rolling buried alive in china 2012

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/activists-blind-chinese-lawyer-flees-house-arrest-16224458

so should i read The Fat Years?

what else do you have to do?

I cna't keep up with the chen guangcheng saga it's too much

big mords.
as i said above
it reminds me a lot of late qing/republican era utopian novels/national allegory novels. sort of unsophisticated somehow and it isn't helped by the oldfashioned translation.
more interested to read about than actually read.
listen to the eleanor wachtel interview.

i'm guessing he's not leaving on hillary's plane
as he's asking
but i've been wrong about stuff like this before. but hiding out in the us embassy was probably a good move longterm even if possibly they weren't 100% honest with how they dealt with him.

this is going to sound terrible, but it's so rare to read a contemporary novel that really matters to any ppl anywhere - or at least it seems that way to me. that's at least 80% of my interest. the other 20% is that i have a thing for dystopias.

http://shanghaiist.com/2012/05/07/photos_college_grads_dress_as_migra.php

these people are really gross

mordy: http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2012spring/koonchung.php

that review was written by my former TA who knows his stuff

agree with everything there and it was what i was trying to say

fits in tradition of most modern chinese fiction -- didactic, characters are wooden and moved around in simplistic plots with the most inelegant fiction moves you'll ever see, dialogue often turns into lectures on the lesson that the work is trying to inform us about

and of course, modern chinese lit has a small stable of translators (goldblatt & duke account for 99% of every chinese novel in translation i think) that seem incapable of turning chinese into modern english. the translations often remind me of the english of novels of the 40s and 50s. so much so much bad chinese-english translation.

http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/1280

v interesting, confession I once thought about doing comp lit for a living

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/02/06/120206fa_fact_chang?currentPage=all

I had no idea that leslie chang was married to peter hessler

not really a fan of that style ofw riting though, a little too smug, positing america + historical china as better paradigms. uhh, america is pretty fucked up too, and historical china is not that much better than current china

hessler's book about driving in china (which is really good) is dedicated to her and i think
factory girls was dedicated to him

i think i wrote briefly about du lala's promotion on chinese littranslation site paper republic
not sure. but it's fairly horrifying. chang's piece here isn't... .... bad..............

Shanghai Index drops 64.89 points on anniversary of Tiananmen Square (which occurred on 6/4/89)

o_0

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-04/tiananmen-date-match-bars-searches-for-china-stock-index.html

Provocative analysis of how the Chinese economy is rigged to the benefit of the elite:

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2012/06/macroeconomics-of-chinese-kleptocracy.html

no surprises there

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/30/world/asia/hong-kong-national-education-controversy/index.html

sigh

Interesting speculation on how the Bo Xilai situation may play out and what it all means:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/aug/02/bo-xilai-unanswered-questions/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvb1kjP2mSY

lol my dad taught me these exercises when I was 7 -_-

feels good man

massages seem like a disgusting indulgence when i'm in the western world but in the mystical east i like them because 1) xxx xxx x xxxxxxx xx xxx xxx and 2) the intense face massage where your sinuses are pounded and you feel the masseuse's fingers going into these hidden miniature holes in your face, feels like your skull is being dismantled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/world/asia/hong-kong-voting-for-legislature-is-heavy.html?_r=1

interesting story about 1) support for pro-democracy candidates having some success 2) pro-beijing candidates having some success (article suggests part of the success is through gaming the byzantine hk electoral system):

The pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong used this arrangement to its advantage, running multiple slates in election districts across Hong Kong and using its formidable logistical network to guide tens of thousands of supporters to vote for one or another of its slates. As a result, the party won a series of seats for its top-of-the-slate candidates despite a weak overall vote count.

and there's this element, which has been mentioned before:

Only 40 of the legislature’s seats are elected by the general public; the other 30 are chosen by industries like banking and by professions like the law and Chinese medicine. These functional constituencies, as they are known, are mostly dominated by people who have connections to mainland China, many of whom have investments there; they tend to choose pro-Beijing lawmakers.

also interesting that the "national education" program has been set aside for the moment.

