This time between the “Western holidays” (Christmas, New Year etc.) and the Mother of all Chinese Holidays, 春节, has been fraught with changes, stalled projects, snow, worrying about calamities both in China and abroad, new friends, and 太多的咖啡，香煙，和啤酒。In the midst of all this strange limbo between festivals, I’ve been rather absent on the interwebz. Fear not, here are some interesting links to tide you all over while I’m busy figuring out my life and buying fireworks for the impending New Year.
Some menacing work from NeoCha
–> NeoChaEDGE is an amazing, bilingual Chinese design and art website that I’d heard about from several sources, but never really checked it out until Mike sent me the link. It’s a website devoted largely to Chinese designers and graphic artists, but also reports on music, performance, and other aspects of the offbeat or underground art world. It’s definitely a unique interactive site to see artists who didn’t necessarily come straight outta 798 or 莫干山路 and represent a more independent slice of the Chinese art world.
More work from NeoCha
–> This band, La Loupe, consists of some new American friends who rock out folky tunes (often featuring my second favorite* instrument, the melodica!) with Chinese lyrics. They have a small, but awesome following in Beijing and are a little Dean & Britta-esque in their compositions and overall vibe. Really catchy songs, the music is simple and witty.
–> This is just absurd. Welcome to our scary world.
–> Last but not least, check out my girl Tao Yang being a total expert on Chinese independent film all over the news–holla! Tao Yang was interviewed for a Chicago news station about film festivals and the direction of Chinese film and aced it fabulously.
*after the glockenspiel, of course
This entry was written by , posted on January 22, 2010 at 12:04 am, filed under adventures, art, beijing, chinese, film, music, news and tagged beijing, chun jie, dean & britta, la loupe, neocha. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Once in a while, you find yourself gobsmacked by a totally unsuspecting cultural experience. When James Wallace, a Nashville-based musician who I met in Beijing way-back-when, invited me to a concert he was playing in, I was more than happy to drop by and see an old friend. What I didn’t expect was an astonishing show combining traditional Chinese and Mongolian instruments with some of the finest bluegrass and Americana on either side of the Pacific.
The headliner was Abigail Washburn, an amazing artists who’s made the world hear just how sweet Chinese bluegrass can sound. Abigail plays a range of instruments and carries songs in such a strong, smoky voice in both Chinese and English. What’s most incredible, though, is not her considerable musical talent, but her ear for bringing together seemingly incompatible sounds to create an unexpected fusion of Chinese and American musical traditions. When a Chinese musician went to town on the pipa, I realized for the first time that this instrument (that I’d formerly thought of as just vaguely whiney) sounds like the fiercest, most badass banjo in town.
Charmed as we were by Abigail, James, and conspirator Kai Welch’s renditions of old American fare with some Chinese instrumental interludes, I was totally blown away by the introduction of the Mongolian rock bang, Hanggai. I know: Mongolian. Rock. Band. We were skeptical, but it was rad, you guys. They wore fantastically pointy hats and with instruments with such names as the “horse head fiddle” and “Tobshuur,” as well as electric guitars, bass, and drums, totally rock on with their frocks on. (Observe frocks below.) The whole company brought the house down with Mongolian and American drinking songs–they were clearly having a great time.
What I found so inspiring about the whole show was not just the obvious skill of the musicians, but the enthusiasm they showed for doing something new, something innovative, something beloved. I’m no musician (apart from my unfortunately well-documented bongo skillz…Black Yak Band, you were all there in my heart) and no informed connoisseur, but I know when I’ve seen an amazing show and I left the concert feeling good about life. I feel like seeking out these experiences–those that leave you feeling colorful and energized and even nostalgic–is especially important in Beijing, where life can fall into grayness or sameness quite unexpectedly, and this show was enough to inspire ridiculous cliches about art and inspiration and how, at the end of the day, a banjo and a pipa and a Chinese song and an American song can do the trick to make life that much better.
This entry was written by , posted on December 19, 2009 at 10:03 pm, filed under adventures, art, beijing and tagged abigail washburn, beijing, hanggai, music, yugong yishan. 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.
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.
According to a whole hell of a lot of Chinese people, Gasp (气喘吁吁) is pretty much the worst movie ever made. (Clearly, these people have never seen He’s Just Not That Into Making The Stupidest Movie Ever.)
I, and approximately…one other person think that Gasp is on the of the most original, compelling Chinese movies this side of a ten minute Jia Zhang-Ke tracking shot. (No offense to good ol’ JZK, but this is a new kind of Chinese movie!)
Sure, it’s slightly rude and vaguely surrealist in a way that is totally unappealing to epic-loving Chinese audiences, but Gasp tackles some of the weightier issues of modern urban life in China with an incredible style and humor, even irony, rare to contemporary Chinese filmmaking.
