Pro-con list for going to Beijing this summer, aka 95% futility.

It needs to be noted that the Chinese view abortion as standard and no different than any other medical procedure, similar to cutting out the appendix or getting a cavity filled. I’m so sure that someone will read this article and walk away thinking that of course China would have female shortage—of course that’s the consequence of heartless fetus-killing monsters. But tell me how this can’t be, at least in part, explained by a vastly different cultural perspective and pure economic rationality (since boys are more capable of performing hard manual labor than girls in the countryside) rather than a matter of ethics. In return, I will lend you some skeptical yet unassuming ears.

But more importantly—get me while I’m hot, suckahs!

香港，我不能理解。

Www.Djxixi.Com's Www.Djxixi.Com has been played 16 times.

PLAY: “那个 (Nei Ge)” // Penny Tai

Am I wrong for pointing out the unintentional pun in this song? I mean, I would feel like a moral douche and a half, but don’t shoot the messenger, you know.

New blogular addiction of the month: Disgrasian. If my Asian parents knew the kind of daughter that I’d grow up to be (i.e., not going to Chinese school at age 12, not going to med school at age 22), they might have considered blasting that little zygote to pieces just to avoid the headache of having a Disgrasian as a child. No hard feelings though, Rents. Just give me some cash to tape up my future box of a shelter, and consider everything else water under the bridge.

The contemporary literature section of the Xinhua Bookstore houses a collection of western-inspired oil painting books created by rising Chinese artists, most of whom graduated from CAFA. Unusual, to say the least; genre-bending, to spell it out. There’s no good or bad with art movements infiltrating one another, but still doesn’t make it any less bizarre when coming across a Terra-cotta soldier painted like a nude Renoir française.

I would also like to point out that, on the left, the Chinese edition of Lolita is waaay less suggestive and more innocent than its western counterparts. Wouldn’t want those Asian grannies getting all hysterical and tripping over their bound feet.

Yangshuo, June 2009. 44mm, f/4.5, 1/50s.

“I could use a cigarette right about now.”
“I’m not in love with you anymore.”
Or…

“Did I leave the stove on?”

INTRODUCING my ultra athletic tour guide when I went to 金坑 (Jinkeng) to visit 龙脊 (Longji) a few weeks ago. Before eating lunch at her family’s restaurant, she took us from the bottom of the terraces all the way to the top in less than 45 minutes. On the way, she explained to us the customs of her minority clan, Yaozu, including sartorial traditions, such different skirt colors for single or married women. The women like to grow their hair out almost to their ankles and then tie it all up in a bun on top of their forehead each day, decorating it with an embroidered handkerchief. Putting American emo scenesters to shame, my guide wore heavy silver earrings that stretched her earlobes all out of proportion, like dumpling dough. How appetizing.

Besides trying to avoid looking at her ears, we were led on an exhausting yet knowledgeable trip as we trekked with her all the way up 1000 meters above sea level to the first and second “summits” of the Jinkeng (literally, Golden Pit) and listened to her mini-history lesson on the Yaozu people and their customs. I learned that she makes this steep hike daily during the summer time, when temperatures reach around 40 degrees Celsius in the valley. As we maneuvered our way on the precarious path constructed from rocks that jutted out in all sorts of inconvenient directions, occasionally, a farmer leading his ox or horse along would joust us for the right of way. “Rang kai yi xia!” he’d warn us with a slap of the bamboo rod he carried with him on one hand while he steered his four-legged companion with the other. “Step aside a little!” Each time, we sidled up against the mountain wall, letting the animal pass first, which made me doubt my worth as a commodity just a little. Hmm… maybe I’m not as priceless as I thought.

Up on the peaks, wooden hostels are situated next to homes of the Yao. Wayfaring travelers can rest their weary legs and stay the night for a mere 50 RMB, and the next morning, they can watch the sunrise from their windows as dawn breaks over the terraces, which are constructed by the village people in order to maximize land area for the agriculture on which they survive. After the trekker sweats more than a normal person ever should when he makes it to the top, he sees a sight that makes his breath short with fatigue, his legs crumble with vertigo, and his eyes wide with incredulousness.

If some of the tourists plan to stay the night on one of the peaks, she and other women in the village will carry their suitcases from the bottom up—on their backs. Even though this is a way for the Yaozu to conduct business and make a living of sorts, it pains me to see these dark, petite women shoulder things equal to their weight up a height equal to that of multiple skyscrapers. While hikers pay them to do this, I am curious as to what kind of people would be willing to dole out the money to witness this kind of manual labor.

Halfway down the trails as we were descending the mountain, it suddenly hit me that we didn’t even ask for the guide’s name. After all, she was a stranger in a strange place, and you don’t just ask for people’s names that you don’t know. But I should attribute all those stories to… who now? She’ll be a legend in my mind. Just a nameless one.

We returned to the city in a small rotund van (“bread car,” transliterally) popular in China for its versatility and good gas mileage (read: unsafe and cheap). More than one person made the trip on the verge of carsickness due to the driver’s less than steady driving prowess. The day after, the local news reported that the mountain road from Longsheng, the city most closely associated with the terrace landscape, and He Ping village had been blocked off by mud slides. Within the course of one rainy day, the narrow and winding roads up toward the village area became slippery and dangerous. Avalanches of dirt came crashing down within 24 hours after we left. Any vehicles traveling on the way to Longji would be swept off the path down into the steep ravines below. Was it a fortunate coincidence? Was it the bracelet I always wear for good fortune? Oh, to think about things that don’t have answers.

Then there are the people who say that whenever someone from the mountain village makes it to the city, he will never want to return to his roots nestled in nature’s layered cake after comparing his previous life to his current one. And true, after a close encounter with this different world, the peasant life in He Ping and the surrounding area is demanding, isolated, and predictable. Long days in the field turn the men’s skin permanently dark and rough, and people well into their 60s and 70s use canes to help them navigate the stoney slopes as they move back and forth between their homes and the fields. But whenever a villager leaves, never to return, he probably loses a part of the idyll that he won’t find again anywhere else. He will no longer breathe the cool and gentle mountain air. What’s worse, if he’s not strong enough, urban greed may rob him of what was his previously simple soul. So when he sleeps, I like to think that behind his closed eyes, he’s dreaming of a pink sunrise inching over the first peak.

Needless to say I pale in comparison.

via the Beijinger

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s “female bodyguards, complete with concealed handgun, 007 style.” I think I’m the only one who reads this as an unintentional display of feminism in a somewhat misogynistic country and gets a kick out of it.

Floating paintings levitated by thirty-four mufflers jetting out air at 100 mph coming down from the ceiling in Beijing. “What did you say?” Words get lost in a room of white noise. Ear plugs required. 天吖。

“吃完这顿饭，不知道何时才能相聚？

People depart after the curtain falls. After this meal, when could we get together again?”

Found in the far corner of a shop close to the Timezone 8 bookstore in Dashanzi. On first glance, it looks like porcelain for sale. Not at all. Perhaps not for the faint or nostalgic of heart. How did he know that I always asked this after the main course? We’ve put down our chopsticks and sent for the bill. Do we have to wait years before eating at the same table again? Even so, I hope he can be content even though no one can answer the question. 只能等等，看看未来。

celena:

In Xidan w/ Q after a tiresome 2 hours of bargaining (sooo worth it!).

I don’t vlog so other people do it for me. Additionally, I would say the skewers were pretty well worth their money, given the fact that we didn’t end up getting diarrhea (always a plus in my opinion).

Through the window of a dilapidated design gallery on a closed off side street, there hangs a naked angel.

(Splishsploshsplishsploshsplishsploshsplash page of Tokyo Gallery 东京画廊, exhibiting works of some of the best Korean/Japanese/Chinese artists from our generation.)

Even though Beijing’s Dashanzi 798 Art District relies solely on support from consumers and none from state funding, it’s eye-opening how much commercial success has blossomed from interest in contemporary Chinese art. Years of suppression from the Communist Party initially forced modern artists in the late 1990s to seek hideouts in places like the Yuanmingyuan (the Old Summer Palace) area, and eventually to the defunct factory premises located on the intersection of Jiuxianqiao Road and 798 Road. With younger artists graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing flocking to the area, eventually it became the to-go place for contemporary art collectors.

The most interesting and best part, I think, is that all gallery admissions are free, except for internationally-imported exhibitions, such as the UCCA Isabelle Huppert show last week (even then, I got in without having to buy a ticket when I flashed my student ID). Kind of shows the success that artists are having with whatever they’re producing—and it really is WHATEVER GOES here—and not needing über-wealthy subsidiaries (for the most part), unlike much of independent art in the states.

This goes not without repercussions. The area has been blamed for succumbing to commercialism and, in Andy Warhol-esque style, inevitably making art a business to be reckoned with. And it’s true that many establishments have sprung up in efforts to cater to western tastes and senses of purchasing art, such as “European-style” cafés and overdone Anglicization (such as exorbitant prices for design books). But a willingness to let go of this aspect of the art zone is important when embracing the fact that it is one of the few in a place that has been creatively repressed for such a significant period. After all, artists are human like the rest of us—they live to work. And if supporting their work means a little more commercialization of creativity, it’s money better spent in a country that has already unapologetically become the biggest, baddest, western-capitalist glutton.

[Note: Sorry for the terrible linking. Trying to work around the Chinese firewall isn’t easy, even with a private network.]