i had dinner in shenzhen a little while ago with some women that graduated college in the late-80s and were involved in the student movement (first time i ever heard of smashing bottles in protest of deng xiaoping-- i always thought deng came out okay in 89 and didn't realize there was much protest directed at him. i always thought his concessions to smashing protest was understood as self-preservation, because he was so linked to hu yaobang and zhao ziyang. and then in 92, he basically restarted the reform process with his southern trip and swung influence away from the hardliners. but this was just how i understood it). they had lots of stories about their fathers, who were the first people going into hk in the 80s and how they came back with books, magazines, news and hk was like a gleaming beacon of freedom (another common story: after 89, the news from hk stopped and their fathers wouldn't say shit about what they had seen/heard about tiananmen and the crushing of the student movement and it clearly freaked them the fuck out). but as soon as i mentioned anything like, say, being shy about speaking mandarin in hong kong and disturbed by "national education" and politicians speaking mandarin or being unnerved by the legions of 7-series with 粤 plates and the way mainland political and business influence would change the city in negative ways (my opinions are mostly emotional and maybe nearsighted and wrong and show a superficial understanding of hong kong's situation), i was met with unexpectedly fierce nationalism. one woman said that in shenzhen when they learned that hong kong would return to china in 97, they were saddened, but that now it's just inevitable and right that hk be absorbed back into the people's republic as quickly as possible because IT'S PART OF CHINA. they also reminded me that hk has no future outside of china: no resources! how many financial centers does china need? hk only made a living when china was closed! yeah.

elsewhere

http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/gazettetimes.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/2/be/2bedb1c8-f96c-11e1-9c2e-0019bb2963f4/504ac6f6e9c02.preview-620.jpg

Citing “strong resentment from the local Chinese community,” the Chinese government has asked the city of Corvallis to force a Taiwanese-American businessman to remove a mural advocating independence for Taiwan and Tibet from his downtown building.

before i saw the images, i expected it to be a little more subtle...

xp hk needs china like a forklift needs broccoli. btw singapore's doing all right w/out resources or indon/malayan control, so idk maybe those people are not into regional comparisons when they're poised to consume the region's biggest open market.

I've not been to shenzhen but it always struck me how shenzhen seemed quite jealous of hk (despite being a sez pilot), but in hk you'd be forgiven for not knowing that shenzhen existed (although I couldn't read 简体 (much less 繁体) when I was last there, so maybe there's a whole 深圳 consciousness that I just didn't see). it seems to be the destination of choice for tourists to hk who want a better range of knock-off shit.

my feeling was the opposite, shenzhen felt far more selfcontained and less hk-oriented than i expected. i'm always surprised that so few shenzheners i talk to have never been to hong kong. but still, maybe i was talking to the wrong people, because there are a couple hundred million border crossings a year at shenzhen/hk.

shenzhen-hk relationship is defined by econ development i guess, rather than like cultural/political trends. shenzhen and hk are both economic rather than political powerhouses and their political role is defined in economic terms (not sure if this makes sense but i don't know how to say it in a way that makes sense). and looking at hk and shenzhen's economic relationship, shenzhen needs hong kong less and less: the centers of shenzhen have moved away from tight up close against the border (the first SEZs in shenzhen were chosen for proximity to hk, right?) and the new central business district has been intentionally cityplanned distant from territorial crossings, and the old idea of 店前厂后 is outdated because shenzhen now functions as both 店 and 厂. if in china, there's a big split between economic vs. political power center (maybe this isn't even true), hong kong will continue to be marginalized esp in comparison to shenzhen.

^------ not sure how much of this is actually true or is expressed in a way that makes sense

www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=2100

slightly related. this is a really good collection of essays on pearl river delta history. but mostly covers a span of history that ends in 49, when there is an end put to major exchange between hong kong and the rest of guangdong.

