Cover art is by the renowned satirist Badiucao

If you transcribed every twisted, bitter, sick thought you ever had about China, tied it to a brick, then repeatedly smashed it into someone’s skull, you might give them an experience akin to reading Arthur Meursault’s debut novel Party Members (Camphor Press). There is no more unrelentingly savage satire of modern China ever written, and perhaps deserves more attention than it received.

The book traces the journey of Yang Wei, an unremarkable junior official (“one of a billion, not in a billion”) in a third-tier city, destined for the unheralded heights of utter mediocrity — until his penis gains consciousness, and starts telling him exactly what he needs to do to get ahead.

Less a phallic nod to Kafka than a Sino-cidal literary replay of the (largely forgotten) Richard E. Grant movie How to Get Ahead in Advertising, a satire about an ad man with a vicious boil that tell him what to do, it would be far too easy to dismiss Party Members  as a crude schoolboy ode to the adage that men think with their dicks. That would miss the point.

Such is Meursault’s anger with Chinese society that he has intentionally deployed the most vulgar metaphor he can find to prod at its leaders: He thinks Party members are a bunch of dicks and says so, occasionally to devastating effect.

Not for the easily offended or those who lean toward hugging pandas, Meursault’s China flows with faeces, saliva and urine. A man gets clubbed to death by a giant penis. There is a vigorous anal rape. The lust for luxury car-ownership sees men furiously getting off in showroom Audis. Those with a taste for the grotesque will revel in any number of set pieces, many of which are masturbatory: “When they were not talking or playing with their phones, Rainy would lie next to Yang Wei, playing with his penis, letting her hands glide up and down the thick, meaty sausage like an Amazon warrior polishing her spear.”

The venomous sneering takes aim at almost every conceivable headline issue: Food scandals, greed, corruption, pollution, inequality, urban management, civic values, public defecation, GDP obsession, education, parenting, marriage, government and, of course, the Party. In lesser hands, this might be nothing more than the race-tinged rantings of a long-term expat, expanding (condensing?) his every negative thought about China into a flimsy fictional pretext. But Party Members’ dark humour, technical prowess, and outlandish exuberance save it from such a fate — though it sails dangerously close to the wind at times.

A typical members-only party

What mostly saves the book is that it is often very funny (sometimes laugh-out-loud so), not to mention savagely accurate, despite its obvious excesses. It is that rare more than half a dozen pages pass without some pithy caricature or barb, whether it’s aimed at the nation’s terrible television (“…his aging wife falling asleep in front of part 63 of a 745 episode of a Korean soap opera…”) or obsession with Japanese militarism. Often both are merged to comic effect: “Three minutes later, Yang Wei walked over from his chair, swiped the remote from her, and changed the channel back to the local TV channel’s premiere of Let’s Nuke Tokyo 3.”

China’s often ham-fisted attempts at propaganda are easily satirized, and the description of Yang Wei’s third-tier as  “THE FOREST OF PROGRESS” and “THE PARIS OF ASIA” are less satire than stenography (compare the shithole concrete reality of Dongguan, a textiles hub, with its National Foreign City status). So too, the surreal effect of the cuddly, yet sinister sloganeering: “The smiley faces, dancing cats, and knock-off copies of Japanese anime characters that she normally chose to decorate the Party’s contemporary slogans gave off the air of a benevolent dictatorship controlled by a schizophrenic four year old.”

Dongguan (above) as it imagines itself

Dongguan (above) as it is

Sometimes it is difficult to tell if China’s development is more inspired by Charlie Chaplin or Joseph Stalin, a point made in the book by channeling that other totalitarian satirist, George Orwell: “It was a bright, cold day in April, and the large clock atop the Ministry building was striking thirteen. Actually, it was supposed to strike twelve, but there had been a mix-up during the clock’s manufacture and nobody could be bothered to change it.”

For all its searing rage, and certainly because of it, the book has its faults. It does not have any gears: going from neutral observation to China-is-completely-and-utterly-fucked up within a few pages, never really slowing down or changing direction. For those that like their narratives to have a natural rhythm and flow, to gently undulate with plot twists and emotional highs and lows… this is not the book. Aside from the plot-device of an unwieldy and absurdist talking penis, the novel is a bit one-track, like a hammer brutally smashing rusty nails into one’s head, page after page after page.

There’s also a sense that this merciless savagery damages the fiction itself. In the absence of any characters to care about, with Chinese cities given no color other than the bleakest grey, the effect is brutally numbing, making it easy to switch off. If the aim of satire is to affect some type of change, then Party Members misses the mark. The book’s monotonous ferocity drains the book of the emotional impact it might have delivered, enticing the reader to think China is getting exactly what it deserves — and nothing can be done about. That bleakness—nihilism, really — might be too much for some readers to bear. For others, it might be just the tonic.

The author, Carlos Ottery, is on Twitter @CharlesOutre

Ladies and gentlemen, we have Jiang Zemin – “the elder.”

Jiang Zemin was a pretty popular president in his own time. Though not without criticism, his term marked a breaking point in the widespread reforms that would go on to define the successes of post-Cultural Revolution China. By today’s standards, Jiang could be called conservative, but in the early 90s when he came into power, he was a revolutionary. His China in the 1990s was in many ways more liberal than it is now. Jiang Zemin was a powerful and respected president, but today the 91-year-old man, still very much alive, is reborn as a meme beacon of hope to China’s millennials.

Younger Chinese have adopted the leader as a beloved character of their own, despite not being old enough to clearly remember his presidency. Grainy video clips are enough to document the ex-leader’s unscripted public persona (a trait unmatched by perhaps any party official to come before or after him). In the clip above, Jiang scolds a reporter for asking if China’s elite had personally selected Hong Kong’s next president. Jiang rises to his feet and marches straight to the camera, in order to deliver a riveting oral address in three languages. He asks the reporters why they can’t be more like CNN’s Mike Wallace, whose company Jiang says he enjoyed very much. I’m speaking to you as an elder, he tells them, unwittingly generating his eternal nickname. He tells them they must raise their journalistic standards, then switches into English to denounce their questions as too simple… sometimes naïve!

Given the otherwise standard history of CCCP leaders as either cold pragmatists or calculated androids of Communist ideology, Jiang Zemin’s animated, genuine demeanor is a welcome breath of fresh air. It would be natural to write this outburst off as a one-time kind of occurrence. We’re happy to tell you, it’s not. In different videos Jiang can be found waltzing with the French president’s wife, playing the ukulele for a crowd of onlookers, and singing Elvis tunes.

Jiang Zemin pulls out a comb to fix his hair at a meeting with the Spanish king

The unlikely cult of personality that’s grown around Jiang is called moha (膜蛤), or toad-worship, referencing the leader’s admittedly amphibian features. Toad lovers who admire Jiang will use his most famous phrases frequently, and quickly bond with anyone who can respond with a Jiang Zemin quote of their own.

