rolling china thread 2011

http://shanghaiist.com/2011/11/17/video_of_tibetan_self-immolation_fr.php

haven't watched this yet, dunno if I'm going to

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8893337/Chinese-man-sets-himself-on-fire-in-Tiananmen-Square.html

1984, forrealz

oh hey, okay dude!! thanks for the offer. aware of yang zhichao as performance artist but hadn't heard of the notebooks project. would like to check it out. has yang zhichao staged a selfimmolation yet?

actually, i will say this right now, if anyone is ever in northern china, feel free to stop by and visit :))))

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/rBGpV6bjdhU/

http://shanghaiist.com/2011/11/18/google_maps_mystery_structures_actu.php

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

http://the-diplomat.com/china-power/2011/11/18/reporting-on-china/

Fox Butterworth, the New York Times’ first post-Mao China correspondent, tells the story of a young woman who opened up to him (off the record) about the sex life of Deng Xiaoping’s China and wound up in a prison camp for embarrassing the country.

now I'm intrigued

my dad tried to explain to me that mao wasn't a sex-crazed peasant, that he was just 'curious'

he lived up to the old kmt line about 共产共妻

actually, i know he had a few wives but never really heard much about mao's sex life.

heard mao had the pick of the litter of all the nubile young female peasants in the countryside, there have been books that go into this in more detail but you can never be sure how apocryphal the tales are or if they are really true

What has lent Mr. Gingrich’s written and spoken work, or, as he calls it, his “teaching,” the casual semblance of being based on some plain-spoken substance, some rough-hewn horse sense, is that most of what he says has reached us in outline form, with topic points capitalized (the capitalization has been restrained in the more conventionally edited To Renew America) and systematically, if inappositely, numbered. There were “Seven key aspects” and “Nine vision-level principles” of “Personal Strength” (Pillar Two of American Civilization), there were “Five core principles” of “Quality as Defined by Deming” (Pillar Five), there were “Three Big Concepts” of “Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise” (Pillar Three). There were also, still under Pillar Three, “Five Enemies of Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise” (“Bureaucracy,” “Credentialing,” “Taxation,” “Litigation,” and “Regulation”), which would have been identical to Pillar Four’s “Seven welfare state cripplers of progress” had the latter not folded in “Centralization,” “Anti-progress Cultural Attitude,” and “Ignorance.”

In Window of Opportunity, Mr. Gingrich advised us that “the great force changing our world is a synergism of essentially six parts,” and offered “five simple steps to a bold future.” On the health-care question, Mr. Gingrich posited “eight areas of necessary change.” On the issue of arms control, he saw “seven imperatives that will help the free world survive in the age of nuclear weapons.” Down a few paragraphs the seven imperatives gave way to “two initiatives,” then to “three broad strategic options for the next generation,” and finally, within the scan of the eye, to “six realistic goals which would increase our children’s chances of living in a world without nuclear war.”

haha when I was reading that I was thinking the exact same thing

newt gingrich really is a remarkable man

i did always love how clearly mao outlined stuff

newt gingrich's 'ten taxonomic precepts of sedition' will be required reading for ccp plants worldwide in 2k12

http://beat.baidu.com/?p=3515

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

we will start the 2012 thread on chinese new year's. the ayes have it.

very surprised at hu's blatant declaration that the US and china are in a culture war

wonder when china pop culture will 'get it.' like, for example, look at their cartoons - they just don't understand anthropomorphism. their shit looks so creepy. like beady-eyes, no expressions, dudes, japanese & american cartoons have big beady eyes for a reason

err *big expressive eyes

id like to see a chinese equivalent of rush limabugh style mock-chinese, preferably on youtube

feel like china's efficiency in mocking wite ppl langauges will have big implications for the kulturkampf

http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2012/01/04/the-republicans-on-china-who-knows-what%E2%80%99s-up-and-who-doesn%E2%80%99t-2/

interesting take on hu's remarks

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/beijings-culture-war-isnt-about-the-us-its-about-chinas-future/250900/

reminded that so far the most strident efforts have been made against china's own culture-producers like 非诚勿扰

it's always been embarrassing to have to rep for chinese literature because there isn't a lot of it that i feel right repping for and everything that appears in english translation is hindered by being shittily translated (99% of it by howard goldblatt).

so i dunno. to see chinese literature today devote an issue to him... with a fucking self-interview... and everything in the magazine is basically howard goldblatt school of translation stuff. really overliteral and all the chinese idioms are matched with english idioms (which would work if english writing involved a lot of pithy phrases and shit).

anyways.

i was sort of stoked to see them finally drop a second issue because i was supposed to have an excerpt of northern girls by sheng keyi in it. but there was supposedly some "controversy" because it had dirty words in it (book revolves around a girl with huge breasts who fucks her way to shenzhen). but no.

