OK everybody, it’s Genius Time: I’m going to write a screenplay. It’ll be a romantic comedy for the 90后 teenyboppers. Premise: two online censors meet cute when they accidentally delete the same forum thread. The entire thing will be shot indoors, preferably in bad lighting, with all dialogue to be overdubbed slightly out of sync [...]
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Today in non-Chinese Language Politics
Exhibit A: Geoffrey K. Pullum, Language Log: “David Starkey on rioting and Jamaican language” A week after the riots that sprang up across a large part of England, pundits are struggling to find smart and profound things to say. One of the least successful has been David Starkey, a historian and veteran broadcaster. Speaking about [...]
Morning, October 1
Last night’s dismal attempt at rain — whether artificial or manmade — doesn’t seem to have done much: the sky is distinctly overcast, though the air at least doesn’t seem to have the velvety quality it did yesterday. I’m guessing that right now there are a lot of people a couple of blocks south of [...]
[Help], [Help], [Help] the Police!
In response to the recent New York Times article about Hip-hop in China (and partly inspired by the execrable Jay Chou/Song Zuying performance on last night’s CCTV gala), I present to you a video that perfectly sums up, for me, everything that’s wrong with foreign attitudes to allegedly underground Chinese music. A minor digression first: that [...]
John DeFrancis, 1911-2009: You Can't Do That Anymore
The Sinologist John DeFrancis died recently at the age of 97. You can read more about him elsewhere – in the NYTimes obituary or on the memorial site set up for him – but I thought I’d write something, as a student of Chinese, about what he meant to me. I first heard of John [...]
After the Olympics: What's Next?
Now that the Olympics are over (and how about those closing ceremonies? Those of you who found my comments on the Opening Ceremonies distasteful should count yourselves lucky I didn’t blog the closing ceremonies) everyone is asking what will be next. It’s a good question: I first came here about a week and a half [...]
T+12 – Opening Ceremonies
8:00 – Liveblogging ACTIVATE. Set phasers to MAXIMUM SNARK! Boy, Jiang Zemin looks old. Sweet-ass fireworks at the beginning. Flying apsaras escorting an Olympic logo. Well, that’s tacky, but if that’s the worst of it then – Hey, time for the singing minority children gathered around the Chinese flag. For fuck’s sake. And now it’s [...]
T-Minus 2 Hours: Holy Shit
People are twittering online (via retweets through @gvoolympics) that: Chaoyang Park and the small parks around Tian’anmen Square are closed for viewing. There’s heavy security in Ditan Park. No food (i.e. beer, as @AdrianeQ notes) or sitting on the grass will be permitted at Ditan. There are SWAT teams in the subway. (Not sure whether [...]
T-Minus 5 Hours: Crowded and Grey
CCTV 5 — sorry, ‘CCTV Olympic’ or whatever they’re calling themselves — is broadcasting a succession of reporters standing in front of the Bird’s Nest stadium and pontificating into the camera about the Olympic Green, which registers behind them as a murky, greenish grey color, sort of like a cowpat that’s been out in the [...]
1 Day: Crowds at Tian'anmen
Thoughts on the Olympics and the ways in which I’ve collided with it will come in later posts, I’m sure. For now, here’s some footage I shot around Qianmen and [Unnamable?] Square north of there this evening. Sound quality is lousy and transitions are jumpy because I edited in iMovie, which is the worst Apple [...]