When I was explaining the difference between Beijing and Hong Kong, I used to say to friends back home that Hong Kong was the kind of place where my Evil Expat Twin would have a great time. Then a couple of years ago I realized that actually, my evil doppelganger would have a pretty rocking [...]
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Trans-Cultural Yuppieism and the Big Gulp
I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting Ikea in China — on weekends, especially, it’s like a theme park (FurnitureLand?) where people flop around on the demo units, test out lamps by flicking them on and off repeatedly, and blow off steam by waiting in half-hour lines for two-kuai hotdogs. In [...]
True world-class badmotherfuckerdom
Exhibit A: Genghis Khan’s Mongol invasion in the 13th and 14th centuries was so vast that it may have been the first instance in history of a single culture causing man-made climate change, according to new research out of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology. [...] Unlike modern day climate change, however, the Mongol [...]
The Tonsorial Theory of Development
Hu Jintao is in the US, and as usual Jamie is asking the questions nobody else has the courage to ask. From a comment I left on that post: I’ve often wondered if there is a hair dye (or possibly shoe polish) factory somewhere on the outskirts of Beijing that produces dye for the sole [...]
Notes from Hard-Seat
Last Wednesday, I made a visa run down to Hong Kong – one of way too many over the past six months. This time, I got to the train station too late to go through the exit procedures necessary to ride the sealed, soft-sleeper, Hong Kong-bound half of the Beijing-Hong Kong train, and ended up [...]
archy and mehitabel and du fu
六月廿六日於費城市立圖書館讀《唐詩300首》英譯版 Written After Seeing an English Translation of 300 Tang Poems in the Philadelphia Public Library on June 26 古語韻難尋 夷言更添哀 囮者詠嘆寄 巢空鳥驚飛 what is with all these translators who make tang poetry read like e.e. cummings don’t they know classical forms never used enjambment
More Great Firewall weirdness
Caution: geekiness. So I have found recently that there are certain places where certain blocked sites — Facebook and Twitter yes; Blogspot no — are still inaccessible even when I’m logged in through my VPN. This seems to happen most consistently when I’m connecting from cafes in the Jiaodaokou and Jinbao Jie neighborhoods of Beijing, [...]
BREAKING NEWS: Explosions Rock Chinese Capital
(This was originally written as a guest column for The Beijinger, but the censors apparently didn’t find it as funny as I did, and it didn’t make it into print.) Brendan O’Kane, The Beijinger‘s new war correspondent, contributed this piece while in Beijing on vacation from his regular posting in Baghdad. [DATELINE: FEBRUARY 13, 2010] [...]
Interesting Times (I): Confucius on SARFT
Yesterday afternoon, word got out that the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) — the wild and crazy guys responsible for approving foreign films for screening in China, issuing shooting permits and then distribution permits for Chinese movies, and spoiling everyone’s fun once things get too popular — was dropping the axe on [...]
Winter is Icumen In
Winter is Icumen in, Lhude sing Goddamm. Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm. Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver, Damm you; Sing: Goddamm. — Ezra Pound, noted Sinologist