滚着滚着 rolling china + sinosphere 2013

Looks like I'll be in Weihai for a few days in July. Anyone know about cool stuff in the area? Changdao Islands sound kind of interesting from the little information I can find: fishing villages + temples, Westerners allowed only very recently.

that's pretty awesome. i don't know anything about weihai. looking at it on a map. i would suggest you go to the most northeastern corner you can find. take a stone. throw it as hard as you can at north korea. maybe you'll hit something.

*inadvertently starts stone war with NK*

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/apr/25/china-xinjiang-sufi-shrines

when i made my top 10 list of chinese cities to live in, i put down yantai, which is an hour's drive away from weihai and has a wal-mart and thousands of dog meat restaurants and korean sex tourists everywhere. weihai is superficially nicer, i guess, and it does make those questionable liveability lists, but once you get out of the development zones on the edge of town, it's pretty beat down. the waterfront area is grey and mean and grotesquely developed and marred by one of the ugliest buildings in china (and it's called happiness gate). i don't know how much time you've spent in china... i almost think it's more fun to wander around aimlessly than go to the trouble of seeing tourist sites (july, weihai, they'll be fucking packed).

changdao islands are cool. you can see similar fishing villages along the mainland coast, too, among the industrial zones and golf courses and AAA NATIONAL ECOLOGICAL TOURISM AREA OF XXXXX. outside of the cities (and even outside of the cities' economic development zones and main streets) and beyond the thin strip of coastline that's been developed, shandong is quite impressively rural and underdeveloped. penglai is worth checking out, too. most of the old city was torn down this decade (same deal in yantai and weihai, which had an interesting history as coastal cities and fell under various colonial powers and... all vestiges of that were pretty much torn down). you can go see penglai pavilion (one of the four great towers of china!), which will be a mad house in the middle of summer, but is still beautiful despite years of misguided development as a tourist spot and the crowds.

i think coastal shandong has the best food in china.

but eh, it's hard to tell you what to expect. to me, weihai = muddy backlots beside a string of pinklight microbrothels by the ferry docks ((if you had longer, you could take a ferry to dalian 9 hours/fast boat 3 hours and there's a ferry to incheon) and the concrete mausoleum lowceiling tunnels of the korean wholesale clothing market the source of all university district clothing shops and nightmarkets in easternchina and wide highways out to the extravagantly named economic zone exurbs welcome to the high technology commerce and transportation special development zone of the prefecture of huancai and the korean food naengmyeon and all the markets full (why coastal shandong has good food: sweet spot of agriculture + ocean, history, passionate food culture) cheesy tourist shops with glass cases of sea cucumber the generic chinese city architecture the last pieces of the old city rotting late 70s 80s bathroom tile rubbing up against dirty glass of the new new the gated communities PARIS COMMUNE statues of greek gods and the beach where while waiting for a ferry to arrive from dalian i saw two kids accidentally drown a dog.

just give yourself a lot of time to screw around if you can, i guess is my advice.

why areyou going there?

mordy my man did you see thing i like the ms http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/world/asia/violence-in-western-china.html?_r=0

that is intense!

this is cool: http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2013/04/24/178900162/explore-madame-maos-hollywood-fantasies

there are more pics like that, i posted them to the catalogue famous people thread... hol up

http://photographyofchina.com/Zhang-Yaxin#.US44LOvF00x

http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2013/04/23/Shanghai-Auto-ZX-Libyan-Rebel-Model-042313.aspx

i need to drive this.

...it's hard to imagine any attendee out-crazying China's Hebei Zhongxing Automobile Co. Ltd or "ZX Auto." ...the automaker presented a "Libyan Model" of its Grand Tiger truck, complete with rear heavy weapons mount, Arabic stenciling and an accompanying photo gallery showing the model in action against Muammar Gaddafi.

see also: How I took my ZX Auto Grand Tiger To War Against Gaddafi

Thanks for the Shandong tips, dylannn. I'm going to Weihai for work so not much flexibility there but hopefully I can find a few days afterwards to potter around the area.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/apr/26/iron-man-3-chinese-edition

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1371

dylannnnnnnn, any recs from this list??