In China, though, even something as innocuous and positive as praising one of the country’s significant leaders is not so simple. In recent years, searches for Jiang’s name have become increasingly censored. Part of it had to do with a surge of untrue rumors about his death (remember, he is still alive). Really, the central government in Beijing doesn’t want people talking about politics at all, but searches for Jiang’s name are especially obscured in the context of Xi Jinping’s presidency. He and Jiang were political rivals, and there’s speculation among the people in China that Xi’s crackdown on corruption serves the secondary purpose of removing Jiang Zemin supporters from the party’s ranks, which falls in line with further speculation that Xi might attempt to stay on for an unprecedented third term.

Connections have been drawn between the beloved toad Jiang and another froggy figure who stands between the worlds of politics and internet memes: Pepe. The cartoon frog rose to a position of holding actual political influence when he was adopted as symbol of the alt-right during last year’s American election. Pepe went from a crude drawing circulating on message boards to a figure of political weight. Jiang Zemin looks like he might one-up the situation, going from a major political figure to a meme, and thereby back to a major influence on the digital generation that’s building tomorrow’s China.

One toad lover explained his own love of Jiang:

“I think it’s hard to pinpoint one reason for the phenomenon. I think it’s just his personality – his behavior is so different from the other Chinese leaders, especially Hu Jintao or Xi Jinping. They’re more contained, more restrained, very careful with their words. Also, the younger people didn’t really live through his period, so that contributes to the mystique around him.”

It’s 2017 and memes have actual power now. Jiang Zemin’s unlikely rise to internet superstardom could very well have an effect on the next generation of China’s leaders – he really was one-of-a-kind in the country’s history. In the meantime, we’ll leave you with these nonsense memes.

Ever the Quiet Burier of Ledes, Global Times published a news item Monday that surely qualifies for Hideous China Story of the Year (Relationships Edition)… although GT went for the more casual “Mom jailed for covert contraceptive.”

It’s a Turducken of a tale – one that gradually reveals more unpleasant layers with every sentence until, eventually, everybody loses. The action begins in 2015 with a young graduate, Zhang Yang, whose girlfriend, “Yanzi,” is pregnant. Unfortunately, Zhang’s mother Zhang Xiuqin does not approve of the match, and not only pressures Yanzi into getting an abortion – she does the procedure herself. Medical ethics are clearly not an issue for Nurse Zhang, though:

Zhang Xiuqin was handed six months and a 5,000-yuan ($743) fine…for implanting [a] diaphragm while performing an abortion on the woman, CCTV news reported.

Yanzi only discovered the device years later while seeking treatment because she had been unable to conceive since.

Zhang told authorities she inserted the contraceptive device to sabotage their relationship and prevent them from marrying.

Zhang said she had disapproved of their relationship because at the time her son was a college-educated and Yanzi was working as a waitress.

Things then take a deeply amoral twist for the worse:

Zhang began encouraging Yanzi and Zhang Yang to get back together after learning the former waitress had made a fortune.

For some reason, Yanzi didn’t fancy another invasive Ob-Gyn procedure at the hands of her meddling mother-in-law and went somewhere else to figure out why she couldn’t get pregnant again. The plot unraveled and the sociopathic Nurse Zhang ended up in jail (whether she is allowed to practice nursing again is another story, but am gonna guess probably… yes). Last, quick twist of the knife:

The couple eventually broke up.

The story is filed under GT’s “Odd” section, but is frankly so WTF-awful, it could form one of the plotlines in Party Members and still come off as a little extreme.

h/t Isabella Steger

This piece originally appeared on the China digital media platform Radii, and this edited version is republished here with permission.

It’s the kind of balmy Sunday afternoon that makes you want a cold drink, and the Chinese street artist known as SHUO is taking me on a stroll through the hutongs after showing off one of his pieces.

“Did you see that?” he suddenly asks on our way to get milkshakes. A grin breaks out over his face. He says that I just missed an old lady on the street wearing an awesome shirt that said something about explosions. He’s very excited about the old lady’s awesome shirt and suggests that I write about awesome stuff like that. He doesn’t seem to be joking.

SHUO’s childlike excitement catches me off guard, if only because I expect him to be a little more cynical. The twenty-something 3D animator from Henan leads a quiet double life as an underground street artist in Beijing. He started off doing graffiti but moved onto stencil work — “I thought that stencil could express some things more easily, more concretely” — though he’s been playing around with cheaper and faster alternatives, like pasting stickers. His pieces are often deeply ironic takes on Chinese society, like this wheelchair-bound boy with his phone and charger stylized as an IV drip –

– or the URL http://www.china.com/ juxtaposed with a virus alert on a wall about to be knocked down:

SHUO is wearing white Converse sneakers, dark wash jeans, and a short-sleeved black t-shirt that doesn’t cover his tattoos. A pair of headphones is casually slung around his neck. One of his sleeves is streaked with dirt, as if he’d been scaling rooftops to put up his work — which is exactly what he did for the piece he just led me to see:

The weather-beaten blotch of paper above this Huguosi Xiaochi snack shop is one of his few extant pieces, too high up for sanitation workers to reach. It’s barely legible, a stencil of a pixelated Microsoft Word icon labeled  “个人简历” (“Personal Resume”). Last year, SHUO put up several of these around Beijing in a parody of the job application process, as if to comment on how hard it is for young Chinese like him to find employment.

Even the t-shirt SHUO’s wearing — self-designed, I learn — can be construed as a knowing jab at the new normal of air pollution. It’s embellished with a blown-up version of the green shield sticker found on the 3M face-masks commonly worn around Beijing.

The 3M motif appears elsewhere in his work, as in one piece where he superimposes a mask over a child’s face in a poster of an urban paradise with blue skies and green spaces:

In SHUO’s mind, it seemed to me at first, everything is ripe for this brand of dark humor.

I was surprised to learn that this isn’t quite the case.

“I don’t care about the law, I don’t care about other things, but my starting point is fun”

One is tempted to label SHUO the “Chinese Banksy.” Like the famous UK street artist, SHUO makes provocative stencil art behind a cloak of anonymity. But while Banksy’s choice to remain unidentified might have started out as a way to avoid prosecution, it now constitutes an important part of his identity; it’s both the mystique that makes his brand so appealing and a means of control over his public image.

For SHUO, anonymity is less of a choice: his work goes mostly unnoticed.

“Making these street art pieces, I’ve never been caught or chased, no one really cares about me. Even when doing it during the day, I don’t think it matters,” he says. (This isn’t completely true; he puts up a piece of work only if the coast is clear, as it were.) The fact that his work is always taken down or painted over doesn’t help, but he’s reluctantly accepted that his individual pieces are destined to be short-lived.

“Sitting on the street is boring,” he says. He wants more things — like his art, like that woman wearing that awesome shirt about explosions — to be fun.