The film tells the story of Frank (John Savage), a dopey Texan hit hard by the recession who travels to Beijing in hopes of selling his family cheese company to a Chinese investor. In Beijing, he encounters an outrageous cast of characters, from Mr. Lee (Ge You, one of the most famous comedians in China, for whom this movie represents a Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine-like leap), a business man in a serious life crisis, to aspiring starlets, lunatic business people, and a strange host of expats. Set almost entirely within Beijing, Gasp (directed by Beijinger Zheng Zhong, who penned 2004’s also-controversial, also-surrealistic Baober In Love) is political, timely, culturally significant, but it also succeeds on a much higher plane–it’s the first Chinese movie I’ve ever seen that is able to comment on the fact that China is such a totally bizarro place.
With a formal style that shows Beijing through Frank’s boggled, often baijiu-addled eyes, the film is spliced, diced, and often utterly baffling. Through jump cuts galore and strange slices of story, we see Beijing and all its denizens as complicated, miserable, ecstatic, hungry–a range of bizarre moods and appetites in this bizarre city. Chinese audiences may not like Gasp for the very reason I like it so much: it embraces China as an disjointed pastiche of old and new, an unresolved society with quirks and flaws to play with the best of ‘em. The film lacks a linear narrative structure, it jumps around and confuses–much like life in this and any city.
Gasp is part of a new generation of Chinese films that subscribe more to genre than previous generations and this comedy takes its humor like I take my coffee–black, black, black. There are some terrifically funny moments in the film: a model learns that she’s been hired only to showcase only her more…bulbous physical attributes, an African-American expat teaches Ebonics to a group of eager young Chinese, as well as a lot of Lost In Translation-style misunderstandings and mistranslations. That being said, this film may garner comparisons to Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation as a stranger-in-a-strange (Asian)-land story, but Gasp achieves what Coppola could not–a real attempt to understand China, beyond the facade of strange and different. Zheng Zhong is clearly influenced by a lot of global cinema, but think Jarmusch-style sensibility rather than the muted crises of Sofia Coppola’s work.
This film may resonate with me and not with Chinese audiences for several reasons–I’m an expat living in Beijing, I like weird films, I’m not easily offended by criticisms of China (or even the US, for that matter), but I think that this is, by and large, a film that will be mostly appreciated by a foreign, non-Chinese audience. Gasp is window into a China we’ve never seen on-screen before, a China that embraces style and wit and all the contradictions that make this place what it is.
The film isn’t perfect and does feel too fragmented and frantic at times, but it is also daring and original. The film also features a pretty badass soundtrack by Howie B and some incredible art direction and costume design, which can ice over even a crumbly film. It is my fervent hope that Gasp will be seen by an international audience some day and provide a jump-cut-laden, non-linear window into one of many crazy Beijing stories.
Trailer (no subtitles, but little dialog) can been seen here.
This entry was written by , posted on October 2, 2009 at 12:19 am, filed under art, beijing, film, style and tagged beiing film, beijing, film, gasp, zheng zhong. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
One of the kindest people I have met in Beijing so far is Lily (高丽), who works at Yan Club gallery in 798. Lily basically runs everything at Yan Club–a beautiful gallery and events space where the Beijing 48 Hour Film Festival was held earlier this year. She gave me a tour of the space (which at the time held a group show of video artists from Europe and the US as part of the 798 Biennial) and very sweetly offered me a pick of the publications Yan Club has produced from their previous exhibitions. After much perusing, I decided on the melodramatically-titled, but strongly compelling “The End of the World and the Grim Fairyland,” (世界尽头与冷酷仙境) )a book of paintings by young Chinese artist Liu Ye(刘也).
The End of the World and Grim Fairyland Part 1, 2007
Liu Ye’s work is unlike that of so many Chinese artists of his generation (Unbelievably, Liu was born in 1984, which just makes me feel like the least talented, laziest person on the planet…) who adhere to a more deliberately political, boldy satirical aesthetic. Unlike these artists who riff on popular advertising and draw from Japanese cartoon influences, Liu’s work is subtle in its politics and poetically muted in both its conception and execution.
Belief No. 1, 2008
Liu’s work represents a unique direction in the art of a certain generation of Chinese. Something about his side by side rendering of international icons and anonymous architectural bodies begs up some very mature questions about what it means to be global, to be at home in the world.
The Day After Tomorrow-Sydney Opera, 2007
There’s certainly a maudlin slant to Liu’s apocalyptic view of the world as he paints the destruction of the world’s structures on a literal world stage, but not quite everything falls apart. His style of painting is bold and enduring; the images are crumbling, fading.
