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.
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.
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 October 5, 2009 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.
With all the horrible fuckery going on in the world right now, it’s good to know that
a.) NYT.com has finally come unblocked on the Chinese internetz
b.) Even in the face of flooding, oil spills, and general chaos, the NYT knows how to keep things light.
Blessed Seltzer!
(This post has nothing to do with Beijing. Deal with it.)
This entry was written by , posted on September 27, 2009 at 10:37 pm, filed under news. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
This week marks the Manhattan Short Film Festival–a festival that allegedly screens the ten best short films in the world, all over the world.
On Tuesday, the Beijing Film Festival is hosting the Beijing branch of the Manhattan Shorts at Yugong Yishan (愚公移山) off the Zhangzizhonglu (张自忠路) subway station. The ten films this year promise to be fantastic and come from the US, Sweden, Mozambique, France, Australia, Italy, Spain, the UK, and Israel. At least three of the directors of this year’s shorts are female, which is (as sad as this is…) a pretty decent percentage in the world of film-making.
A still from 'Plastic,' the short from Australia
So, if you’re in Beijing next week, come by Yugong Yishan at 7pm and check out the shorts! If you’re…almost anywhere else on the globe, find a location near you and check them out anywhere. Aaaah, the beauty of globalism.
This entry was written by , posted on September 19, 2009 at 5:11 am, filed under beijing, film, news and tagged film, manhattan shorts, shirt film, yugong yishan. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
You know, the Chinese government has pulled some pretty sneaky shit over the years, but this takes the cake:
According to thebeijinger.com, in preparation for the 60th anniversary of the PR China and ensuing pandemonium disguised as a celebration, “kite and pigeon flying have been banned in Beijing from September 15 to October 8.”
They’ve gone too far this time, I tell you. Too far.
This entry was written by , posted on September 17, 2009 at 9:44 pm, filed under beijing, chinese, news and tagged outrage, pigeons. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.