"The main inspiration was G. William Skinner's idea that Chinese history has been a pattern of unique structural transformations of regional systems."

hong kong def needs china in order to stay alive

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/foolish-and-backward-nation-a-self-effacing-chinese-satire-of-america/261946/

http://www.triciawang.com/bytes-of-china/2012/6/23/mapping-the-city-first-stop-sex-workers.html

i like her blog. i think she's pretty. american ethnographer, who we last noticed working a food cart in a suburb of shanghai.

also

dancing with handcuffs: the geography of trust in social networks

a talk she gave on 寒君依, who threw a shoe at fang binxing and got away with it

anxiao mina on memes, protests in hk

http://www.88-bar.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/a3b9d0b9tw1dwjf1lxqrfj.jpg

星月菩提—妙涵 17:46:32
打仗对经济发展的中国，会造成回落。如果说日本与中国开战，便宜的是美国。因为美国的经济在飞速倒退，十年之间，美国就会沦为二流国家。如果说中国与日本开战，美国支援日本，战争结束了，钓鱼岛挣到了，接下来就要商讨互相赔偿的问题了。钓鱼岛是中国绝对不可以放弃的岛屿。钓鱼岛就是中国的咽喉，中国的船只、军舰、潜水艇要想进入太平洋，必须经过钓鱼岛。美国就是打算靠战争来解决他的危机。中国现在主要做的就是派军舰巡航，日本去船先警告、警告无用可以撞他。绝对不可以开火！十年中国靠的起，美国靠不起、日本更靠不起！现在只要抵制日货，就是最好的行动，中国进出口 对日本来说是一主要资金来源。如果你是一个中国人，还有一点爱国之心，希望你看到后默默复制10份发给群和好友。
美国与日本已经有资金进入中国,支持中国部分城市动乱,请善良的人民清醒,安定工作,不购日货,我们唯一能做的便是在经济战算上一份子,不要对同胞下手,不要为难同胞,团结起来,一起对外!努力工作便是爱国,动乱胡闹便是害国!请转发.....
理性有序才是震慑日本的最大力量，既表国人誓死捍卫国土的决心，又显强大素质！千万不要过激，否则正中敌人下怀！30年代日谍川岛芳子曾假扮爱国青年鼓动国人杀人以便寻找借口且得逞，今天等着抹黑的人正四处寻找素材！不要内斗不要跟警察冲突他们也是满腔怒火无奈职责所在！ 千万不能让爱国行为演变成内斗，这正是敌人最希望的，不能把对侵略者的恨发泄在同胞身上，抹黑的人已经架好键盘，打算站在道德制高点把你们打的体无完肤，理性才是力量！钓鱼岛一定是我们的！切记！看了复制扔出去，让更多同胞知道！

just got that msg on qq

just tryna 让更多同胞知道

interesting:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2012/10/why-china-lacks-gangnam-style.html

yeah but. some things i wanna say:

-- maybe part of the thing is american perception of china vs. perception of korea (never heard of it, kim jong il on team america, hyundais). quite a few cultural productions get thru to america and they reflect what america sees in china: martial arts epics, memoirs of political oppression, rural epics.

-- a fluke k-pop hit in america is pretty likely i think because of korea's longterm engagement with american pop culture (+ the vocabulary or sound or whatever of american pop music) vs. china being open to american cultural influence for relatively shorter. and look at hong kong or taiwan, which pump out 2 billion pop singles a month and don't have the same political controls on the culture industry or fear of satire if that even exists. and the biggest sinophone hits in america have been edison's pix of girls you've never heard of rubbing themselves on the bed in his surprisingly modest apartment. pop music in china/hk/taiwan belongs to a diff tradition than korean pop music.

-- "gangnam style" being played on american top 40 radio has nothing to do with its lyrical content. if chinese pop singers want to open themselves up to the racist ridicule of middle america, i'm sure they could set 《我们走在大路上》 to something fresh, invent a dance, and make it happen.

-- why does japan lack "gangnam style"? why does singapore lack "gangnam style"? why does taiwan lack "gangnam style"? why does sweden ... israel ... germany ... greece ... ? dumb question.

But the most important thing that “Gangnam Style” has is a sense of humor about itself. (If you haven’t yet seen it, put down your surgical instruments or air-traffic-control headset or whatever else might be distracting you, and watch it now.) Its satire made it a viral phenomenon with three hundred million views on YouTube, surpassing and mocking the earnest K-pop products, and thus proving, as Seabrook says, that “cultural technology can only get you so far.”

i mean:

"earnest K-pop products"? the fuck... have you seen what's going on over there in korea?

