Reviews Posts

Feb142012

Posted By
Marian

Review: Parfitt’s ‘Why China Will Never Rule the World’

I’m going to assume that most of the readers of Lost Laowai are the kind of people who bother to run VPNs and the kind of people who follow the China blogosphere. If so, they may have seen Troy Parfitt’s “Why China Will Never Rule the World” coming up again and again. Peking Duck, Seeing Red in China, China Law Blog, they’ve all written reviews on it and they’ve all covered different but equally valid aspects of why this is or is not the book for you to read.

The job of a book reviewer is to tell you, gentle reader, why you should or should not spend your time or money on a book. I won’t lay down a pronouncement yay or nay so much as give my thoughts and let you make your own decision based on those opinions.

Dec312011

7Comments

Posted By
Marian

Review: Flying Swords of Dragon Gate

For the laowai who likes movies, there are certainly a number of offerings available this month to tempt you out to the movie theater instead of staying at home and watching pirated DVDs. While Nicki has just reviewed the “Flowers of War” with its serious historical plot line involving things few of us really want to think about, I’d like to take this time to talk about pure fluff.

My parents are visiting from the US and we celebrated Christmas in traditional Jewish fashion — Chinese food at a restaurant followed by going out to a movie.

I like to play movie roulette. Walk into the theater and buy a ticket for the next show. I hate buying tickets in advance. It seems to me whenever you buy tickets in advance and are enjoying your meal, you have to rush to leave. Perhaps the situation in larger cities like Beijing or Shanghai is different from Haikou (or Baltimore for that matter) but there are always enough empty seats 20 minutes before the show that I and my other similarly inclined friends manage to get seats together.

Dec232011

13Comments

Posted By
Nicki

The Flowers of War: Christian Bale and the making of a hero

Today, for my all-to-close-to-Christmas birthday, my hubby took me on a date. We saw the new and somewhat controversial Zhang Yi Mou directed “The Flowers of War,” starring Christian Bale.

For those of you who haven’t been following the controversy involving Mr. Bale, the movie is a period piece set during 1937′s Rape of Nanjing. Since it’s a war film, and especially since it is a Chinese-made film about the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, it naturally involves a lot of violence and, although the camera never focuses directly on it, rape. That’s to be expected, you’ve had fair warning and should know what you’re getting into if you choose to watch this movie. And I think if you are a laowai living in China, you should choose to see it. More about why in a bit. What you’ll not need to worry about is the language of the film: it’s in Chinese, sometimes in the local Nanjinghua, but it has terrific English subtitles.

Oct272011

2Comments

Posted By
Nicki

Review: Yes China! An English Teacher’s Love-Hate Relationship with a Foreign Country

I’m a huge bibliophile. When I moved to China in 2005, half my luggage weight allotment went to books. I knew that, living in Hainan, I probably wouldn’t have access to the kind of foreign language (i.e. English) bookstores you can find in Beijing or Shanghai. So I brought my own. Of course I could never bring enough. Not even enough for the first year that we had committed to, let alone the nearly seven total that we’ve stayed for so far.

So I’m very acquisitive regarding books. I borrow them from friends, and have been lucky to have generous friends who love books just as much as me. I buy suitcase-fuls every time we leave Hainan. Ever since I got my HTC Android phone, I’ve been ecstatic about my ability to just download books anytime I want to. So when Ryan asked me if I wanted to read and review a new book on China for Lost Laowai, I was thrilled. I love books! I love China! Sign me up.

Clark Nielsen, author of “Yes China!“, gifted my Kindle reader with a copy of his book, and I was set to go. (Yes, Kindle does work on my Android phone, in case anybody was wondering.)

I read the book fairly quickly, but ever since then, I’ve been struggling with what to write in this review.

Oct032011

21Comments

Posted By
Becky

Review: The New Lonely Planet China. Is it Worth it?

If you’re planning a trip, or living in China, chances are you own a Lonely Planet guidebook. In the past, using LP showed the world you were young and crazy, and would rather stick toothpicks in your eyes than hit up the main tourists spots with all the other blue-hairs. (Or as others saw you: stoner punks who trashed obscure tropical beaches looking for the best banana pancakes.)

