I recently wrote a post about my Chengdu Compound, and the comments on the post, and on Reddit, reflect two things, in general: 1) Good job, enjoy the palace 2) Watch out, Chinese landlords are evil and will fuck you And the feelings I have in my own heart about the compound revolve around these […]
China
Last time I was in Shanghai
… was back in April to visit Chen Jia and her Taiji studio, as well as catch up with a few old friends. Here is a link to a post about Chen Jia and her school, and below are two pics. One is the breakfast of champs for anyone who did what I did my […]
Don’t wink at me
I am a stranger in a strange land. I need connections or I will wither and die. And the connections I need are not just with my native people, or with people similar to me, but with the people who inhabit this strange land. I learned to speak Chinese out of survival instinct and I […]
That cess in yer chest
Tell me how to keep the smile on my face when I start every morning hacking like an old revolutionary until lung butter splatters the toilet bowl like adolescent lust. And clings to it like a first crush. Every morning ya’ll. I quit smoking and I remember someone saying that the first few weeks/months after […]
A True Belief
Tom from Seeing Red in China pointed out some China Quarterly essays and one of them is the inspiration for this essay … Few of China’s problems seem so intractable as the issue of the Chinese soul and what morals are available to guide it in the 21st century. The whole concept of a soul […]
China-US Cold War and what we can do about it
Can it be denied that the US is actively engaging China’s border nations in an attempt to contain and control China? It seems pretty clear to most observers that such was the case years ago – Kissinger commented on the idea of containment back in 2005 – but with the recent moves in Myanmar and […]
Agents of Conformity
Today I read Murong Xuecun’s speech given in Oslo. The things he described in his speech are clearly happening all around us and I have rarely, if ever, met a Chinese who will dispute much of what he said. In fact, most of the conversations that end up dealing with the woes of China are […]
Ai Wei Wei, prepare for martyrdom
It’s hard to watch a good man go down, but that is exactly what I find myself doing everyday now since Ai Wei Wei’s battle with the Chinese government took over the front pages of a lot of the mainstream media and China related blogs. He is a heroic figure and, for Westerners, his return […]
Chinese Winters Suck
These past days I feel like I am just holding on … waiting for this miserable winter to end. Winters in China are exceptionally difficult because there is no escape from the wet, damp cold. Homes have no insulation, no heaters, no storm windows … cracks everywhere let the cold air in the hot air […]
One Second Encounters
I can only remember a few, but my mind swims with them in the hours before i rise and after the alarm has already been silenced. I remember the little Chinese meimei sitting with her grandmother on a bench in Chengdu, on Renmin Road South. I was walking along with Heather from Proximity Butterfly. Heather […]
Being a Rock Star in China
I have tried to write about this a few times from a few different angles … here is a story on the Rock Music scene in China for ChinaTravel.net, a long meandering story that follows my friends Proximity Butterfly as they make their way to a show in Nanjing. The rock scene is something all […]
Time-Lapse Video in China
Here is a post for ChinaTravel.net about a group of (actually an individual named Joe) filmmakers who are doing some interesting work with time-lapse and tilt-shift video- and photography. The same guys who are in doing the time-lapse stuff are also doing the “Sole Man Project,” in which an Englishman spends one year shoeless in […]
Anti-Japan Protests Rock Chengdu
The conflict between the Chinese and Japanese is getting heated. First Chinese “fishing boats” enter “disputed territory” and snoop around.. Japan sends in destroyers to see what’s going on; the Chinese boats allegedly ram the destroyers. Japan arrests everyone then releases the crew while holding onto the captain for a week. China goes apeshit. Screams, […]
Can’t Truss It ..
No No No No! I try not to get sucked into these discussions anymore, but part of my daily routine is to open sites like Atimes.com and Antiwar.com and others and when I read certain passages I just can’t help my emotional response. Last week, during the peak of the Sino-Japanese pissing contest over rocks […]
Chinese Baby Products Pose a Danger
Last night I spent about an hour putting together a baby bed for Dorian. It was a pretty shoddy little bed and a very shoddy set of instructyion, but with a little love it will serve its purpose. But after finding some little nails in part of the bed I am anxious about what else […]
Class Lines Apparent
I went on a little Man on the Street interview stroll yesterday, asking people what they had planned for the October Holiday. I pretty much knew what I would hear from the garbage collectors and the coffee jerks and how it would differ from people throwing trash and sipping lattes, but I didn’t expect 90% […]