for mordy, more zhang yaxin: http://photographyofchina.com/Zhang-Yaxin-1#.UYEe5yvF1Fo

as far as change the world documentarymaking, i don't think anything like river elegy has been reproduced. it was the most widely available piece of critical thought around in china in 1988 (summary: all the symbols of civilization that are cherished by the chinese people are a sham. the great wall is a symbol of isolationism. the yellow river is a stagnant shitsmelling puddle. china was conservative and introverted. meanwhile, the europeans went out onto the big blue ocean and created a market economy and allowed intellectual freedom that led to amazing scientific discoveries)-- when deng xiaoping and his faction had destabilized the chinese political elite and the entire country, it was also a broadside in support of their reformist goals, which is why i suppose it was allowed to be broadcast in the first place. 77 to 89 was not a solid period of dengist reform but a series of freezes and thaws as various factions within the party jockeyed for position. river elegy and the little island of intellectual freedom created in the press + academia at the time was met by a hard freeze and the people that worked on it and supported it in the press (right up to the highest levels in the party) didn't escape criticism or punishment. even if the neoliberal crew in the party eventually wrested control back, the critique of the pillars of chinese nationalism (esp their use within narrative of chinese civilization growing from yellow river, glorious great wall etc) still doesn't fly.

i'm not sure how it would work condensed into an hour. there's lots of good background material to read on it, including a great annotated translation of the script, deathsong of the river. i'd probably go see it.

i'd want to go see wu wenguang in conversation! he made that artists in beijing documentary that i embedded somewhere up there. and he made fuck cinema, which is another one i'd go see.

out of phoenix bridge is beautiful and sad.

i love jia zhangke but you might have already seen 24 city and you've probably seen qiu ju.

if i had to pick something that i think you might really like, i'd say san yuan li + disorder.

i think longing for the rain sounds amazing from the description. i need to see that.
erotic ghost story + surreal depiction of female sexuality + social documentary.

also, petition is worth it, if you haven't seen it. and west of the tracks is pretty wellknown as like an over the top concept, 10 hour documentary on postindustrial shenyang wasteland. i think i quite liked it. but i also just sat through wang bing's labor camp nondocumentary the ditch.

i feel like amateurist could also offer some pointers here.

i've seen disorder! i will try to go and see the ones you mentioned. just my luck that this stuff happens in the midst of finals season

i didnt realize rian dundon was a personal english tutor for fan bingbing, also took lots of pictures http://www.chinafile.com/being-bingbing

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/wp-content/gallery/china-report/z-10-china-daily-forum.jpg

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/05/china-report-weapons/

yeah, MoMA series is starting as my work leave is coming to an end...

I reviewed the short version of Petition, wd love to see the long one but don't know if I could last 5 hours right now outside of home.

i saw the fan bingbing series before and i really liked it, grainy out the window of a mercedes pictures, the shot of her in the long parka, theres so much emotion and detail in them especially in the direct contrast between fan bingbing's usually sunglassed distant elegance and her environment and the shots of movie sets and the raw blankness of an school auditorium in smalltown jiangnan adoring fans. im stuck on that shot of her getting out of her car with her team wrangling her into an appearance at a shoe wholesaler in shenzhen, the crowds behind her, the intersuburban bus idling. i really like them, even if my description here of why i really like them might not be clear. if he could extend the fan bingbing series to a booklength project i'd buy that too.

i hate to hear him sound so dejected about photography. honestly, the changsha series meant a lot to me: the material is so compelling and familiar to me and im deeply impressed with the way he shot those subjects, that setting.

and i also had no idea he was fan bingbing's personal english tutor!

heh his thoughts on photography in his latest tumblr post almost exactly mirror mine, down to the getting depressed if not making pictures / BUT questioning the value of it all.

is it possible he made any money off changsha or does it have the potential to make him any money in the future?

big mo, i'd love to hear your thoughts on petition and other films on the programme! some of the selections struck me as a bit odd but lots worth checking out.

if anyone has a chance to go see chris berry talk, i think they should. his writing has introduced me to a lot of chinese filmwork / theory on + hes had the biggest impact on how chinese film is treated in academia + is a good writer and speaker.