A tree in front of the door, 2007
Some pieces of art are stories and others are poems. In an arts culture where many artists are focused not only on stories, but also stores, it’s remarkable to see this kind of poetry. Traditional Chinese paintings and poetry, particularly from the Tang Dynasty, have always focused on nature and the passage of time. In this legacy, Liu is typically Chinese–drawing on the oldest of Chinese themes to inform his work, but there is also something futuristic about these images. In these paintings, we see what is beyond society, beyond globalism, beyond cultural politics, beyond what we have the power to build.
Liu Ye says: “The West has already finished building its gravestones…Developing countries are going on building their gravestones, continuously trying to progress…If you have a look at both of the works together, you will witness the cyclical nature of history.”
The End of the World and Grim Fairyland No. 4, 2007
Liu Ye’s exhibition at Yan Club in 2008 was, I believe, his most recent in China. Lily tells me he currently has a fellowship at Art University in Kassel, Germany. He should not be confused with Beijing-born artist Liu Ye (刘 野), whose portraits can be seen here: http://www.artnet.com/artist/10616/liu-ye.html
More on Liu Ye and Yan Club: http://www.yanclub.com/wwwsite/liuye.html#
UPDATE: Because today is the day many new exhibitions open at 798, I went by Yan Club to check out their new show. Lo and behold, their new group show features several paintings by Liu Ye! I was so thrilled to see his work in person (particularly A tree in front of the door, featured above), as well as many other artists including Shen Dapeng (also insanely young–born in 1983!), Liu Baomin, and Rao Songqing. More on these artists later, no doubt. If anyone reading this is actually in Beijing, definitely head to Yan Club and check it out!
This entry was written by , posted on September 18, 2009 at 8:12 am, filed under adventures, art, beijing, travel and tagged 798, art, beijing, liu ye, painting. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
798 七九八: Beijing’s answer to SoHo (but maybe a pre-fashionized SoHo of yesteryear…) where I first encountered Chinese contemporary art one fateful day in 2006. 798 is a sort of rambling art district in Northwest Beijing of galleries grand and small, pretentious cafes, and lots of tourists and gallergos (see what I did there…eh?). Despite the hype and commercial blow up (and then subsequent deflation) of 798, it’s actually a beautiful place where some incredible artists, both Chinese and foreign (don’t even get me started on how weird (and existential…) it is to refer to oneself as a “foreigner”), have shown their work
Anyhow, I visited 798 the other day during the last gasps of the 798 Biennale and was not disappointed, even though many of the galleries are between shows. I came across a show called ‘The Chinese’ (中国人)–an exhibition of portrait photography by Swiss photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer at the Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery. After a sprawling road trip through China, Braschler and Fischer have produced ‘The Chinese’: an extraordinary exhibition of portraits of…exactly that. From military officials to coal miners to prostitutes to nomads, window washers, internet moguls: a cross section of the Chinese people that drives right at the uneven urban development and 经济发econo!!!mic expansion that we hear about all the time. Chomp chomp chomp build build build etc.
The concept behind the exhibition is fairly simple, even somewhat reductive at times, but I was really taken by the honest, beautifully curated photography. Every subject is photographed in their natural habitat and the results provide a nicely understated contrast about this strange, enormous country. I think I found this photographs so compelling, not just because even my pathetically untrained eye can appreciate exquisitely executed photos, but because it provides a little celluloid window into this place I’m just beginning to explore.
Maybe this exhibition is compelling mainly to foreigners, designed by outsiders for outside tastes and curiosity, which can be dangerous, but this exhibition succeeds without typically foreign assumptions of Chinese human drama. On the other hand, many affluent, educated Chinese I’ve encountered don’t seem to care much about the less worldly, less fortunate people who clean their houses and deliver their food and live tucked away in the suburbs or small villages. The general mood is not wildly different from any prevalent attitudes in the US, but there’s perhaps more resignation about class divisions here. There are fewer racial lines drawn here, which is the major difference between US and…most places, but class is tangible and awkward in Beijing–maybe because no one talks about it, maybe because this is, at least on paper, still supposed to be a classless society.
There seems to be a sense in Beijing that promotes: if you can’t change it, ignore it. People seem to feel this way about class, about the government, about the way their lives have changed in the past few decades.
At our best, we want the best for each other. Even if we don’t know what the best is.
All photos at Braschler/Fischer website: http://braschlerfischer.com/
Link to ‘The Guardian’ review/background of project: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/05/china.photography
This entry was written by , posted on September 12, 2009 at 7:55 am, filed under art and tagged 798, brashler, fischer, paris-beijing photo gallery, the chinese. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.