SHUO’s “Personal Resume” on the wall of a Beijing subway station, before and after

The New Yorker referred to Bansky in a 2007 profile as “a sort of painterly Publius” who “surfaces from time to time to prod the popular conscience,” but SHUO couldn’t even prod the popular conscience if he wanted to. His art lingers in obscurity, both offline and online. “No one really pays attention to me. One friend of mine thinks it’s really weird, that in 2014, at my peak, I never took off, and after that the response just kept mellowing.”

Why is that? “I think it’s maybe that there are relatively few people doing [street art].” SHUO says he’s one of only two people in all of China making this kind of stencil art, as opposed to spray-paint graffiti, which is far more common. (The other artist, he says, is ROBBBB.) “First, [people] just don’t have the awareness. Second, they don’t know what this [kind of art] is. If they don’t know what something is, it’s really easy for them to ignore.”

“If the government says it’s reactionary, then it’s reactionary”

Offline, SHUO prefers to remain anonymous out of a sense of self-preservation. When he was in middle school, he went online and posted a question about rumors of Xinjiang people stabbing people on the street with needles to spread HIV. The next day, two police officers came to his house and told him he’d broken the law. They let him off because of his age, but the incident left a deep impression on him.

SHUO won’t post certain pieces for fear that the police will trace them to his home, as social media platforms like Weibo require real-name verification. Besides his graffiti friends, none of his acquaintances or family know him as a street artist. He doesn’t even sign his work, and says he doesn’t want it to attract too much attention. “Because I’m acting on my own, if I suffer one blow, I might just, disappear…” He trails off.

Perhaps the most important difference between an artist like Banksy and SHUO is what animates their work. A self-described “art terrorist,” Banksy creates tongue-in-cheek pieces that reek of anti-establishment sarcasm, such as his dystopian theme park Dismaland, a blockbuster critique of the Disney franchise. Banksy told The New Yorker in the 2007 profile, “I originally set out to try and save the world, but now I’m not sure I like it enough.” In his art, the world is a big, bad joke, and although he might have run out of charity for it, he never tires of pointing out the punchline.

SHUO’s work can be much more ambiguous. He once put up a Wi-Fi sign outside of a police office — complete with the official logo — because every time he passed it, the officers inside were playing with their phones:

“It has the feeling of human warmth,” he says about the piece. “If you play with your phone, okay, I’ll give you Wi-Fi. It’s not that I’m criticizing you, not that I’m mocking you; it’s to make you feel more comfortable, I guess.”

His explanation triggers a kind of gestalt shift in how I view that work. Far from merely making fun of the police, he’s employing them in his little joke, and then sharing it with them. 

If Banksy-style sarcasm feels kitsch nowadays, it’s because it has become formulaic, and there isn’t much surprise to be found in reiterating the absurd. As hard as it might be to believe SHUO when he says his motives are innocent, his art is eye-opening in its capacity for both ridicule and earnestness, in its ability to appear sarcastic and yet still double back on itself to avoid descending into cynicism.

It is also completely his own. As he said in an interview with Beijing-based website Loreli in December 2015: “I’ll never stop, it’s part of my life. I have this problem that every time I take a picture of what I’ve done and put it online, everyone that comments just writes: Banksy. Just the word: Banksy. And I’m like, Dude, it took me ages thinking of the idea, I’ve finally had time to go paint it, can you not appreciate it?”

SHUO’s art is eye-opening in its capacity for both ridicule and earnestness, in its ability to appear sarcastic and yet still double back on itself to avoid descending into cynicism

In SHUO’s worldview, dark humor can be light. One of his more sensitive pieces saw him inserting the letters A, B, and C onto a poster touting “socialist core values,” turning it into a multiple-choice question:

The piece raises questions about whether all of these values can feasibly coexist, or whether some, like democracy, are more important than others in Chinese society.

He thinks it’s harmless, though he sees the friction between different interpretations. “If you use a different logic, like in real society, some things are very harmful. Like the ABC piece, if the government says it’s reactionary, then it’s reactionary. But if I tell my other friends I’m making a joke, I think it’s pretty funny. It’s very ambiguous.”

Real society exists in tension with SHUO’s society. “I think society is a really fun game, and you can freely play this game,” he says. “But if you think according to this principle, it’s actually pretty crazy, pretty chaotic, because…” He trails off over his chocolate milkshake, collecting his thoughts. “I don’t care about the law, I don’t care about other things, but my starting point is fun. I don’t want to hurt people.”

The other day, SHUO says, he was talking with a friend about how they could make society feel more like a community. Everyone could feel like neighbors, like a big family. If he saw someone he didn’t know on the street and liked their clothes, he would feel comfortable complimenting them, without fear of misunderstanding.

I ask SHUO if he’s ever done anything like that. After all, he didn’t tell that old lady we’d seen earlier on the street that he liked her shirt.

“No,” he laughs. “I was just talking about it with my friend. We thought it would be fun if we could do that.”

It’s only a hypothetical. But his street art? It’s very real, and very fun.

This piece was published on Radii. Most of the photos above were taken with permission from SHUO’s (private) Flickr account, with some first appearing on Loreli.

Megan Pan is a writer and undergraduate at Northwestern University majoring in Philosophy and double-minoring in Poetry and Chinese.

Per usual, no idea about post frequency, etc. But there it is. We’ve entered the cashless society!

You don’t care about any of that, though. You want to know about this:

Yes, that is Donald Trump in a PLA uniform.

No, that is not a real photograph — we have People’s Daily, a Chinese government publication, to thank for it, as they recently released a fun meme-maker that lets people upload photos (of themselves, I think is the point) that are then superimposed onto PLA uniforms from different eras. For example, I uploaded the picture of the Donald above onto a uniform from World War II.

Naturally, we wanted to see how the Donald looks throughout all the eras. Let’s start from the beginning and move forward:

There he is, a spry young man, during the Nanchang Uprising, the first major engagement in the Chinese Civil War on August 1, 1927. What a moment in history, when the Donald, full of theory and idealism, and blessed with ignorance, entered the fray as the ultimate underdog in a campaign to upset the established order.

Of course, there would be much hardship in the coming years, as he and his fellow politically ostracized “bandits” were driven into the heart of the country, where humble, family-oriented, salt-of-the-earth villagers welcomed him with a fervor and passion which his opponents could not understand.

The “Red Army” marched across the country, rallying the underclass to their cause while evading a better-stocked, more experienced and “refined” enemy. For the Donald to have any chance at victory, certain… tactics would need to be employed.

But guerrilla warfare suited the Donald just fine.

The conclusion of the internecine conflict saw the founding of the People’s Republic of China, with Mao, modestly dressed in a woolen jacket, declaring it so on October 1, 1949 from the rostrum of Tiananmen. If you squint really hard at some of the footage from that time, you can see, to Mao’s left as he faces the crowd, the unmistakeable smirk of this figure:

But the rigors of bureaucracy proved difficult for the Donald, who demanded loyalty above all else — to himself, not the country. He formed unholy alliances with oligarchs and despots. He set traps for the intellectual class, which he hated with all his lifeblood, for he himself had been rejected by them. He made speeches, albeit infrequently, to consolidate his power. He had his stooge call an enemy “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.” He turned his countrymen against one another, and would have gladly destroyed a once-proud culture to preserve his legacy. All the while, he held the expression of one who is unable to find the letter Q on a Write and Learn Touch Tablet.

Who could he turn to in times of need? Who would, as he so often does in front of a personal ornate embossed antique gold framed mirror, pucker up at his every glance, and execute with incurious resolve the duties of the true patriot?

The years wore on the Donald.

His eyes sagged underneath the weight of his responsibilities. He lost the ability to give proper physical response to natural stimuli. His every bodily movement became a simulacrum of basic human behavior. His smiles became squints. His words became grunts. Standing over the toilet, pinching the squat end of his prune, he shat when he meant to pee.

He lost his smile.

Gaze long upon his eyes, and you might glimpse the abyss.

Lord have mercy on us all.

Editor’s note: On July 23, the writer Zhang Wumao published an essay called “In Beijing, 20 Million People Pretend to Live” to his public WeChat account. As of the following morning, it had accumulated more than 5 million views and nearly 20,000 comments. 

Of course, the article was removed that very afternoon.

But by then, the essay had attracted thousands of responses. As our correspondent Megan Pan wrote for Radii:

Though the hubbub online has died down, the essay, a meditation on varying facets of life in Beijing, has since spawned over a hundred thousand countering essays in response. Titles include plays on the original essay’s title, such as “In Beijing, 20 Million People and “In Beijing, 20 Million People are Bravely Living,” and even direct digs at the author, such as “Mr. Zhang, You Aren’t Even a Beijing Kid So Why Are You Acting Like a Know-it-all.” The original essay has been lambasted as “making a fuss over nothing.”

But “In Beijing, 20 Million People Pretend to Live” resists easy summarization – it’s framed as a series of Zhang’s loosely related reflections on living in Beijing, heavily supported by anecdotes. He touches on a variety of topics that hit close to home: the everyday absurdities of urban sprawl, the never-ending struggle to buy a house, and alienation from home. As a nonlocal from Shaanxi who has been living in Beijing for the past eleven years, he also attempts to negotiate the tensions and differences between locals and nonlocals.

What follows is Megan Pan’s translation of that now-censored essay.

在北京，有2000万人假装在生活
In Beijing, 20 Million People Pretend to Live

1

北京没有人情味.

Beijing has no human warmth.

经常被外地朋友批评：北京人钱多装逼不热情。都到了同一个城市，干嘛不一起聚聚？几十年的交情，还不把我送到机场？事实上，北京人很难像外地人一样热情——来去接送，全程陪同，北京人真的很难做得到。

I am often criticized by nonlocal friends: Beijingers have a lot of money and act unfriendly. We’ve all made it to the same city, why don’t we get together? A few decades of friendship, and you won’t even send me to the airport? In reality, it is hard for Beijingers to be as friendly as outsiders – picking up and dropping off, accompanying all the way, these things truly are hard for Beijingers to do.

北京人很忙，忙到晚上11点，还在三环路上堵着；北京社交时间成本真的太高，高到从石景山去通州吃饭，还不如去天津来得快；北京真的太大，大到根本就不像一个城市。

Beijingers are very busy, busy all the way until 11 o’clock at night, and even then they are still stuck in traffic on the Third Ring Road; the time cost of socializing in Beijing is too high, so high that it is faster to go to Tianjin than it is to go from Shijingshan to Tongzhou to eat; Beijing is really too big, so big that it isn’t like a city at all.

北京到底有多大？它相当于2.5个上海，8.4个深圳，15个香港，21个纽约，27个首尔。2006年，张先生来北京，地铁只有1号，2号，13号线，现在的北京地铁到底有多少条线，不用百度还真记不住。10年前我坐着公交去找工作，拒绝去四环外的公司面试。现在，京东、腾讯、百度这些大公司都在五环外。

How big is Beijing? It is equivalent to 2.5 Shanghais, 8.4 Shenzhens, 15 Hong Kongs, 21 New Yorks, and 27 Seouls. In 2006, when Mr. Zhang [referring to himself] came to Beijing, the subway only had Lines 1, 2, and 13; if I didn’t use Baidu, I really wouldn’t be able to remember just how many lines the Beijing subway has now. Ten years ago, I took the bus to look for work and refused to go beyond the Fourth Ring for job interviews. Now, big companies like JD, Tencent, and Baidu are all outside of the Fifth Ring.

外地朋友来了北京，以为我们就很近了，实际上咱们不在同一个城市，咱们可能是在若干个城市，它们是中国海淀，中国国贸，中国通州，中国石景山……如果以时间为尺度，通州人和石景山人谈恋爱就算是异地恋，从北五环来趟亦庄就可以说是出差。

When nonlocal friends came to Beijing, they thought we were closer, but we weren’t actually in the same city, we may have been in a number of cities: they are Haidian, China; Guomao, China; Tongzhou, China; Shijingshan, China… If we use time as a measure, then someone from Tongzhou dating someone from Shijingshan would count as long-distance, and going from North Fifth Ring to Yizhuang can be called a business trip.

十年间，北京一直在控房控车控人口，但这块大饼却越摊越大，以至于西安的同学给我打电话，也说自己在北京，我问他在北京哪里？他说：我在北京十三环。

For the last ten years, Beijing has been controlling housing, controlling cars, and controlling population, but this large flatbread continues to sprawl and grow larger, to the point where my Xi’an classmate called me and said he was also in Beijing, and when I asked where in Beijing he was, he said: I’m in Beijing’s Thirteenth Ring.

北京是个肿瘤，没有人能控制它的发展速度；北京是一条河流，没人能划清它的边界。北京是一个信徒，只有雄安能将它超度。

Beijing is a tumor, whose speed of development no one can control; Beijing is a river, whose boundaries no one can draw. Beijing is a disciple, and only Xiongan can release it from purgatory. [Editor's note: Xiongan is a recently established state-level development hub in nearby Hebei province.]

北京的人情淡薄不只是针对外地朋友，对同处一城的北京朋友同样适用。每次有外地同学来京，聚会时外地同学会说，你们在北京的应该经常聚吧？我说，你们一年来几次北京，我们差不多就聚几次。

Beijing’s coldness is directed not only at nonlocal friends, it is also similarly applied to Beijing friends who live in the same city. Every time a nonlocal classmate comes to Beijing, when we all get together the classmate will say, you guys in Beijing often meet up, right? And I will say, however many times you guys come to Beijing is about how many times we meet up.

在北京，交换过名片就算认识；一年能打几个电话就算至交；如果还有人愿意从城东跑到城西，和你吃一顿不谈事的饭，就可以说是生死之交了；至于那些天天见面，天天聚在一起吃午饭的，只能是同事。

In Beijing, exchanging business cards counts as recognition; calling a couple times a year counts as best friends; if someone is willing to go from the east to the west side to have a meal with you without talking business, then you could be called friends for life; as for the people you see every day, eat lunch with every day, they are only coworkers.

2

北京其实是外地人的北京。

Beijing is actually the outsider’s Beijing.

如果要让中国人评选一生中必去的城市，我相信大多数人会选择北京。因为这里是首都，这里有天安门，有故宫，有长城，有几百家大大小小的剧院。话剧歌剧传统戏，相声小品二人转，不管你是阳春白雪，还是下里巴人，都可以在北京找到属于自己的精神食粮。但这些东西其实和北京的人没多大关系。

If you let Chinese choose their must-go cities in this lifetime, I believe that most people would pick Beijing. Because here is the capital, here is Tiananmen, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the hundreds of theaters, big and small. Drama, opera, traditional drama, crosstalk, two-person skits, whether you like highbrow or popular art, you can always find what your spirit needs in Beijing. But these things actually do not have much to do with Beijingers.

走进北京各大剧院，十个人里面有六个人是口音各异的外地人，还有三个是刚来北京，没新鲜够的文艺青年，最后剩下一个是坐在角落里刷手机，熬时间的北京地陪。

Walking into Beijing’s various big theaters, I see that among ten people, six are outsiders with differing accents, three are young literary types that have just arrived in Beijing and haven’t gotten enough of the novelty, and the last remaining one is the local guide sitting in the corner, playing with his phone to kill time.

来京11年，我去过11次长城，12次故宫，9次颐和园，20次鸟巢。我对这个城市牛逼的建筑，悠久的历史完全无感。登上长城，只会想起孟姜女，很难再升腾起世界奇迹的民族豪情；走进故宫，看到的只是一个接一个的空房子，还没我老家的猪圈生动有趣。

In the 11 years since arriving in Beijing, I have gone to the Great Wall 11 times, the Forbidden City 12 times, the Summer Palace nine times, and the Bird’s Nest 20 times. I feel complete indifference for this city’s awesome structures and long history. Climbing the Great Wall, I only think of Lady Meng Jiang, finding it difficult to stir up that lofty pride for the wonders of the world once more; walking into the Forbidden Palace, I see only one empty building after another, which is even less lively and interesting than my hometown’s pigpen.

[Lady Meng Jiang, according to folklore, wept bitterly at the Great Wall for her dead husband, who helped build it.]

很多人一提北京，首先想到的是故宫后海798，是有历史有文化有高楼大厦。这些东西好不好？好！自豪不自豪？自豪！但这些东西不能当饭吃。北京人感受更深的是拥堵雾霾高房价，是出门不能动弹，在家不能呼吸。

When bringing up Beijing, so many people think first of the Forbidden City, Houhai, and 798 [Art Zone], of how Beijing has history and culture and high-rises. Are these things good? They are good! Am I proud? I am proud! But these things cannot be what we live off. What Beijingers experience more deeply is the congestion, the smog, the high housing prices; it is how, when leaving the house, you cannot move, and when at home, you cannot breathe.

3

北京是终归是北京人的北京。

Beijing, in the end, is the Beijingers’ Beijing.

如果说北京还有那么一点烟火味的话，那么这烟火味属于那些祖孙三代都居住在这个城市的老北京人。这烟火味是从老北京人的鸟笼子里钻出来的，是从晚饭后那气定神闲的芭蕉扇里扇出来的，是从出租车司机那傲慢的腔调里扯出来的……

If Beijing is said to have that hint of the smell of smoke, then that smell of smoke belongs to the old Beijingers who have been living in this city for generations. This smell of smoke curls out of old Beijingers’ birdcages, fans out from the leisurely palm-leaf fan after dinner, is pulled out from the taxi driver’s haughty tone of voice…

老北京人正在努力为这个城市保留一丝生活气息，让这个城市看起来，像是个人类居住的地方。

Old Beijingers are currently trying to preserve a bit of breath of life for this city, in order to make this city look like a place where humans live.

老北京人的这点生活气息是从基因里传下来的，也是从屁股下面五套房子里升腾起来的。当西城的金融白领沉浸在年终奖的亢奋中时，南城的北京土豪会气定神闲地说，我有五套房；当海淀的码农们敲完一串代码，看着奶茶的照片，幻想自己成为下一个刘强东的时候，南城的北京土豪会气定神闲地说，我有五套房；当朝阳的传媒精英签完一个大单，站在CBD落地窗前展望人生时，依旧会听到南城土豪气定神闲地说，我有五套房。

This breath of life that old Beijingers have is passed down through genes, and also rises up from the five houses underneath their asses. When Xicheng’s [Beijing district to the west] financial white-collars are absorbed in the excitement of their year-end bonuses, Nancheng’s [district to the south] Beijing tuhao [Chinese term for people of wealth/nouveau riche] will leisurely say, I have five houses; when Haidian’s manong [coders] finish typing out a string of code, looking at pictures of milk tea* and fantasizing about when they will become a Richard Liu [founder of JD.com], Nancheng’s Beijing tuhao will leisurely say, I have five houses; when Chaoyang [District]’s media elite finish signing a large order, standing in front of the CBD’s [Central Business District] floor-to-ceiling windows forecasting life, they will still hear Nancheng’s tuhao leisurely saying, I have five houses.

* ["Milk tea" is a reference to JD.com founder Richard Liu's wife, Zhang Zetian, whose nickname is "milk tea sister."]

没有五套房，你凭什么气定神闲？凭什么感受生活气息？凭什么像北京大爷一样逗鸟下棋，听戏喝茶？

If you don’t have five houses, on what basis can you act leisurely? On what basis can you feel that breath of life? On what basis can you be like an old Beijing uncle, playing with birds, playing chess, listening to operas, and drinking tea?

在北京，没有祖产的移民一代，注定一辈子要困在房子里。十几年奋斗买一套鸟笼子大小的首套房；再花十几年奋斗换一套大一点的二套房，如果发展得快，恭喜你，可以考虑学区房了。

In Beijing, this generation of migrants without inherited property are destined to be trapped within the housing system their whole lives. They struggle for decades to buy a house the size of a birdcage, then struggle a few more decades to swap it out for a slightly bigger second house, and if you make strides, congratulations, you can now consider school district housing.

好像有了学区房，孩子就可以上清华上北大，但是清华北大毕业的孩子依旧买不起房。那时候，孩子要么跟我们一起挤在破旧的老房子里，要么从头开始，奋斗一套房。

It is as though if you have school district housing, your kids will be able to go to Tsinghua and Peking University, but kids that graduate from Tsinghua and Peking still can’t afford to buy a house. Then, they will come live with us in that shabby old house, or start all over again, struggling to buy a house.

4

2015年，电影《老炮儿》热映，朋友圈里有好多人吐槽电影里六爷的北京味。我深有感触。

In 2015, Mr. Six was popular in theaters, and on my Wechat Moments were many people complaining about Mr. Six’s Beijing flavor. I felt very much the same way.