But nowadays it is just as common to see an old couple, or a family of six, holding a Lonely Planet guidebook as it is to see a young backpacker. In my years of traveling around China I’ve seen people clutching it in their sweaty hands at the top of mountains, and primed polished fingernails searching through the hundreds of pages to find the certain little write-up to share with their tour group. (Here’s a hint people: Just tear the pages you need out and leave the book back at the hostel. No sense adding 100 pounds to your day unnecessarily.)

Sep032011

19Comments

Posted By
Ryan

Review: River Town — Two Years on the Yangtze

I realize I’m about a decade late posting a review of Peter Hessler’s River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, but it was only recently that I finally took the time to read it.

I can’t be certain why it took me so long to pick up Hessler’s seminal work, but I think it was due to the weight of it. Not the book itself mind you, though a bit weighty for a travelogue, it reads quick and handles well. Rather, because for any post-Y2K laowai, Hessler is definitively known as the laowai. Next to Mark Rowswell, few foreigners in modern China are as well known.

I suppose I was worried that reading Hessler’s experiences might colour my own. Lord knows I’m susceptible to such things, as it took me more than a couple years to stop spouting off facts learned from Jung Chang as gospel (worry not Changites, when last I visited an expat pub the doctrine was alive and well).

Oct252010

1Comment

Posted By
Ryan

‘Electric Voices and Stinky Tofu’ on your bookshelf

I first heard of MandMX.com back about a year and a half ago when they featured Lost Laowai in a comic of theirs. So when Magnus, the “M” of MandMX, contacted me to let me know they’d compiled their large collection of bilingual, China-themed comics into a new book, I was excited to get my hands on it.

Dubbed with the quirky moniker “Electric Voices and Stinky Tofu“, The book is an illustrated journey of ah-ha moments for any Westerner who’s spent time in China. Magnus, and his wife MingXing, have cartooned nearly every “China moment” I could think of — inking out what we all know from living here — China’s one wacky place.

I chatted with Magnus recently about the book and living in China. Here’s what he had to say:

Aug032010

14Comments

Posted By
Ryan

Review: Invisible Browsing VPN (ibVPN)

A little down recently about my regular VPN’s lackluster speed, I started testing out a new service called ibVPN (Invisible Browsing VPN) and am decently happy with the results/ease of use.

The service is strictly PPTP and not SSL, which I suppose is both a pro and a con. From my experience PPTP is faster and easier to setup as services go, but is easier to get blocked.

And blocked I think is exactly what happened with the initial setup I was using with the service. ibVPN allows you to use various different gateways (3 US, 2 UK, 1 DE and 1 NL). I slapped the first US gateway into my settings and tried to connect — no go. Not a great start for my review. Not easily dissuaded, especially when the reward is funny cat videos, I gave the second US gateway a try — worked great.

Jul092010

7Comments

Posted By
Matt M

A Review of China: Portrait of a People by Tom Carter

What Peter Hessler did in his memoir River Town, Tom Carter does with China: Portrait of a People. A new wave of camera-toting expats will soon come to China hoping to follow in Carter’s footsteps.

I write this within a week of coming back to America after a year of teaching English at university in southern Hunan. While it was a wonderful experience, I was eager to get back home and move on to bigger and better things. But then Carter’s book came in the mail from Amazon. My immediate reaction: every expat coming to China should have one for the inevitable day culture shock strikes; the book should come wrapped in white paper with a red cross and the instructions: “For prevention and treatment of culture shock. Open if you have any of the following symptoms…” Just paging through it compels me to return to see what I can see, do what I can do, and meet whoever I can meet.

May042010

4Comments

Posted By
Ryan

eXpo: offering some movement this May Fourth

One of my favourite Chinese sites, Neocha, has teamed up with the very talented producer Dave Liang, of The Shanghai Restoration Project, and created eXpo, a 10-track collection of Chinese electronic music that goes on sale today.

I generally accredit Neocha as the source of reversing my opinion about creativity in China. The site is a SNS for Chinese creatives of all disciplines, and while it’s all in Chinese, it does a great job of bridging out to the English speaking world with its NEXT player for streaming independent Chinese music, and the awesome NeochaEDGE blog that showcases the best of Chinese creativity where ever it may bloom.

I chatted with Neocha founder and CEO Sean Leow, as well as The Shanghai Restoration Project’s Dave Liang to get the skinny on the album, the Expo and the state of independent music in China. Here’s what they had to say: