We know laowai song-and-dance videos are passe -- thanks, Jesse Appel, et al. -- but the effort in this latest one is simply too rich to ignore. Matt Sheehan -- who you recognize around these parts as the China Eastern airport rumble writer -- teamed up with his friend Matt Allen to write, direct, shoot, and produce "We Livin in Xi'an," and the result is a perfectly outlandlish little paean to the capital of Shaanxi province, and perhaps the foreigner experience in China.
By now, you’re probably familiar with Ai Weiwei’s “Dumbass," the Beijing-born artist-cum-activist’s widely-publicized collaborative heavy metal music video with Zuoxiao Zuzhou that was unveiled last week to promote the pair’s upcoming full-length effort, The Divine Comedy.
Directed by well-known Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle -- you may recognize his work with Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-Wai -- the highly-polished video offers a surrealistic interpretation of the 81 days that Ai, 55, reportedly spent in detention in mid-2011 for tax evasion
On May 15, a 24-year-old nurse surnamed Wang was cut in half by an elevator after she found herself pinched between its closing doors.
That sentence is horrific enough, but what about more details?
The victim, a nurse surnamed Wang, was trapped in the elevator in Changhong Tower in Shenzhen's Luohu district, when it stopped due to failure. Since the door was open the woman attempted to exit, but the elevator started moving again. The elevator fell at least three stories, killing Wang.
Those details are definitely sufficiently horrific, but what about the video?
You've likely not seen this because fun and original content has a way of getting buried over at China Radio International -- CRI has a lot of money and heart, just not enough marketing -- but C4, which is probably the only English-language "comedy news quiz show" in China, deserves your attention. Produced, directed, and hosted by Rob Hemsley and Stuart Wiggin, C4 (China News, China Chat, China Fun, China Four) is quirky, unique, satirical, funny -- all of those things at the same time, when it's at its best. (At its worst it's probably a medium-sized animal's droppings, but lucky for us, there's entertainment value there, too.)
Hey, I'm Morgan, I ran out of funny things to say for this bit.
Oh hai guys, happy Friday, good to see you all, and I hope you're all already having sweet, awesome weekends. Super sweet, awesome weekends.
Welp, for this week's Friday Outro, our man The Tao specifically requested some content relating to this weekend's INTRO Festival because BeijingCream has to stay relevant with the kids.
One of the most common questions I see posted on TEFL forums is whether X school in Z province is a decent place to work. There are ways to ensure that you aren’t walking into an educational Sarlacc pit by emailing current staff and properly vetting your contract. Still, there’s a good chance your first job will be in a shitty private language center — and there’s actually nothing wrong with that. But before we see why, a quick aside.
The problem with gringo lit about the gringo experience in China is it inevitably and unsubtlety reinforces the foreigner's sense of Otherness while feeding his inflated sense of importance. In doses this is not necessarily bad – it can be therapeutic to read, even for lesser voyeurs – but in bulk it becomes obnoxious, not least of which because it is both disingenuous and vapid to pretend that foreigners don't relish, if not secretly rejoice at, their entitled status as Other.
“From the moment we step foot in the Middle Kingdom,” editor Tom Carter writes in his introduction on the opening page of Unsavory Elements: Stories of Foreigners on the Loose in China, “foreigners are subjected to an extraordinary range of alien experiences, ranging from appalling to exquisite.” The use of passive voice – are subjected to – places the emphasis strictly on “foreigners,” who are subjects protraying themselves as objects, assailed. The next sentence begins – emphasis mine – “We contend with seething masses of humanity,” and it becomes abundantly clear who are the looked-upon They.
This week we introduced the 2nd annual Beijing Cream Bar and Club Awards (VOTE HERE), with 20 categories divided into four groups. We've saved the best for last, and look who's come around to write about Mr. Sex
There's not a doubt in my mind, and there should certainly be none in yours, that this group of categories is the most important. If you look at the content allowed by the owner and proprietor of BJC, you'll see that he is actually catering to the deepest and darkest urges of blog readers.