来北京十多年，我拒绝去五棵松看首钢，拒绝去工体看国安，因为没有发自肺腑的热爱，也学不会京腔国骂。但在北京久了，你会和老北京人达成某种和解。对他们有了更立体的了解，就没法再把他们简单地标签化。

Having been in Beijing for 10 or so years, I refuse to go to Wukesong to see the Beijing Ducks [basketball team] and to go to the Workers’ Stadium to see Beijing Guoan [soccer team], as I have no love for it from the bottom of my heart and I can’t learn Beijing-style cursing. But if you stay in Beijing for a while, you will reach a kind of understanding with the old Beijingers. Once you have a richer understanding of them, there is no way to stereotype them.

事实上，不是所有的北京人都排外，我身边就有很多友好的北京土著；也不是所有的北京年轻人都不求上进，坐享其成，大部分的北京年轻人和我们一样勤奋。

In reality, not all Beijingers oppose outsiders, many of my friends are Beijing natives themselves, and not all young Beijingers are idle and only enjoy what they already have. Most young Beijingers are just as assiduous as we are.

你可以不喜欢《老炮儿》，不喜欢北京人的自大京骂吹牛逼，但你得尊重他们，就像尊重东北人戴金项链，尊重山东人吃大葱一样，这就是人家的文化和习性，不能入乡随俗，至少也得敬而远之。

You can dislike Mr. Six, dislike Beijingers’ swaggering style of cursing and bragging, but you must respect them, just like you respect Dongbei [northeastern] people wearing gold chains and Shandong people eating scallions. These are people’s culture and habits, and if you can’t do as the Romans do, you must at least respect them from a distance.

有一次打车去林萃路，怕师傅不认识路，我打开导航准备帮师傅找路。师傅说不用导航了，那地方我知道，30年前那里是个面粉厂，十年前面粉厂拆了，建成了保障房。我说，你咋这么清楚？师傅满脸忧愁地说，那是我老家。

The first time I took a taxi to Lincui Road, I was worried the taxi driver wouldn’t know the way, so I opened up my navigation app to help guide him. The driver said he didn’t need it, I know that place, 30 years ago it was a flour factory, 10 years ago the flour factory was torn down and turned into affordable housing. I said, how do you know so much? With a face full of sorrow, the driver said, That was my old home.

我从师傅的话里能听出一丝乡愁和怨恨，北京对于新移民是站不住的远方；对老北京人却是回不去的故乡。

I could hear in his words a hint of nostalgia and resentment; to new migrants, Beijing is the distant place where they cannot stay, to old Beijingers, it is the home to where they cannot return.

我们这些外来人一边吐槽北京，一边怀念故乡。事实上，我们的故乡还回得去。它依旧存在，只是日益落败，我们已经无法适应而已。但对于老北京人而言，他们的故乡才是真的回不去了，他们的故乡正在以前所未有的速度发生物理上的改变，我们还能找到爷爷当年的房子，但多数北京人，只能通过地球经纬度来寻找自己的故乡。

We outsiders complain about Beijing while missing our homes. In reality, we can still go back to our homes. They still exist, it is only that they fall increasingly behind day by day and we cannot adjust anymore. But for old Beijingers, they truly cannot go back to their home, their home is now undergoing a physical change at an unprecedented speed. We can still find grandpa’s house from back then, but many Beijingers can only search for their own home by the earth’s coordinates.

有人说，是我们外地人建设了北京，没有外地人北京人连早餐都吃不上；是因为大量的外来人口抬高了北京的房价，造就了北京的繁华。但是你想过没有？老北京人也许并不需要这繁华，也不需要我们来抬高房价，他们和我们一样，只需要一个说青水秀，车少人稀的故乡。

Some people say, it is we outsiders who built up Beijing, if there were no outsiders, Beijingers wouldn’t even be able to have breakfast; it is because the migrant population has raised Beijing’s housing prices, creating Beijing’s prosperity. But have you ever thought about it? Perhaps old Beijingers don’t need this prosperity and don’t need us to raise housing prices. They are just like us, only needing a home with idyllic scenery, with few cars and less people.

5

今年，北京核心城区开始治理开墙打洞，越来越多的小商店、小饭店、小旅馆被迫关门，越来越多低端行业的从业者被迫离开，这种脱衣服减肥的管理方式让北京在高大上的道路上一路狂奔，但它离生活便利的宜居之都却越来越远，离包容开放的城市精神越来越远。

This year, Beijing’s core city area has begun to clean up “holes in the wall.” More and more small shops, restaurants, and hotels are being forced to close, more and more people working in low-end sectors are being forced to leave. This kind of shed-clothing-to-lose-weight style of management has allowed Beijing to hurtle down the road to sophistication, but it draws further away from the livable city, further away from the open and inclusive spirit of the city.

那些追梦成功的人正在逃离，他们去了澳洲，新西兰，加拿大，美国西海岸。那些追梦无望的人也在逃离，他们退回到河北，东北和故乡。

Those who have successfully achieved their dreams are currently fleeing to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the west coast of America. Those who have chased their dreams in vain are also fleeing, they are returning to Hebei, Dongbei, and their hometowns.

还剩下2000多万人留在这个城市，假装在生活。事实上，这座城市根本就没有生活。这里只有少数人的梦想和多数人的工作。

And in this city remain 20 million people, pretending to live. In reality, there is no life in this city. Here, there are only the dreams of few and the work of many.

~

Megan Pan is a writer and undergraduate at Northwestern University majoring in Philosophy and double-minoring in Poetry and Chinese.

Oh, bother. https://t.co/KZBz255r0c

— Dissident Pooh (@DissidentPooh) July 17, 2017

I really hope the person behind this account has “Pooh” and “Tigger” on Google Alerts, if only to run an experiment to see how many times characters from Winnie the Pooh will be mentioned in relation to China:

Let this be the start of a beautiful thing… and not one of those two-week Twitter fads.

Follow @DissidentPooh now.

Today was a good day in Beijing, weather-wise, if not a bit on the hot side, and humid. There were blue skies and white clouds. Moments after Liu Xiaobo’s death, this was the scene:

Liu Xiaobo will be remembered by the Chinese people — someday, even if it’s not today or in the near future — as a man of immense dignity and unyielding grace, whose unshakeable conscience caused him much suffering, but in the end elevated all those who understood what he stood for and why he persisted. He will be celebrated.

This latest China-based production of the comedy is not about money, stars, or even an Expat in Chinese Film and TV Award: It’s about the art. To learn more, and help shift some tickets, Beijing Cream had a quick chat with the cast of this 90-minute modernist comedy about “three people losing their shit over a painting” (curtains rise 7.30pm on Thursday; tickets 100 kuai).

Beijing Cream: (stroking chin) So why Art?

