect city for a bunch of cinephiles to go roaming around in.
*Okay, a Chinese film nerd, probs. On that note, I am totally missing meeting Jia Zhang-Ke by being here in Shanghai this weekend. I’m trying not to think about it.
This entry was written by , posted on November 22, 2009 at 7:09 am, filed under Uncategorized, adventures, art, chinese, film, style, travel and tagged chinese cinema, shanghai, suzhou river, zhou xuan. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
All of these words justify my reasons for not posting lately (with accompanying Mad Men pictures duh):
懒
LAN
lazy
忙
MANG
busy
累
LEI
tired
This entry was written by , posted on November 16, 2009 at 10:46 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.
It seems like blogging and discussing one’s carbon footprint have, as someone I know would put it, “some Venn Diagram Shit going on.” Meaning: they have some stuff in common. Both are kind of non-specifically conscientious and kind of pointlessly well-intentioned. Ergo, I will blog about my carbon footprint.
Let’s put it this way: the only thing that seems bigger than my actual footprint in China* is my carbon footprint. Despite my best efforts, it’s incredibly difficult to make even mundane gestures towards green-ish living in Beijing: a fact that looms ominously over the city as a thick smoggy blanket.
Obviously, there are much more pressing issues at hand when it comes to China’s catastrophic environmental problems, but it would be nice to feel like I have more control over my own ability to consume responsibly, but I feel roadblocked or just devoid of will power in so many ways. The things we’ve all been taught to do as individual efforts: bring reusable bags shopping, try to eat locally, use public transportation etc. feel like much more of an effort in Beijing than elsewhere I’ve lived. Certainly, I’m riding my bike a lot, but this barely makes up for the super cheap taxis at every corner that beckon to whisk me home. Allegedly, Beijing enacted a policy that charges customers for plastic bags, but I’ve literally never seen evidence of this. On the contrary, local food vendors often look confused or even offended when I ask them to just put all the vegetables into one bag. As for eating locally: yeahhh…they don’t really make cheese in China. Or hummous. Or any kind of dessert product that doesn’t taste somehow like slightly stale corn. So, that’s a tough one. There are other factors preventing healthy living here, too: the poor air quality makes it almost impossible to exercise outside and I find myself counting down the days until the coal-powered heating comes on city-wide. It’s bad news, people.
Despite these frustrations and the gloomy feeling that I’m contributing to the post-apocalyptic-looking industrial landscape I can barely make out beneath the dense white fog, there is some hope. Beijing’s air quality is today better than it’s been in years and organizations like Greening the Beige (more on them later) are bringing environmental thinking into the local discourse.
For now, though, it’s a little scary to live with the kind of environment pictured above almost every day. To add even more to this blogging cliche, I leave you with the following: It’s not east being green. And especially in Beijing, 绿色的 生活不容易。
*Ok fine. Not just in China. I have freaklishly long feet.
This entry was written by , posted on November 8, 2009 at 2:58 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.
Blurb from the DVD of ‘Vertigo’ I just bought:
“Allred Hirchock engalls you in a whirlppol of terror and rension!”
Think about it.
This entry was written by , posted on at 2:03 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.
Greetings from the (artificially-created) Arctic Tundra.
In an attempt to warm our poor souls (since we certainly can’t warm our bodies too effectively…the powers that be have decided that Beijingers don’t need heating in their homes or offices until November 15th…), the Beijing Film Festival will be hosting a series of screenings this and next week to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.
The screenings will occur over the next week at various locations around the city, with a selection of shorts and features playing in rotation each time. While the films, courtesy of the Geothe Institute, the Berlinale Talent Campus, and the German Embassy in Beijing, are not all German in origin, they all relate to walls– as barriers, as objects, as obstacles, as protection, and as the boundaries that define both geography and lives.
A still from the short Teleportation
Watching and working with these movies has been fascinating–not just because they represent so many political histories and stories, as well as some expert film-making–but because the focus on the wall falling has shed some light on (and maybe exacerbated my paranoias concerning) the state in which we live. I’m being deliberately vague here, but it’s interesting and sometimes frustrating to observe the changes and regulations that are apparent every day in Beijing. There’s an expression in Chinese: “山高， 皇帝远。T”his literally translates to “The mountain is high, the Emperor is far away,” but is used today by people outside of Beijing to express their views about the government. Basically, it means: the government is far away, it can’t see what we do
Well, we live in Beijing. The government is not far away. And it’s freezing.
Das Wunder von Berlin
“Movies About Walls, Movies About Berlin” Screenings:
November 5, 7:30 PM 愚公移山 (Yugong Yishan)
November 6, 7:30 九朝会 (Nine Dynasties)
November 9, 6:30 中央音乐学院 (Central Conservatory of Music)
November 10, 6:30 北京师范大学
艺术楼 (Beijing Normal University Arts Building)
This entry was written by , posted on November 3, 2009 at 7:23 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.