Beijing Cream's "An Expat Christmas" series continues, in which foreigners in China write about the holiday experience from their respective cities. Our second of two stories from Beijing comes via Allison Reibel, about a tree rooted in the Christmas spirit no matter how much things around it might change.
What do roast chickens and love have in common? Absofuckinglutely nothing. Form and content in art should go hand in hand. However, in Guangzhou-based performance artist Kang Yi’s recent work, nothing seems to fit. He stands on a podium, stripped down to a thong, with three golden-brown, baked birds hanging from his limbs. A girl... Read more »
Peeping weekly at the best (and worst) that was, is, and will be on the China blogosphere.
The weblogs which concern us here are a mix of vanity press and sociopolitical discussion forums. But first and foremost, they are terrains where weblords attempt to manage and regulate discussion, cross-cultural differences and those rotten anarchic impulses intended to derail thread trajectory. And it goes without saying that different sites attract different digital communities. Throw in market share, monetisation ("Meet Juicyfruit: I love the hip hop and r@b. Design the handbag"), a couple of the seven deadly sins, and it's time to discuss those About and Commenting Rules buttons.
As with dog years, so is it with China years – one here is equivalent to several most places else. They just fit more in. When it comes to pace of change, no-one else holds a candle really.
I’ve been out of China for two years. For a dog, that’s ten human years, and you could argue the rate for China is about the same. It’s like leaving London shortly after the millenium and coming back for the Olympics. Recognisable, but look closer and you notice all the new things.
Here we go again. From the news agency that brought you “Lair of King Tongmyong’s Unicorn Reconfirmed in DPRK,” we now have this: “U.S. Magazine Selects Kim Jong Un as Man of 2012.” Well… yes and no. The Korean Central News Agency may want to look again. Kim Jong-un indeed won recognition from Time Magazine, but... Read more »
Our friends at Koryo Tours have posted an online game called Pyongyang Racer, which they’re advertising as the “first computer game out of North Korea” (is there any reason to disbelieve it?). Players race around the “city of willows” collecting barrels of fuel and avoiding obstacles such as cars. (True to the Pyongyang I visited last... Read more »
Here’s the thing I really like about Beijing’s subway: there are bathrooms at the end of most platforms. (Contrast to, say, New York, where everyone has peed onto subway tracks at least once.) This guy here, however, does not care — because why walk to the end when you can just relieve yourself in the... Read more »
Bad articles deserve to die a silent, lonely death. Really bad articles, however, deserve to be thrown into the public stocks and ridiculed. This one from Daily Mail belongs with the latter. It begins: Ravaged by hunger and desperate for food, these are the sad pictures which show just how needy families in China are. Oh... Read more »
