Brackmann, who has lived in and travelled around China extensively over the past three decades, returns to the country for her latest book, Hour of the Rat. Released this week, the novel takes place about a year after the first book and continues the story of Ellie Cooper (née McEnroe), a tough-n-troubled Iraq War vet living in Beijing who frequently finds herself traipsing around the country running from one mys…
Popular Beijing-based blog Beijing Cream has just released the inaugural episode of The Creamcast, a weekly podcast hosted by John Artman and The Good Doctor.
The podcast's first guest is long-time China expat Frank Yu, founder of Chinese start-up Kwestr. The format is very much unstructured and conversational, and will remind most of a typical night out with a group of foreigners shooting the shit about living in…
I caught a link to this video in Bill Bishop's excellent Sinocism newsletter today. The video was published back in 2010 by the Asia Society, and shows Nicholas Platt giving a voice over description of several minutes of home movies he shot in 1972 Beijing, just after the US and China resumed diplomatic relations.
It's interesting that while a lot has certainly changed in Beijing over the last 40 years, a lot …
Credit to Beijing Cream for introducing me to the The 党 Dynasty, westside China's latest laowai talent. Made up of friends Bro西来 (Matt Allen) and 他马特老外 (Matt Sheehan), the duo produced the following "We livin in Xi'an" video, which is as ridiculous as it is fun.
on Youku
Straight off the streets of Xi'an, bilingual rap duo The 党 Dynasty lay down the hottest bilingual club thumper to come out of Xi'an since th…
Begin watching in the top right of the screen.
I remember when I first purchased an e-bike 5 years or so ago, it had been a while since I'd been on any sort of bike, let alone a motorized one. There really is a certain amount of trial by fire when buying a bike in China, with most bike shops deep in urban centres; hell, most of China is an urban centre. So I do sympathize with this fellow to an extent ... like…
I was pretty eager to sit down and watch "Seeking Asian Female", Debbie Lam's new documentary exploring 'Yellow Fever'. I've always been a bit skeptical about the whole Asian fetish thing, and, admittedly, a bit defensive about it -- my wife is Asian and I'm Caucasian.
I suppose the thing that gets my back up is the hinted presumption that all white people with Asian partners are somehow suffering from a fetish. O…
I'm not sure if it's fitting or unseemly that I should be posting this today, April 20th, but here we are. A couple years back I remember reading about a foreigner who spent seven months in a Chinese jail. Other than a passing, "man that sucks," I didn't think much more about it. I certainly didn't think it was anyone I *knew* (however loose I can use that term).
It wasn't until I stumbled across a recent The …
It was my intention to sit down and write a review of "The Man with the Iron Fists" this week. I just watched it a couple nights ago, and had a lot to say about it. Well, enough to fill a few paragraphs here. I was going to cry foul my disappointment at what RZA had led me to believe was going to be some grade-A, genera respecting, childhood VHS watching retrospecting, B-grade brilliance.
It wasn't.
However, be…
They roamed the streets of her hometown, knocking their sticks along to lay a path in that endless shade. What they could not see with their eyes the cards showed them by touch. Lu Jun was little when her mother made them show her her future. They rambled on for awhile, illshapen words boiling down to one sentence: she will be happy at a great school.
She never forgot this.
In primary school they took their les…
This week FluentU (who changed their name from Fluent Fix - which personally, I liked a bit more) announced that they now have over 300 videos available for Chinese study on their site. 308, at the moment actually, and more all the time. Congratulations to the FluentU team on all that hard work!
But what's FluentU anyway, you ask? In their own words:
"FluentU is a new way to learn Chinese through authentic vi…
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