Remember Alicia's duck story last week? It eventually made its way to a whole lot of news outlets, which is curious, because just today I realized there's a video of "5,000 ducks" in China from April 2009. Strange how the news cycle works, right? And it's interesting how a story can remain obscure for so long just because it happened in a rural part of the country. To summarize what we think happened:
It's strange what goes viral and what doesn't. It seems this video was first posted on Youku seven days ago, then transferred to 56.com (unclear whether by the same person). On Youku, by far the bigger website, this video has 430 views. On 56.com: 334,000.
The original video description simply reads, "Old man, you're pretty awesome." I'll leave it at that.
Slightly old, from 2007, but still timely, given that China’s national college entrance exam (gaokao) was just two weeks ago, and this documentary is about how students at one particular high school prepare for that exam. This film, which won the Best Documentary award at the Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2006, has been... Read more »
Last week, we posted a video from Nice Peter called Chillin Panda Baby. What we failed to mention was that Nice Peter is sort of famous on the Internet for a series of amazing vids called “Epic Rap Battle,” each with millions and millions of views (like, 58 million, in the case of Darth Vadar... Read more »
SUBS, from Beijing, is one of the many bands (at least 17) expected to play tomorrow at 2 Kolegas in Beijing as part of dazeFEAST, organized by Badr Benjelloun (more commonly known around these parts as Beijing Daze). SUBS is joined by another Shanghai band, Fever Machine, who we'll feature them at another time. But for now, enjoy SUBS's Ship's Log -- and drop us a note if you end up going to tomorrow's extravaganza. Would love to hear about it.
Picture via Philip Tinari, captioned: “Liu Wei in front of his painting at waitanyuan, hung upside down for last 3 years.” Dazefeast is tomorrow starting at 4 pm at 2 Kolegas, for those in Beijing. Unrelated: the most interesting things happen between Wednesday and Friday, as we’re about to show you in today’s links.
On one hand, I want to call out this director for his whiny first-worldism and paranoia. But on the other hand, I can't imagine the brand of hell that is making a movie in China: the ribbons of red tape, the soul-searing bureaucracy, the endless baijiu banquets and bribing with cigarettes. We're never told what movie this director, Gil Kofman, was working on, or if he ever finished. But we do know that he made a film about the experience, ala Tropic Thunder ("The Making of Tropic Thunder" was the movie that won the Oscar in Tropic Thunder, as you'll remember). The trailer is above.
![Before Jumping, Young Man Leaves Girlfriend With Haunting Last Words [Graphic]](http://beijingcream.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Suicide-jump-150x150.jpg "Before Jumping, Young Man Leaves Girlfriend With Haunting Last Words [Graphic]")