the total funding for changsha was like, 17,000, probably there's a couple thousand dollar profit built into that.... 8 years of work turned into rent money for a couple of months, i guess

photobooks don't really make money except in the secondary market, you can't pump them out w/ regularity unless one becomes a megasuccess i think, haven't really heard of a 50 shades phenomenon in the photo community, not even sure how many copies these new vivian maier monographs are shipping

i remember a comment about steidl, like, publishing the steidl version of the americans is what enables them to do so many other cool photobooks that lose money

if rian were smart he'd print 1000 copies, sell 500, wait for prices to hit $1000 on the used market and then slowly sell his others on the used market

http://www.amazon.com/Wonderland-Fairytale-Monolith-Jason-Eskenazi/dp/0974283673

i bought this for $35 from jason -_-

would they hit $1000 on the used market? wht would that take?

i have no understanding of this kind of thing. from reading talking barnacles' behind the scenes photobusiness stuff, i got the impression patrick tsai made very little money but was able to pay for a modest lifestyle with a lot of hustling and maybe a bit of photobook cash.

nah they probably wouldnt hit $1000, $1000 sticks in my mind because it was the high price for a copy of wonderland according to TOP, but i'm sure that didn't sell. realistically probably would be looking at 1-200. even something like http://www.amazon.com/Winogrand-1964-Trudy-Wilner-Stack/dp/1892041626 sells at like, $2-400 for an average copy.

photobooks just don't sell in the same way that books sell, and when you want to do a reprint i imagine you have to secure time on a printing machine, of which there are gonna be a lot fewer + a lot more expensive than a normal printer, that's my guess.

well a critic friend and I lol'd when independently we both wrote that Petition was a doc mix of Bleak House and Kafka, so perhaps my insights are not that vital.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/05/chinese-diy-inventions/100511/

i recognize this diy impulse very much

http://micgadget.com/34884/wtf-chinese-woman-poops-in-glass-elevator-in-shenzhen-subway-video/

what an appealing URL

does what it says on the tin

diy china and slightly more life or death than robot rickshawmen, homemade dialysis machine built from surplus medical equipment: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2266412/Chinese-man-kept-alive-13-years-HOMEMADE-dialysis-machine.html

this is where i mention half the furniture in our house was DIY built by my dad

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/09/zhang-yimou-seven-children-claims-china

this isn't very important but
there was a story a few days ago on my qq popup news thing about zhang remarrying and i noticed, woah, the guy has a lot of kids, eh?

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1232976/chinas-underdog-youth-find-success-diaosi-or-loser-identity

ive seen this piece + a few others in english over the last couple weeks trying to figure out the meaning of 屌丝, including one piece that says:

...I want to argue that one of the latest of these, the rise of "diaosi" – or "loser" – culture on the Chinese internet, is interesting enough to deserve close attention from a political perspective. The popularity of this identity among people who do not seem like natural losers is a major challenge for Xi Jinping as he makes his current push for legitimacy on the strength of the "Chinese dream." China PowerA New World Order‹ Back to China Power Could This Be China’s Youth Movement? (short answer: no)

scmp gets a bit closer, identifying it with smallscale achievement, online diy culture. but goes wrong looking at the overachiever diaosi and talks about wei xiaobo from the deer and the cauldron and ah q as prototypical diaosi heroes-- maybe wei xiaobo gets a bit closer but i still don't think so, and ah q has a very specific meaning, i think, as someone who's self-deluding, whereas i think of diaosi as very aware/resentful of their social position. and i think lots of these pieces ignore the very male resentment embodied by the term, dudes who can't get pussy.

although the term is so widely used now that my reading of it is probably too narrow. and i see it more often used now to talk about backdoor achievement and more of the general stuff that the scmp article talks about, but i still think it's missing the point to talk about diaosi as overachieving slackers! that's how i feel.

so, i guess it's okay to use the term for guys that can't get any pussy and resent their social situation but i also understand exactly when people refer to <a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2013/03/19/zhao_xiyong_fake_communist_official.php";>zhao xiyong</a> as diaosi.

always forget that convert simple html to bbcode button.

my friend when i asked about a good working definiton said, you are totally diaosi.

it also calls to mind 草食男子 in japan i think but i'm not an expert on that term either, but i think it has its similarities in that it refers to men turning their back on traditional masculine pursuits because of deep resentment about their social situation + economic situation.

grass-eating boy? hehe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_men

ah okay, i'm familiar w/ the phenomenon but had not heard that term!