April 28 – May 11

Ernest Hemingway was a champion drinker in China. Big Bang Theory creator Chuck Lorre didn’t like that his show was pulled in China. Game of Thrones, rather incredibly, is being aired in China — but for how much longer?

There was another knife attack at a Chinese railway station, this time in Guangzhou. The Creamcast has returned with the Anthill’s Writers and Rum event. Ai Weiwei’s objection to the marketing of The Sandstorm resulted in its removal from Kickstarter.

Look at all those asses. Chinese sex habits. People’s Daily, man. And Andray Abrahamian reviewed the first-ever North Korea travel app.

Here are three Liu Xia poems. Global Times headline: “Granny nags her way out of kidnapping.” Finally, a review of the trailer for Zhang Yimou’s newest movie, Coming Home.

Comment of the Week:

@beijingcream @david__moser I didn’t know they were filming A Touch of Sin 2

— SamSpackman (@SESSpackman) May 7, 2014

|Week in Review Archives|

April 14 – April 27

Hannah Lincoln wrote about one magical, mystifying Beijing summer, during which she dated a Chinese pop star. RFH reposted a relic from China expattery, a Sherpa’s recording of the douchiest expat ever. People’s Daily actually called out @relevantorgans.

Oliver Stone made controversial — though correct — statements about Chinese filmmaking. The FBI made a 30-minute film called “Game of Pawns” warning American students in China to not accept money to become a Chinese spy. The New York Times wrote about China’s role in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, drawing People’s Daily’s ire.

These are horrifying, terrifying pandas and panda-lovers. Xi Jinping made the Time 100 list and was profiled by Jon Huntsman. Here are pandas watching TV.

The 11th annual Shanghai Sexpo happened. Here’s a very important Tumblr called Politbros. WeChat has a series of ads featuring a fake Mark Zuckerberg.

Pacman and Pe$o filmed a rap video in Beijing. We’re posting videos from Poetry Night in Beijing, beginning with Stephen Nashef and Canaan Morse.

Comment of the Week:

Benji, on the “made in China” music label:

China’s foray into idol manufacturing in the Korean vein has come and gone. The Korean model is dead.

Five or six years ago, Chinese labels would partner with Korean entertainment companies to create boy and girl bands. Prospective members from China would be sent to Korea to train to sing and dance. The music production was Korean. The video production was Korean. Wardrobe. Choreography.
Management was Chinese.

Most of them flopped. The three most successful boy bands, H.I.T,Top Combine (which even had a Korean member) and M.I.C, achieved moderate success at best. Girl groups such as S.P.Y and Idol Girls never made much of an impact. The last, real attempt at this was in 2012 with the Japanese Johnny’s Entertainment creating its own Chinese boyband.

Currently, reality television talent contests dominate the pop music industry. They had been a staple of Mainland Chinese pop music since 2005, when HunanTV’s Super Girls first became massively popular. But monotony and censorship eroded the franchise’s relevance over the years.

That reality TV format was revived, explosively, in 2012 with The Voice of China. This was followed by copycat franchises. Some foreign, like X-Factor and Chinese Idol, some local, like Sing My Song and Let’s Sing Kids. Since then, these contests have virtually monopolised entry into the pop industry. It is now almost impossible to make it in the Chinese pop market without prior exposure. The last person to do so was probably Wanting Qu, in 2012. Chinese labels with budding singers often form agreements with reality television producers to have them compete on shows for exposure. There is almost no other way.

For its part, I Am A Singer (also a Korean franchise), is hardly an idol show. It brings together already established, veteran singers to compete against each other. Most of them are in their 30s and 40s. Simple commercialisation does not an idol make. And that’s perhaps where this gets it all wrong: not everything that’s not independent is an idol. Promotion is not idolatry. Artist development is not idolatry. Being mainstream does not mean you’re an idol.

The Korean influence on the Chinese music industry is still strong. And growing. Korean producers are more and more frequently producing Chinese songs. Video production is sometimes done in Korea. But the Korean idol format in China is dead. Since 2012.

|Week in Review Archives|

March 31 – April 13

Shannon Shapiro wrote an oral history of the popular Beijing bar 4corners, this after checking out a rehearsal with Plus One for Beijing Improv Festival. Beijing air quality may be bad, but how obsessed are we in repeating that fact? Something dumb: #CancelColbert.