Carlos Ottery (actor, Yvan): A screenwriter pal of mine, Peter, wanted to direct the play in Beijing a few years ago but it fell through, as these things often do… putting it on at has been at the back, the very back, of my mind for quite a while.

Gregory Joseph Allen (director/actor, Marc) From the very beginning this has really been all about a small group of like-minded artists falling in love with a script and wanted to share it with others. Oh, and chicks dig theatre nerds… they do, right? Right? I hope that I didn’t just waste three months of my life. Shit.

BJC: Why are there so few small indie productions, like Art, in Beijing?

CO: Money. Unless you are talking about a big Broadway-style show or a particularly commercial performance, theatre makes bugger-all cash. These days a lot of people in Beijing are in things for the money alone…People prefer to lose 10 million dollars on a film that will never get made, or to watch something with Vin Diesel topless, and who can blame them for that.

The other thing is censorship, which seeps in everywhere. It effects everything: public discourse, books, TV, theatre. Who can be arsed putting on a good show, only to be told at the last minute that the censors want you to change things, due to some imagined sensitivity?

GJA: Because producing a play of any kind is really fucking hard to do, dude. I am only kind of kidding… There is just a lot involved in the putting-together of a play intended for public presentation, and unless you are really passionate about what you are doing, it’s hard to justify all of the time and work that it takes to get it done. Also, there are only so many theatre-loving expat actors in Beijing… Most of the quality actors that I know are trying to pay the bills by gigging in the local film and television market. They don’t really have the luxury of taking the time to do a play.

But is it Art? Greg’s knitted vest raises challenging questions

BJC: What are the cast’s theatrical bona fides – other than being three out-of-work chaps who can speak English?

CO: Ha. You have got me down. Even when I am gainfully employed, which I occasionally am, people still seem to think I am out of work. I think it something to do with the way I dress.

Greg is a good one to deconstruct. He played American football in his youth and he has that build, a cross between a drill sergeant and a bouncer. Yet at the same time, he strides around rehearsals quoting Shakespeare soliloquies… he lives and breathes theatre. He’s done hundreds of Equity performances, talks endlessly about Chekov and Stanislavsky, that sort of thing. Basically, if the show comes anywhere close to being remotely professional, then it is all down to him.

GJA: Stand back, bitches, and let the tootin’ begin… I have been acting for about 40 years. I have been in over 100 stage productions of one kind or another. I have a B.A. in Theatre Arts, and an M.F.A. in Theatre Arts: Acting and Directing. I have spent the last six years teaching theatre at Tsinghua International School, and since arriving in China I have had the pleasure of acting in several locally produced films [note Gregory’s role as “American Prick” in last year’s Jackie Chan-Jonny Knoxville flick Skiptrace– Ed]. And if you have ever wondered, yes, it is pretty fucking cool to see your big-ass head on an IMAX screen.

CO: Then there’s Sam [Kamanguza, who plays Serge]. A very cool character indeed. Ice-cold. My complete opposite on the stage. I’m all nerves, jangling around, barely able to stand still, and Sam will just stand opposite me and toss out his lines, like someone out of an old cowboy movie. Maybe inside he is all jittery and faking it, but I don’t think so. Funny too – has some great stories about guys in urinals standing next to him to, erm, check him out. Wonder how controlled he is then.  

BJC: Have you paid much attention to the recent Art revival in London?

CO: I saw the three ‘actors’ give an interview on Youtube. One of them was talking about what a great job he had done with his lines, and I remember thinking, ‘the smug git’ – only because I have had such a struggle with learning mine, obviously.

GJA: A couple of my colleagues had the pleasure of seeing it recently. They had nothing but praise for it. If we can deliver anything even near to what they are sharing on the east end, I would consider our production a success.

What particular relevance (if any) will Art hold for a Beijing audience?

CO: These days, China is famed for people paying millions of dollars on art of very questionable value. The play certainly taps into that. There’s also a lot of stuff about the getting rid of the old, to replace it with stuff that is ‘modern’, for no real reason other that the sake of it. I know Beijingers will be able to understand that.

For me the play is really about three blokes arguing to the death over something (seemingly trivial), simply because they have known each other for so long that they can. I think people can relate to that anywhere…

(L-R) Sam Kamanguza, Carlos Ottery and Gregory Joseph Allen play Serge, Yvan and Marc

BJC: What difficulties did you face mounting the play in China? Did you at any point find yourself wishing to punch a nearby wall?

CO: Getting ‘official approval was a problem… our producer was able to pull some strings with the relevant departments at the last minute and rush things through. Fortunately, three blokes losing their shit over a painting isn’t deemed a sensitive issue.

GJA: Producing a play anywhere usually produces a few “wall punch” worthy moments, but our process has been relatively stress free… I wouldn’t be surprised if we sent a few walls to the emergency room before it is all said and done.

CO: It’s put me off producing for life. When it is all over, am gonna switch off my phone, and spend a week in my bed doing nothing but drinking cider, and eating sandwiches. Whilst theatre is a mild passion, what I really like to do is make sandwiches. Recently, I have been experimenting with homemade shish kebabs. I get some lamb skewers from a local Xingjiang place, make my own chilli sauce, throw it in a tortilla from the supermarket: Less stressful than theatre production. And cheaper

A homemade kebab, courtesy of Carlos

ART runs from May 11-13, 7.30-9pm/ May 14, 2.30-4pm (100 RMB/ Students 70 RMB) at Penghao Theatre. Photo credits: Sophia Wong

There was a restaurant? (Pic via Thats)

A swathe of this street that included 3 Rock was demolished last week and, while some mourned, others cheered the ongoing erosion of what grassroots Beijing nightlife. There’s nothing wrong with whisky bars, brewpubs and cocktail lounges, unless you count homogeneity and banal exclusivity. But as Tolstoy said, all whisky bars are alike; each dive bar is divey in its own way.

Beijing is already deep down its path to progress, where no night out is not the same. The orders still go out to “sweep the streets,” yet there’s nowhere left to crack the whip. While cops used to roll up at roadhouse dens like Dos Kolegas, these days they’re reduced to raiding modest French bistros like Café de la Poste, or drug-testing patrons at family pub Great Leap on a Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, among such sites never again to be witnessed at 3 Rock – a Scotsman being served at the bar with his pants around his ankles; half-naked arm wrestling; a drinking game involving a pint of “everything”; two rock chicks playing strip dice; and one of the foulest unisex bathrooms in Beijing.

Here’s some of 3 Rock’s best/worst graffiti to remember it by

This is almost Bukowski-esque

Makes ya think…

Yesterday, an editor at the venerable in-flight magazine of Trump Airlines published an article by one of its many, many, many useless contributors entitled ‘China Expert: I’m Drunk,’ in which the author has a chin-stroker of an evening with a China expert who admitted to having already sunk a bottle of claret and several jars.

The conversation indeed sounds like something one might overhear between Martin Jacques and a barstool around closing time at the Bull and Bear.

Other than being British, the writer of a recently “well-received book” and “not on Twitter,” the expert is unidentified but drunk, you say?

