Try not to so predictably freak out over the air every time there's one bad day, eh folks? The AQI's below 100 as we speak. Read these non-air-related links.
This video begins with the text: "After his video 'Donnie Does Marriage Market' went viral in China, Donald Mahoney was invited to Beijing to be a guest on the popular Chinese TV show: My Oscar."
That's quite the set-up. But Donnie struggles, privately, with a crisis of confidence -- before finding himself amidst firecracker smoke. At the 10-minute mark, he goes on stage. It gets awkward real fast.
Ablajan Awut Ayup, the Uyghur Justin Bieber, is trending again in Uyghur cyberspace. Uyghur Weixin and popular social media sites like Misranim have amped up Ablajan’s meteoric rise in Uyghur pop culture, but this time it’s not just his highly orchestrated K-pop-style dance-ensemble performances, his catchy rhymes and bad-boy persona. Ablajan is crossing over. China, meet A-bo-la-jiang.
The mayor of Taizhou, a small city in Jiangsu province, has rejected a netizen's complaint that his mental health has been damaged by an eye-catching outdoor advert featuring the cleavage of Taiwanese model Lin Chi-ling.
The netizen left his message on the government website of Taizhou city on January 10, signing it "a primary school child."
Poets! Yes, you. Beijing Cream and Pathlight are excited to present Poetry Night in Beijing at the Bookworm Literary Festival on Sunday, March 16, a curated community event to promote English-language POETRY in this wonderful city of ours. We need your help.
We are seeking four poets enthusiastic about reading their work at the March 16th event for a keen audience of peers and poetry lovers.
We have an announcement coming up tomorrow at 10 am. I'll go ahead and spoil it here: we're hosting a poetry event at the Bookworm Literary Festival with the wonderful folks of Pathlight, and we're calling for poets. Read all about that later; other links for now.
I've written about Liu Xia's house arrest before, the disgrace and heartbreak of it, forced into isolation for the past three years because her husband happens to be Liu Xiaobo, the activist and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient who's currently in a Chinese jail.
In the above video, shot last month, we get a rare glimpse into her world, bounded physically -- no metaphor needed -- by the wall of her Beijing apartment. But as she reads two poems, "Untitled" and "Drinking," it's apparent she occupies another place whose boundaries are less defined, depthless.