"Has he sold out his prison-mates? Why else would he get such good treatment? A large piece of pork every time."

In any case, pork was a welcome addition to their meal. Sometimes they even joked about it:
"There were bristles on the piece I got. Lots of them standing straight up, like that you-know-what down below. Ha ha ha."

"Is your you-know-what as skinny as a pig's bristle?" someone would ask in jest.

now, this type of shit is basically chinglish to me. why can't we have chinese-english translation where the final result is natural, modern english???

"prison-mates"
"you-know-what down below"
"in jest"

The heat brings out the gamy smell of the beef, but, with the amelioration of spices, only an aromatic meaty fragrance remains.

It is a heavy fragrance.

It has an authentic, delicious flavor.

:(

http://www.ou.edu/clt/vol-2-1/fiction-li-ang.html

it's actually a decentish essay but to me, it's almost unreadable if i have to read

For those under the sentence of death each Thursday night's three-inch piece of pork and cake of tofu could very well mean his "last, sumptuous supper." :(((( why is last sumptuous supper in quotation marks? likely because it represents a chinese phrase but DUDE JUST FUCKING TRANSLATE IT. WHY KEEP TALKING ABOUT A BOWL-SIZED ETC. IN CHINESE YOU SAY SOMETHING IS THE SIZE OF A BOWL OR AS THICK AS A BOWL BUT NO ONE DOES THAT IN ENGLISH

but i really like li ang and the piece is interesting so i guess i just want to say it deserves a more natural, fluent translation and more people to read it.

goldblatt had the one crack at doing jia pingwa in english and fucked it up.

theory: people that study chinese literature are so caught up in the idea that each character is crucial and must be understood and communicated that they miss the idea and the vibe and the soul of the original.

theory: howard goldblatt and lots of the other dudes that get the few chinese lit translation jobs are REALLY OLD. (recent exception cindy carter for dream of ding village and a few more that i can't think of off the top of my head).

but actually: i think howard goldblatt is good as a digging in the crates type of dude and found lots of good stuff that nobody bothered with, especially in taiwan. and i always liked his translation of notes of a desolate man by zhu tianwen.

actually, i take back everything i said about him. that self-interview upset me. it's not his fault he's basically the only show in town.

eh well those are mostly theoretical translation issues. there's the fear of turning into a modern day constance garnett, i.e. someone who translates works into stiff victorian prose.

man i get all fucked up on this hu jintao shit and i forgget that this is the actual countyr where i live and i just took X and made out with a beautiful korean girl in a club bathroom listening to david banner we need and she unhooked her bra for me and i had to ask her the first or second row when i did tback up . god it's snowing in dalian and it's so beautiful and peaceful and all the sttreetsweeper men are out sweeping snow instead of dust and i have my spring festival train tickets and i love it her despite cultural war or whatnot. lol.

http://www.ou.edu/clt/vol-2-1/interview-wang-jiaxin.html

any misty poetry fans in this motherfucker？》》》》》

http://news.ftv.com.tw/NewsContent.aspx?ntype=class&sno=2012105L05M1

http://www.ministryoftofu.com/2012/01/photo-showing-payslip-of-a-chinese-sanitation-worker-strikes-chord-in-netizens/

posting only because I have been to zengcheng!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/11/british-chinese-racism/print

http://www.danwei.com/serial-killers-in-china/

normally i'm super interested in serial killer stuff but I had to stop reading, probably because the police response was so weak

Good look at the Taiwan election result: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137029/daniel-lynch/why-ma-won-the-elections-and-whats-next-for-taiwan-and-china

http://www.zhongnanhaiblog.com/?p=475

thanks to ilxor rent - a good summary of the differences between HK and China on the ground

I think the idea of serial killers in China scares the shit out of me because there would be no police to protect you

http://www.economist.com/node/21541716

http://shanghaiist.com/2012/01/18/iconic_good_samaritan_case_in_china.php

:O :O :O

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/TKoY3j6yyyM/?resourceId=0_06_02_99

I like the way shanghaiinese sounds!

http://badcanto.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/mainland-scholar-many-hongkonger-are-dogs/

so uh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2uINfAKOxc

fucking A

he actually calls hongkongers 'running dogs'

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

www.cnn.com/2012/11/14/world/asia/china-leadership-transition/index.html

习近平 surprise.gif

Errr

xi jinping, sorry

rolling buried alive in china 2012 btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02UMJESbwJg

Xi
May be the face I can't forget
The trace of pleasure or regret
May be my treasure or the price I have to pay
Xi
May be the song that summer sings
May be the chill that autumn brings
May be a hundred different things
Within the measure of a day