Sounds like he’s been drinking deep of the Cup of Tea.

This has the makings of a promising series: Maybe next week Forbes can huff paint with Dave Shambaugh and ask if he’s cracking up? Note: “Chinese conglomerate HNA Group is in talks to buy a controlling stake in the owner of the publisher of Forbes magazine”

Soon, this is how all China watching will be done

UPDATE 25/4 15.04 – A reader alerts: Forbes seems to have taken down the article without comment

240 years, American friends! Longer than the Yuan. Longer than the Sui. Not as long as any of the good dynasties, but still a good run!

— The Relevant Organs (@relevantorgans) November 9, 2016

Self-Portrait in a detail of Yarmemet Niyaz’s 2013 painting “

A good while ago the anthropologist Stevan Harrell asked me to consider the unique position of Uyghurs as heirs to an urbanism that predates the rise of Chinese cities in the region. He asked me to think through the ways in which this urban tradition has affected Uyghur social organization. I’m still thinking about this.

Uyghur thinkers are too. They are thinking about the way new urban forms reorient their lives. They are grappling with the way certain spaces draw them in by reflecting their pasts while other forms face them with a blankness that does not allow them a way in.

One of the most remarkable paintings at the first Uyghur contemporary art art exhibition in 2015 was a mixed media piece in which the artist Yarmemet Niyaz inserted a small rectangular mirror onto the side of a bright blue house next to an old coal stove (Uy: mesh) that many people use in Uyghur oasis cities. The mirror interpellates the viewer. You can literally see yourself in the painting. As you do this you imagine yourself in that place, or, for many Uyghur viewers, you imagine yourself in that past: standing in front of a mirror combing your hair with a comb that hangs on a string before walking out into the bazaar.

Uyghur urbanism is still with us. For some it exists in memory; for many it exists in the ways spaces are used. In three of Tahir Hamut’s poems, which we recently translated and published in the US-based literary journal Banango Street, we see the way a young man settles into a place like the city of Ürümchi. We see how over time he gradually comes to terms with approaching middle age. We see the way he comes to know the parameters of his life.

Like a city, life seduces. The beauty of its ugliness makes Tahir care for it. The filth of the streets, the pollution in the air, the bitterness of the cold, the blankness of the walls and the apathy of strangers, all of these elements coalesce as a strange machine. Through familiarity with its estrangement, it comes to feel like a place where making a life is possible. The jumble of Uyghur urbanism, dusty streets, calls to kebab and to prayer are still there, but the future is opening up to a concrete world of “stubborn streets, angry cars, glaring lamps, immoral roads, lonely trash, beautiful dungeons, naked concrete.” This is Tahir Hamut’s Ürümchi.

Here are excerpts from poems about the city by Tahir Hamut:

The latest issue of Banango Street is not the only place where Tahir’s work has appeared. Joshua L. Freeman, a doctoral student at Harvard University, has also translated and published his work in Gulf Coast, Crazyhorse, The Berkeley Poetry Review and Words Without Borders. Many of these stunning poems from the 1990s and early 2000s are focused on Tahir’s attachments to the places he came from – Kashgar and the dusty, time-worn traditions of Southern Xinjiang. They take us out of spaces of capitalist development into the deep time of Uyghur worlds. The poems I’ve chosen to highlight here are more pedestrian. They make us think about the present condition of the Uyghur every day. But they still make us wonder, how does the past live in the present?

Beige Wind is Darren Byler, an academic in Seattle. He will be posting under his real name on his website The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia, which attempts to recognize and create dialogue around the ways minority people create a durable existence, and, in turn, how these voices from the margins implicate all of us in simultaneously distinctive and connected ways.

|Dispatches from Xinjiang Archives|

Some disappointing news for this year’s Bookworm Literary Festival, which launched on Friday: headline act Roxane Gay, an American writer, critic and literary figure whose books include the bestselling Bad Feminist, has cancelled her much-anticipated visit, citing “personal reasons.”

Author Roxane Gay, whose books include Bad Feminist and the novel An Untamed State

Roxane was scheduled for a solo talk today, talking about gender activism and her recent novel, as well as a forum on March 15 addressing race, gender, identity, and cultural marginality. The latter, though, will proceed as planned (The Bookworm is refunding all ticket holders for the Sunday talk, and offering the same deal for anyone not wishing to attend Tuesday’s panel).

Last week, Roxane had tweeted concerns about how she might be received in China

Also, theoretically I am going to China in 6 days. I keep hearing horror stories of how fat people are treated there.

— roxane gay (@rgay) March 5, 2016

So I am in a constant state of panic and dread about the trip.

— roxane gay (@rgay) March 5, 2016

Although… being “plus size” in China is an aspiration to many.* Subjects that might be considered taboo or tricky elsewhere – education, salary, medical history, career prospects, home ownership, whether you’re interested in investing in a third cousin’s startup – are sometimes used as ice-breakers in the PRC.

“Hi, good to meet you – are you married? Why not? Did you attend Harvard? OK, see you later” is a conversation we’ve all had, or overheard, or had a few times (by the way, if you’re ever in a desperately awkward social situation: mention that you don’t “get why people have kids, ever,” suggest all property is really theft, or boast about the cartel of Japanese nationalists you befriended last week in a Mongolian nightclub. Problem. Solved).

Big picture, though – times are tough for women. Last year, five were detained by police for handing out leaflets discussing sexual harassment – they were only released after an international media backlash. Those same women have since been sharply warned to keep their mouths shut while Beijing hosted the annual political meeting this month. Meanwhile, officials celebrated last week’s International Women’s Day with an… ethnic fashion show. And just yesterday, before the Bookworm Literary Festival’s morning event called Women’s Rights Around the World, this happened to Beijing LGBT center executive director Ying Xin (a.k.a. Xiao Tie):

An empty seat for Xiao Tie, who was intercepted by cops on her way to her event this morn at The Bookworm #BLF2016 pic.twitter.com/g6WSf5MiHy

— The Bookworm (@BeijingBookworm) March 12, 2016

To be clear: not detained, just not allowed to participate in event Women's Rights Around the World with Bidisha, Clare Wright, Lijia Zhang

— The Bookworm (@BeijingBookworm) March 12, 2016

China already has many bad, bad feminists ­– just look at the All China Women’s Federation. So be well, Roxane: you’re probably needed here. You’ll certainly be missed.

* OK, mainly men. Many men. There’s definitely a tranche of Chinese fellows who’d argue Jabba the Hutt is a jovial wealth creator, simply a KTV-loving slug who makes his own rules. When Jabs is then cruelly betrayed by Princess Leia in Jedi, the lesson becomes ever-clear: Never the trust a woman you’ve kidnapped and sexually demeaned. Right?!? These men should be avoided at all costs, but can be swiftly identified by their pompadour hairstyles, loose polo-and-slacks combo and insistence that you get blind-drunk with them at midday.