"Its satire made it a viral phenomenon..."-- as noted on ilm, a guy yells at a butt was probably a bigger part of making it a whatever phenomenon

all in all, i think he makes some fair points about political controls on the chinese culture industry but he misses the point about the nature of "gangnam style" in america and the ways that chinese cultural products offer social critiques. that's all i want to say.

the last point means: there's lots of popular media in china that critiques social trends that chinese people care about.

but it doesn't sound like lmfao.

In Chinese cultural circles there is a name for this: the “ ‘Kung Fu Panda’ problem,” named for the 2008 DreamWorks movie. It refers to the fact that the most successful film about two of China’s national symbols—Kung Fu and pandas—could only be made by a foreigner because Chinese filmmakers would never try to play with such solemn subjects. The director Lu Chuan, for example, once agreed to produce an animated film for the Beijing Olympics, but after he embarked on the project, he discovered he was not supposed to let his mind run wild.

producing an animated riff on martial arts movies for a hollywood studio = producing an animated short for the chinese government, yes.

and why the fuck would anyone think shit like kung fu panda would play to a chinese audience? even fucking crouching tiger, hidden dragon GREATEST MARTIAL ARTS EPIC OF ALL TIME... ask a chinese audience that grew up on the realdeal and realdeal arty takes on it about it.

and...

and, at the end of the day...

Kung Fu Panda 2 hit 125 million yuan ($19.3 million) at China’s box office last weekend, setting new records for a Saturday opening and weekend ticket sales total, local media reported Thursday.

The first Kung Fu Panda, released in China in June 2008 in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, was the first animated film to gross more than 100 million yuan ($15 million) at the local box office, quite an accomplishment in a market where animated fare long has been overlooked by adults.

The animated bear hug the Hollywood film gave the Chinese audience came on the heels of a China promotional tour by DreamWorks Animation production designer Raymond Zibach last week in Chengdu, the cradle of the panda in Sichuan province in southwest China.

On a Paramount and Chengdu-government sponsored tour, Zibach hugged a panda-suited man, demonstrated making bowls of local noodles and mugged for Chinese press cameras.

thank god for lu chuan, standing up for this shitty movie, whose exhibition in china was nixed by stalinist bureaucrats, surely using the screentime to show a historical epic about mao's triumphant long march.

Those are all good and fair points, but I would quibble on a few things. I agree that the popularity of "Gangnam Style" has little to do with the lyrical content. However, I do think it has a lot to do with the visuals in the video. Just by watching the video, one gets a sense of satire and willingness to mock aspects of one's own culture, which I think contributes to the appeal, not because of "racist ridicule" but just because people enjoy things that are funny and don't take themselves too seriously. However, it's also a fair point that the fact that "Gangnam Style" has a very Western sound has as much to do with its success as anything else. No doubt there is lots of social critique in Chinese culture; however, I wonder if there is much social critique with the same level of popularity, production values, and pervasiveness represented by "Gangnam Style". And if there is, is the critique so subtle as to not translate very well? I think that pervasive government censorship must have some effect on popular media. It's a fair point that some countries just seem to export their popular culture more successfully than others, and no single explanation covers all of them, but I wonder if there have been very many examples of countries with a successful pop culture export industry that also exist under lots of censorship.

but i think taiwan/hk work as a good control here: 2 sinophone countries that (esp if combined) regionally export as much pop culture product as korea + and are at leas polit / culturally rambunctious as korea. and the social satire in those countries doesn't need to be subtle.

i feel like the lack of popular social satire in china (not a lack... a lack of social satire that meets western expectations) has less to do with overblown perceptions of maoist controls on culture and more to do with Chinese self perception (although this is shaped by ccp narratives), trad chinese modes of artistic expression (view of art +lit as media of instruction), xenophobic view of western world/culture

mo yan nobel prize MOTHERFUCKERS

gao xingjian can go back to not being chinese again