"Mr. Kim Jong Un! Channel 4 News, UK!” yelled the journalist at the back of Kim Jong Un’s head.
The Great Marshall stopped. He slowly turned and smiled, his visage a million shining suns. The room, which had been full of raucous cheers, came to a hush. In perfect English he replied, “Yes? How may I help you?”
Just kidding. That last part didn’t happen.
Welcome to Three Shots with Beijing Cream, where local personalities may or may not get drunk on camera, depending on their alcohol tolerance. Produced and directed by Gabriel Clermont and Anthony Tao.
Vicky Mohieddeen arrived in China halfway by accident with no long-term plans, but in an opportunity-rich place like Beijing, it didn't take long for her to find a calling. Or several, as it were.
Aspiring American brodude outfit Day Above Ground finally got their big break on Thursday morning after cultural provocateur Angry Asian Man, comedian David So and several other influential media personalities shaped what was initially a locus of outrage in the Asian American community on Tuesday afternoon into a viral campaign and international news story.
Beijing punk rockas get a new HQ this Saturday night with the opening of DMC, a new dive pub / live music venue out in Tongzhou run by members of two of Beijing's longest running "street" punk acts: Demerit and Discord. In honor of this momentous and historic occasion, here's a viddy of Discord's most famous home-town hit, "Beijing Power." Hat tip to LBM.
Long-time Beijinger and The Local owner Kenn Burmel enlightens hosts John Artman and Amy Daml on why his bar is no longer called Brussels, how he survived SARS locked into his dorm (people had a lot of sex), and what exactly propelled The Local to an improbable 2nd-place finish in last year's the Beijinger Burger Cup (including a shocking -- shocking -- victory over Blue Frog).
Please give a hearty Beijing Cream welcome to Beige Wind, an anthropology doctoral student who studies urban living, popular culture and the arts in the cities of Northwest China. He runs the website The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia, and will swing by these parts periodically to enlighten us with stories from Xinjiang.
This is the third post in a multi-part series on Abdulla Abdurehim.
As a lover of home-made water crafts, I recently set out to build my own Beijing boat. The blueprint is simple, the supplies are all within striking distance, and the finished product unlocks a lot of free fun in parks, canals and places like Houhai.
Supplies:
In spite of Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro's diplomatic observations about the sad racial and geopolitical architecture of Hollywood's summer blockbusters, his Pacific Rim does not want for just such stereotypes. There is the fact that an entire hour of film passes during which only a few lines are spoken by a woman -- this in a film whose marketing materials sell it with a female co-star. And there's the stereotype-affirming white guy-submissive Asian female duo (alternative film title: South Pacific Rim). It seems, in del Toro's "very equal structure" of world-saving, a vagina is as much a threat to the world as the "breach" on the sea floor from which monsters crawl forth.
Then there is the China problem.
How many deep-rooted Asian stereotypes can you cram into a five-minute music video? Dozens if you’re the American boy band Day Above Ground, the Los Angelenos who galvanized the Asian American community on Tuesday afternoon after blogger and cultural critic Angry Asian Man blasted the video for their song “Asian Girlz” in a scathing post.
While we’d love to offer a frame-by-frame analysis of everything questionable about the most racist music video we’ve ever seen, doing so would give us ebola. Our shortlist, however, includes:
