Contemporary pop songs named after Chinese women
“Ana Ng” > “Anna Sun” but the real life Anna Sun > fictional Ana Ng
Played 2,195 times
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Peter Broderick - Part 2: Understanding
一个馒头引发的血案 (A Murder Caused By Mantou / yi ge mantou yinfa de xuean) was a Chinese parody video created by Hu Ge after he had watched Chen Kaige’s The Promise. Widely panned, the movie inspired an irate Hu to dub over all the dialogue and remix the period drama into a modern-day farce. It was posted online and received millions of hits, despite Chen threatening legal action. This touched off a wave of support from Mantou (a Chinese steamed bun) fans who supported Hu. In the end, after suffering a wave of negative publicity, Chen decided not to sue. For more about Chen and his film partner Zhang Yimou, see China Pop.
Ok, so yeah, this works.
一夜情 (one-night stand / yiyeqing) was originally a single theatre performance, usually by a guest performer(s) on tour, as opposed to an ongoing engagement. Today, however, the term is more commonly defined as a single sexual encounter, in which neither participant has any intention or expectation of a relationship to come out of it.
Why it might be banned: Because sex is still a touchy subject in China.
food in soho NYC and its environs, circa 2008
Aka, what I during a slow day at the office one afternoon three years ago.
My pee smells today.
Now I know why: not diseased…
but ASPARAGUS!
-what I learned from D & H over the summer
The mall has seven zones modeled on international cities, nations and regions, including Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Venice, Egypt, the Caribbean, and California. Features include an 25 metres (82 ft) replica of the Arc de Triomphe, a replica of Venice’s St Mark’s bell tower, a 2.1 kilometres (1.3 mi) canal with gondolas, and a 553-meter indoor-outdoor roller coaster.
Since its opening in 2005, the mall has suffered from a severe lack of occupants. Much of the retail space has remained empty, with over 99% of the stores vacant. The only occupied areas of the mall are near the entrance where several Western fast food chains are located and a parking structure repurposed as a kart racing track. A planned Shangri-La Hotel has not been constructed.
—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_China_Mall
People Get Ready - Three Strangers
During the arrest, Shao Yuanchong (邵元冲 in Chinese), the incumbent minister of the propaganda department of the Kuomintang, died after he was hit in his testicles while attempting to climb over a fence. (Wikipedia: Xi’an Incident)
I have marked this in my bookmarks as “to-be-confirmed.”
plaid, diddymousedid
Waiting for the bus with this guy. Unfortunately, he’s not real.
lost opportunity
The professor described a Sichuan teacher, Professor Hou Guangjun, who had designed research experiments in accordance with traditional practices, advocating “natural nonploughing” [ziran 1lliangeng} or “no till” agriculture. In the 1950s, after seeing his research plot in Yibin Prefecture, Changling County, a Party leader became convinced of the efficacy of his methods and gave him a large piece of low-yield land for his work. Yields rose through the no-till method. After the Leap began and his ideas became heresy, Hou escaped persecution only because he
had a political patron. The agriculture professor sighed at the lost opportunity:
“If Professor Hou’s methods had been adopted nationally, much wasted labor could have been avoided. The whole question of “taking grain as the key link” to raise agricultural yields could have been addressed in a more moderate way. Bur what leaders said counted, and what intellectuals said was ignored. We were targets for reform.”
Hou’s noninvasive approach, reminiscent of Daoist attitudes of oneness with nature and harmonious accommodation to its ways, was the very antithesis of the Leap’s coercive, labor-intensive interventionism.
—Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature
More David Moser awesomeness
At a private party in Beijing, I once saw a popular Chinese TV actor (whose name I won’t mention) hike up his pants, don a large pair of glasses, and perform a dead-on imitation of Jiang Zemin, giving brutally catty appraisals of various world leaders, cursing like a Beijing taxi driver, and even expressing inappropriate carnal feelings for Kate Winslet in “The Titanic”, boasting that he had a “Titanic” of his own, and he would love to “sink it” with her any time. (You will remember that Jiang had praised the political class consciousness of the movie when it first came out.) This was bawdy, funny stuff, and it made me wonder what Chinese TV might be like if the government censors did not exert such a stranglehold. How many potential Chinese Lenny Bruces, Dick Gregorys or Richard Pryors are out there in China with no forum for expression and no hope of an audience? In this most political of all countries, when will political satire come into being?
