April 2012
1 post
1 tag
“In the face of this social disintegration, we have essentially hired an army of...”
– Is Facebook making us lonely? The Atlantic
March 2012
3 posts
1 tag
1 tag
““I’ve decided I’m going to get an iPhone to bridge the gap...”
2 tags
“Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the...”
– David Foster Wallace
September 2008
1 post
August 2008
24 posts
49
Finally it’s over. My friend Xiao Man and roommate for a month noted in conclusion: “hospitals will sure get busy now with people submitting themselves in for over-exhaustion.” As an English tour guide during the Olympics, Xiao Man has been on the frontlines for “foreign diplomacy” in Beijing. In the span of the two weeks I’ve been here, I’d only seen her...
Olympics Park
Day trip at the Olympics park, where we all got a little tanner despite a hat, sunglasses, and an umbrella (because it was raining yesterday) ensemble. It was hot. It was bright. I want my smoggy, cloudy, egg yolk sun back instead of swimming in a sea of sun umbrellas on a 90 degree day at the concrete jungle that is the Olympics park. So story is, nobody can get close to the Bird Nest/Water...
the coffeeshops of nanluoguxiang
the coffeeshop where we spend our days avoiding the sun… is where goldfishes swim in the sky.
If you are ever in Beijing and have editors on your tail / need a good chill spot for inspiration, break a buck 25 at Nanluoguxiang, a strip of Hutong near Houhai. It’s old Beijing meets western salon, and the result is better than you can hope to be.
breathe in, stay...
interview with BOCOG member
These days in Beijing, it seems like everyone is involved with the Games one way or another. Whether you’re a flag-seller, or flag waver, the spirit is in the air as much as the presence of televisions seem to spike. You could literally go from one end of the city to the other without missing a score. Every restaurant, coffee shop, bar, fruit vendor, convenient store, not to mention malls,...
where were you on 8.8.08
The Perfect Spot
Planning to watch the opening ceremony / China’s coming out party is surprisingly not that different from planning the best New Year’s Eve party. In the end you just end up home lazying around on your couch, or you spent the night out walking around aimlessly and wished you had just been lazying around on your couch. I’d considered a couple...
running man vs. kowtowing man?
The main conversation aloft between friends during the China vs. Dream 8 game was how the “running-Peking-man” in the official symbol for the ‘08 Olympics also looks like a “kowtowing-Chinese-man.” It took me ages to see it but I’ve always been horrible at magic eye.
Instructions on how to see the kowtowing, “please love us foreigners we are a...
Rock n' Roll Reborn / Re-Tros Live @ Mao 9/8
Credit: Shanghai Daily
Finally met up with Madi from the now dissolved MyLittleDeadDick for a Rebuilding the Rights of Statues’ (Re-Tros) live at Mao’s. I learned about the Drum Tower murder of an American from MSN before heading out, and by the time I came home, Russia was already in war. Mao Live House happens to be about a block from the Drum Tower, in the lively Gulou area...
“The volunteers are part of a much larger script for what may be the most...”
– How the west invented queueing… or, why I need to stop reading the NYTimes
Beijing 's Three Big Weirds
In a voice of a tour guide, my cab driver asks me, “so do you know what three three big weirds (San Da Guai) Beijing is known for these days?”
The Bird Nest
The Bird Legs
The Bird Egg
MagazineChina
Music: The Fashion - Solo Impala
Xuehai (“SeaofLearning”) is Tianjin’s best independent bookstore, hands down. I make bold claims because unfortunately, Tianjin is A. known for being a conservative city. There simply aren’t a lot of venues for independent anything. B. the staff at New Younger, a short-lived but spirited Tianjin independent culture magazine came up...
Beijing's Balancing Act →
If you read only one essay about China this month, let it be this one.
“After all, many benign impulses surely flourish under the frantic and gaudy...”
– on Beijing Coma
Zhu Wen's "I Love Dollars"...
…and why I hate Chinese men
Quote1: Though her top was unbuttoned low, it wasn’t doing her any favors, as somehow she’d failed to grow any breasts during puberty; maybe she just forgot and it was too late by the time she remembered. Women like this always made me sad; even now I could almost feel the tears itching the back of my throat.
Yep, and men like this makes me want...
“There’s a lot of world out there”
– Dan the high jumper on China, the world, and beyond
blockade day
Today I…
…tried to go see the Olympics torch relay in Tianjin.
Even if it was six in the morning… and even though I circumscribed the entire school (Nankai)…
I was blocked off at every entrance.
When they won’t let you be patriotic… all you can do is nod and smile…
and buy yourself an 1 kuai flag….
Next time try four o’clock, or...
momentum
Music: 郭德纲 刘刚 - 刚刚好
Well, even if Wikipedia (and Amnesty) fully functions now, Tumblr is officially occasionally blocked here in Tianjin since…yesterday. I’m logging in from Proxy. This usually happens when I latch onto some new hip blog server not based in the mainland. Last year was some Taiwanese host. The Great Firewall is clearly a sophisticated beast. My theory is it’s...
July 2008
11 posts
“{The Elephant Building} …a 40 storey building that was being constructed...”
– Chris in Bangkok
mall olympiad
went to the mall
saw fuwas
the wall of wishes in Olympic-themed stationery
luck on the next test!
?
we will never be apart
love me already
Music: Black Kids - Love Me Already
A combination of being jetlagged and a 2:00am conversation with Rong has brought on a fit of self-induced insomnia. One of which I hope to resolve by collapsing on the nearest bamboo mat by 5:30pm. Anyway, I thought I’d fill the nightly void and talk about TV shows in PRC.
Because because because. Aside from reunion with family, friends, and food, being...
cicada screams on burberry nights
Music: Acidman - Turn Around
A two-hour layover in Narita has re-ignited my teenage-old fever for Japan. Staring out the airplane window oval, Tokyo’s coastline was everything I’d imagined in dreams. Small boats on blue waters, lush greenlands dotted by neat gray buildings (so unlike American suburbia’s neat rows of Monopoly-esque houses), giant power plants gloating like a...
four days until china
As part of Evan Osno’s “Letter from China” series, the New Yorker hits it again with Angry Youth. Perhaps August will be flood season for all things China. Let’s keep it that way. :)
I got MaoMao a Moleskine sketch notebook as a *QisbackfromtheUSA* present, and was tempted to get the Beijing mole. Present-purchasing is definitely the biggest challenge going home every...
all things noted
My English prof, Jack Shuler, who was total boss, told me to submit my American lit essay on Paul Beatty/Cornell West/Cosby’s Pound Cake Speech/Obama to publications, and I got this the other day…
Dear Ms. Chen, Thank you very much for submitting your article, “The Poetician Suicides: Nihilism or the Audacity of Hope?,” to the Columbia Journal of American Studies (CJAS)....
AAWW two years later
Stopped by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (note: uh yes, I am in New York again. uh yes, I’d forgotten how the subways choke of humidity, and how all the pretty girls don dresses with shiny, big purses over their shoulders). Ken Chen, the new director of the Workshop, I’m proud to say, shares my same last name. Seemed like a really cool guy, has a way of tempering his...
sound & vice
In the latest New Yorker, Alex Ross muses on the Chinese music scene from genres classical to the experimental, with a sweeping look on the growth of western music in China in the age of “Super Girl” adulation.
Worth a read. I’m always happy to find mainstream critics/journalists other than the eminent James Fallows who writes China well.
Some highlights
1. He mentions Yan...