Communist Party cadres throw down rapper-level cash on luxury brands, especially in the name of "gifts of guanxi," but a shrinkage in the gift market has affected some key industries in the domestic policy game, like Moutai, which has seen sales plummet over the last year. Luxury darlings Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Cartier also have all seen a slump in demand.
The Xinjiang Guang Hui Flying Tigers are flying high. Riding the phenomenal success of their imported stars, Americans Lester Hudson and James Singleton and a Taiwanese player named Yang Jinmin, the support of China national team players such as the Uyghur point guard Shiralijan (Xi-re-li-jiang) and the Han center Tang Zhengdong, they're back in the Chinese Basketball Association finals for the fourth time in six years -- but the first since 2011, when Quicy Douby took them within two wins of a championship.
Several more months of terrible air, bad publicity and one inspired brainstorm session with my friend Kyle convinced me that this was a movie that needed be made. Beijing right now is one of the most fascinating clusters of humanity in the world and yet it’s almost perpetually shrouded in a layer of physical and public relations pollution. I get that. I’ve read the history, I breathe the air, I eat the gutter oil, and yeah, that all sucks. But at the end of the day this place just has an energy that I’m in love with.
Last month we made an open call for poets to participate in a curated community event at the Bookworm Literary Festival, and the response was exceptional. Please consider this our official thank you to all who answered. The curators of Poetry Night in Beijing -- Canaan Morse, Helen Wing and Eleanor Goodman -- read nearly 200 poems before finally (painstakingly) choosing five writers whose works resonated with them in style and substance.
In Taiwan, it is hard to get away from the image of Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Xinhai Revolution and one of the key figures in the history of the Guomindang (KMT): his portrait is on the money, in schools, museums, and a host of other public places. He is also the only KMT figure to be officially honored in the Chinese Communist Party’s narrative of 20th century Chinese history, and even has his own memorial in Nanjing.
The narrative of the CCP’s triumph over the KMT needs Sun’s legacy to fit events in Chinese history into a Marxist framework.
Memetjan Abla, a painter, teacher, husband and father, known for his subtle use of color in his elegant portraits of Uyghur urban life, was lost on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. He was 35.
Those who live and work around Chaoyangmen in Beijing have noticed a recent addition to the neighborhood. Above the Burger King at U-Town Mall, a huge purple banner has been erected that reads, in Chinese, "Time Since Losing Contact," a reference to the number of hours that have passed since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
It’s not just every night that I walk into Glamour Bar and hear someone talking about figs mixing with the juices from their crotch. Well, all right, pretty much any time that I went I could hear that, but it’s too expensive for my nightly apertif. Still, an old friend was in town and wanted to meet there, and after all, it was only five minutes from my office, so I found myself at 3 on the Bund listening to all of the erotic fictions that Shanghai -- and even one from Beijing -- has to offer.
