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.

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.

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.

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.

Amid all the (well deserved) flack the fashion and magazine industries are receiving these days, street and style blogs serve as a way to see what real people are wearing without the gloss and the size 0 bullshit.

As far as sassy style blogs go, I definitely recommend Cheap JAP.

Cheap Jap is written by a good friend of my friend Kim and is hilarious, DIY, brand-bashing fun. It could easily be called Confessions of a Shopaholic Who Is Not an Idiot And Has a Killer Sense of Humor And Makes Frequent Clueless References.

She could be a farmer in those clothes...

In the realm of more fantasy-driven style blogging, I turn to Garance Dore, who has an adorable little blog where she photographs the cream of the street style crop. Street style is one thing, but snapping Carine Roitfeld on the streets of Paris is, um, cheating. In any case, her blog is all beautiful and sunshiney and cupcakey and shit.

But this is a blog about Beijing! Which brings us to….Stylites in Beijing!, Beijing’s answer to The Sartorialist, style documentation, and much more! Apart from the fact that it’s based right here in the ‘jing, I admire Stylites for being a true street and fashion blog. From fashionistas and Sartorial stars to students to hipsters to typical Beijing youth style to expats who can rock a Hutong, Stylites runs the gamut of fashionable and interesting Beijingers.

Beijing is certainly not (yet!) known as a fashion capital, but there is a definite style one observes here–from students to old timers. Among younger generations, a punk sensibility tempered by Japanese and Korean style is pretty big (cue the flat-ironed hair sweep…), though hip hop style and Hello Kitty are just as apparent. There’s a definite Beijing uniform for some kids (apart from the brightly colored track suits most High School students are required to wear): skinny jeans, big sneakers, messy hair, keffiyah. It’s not an awful look, just somewhat unimaginative.

In any case, many Beijingers (particularly young Beijingers) are definitely becoming more adventurous and savvy when it comes to clothing and presentation and Stylites is a great documentation of that. As a proponent of any reporting that shows China in a fair and truthful light (as opposed to Western Media’s tendency to accentuate the negative da da da…), I admire Stylites for its focus on the individual in China–under each photograph is a short biography of the subject, often with surprising details. China is a big and complex place–no shit–but there are some incredible individuals here creating some remarkable artistic and social movement.

Fashion is just one component of how the individual self is being formed by Chinese youth, how new aesthetics are evolving here, and how it all shakes out on the streets of Beijing.

All photos (except for the Cher one…duh) in this post come from Stylites.net