滚着滚着 rolling china + sinosphere 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48Y3URkpEFA

let's watch a documentary about artists in beijing in 1990

haha

i watched 'ai wei wei - never sorry' last week

the people i know who have been to dalian have said it's nice (and namedrop the bay), but in a nonplussed way; and the people who live there are mainly proud. all of them work/worked in that software park west of the city.

Bloomberg TV ‏@BloombergTV 11m
BREAKING: Magnitude 7 quake hits near Leshan, Sichuan, China

seems like it actually happened here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya'an

hold tight everybody and hope nobody on ilx is near the earthquake right now!

I am in Xi'an right now and really loving it, especially the Muslim neighborhood (yes i'm a lol tourist). Today we fly to DunHuang, then on to Urumchi and Kashgar by train. Lovin' this thread, keep the insights / opinions / recommendations / truth bombs flowing.

apparently the epicenter was 1300 meters underground, so far it seems like no casualties

well shit http://i.imgur.com/DG2ndUG.jpg

also it was 13km underground, not 1300 meters

lol steph is in sichuan right now http://i.imgur.com/grXSnjA.png

13km?! Why, that's almost... (thinks hard)... almost 10x deeper than 1300m!

http://i.imgur.com/jMF6gsE.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/g2BzzPa.jpg

well judging by these pics there will probably be casualties

:\ http://i.imgur.com/lqmF7K7.jpg

already 2 reported dead http://china.dwnews.com/news/2013-04-19/59166150.html

http://news.163.com/13/0420/09/8ST6Q3FN0001124J.html#sns_weibo more than a 100 casualties so far

government is mobilizing 2000+ troops

and i'm signing off

chinese media reporting 46 dead right now.

i have a friend in guiyang that says she felt it but who knows.

positives: not in as fucked up an area as in 2008 / better disaster plans in place / far weaker quake

still, fuck

the official death toll is at 78. i don't want to just dispassionately update that number over and over again.

pictures from ya'an look fucked. lots of video from chengdu and chongqing of people wandering around outside. lots of this on weibo:

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/yaan_zpse947b49c.jpg

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/yaan2_zpsc6935cf3.jpg

"16 year old junjun died when his neighbor's house collapsed and crushed his bedroom. his grandmother explained while weeping, he was just about to write the middle school entrance exams. today was the weekend, so i wanted him to sleep in. if i had got him out of bed a little bit earlier, he'd be fine."

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/yaanpanda_zps2ae09988.jpg

http://s.weibo.com/weibo/%E5%9C%B0%E9%9C%87

if ur interested

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/yaan3_zps00071107.jpg

12:40, a vehicle carrying 17 soldiers and emergency workers plunged off a cliff, killing one soldier. the huaxi metropolitan is reporting that the vehicle swerved to avoid a car ahead of them on the road that had blown a tire. let's remember to stay off the roads in disaster areas, save them for emergency vehicles. in this picture a soldier burns three cigarettes in tribute to his deceased comrade.

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/yaan4_zpsbc729a87.jpg

meanwhile sichuan tv is playing anti-japanese dramas

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/yaan5_zps959e3742.jpg

some aerial pics here http://news.backchina.com/viewnews-240965-gb2312.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B7qmEsjRN4w#at=12

some conspiracy theories on weibo, not surprising because weibo loves conspiracy theories and after 512 2008 there were plenty of issues that took a while to shake out: geng qingguo's predictions about the quake, school collapses. lots of jokes about guo meimei (http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/stories/guo-meimei-red-cross-controversy-pissing-off-chinese-netizens.html).

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c0eae0a-a95d-11e2-a096-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2R4yTy6vf

li keqiang in sichuan. mention of reservoirs as a cause (and the three gorges dam were mentioned in 2008).

WEIBO REPORT, WHAT ARE THE TOP 10 TOPICS ON WEIBO RIGHT NOW

1. LINGLONG ROAD - beijing, haiding district. four cars collide, three catch on fire and start exploding. dog died, a guy's balls were on fire.

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/63e10c60jw1e40ujvc8s4j20c80pomzj_zps47cb7eff.jpg

video here: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTQ2Nzg3NTI4.html

2. ZHU LING - qinghua student, victim of thallium poisoning, case unsolved but all signs point to her roommate, sun wei, whose personal emails telling friends how to post on message boards promoting her innocence were exposed and whose family happens to be connected (father is cppcc member, uncle former dep mayor of beijing)(this is why the zhu ling case is a sensitive topic). her roommate came out with a new, combative message protesting her innocence.

3. YIBIN - powerful aftershocks in yibin, sichuan, majorish city 5 million people, 200 km from ya'an, quite a bit of damage.

4. EARTHQUAKE

5. YANG CHENGYI - low level local cadre in quakezone removed from post. took the deputy county governor post last year. weibo commenters say: he wasn't doing anything wrong, just fucked up by not making a big show when his bosses rolled through. yang chengyi, honest and good natured to the end, told the reporter through tears: "the job isn't important now-- if i can be of any service, i'll be there."

6. YA'AN

7. SUN WEI - see item #2

8.LIAO ZHI - liao zhi is a dance teacher from hanwang county in sichuan. she lost her daughter and mother-in-law during the wenchuan earthquake in 2008. she also suffered her own injuries, including the loss of her legs. she recovered well and was fitted with prosthetic legs. she continued dancing, just as before. after the earthquake this week, she rushed to ya'an to do rescue and relief work. wearing her prosthetic legs, she delivered food, clothes and generators, and helped erect shelters. her name is liao zhi and she's truly an outstanding woman.

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/7af40ad162d9f2d3cbed95bca8ec8a13622762d0f603ecd9_zps211bcadc.jpg

9. FUDAN UNIVERSITY POISONING - similar to the zhu ling story, a grad student at fudan was poisoned by her roommate after a dispute about paying for water. roommate has been arrested. calls for fundraising efforts for the family, conspiracy theories. they say the fudan poisoning case started over a dispute about water fees. i'm a bit worried. when i first got to my dorm, my roommate and i had a little disagreement over water fees. he said he shouldn't pay as much because he never drinks water. now, i really want to thank my roommate for not murdering me.

10. ZHANG XUEBING - shanghai public security boss was possibly (according to hk media) disciplined by the party for fucking around on his wife, having fake passports, and being generally a bad seed popped up again today in a local government symposium heavily covered by the media. so, who knows that's up with this guy.

makes it look like poisoning is a common thing in china. your neighbors had a big noisy party last night? no biggie, just poison them.

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.