Go ahead. Point to the indoor ice-skating rinks. Lavish praise upon the successful Olympic bid. Dry hump the glittering puddles of architectural vomit that Riken Yamamoto has sprinkled throughout our fair town.
For most of the post-adolescent, fist-pumping contingent of Beijing’s expat community (in whose meticulously coifed ranks I stand coolly detached. In expensive pants.), the proof of China’s development lay not in these things, but in the fact that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs recently saw fit to grace the stage of the Modern Sky Music Festival in Haidian Park.
You open a factory and call your self a patriot. I stand in the drizzle and mud and pissing cold wet for Karen O’s gravelly, nonsensical …
I’ve lived in a few countries, travelled through some more, went to school, made friends, associated or worked with people from all over the world and have learned languages that were never spoken by any of my ancestors, but not before I crossed into the People’s Universe of China, had the concept of someone or something being foreign solidified in my mind.
The notion of foreigness is something that was completely absent from my upbringing or my education. I’m from Montreal, Canada, and I grew up in neighborhoods where Hasidic Jews and third generation Greek Canadians, Haitians with Port-au-Prince accents and Vietnamese kids with jagged haircuts crossed paths daily. My classmates were Lebanese, Romanian, Ivorian, French, Congolese, Yugoslavian (before the breakup), …
We again return to Derrick’s great photography for this week’s Photo of the Week. Derrick has a knack at capturing a lot of emotion in his photos, as can be seen in this picture taken at the National Day [*pro*] in Macau. Be sure to check out his site - www.maskofchina.com - for more great photos.
Every week we’ll feature a funny, interesting or otherwise noteworthy photo here. If you have a photo you think might make a good Photo of the Week, throw it in the pool at the Lost Laowai flickr Group …
As some of you may have heard, the Olympics are coming to Beijing next August. No, really.
And beside colourful rings, fancy logos and a bunch of sickeningly cute paraphernalia, the key imagery of the event has got to be the Olympic Torch.
Starting last June the Olympic committee began hunting out the near 22,000 people it needs to relay the Torch to Beijing, and then early last month came the announcement that Lenovo and The China Daily have taken on the task of ferreting out eight lucky laowai to hold the fiery stick.
One such fellow is my friend David Degeest, a teacher at Zhongkai University in Guangzhou, Guangdong, but better known …
Under the influence of Thomas Newman’s haunting theme, something twirls and dances to the whim of the breeze and for a few minutes of movie history a white carrier bag is beautiful…
However, anyone who’s spent any time wandering down any streets in China can tell you that whilst a single carrier bag might be aesthetically pleasing, lots of the damn things blowing around, snagged in tree branches and sticking to your shoes are not.
***
Since I came to China I’ve been waging a single-handed battle against a pet-hate of mine: the carrier bag. I’ve decided to share it in the hope that - in true Olympic spirit - others will take up the flaming baton and run with it.
I’ve observed the …
Anyone that’s taught for more than 10 minutes in China’s public school system will attest to how craptastic the supplied text books are.
Chinese-produced pablum that bears the name of prominent Western universities in hopes that no one will notice that the content is blander than a bowl of zhou.
A recent Southern Weekend article reveals the dirty underside of the Chinese text book market and the seedy monopolies it has created.
From ESWN’s translation:
The supervisory government department publishes a list of “recommended books” in order to “purify the books used for teaching in elementary and secondary schools and to guarantee that they use excellent, authentic publications. This way, the students do not become harmed by poor-quality contraband books and audiotapes.” …
One hundred and ninety children are abducted in China every day. Nearly 70,000 per year.
Take a moment, stare up at the ceiling, and ponder that number. Need some perspective? In the entire year of 2005 my home of Canada had 31 kidnapped kids[1]. The UK weighs in at the 60-70 mark[2] and even the horribly high number of 3-5,000 in the US[3] is dwarfed by this statistic.
The cause, according to a documentary set to air on Channel 4 in the UK on October 8th, is China’s One Child Policy. The country’s strict family planning policy causes a tough gamble for parents who are under an enormous amount of family and cultural …
This week’s Photo of the Week is an unusually appealing and colourful pic of the entrance to a construction site by Flickr user: myblueheaven.
Every week we’ll feature a funny, interesting or otherwise noteworthy photo here. If you have a photo you think might make a good Photo of the Week, throw it in the pool at the Lost Laowai flickr Group and if you’ve got a great caption for it, send that to us as well.
NOTE: Can’t see the photos? You should read this.
Hey all, with the holiday week in full swing, I totally lost track of the China: Love It ~ Hate It group writing project and that it was meant to finish yesterday.
Though this GWP failed to attract a huge number of submissions (I’ll blame it on everyone busy preparing for the holiday), we did get some good quality posts.
I kicked things off with my rundown of the good and bad of Chinese supermarkets.
Rick, in his post Black + White = Fucking Grey, summed things up with:
China is like a really cheap, slutty ex-girlfriend with crabs. You know without all the make-up she’s way ugly underneath, and you know she’s way dirty and you shouldn’t go near her…
…but all …
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