The Beijing Ducks celebrated their second CBA championship, while star point guard Stephon Marbury was made an honorary Beijing citizen. To wrap up our season of CBA coverage, Beige Wind wrote about Xinjiang guard Shiralijan’s obscene gesture at the end of his team’s Game 5 win in Beijing, which caused a storm and a meme.

Ai Weiwei stars in a new short film called The Sand Storm. TimeOut’s list of 100 best mainland Chinese films is well worth checking out.

You can now read my story about panda sex from the That’s Shanghai Erotic Fiction Competition. Baidu autofill and sperm. Porn.

Comment of the Week:

Tiu Fu Fong on post about Falun Gong practitioner making a Chinese media headline:

I don’t think any religious group should be persecuted for their beliefs or their perceived threat to the CCCP as an alternate organisation.

That said, if I was forced to choose one religion/spiritual practice to persecute, FLG would probably be it.

|Week in Review Archives|

March 17 – March 30

There was a sanctioned protest in Beijing in front of the Malaysian embassy in response to MH370 news (or lack thereof). The Russian embassy, for whatever reason, compared its Crimea crisis with China’s Tiananmen Incident. Matt Sheehan made a tribute video to Beijing.

A former Bloomberg editor had some harsh things to say about his former bosses. RFH writes about Savills and Beijing air pollution. The Beijing Ducks won the CBA title.

You can listen to the Bookworm Literary Festival panel discussion on blogging in China in its entirety. Patrick Lozada interviewed Tom Chou of Patrice Wilson video fame. Japanese or Chinese – can you tell them apart?

Junkyard Transformers are pretty cool. Episode 2 of Sindicator is available: give it a watch. And check out the first tweets of China watchers, etc.

Comment of the Week:

narsfweasels on sanctioned protest in Beijing of MH370 handling:

These protestors should already have been arrested and sent down on a charge of “gathering a crowd to disturb public order.”

Oh, they’re not protesting about some murderous Party Cadre or ill-gotten wealth? Carry on then!

|Week in Review Archives|

March 3 – March 16

As Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 continues to go missing, a banner went up over a Beijing mall counting the hours since its disappearance. I participated in the That’s Shanghai Erotic Fiction competition, and Jacob Dreyer recapped the event. The Beijing Ducks are returning to the CBA finals! (Here’s Nick Bedard’s Game 4 vs. Guangdong live-blog.)

RFH and Alec Ash preview the Bookworm and Capital M literary festivals in Beijing. Poetry Night in Beijing has already happened (meet the readers), but this coming Tuesday is our Blogging China event.

Beige Wind wrote an excellent piece about the how the Kunming terrorist attack has affected Uyghurs in Xinjiang. This may, unfortunately, be Austin Dean’s final post for us due to his commitments as a Fulbright scholar.

Comment of the Week:

MrC, on Grace Liu in “Get In My Car,” featuring an airplane scene:

Ohhhh thats what happened to MH370!

|Week in Review Archives|

February 17 – March 2

A gathering of Beijing Creatives at Dada Bar was interrupted by police. Two foreigners were reportedly stabbed in Sanlitun. One-hundred-sixty people were stabbed in a Kunming terrorist attack.

A guy held a cleaver at a bank and was laughed at. This is the best Beijing smog image we’ve seen. Warner Brown wrote about a Mao portrait in Changsha.

Poetry Night in Beijing interviews: Helen Wing and Eleanor Goodman. Hilary Chasse took a closer look at Maximo Caminero destroying Ai Weiwei’s artwork. A boy died after dropping firecrackers down a sewer.

Wuhan students demonstrated for the equal treatment of sex workers. Marjorie Dodson wrote on “tuskonomics.” Astrill went down temporarily, making us realize that PornHub is now blocked in China.

Comments of the Week:

name, on the return of Laowai Comics:

now i get it. these awfully drawn and unfunny “laowai comics” are part of a devious plot by Mr Tao to collect negative comments for a corpus-based analysis of hate discourse in internet forums. we are his guinea pigs, his German Shepperd, and laowai comics is the bait. Mr Tao, you are indeed a true creative and i salute you.

D on dangers of jaywalking post:

China has 5,000 years of history. We all know that China has its own characteristics and conditions. In a word, it is not proper for you to apply Western concepts of traffic navigation to China.

|Week in Review Archives|

February 3 – February 16

Derrick Sobodash had an unfortunate encounter with thugs who wore chengguan uniforms. Stephon Marbury was ejected in his first game back from injury for throwing a “punch.” Here’s a review of Stagnant Water by Wen Yiduo, a master poet who is revived in a new translation.

The Sochi Olympics began. Our coverage begins with a post by Mark Dreyer on things to watch for. Global Times wrote a lot of crazy words on “Western media” reporting Sochi. In fairness to them, #SoichiProblems is just first-world whining.

A scary fire broke out at 4corners on Chinese New Year eve. Patrick Lozada wrote about Xia Yeliang. Reporters Without Borders says China has basically no press freedom.

Danielle Sumita launched a video series on China finance and economics. Victoria Cook wrote about China’s gawking culture taken to the extreme. Austin Dean writes about money – the evolution of the Chinese banknote.

Beijingers: the Taco Bar is returning. And Xinhua loves its Jade Rabbit.

Comment of the Week:

Kibo, on Global Times’s Sochi post:

The so-called “Anthony Tao”, like blogger everywhere, will no rest until forces for porn, judicial oversight and the NFL overrun China with cultural imperialism, enslaving the greatest civilization ever with gimmicks, violence and breast implants. We must resisting!

|Week in Review Archives|

January 27 – February 2

David Letterman conducted a pretty bad interview with Louis CK about China. Warner Brown asks what if The Wolf of Wall Street were set in China? Hannah Lincoln wrote about the expat experience in China… in the 19th century.

Austin Dean’s debut column is about China’s misuse of public vehicles. Baidu Translate is a fantastic, hilarious app. Last Train Home is a fantastic movie, and here’s an amanuensis to prove it.

We traveled to Harbin and came away impressed. Here’s a really funny moment in ping-pong.

Happy Chinese New Year! It’s the year of the whores, after all.

Comment of the Week:

@beijingcream @austinramzy What’s the mistake?

— Nick Holdstock (@NickHoldstock) February 1, 2014

|Week in Review Archives|

January 13 – January 26

Poets wanted for Poetry Night in Beijing. The ICIJ broke a big story on Chinese offshore wealth, Lincoln writes, and then they got blocked. Li Na delighted the crowd at the Aussie Open finals, as Lincoln Daw reports.

Managing editor Patrick Lozada writes about pollution, “yellow face,” and fruit sellers. Also: this Beijing cabbie.

Liu Xia read two poems while under house arrest. Tang Wei fell victim to a telecom scam. Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP cover in China is different.

Comment of the Week:

Mark Dreyer, on the misreported “fake sunset” story:

Lost in all the fake stories is the fact that it’s still an awesome picture…

|Week in Review Archives|

December 30, 2013 – January 12, 2014

Check out Chen Guangbiao’s business card. The Guardian might have been blocked in China. Dennis Rodman’s NBA team lost to the North Korean team, the Torch.

The old Tibetan town of Dukezong in Shangri-la caught on fire. Lots of Western correspondents are getting visas – but not Austin Ramzy. Here’s a really fake street in Wuxi, as Bernd Chang reports.

New BJC editor Patrick Lozada’s debut piece is on La Pizza almost killing a diner. A Chinese man flying an air balloon toward the Diaoyu Islands cost control and had to be rescued by the enemy. People are taking pictures of Xi Jinping’s box meal at Qing-Feng. People’s Daily fell for satire again.

Two really good Dispatches on Xinjiang featuring movies, if you missed it: “Battle” and “Karamay.” Breathtaking pictures of Shanghai. Have we all said hello to Hairong Ma?

Comments of the Week: 

On the Chen Guangbiao post:

@beijingcream Srsly though, a man with that many accomplishments obviously drinks waaayyy too much SFFCCCKS coffee.

— Galicia (@Galicalla) January 9, 2014

Maggie Rauch: I thought “Most Well-Known and Beloved Role Model” was the underage xiaosan reference.

|Week in Review Archives|

December 16 – December 29

Check out Xi Jinping having lunch at a local Beijing restaurant — all these people did. Cats may have been first domesticated in China.

Bobby Brown scored 74 points in a CBA game that was marred by four ejections. Global Times responded to Thomas Friedman. Now we know there are forced cremations. Guangzhou Evergrande finished fourth at the FIFA Club World Cup.

Max Baucus’s favorite Beijing restaurant is Blue Frog. This dish is so indelicately named. Wrong but genius.

Comments of the Week:

https://twitter.com/shannonfagan/status/417154268290744321

Andrew Galbraith on the cats post:

Thanks to Brendan O’Kane’s brilliant Tumblr, I know cats were a thing in China by at least 1040 A.D.

http://bokane.tumblr.com/post/46306113962/laphamsquarterly-since-i-got-my-cat-five-white

|Week in Review Archives|

December 9 – December 15

Some migrant workers in Beijing were kicked out of their wells, which they were living in. Chinese hackers phished European diplomats by dangling the prospect of nude photos of Carla Bruni. Liao Yiwu ran naked — again — in Stockholm in honor of Liu Xiaobo.

Tom Carter conducted a record-setting AMA on Reddit for Unsavory Elements. Justin Mitchell checks in with us from Denver. The smog has created a new buzz word, as Bernd Chang writes: “feed people smog,” a homophone for “serve the people.”

The New York Times has lost $3 million in revenue since China blocked its website. Its future in this country is uncertain. A foreigner in Beijing was deported for hitting a woman with his unregistered motorcycle and working here illegally.

Brendon O’Kane offered a brilliant translation of a circumcision poem. CCTV imitated the Onion. And one more on the Rubber Duck: “Like with love, you’ll scrub and scrub and you’ll never be clean of it.”

Comment of the Week: 

Manzom, on circumcision poem:

Oh great. Just as people are waking up to the circumcision scam in the west, they’re trying to sell it in China now. Unfortunately, a lot of idiots will probably fall for this. “A fool and his foreskin are soon parted”.

|Week in Review Archives|

November 25 – December 8

Story of the week: RFH on Nikki Aaron and the dangers of shilling propaganda for Chinese state media. American rappers Pacman and Peso went to North Korea to film a music video, and here’s how it went. Carl Setzer wrote an open letter to UK-based BrewDog.

We reviewed political prisoners of China playing cards. Wu’er Kaixi tried to get himself extradited to mainland China; failed. Dutch broadcaster won’t apologize for racist remarks against Chinese singer, and Chinese netizens don’t seem to care.

David Cameron visited China. Another seeks child molester flees to China, writes Alina Tsui. Huizhou traffic cops are awesome, writes Sophie Haas. Here’s Beige Wind on Chinese literary giant Wang Meng.

Here’s a wedding gone terribly wrong. Donnie pretends to be Roger Federer, a stunt gone right. And the comic Sanmao is on display and probably worth seeing at the National Art Museum of China.

Comment of the Week: 

holy shit on the “minor traffic accident” post:

Why is it that whenever anyone comments on this site — on ANYTHING — its always to insult the post, or the website, or another commenter, etc? Why the hell does everyone have to start shit on here. Jesus, you fucking people, don’t you have anything better to do besides getting your god damn panties in a twist?

–Longtime reader but first time commenter

|Week in Review Archives|

November 11 – November 24

Mike Forsyth was identified as the Bloomberg leaker. Gary Locke resigned as US ambassador to China. The 11th Guangzhou Sex and Culture Festival happened.

Tom Baxter reviewed Adam Minter’s Junkyard Planet. We’ve begun a new series: send us your pictures of Beijing traffic. Beige Wind interviewed mountaineers.

North Korea Chic is not a fashion trend, but they sure have lots of pairs of Björn Borg’s underwear. Spain wants to arrest Jiang Zemin; Jiang Zemin is not amused. Spotted in Manila: no wang-wang.

Comment of the Week:

@beijingcream @hugchina you mean revolutionary leap forward in the rate of roofs collapsing in winter?

— George Baily (@georgebaily) November 20, 2013

|Week in Review Archives|

November 4 – November 10

The worst party of the year was the Electric Castle party in Tianjin, which organizers apologized for, sort of. People would have been much better suited attending the subway costume party instead.

A series of explosions killed a person near a CPC building in Taiyuan, Shanxi province. Beijing and Zhangjiakou bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Guangzhou Evergrande won the AFC Champions League, becoming the first Chinese team to do so.

China is the best place to be an expat, says an HSBC report. An 8-year-old girl contracted lung cancer. One thousand cats destined for the slaughterhouse were instead released into a forest.

Tom Baxter debuted on this site with an article about the China Story Yearbook. Here’s gay Thor and Loki in Shanghai.

Comment of the Week:

https://twitter.com/Alesia148/status/398330101563019264

|Week in Review Archives|