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Levelling the Playing Field: Asian Movies and the West

On Sunday, March 15th, Sexy Beijing's host Sufei moderated a discussion with film critic Mark Cousins, at the Bookworm Literary Festival.?/span>Mark Cousins is a film critic, producer and director. From directing the Edinburgh Film Festival to interviewing the likes of Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen and the Coen brothers for his BBC show, Scene By Scene, Mark's knowledge of film is encyclopaedic. He discussed his provocative ideas on the relationship between Asian cinema and the West, as explored in his brand new book Widescreen: Watching Real People Elsewhere.

Hutong Renovations 2009

The Beijing government has started a new round of demolitions and renovations of the hutong homes in the Dongcheng District. We spoke to neighbors and found out that most residents will move back into their homes, which are being renovated at the government's expense, to make them safer and replace coal heating systems with electric. The downside is that these low-income residents, who rent from the government, were only given two weeks notice and had to find their own alternative housing and move at their own expense. Some say this is part of a Chinese stimulus plan and neighbors complain that the government is cutting corners to get the job done quickly. The government promises that it will take no longer than four months, and more like two months, to finish the project. Considering that most of the homes are being demolished with sledgehammers powered by migrant labor, they are coming down mighty fast.

Commie, Homo-hating Sons of Guns?

CCTV 6 did broadcast the 81st Oscar Awards Ceremony, all except for the night's climax--the acceptance speech of Milk screen writer Dustin Lance Black and part of Sean Penn's acceptance speech for his leading role in the same film.

Viewers in Hong Kong also reported that Star TV (owned by Rupert Murdoch) aired the speeches in their entirety but muted the volume whenever any of those commie Hollywood types uttered the words "gay" or "lesbian."

Here and here are some links on Chinese blogs about the homophobic Oscar coverage.

CCTV 6 did the same thing when Brokeback Mountain won Oscars. See here.

But as hard as the CCTV nanny works to protect innocent Beijingers from
all of this homo talk, same sex love seems to be catching on. It was a
Gay Valentine's Day this year in Beijing. Here are the pictures to
prove it:

For more on this go to the Wall Street Journal blog by clicking here.

Taliban Conflict Getting Closer to China

The recent takeover of Pakistan's Swat Valley by the Taliban is bringing the Islamist unrest in Afghanistan and Pakistan closer to the Chinese border, and seems certain to impact Chinese-Pakistani trade.

According to the website valleyswat.net, "The valley is an integral part of the strategic and significant region where three parts of the Asian continent�South Asia, Central Asia and China, meet." The famed Karakoram Highway, linking China's westernmost city of Kashgar with the Pakistani capital Islamabad, runs through, or at least very close to, the Swat region. It will be interesting to see how trade between the two countries is impacted on what is the only land connection between them. In addition, China and Pakistan agreed in 2006 to widen the highway, but with unrest growing in the region, these plans may be impacted as well.

Already the important tourism industry in the Swat Valley has been decimated, and certainly neighboring portions of the Karakoram will see significant drops in tourism. It does appear from Lonely Planet bulletin boards that adventurous tourists are still braving the Karakoram. Personally, I cancelled a trip to that region in 2007 after several bombings in Islamabad.

There is an interesting New York Times web documentary about the Swat Valley. However, it is very difficult to find reporting on how this spreading conflict is impacting Pakistan's connection with China, if at all, so anyone who has anything to add on this, please leave something in the comments section.

Look Ma, no hands!

When your bus driver starts saying that, it's time to start getting worried. In this video, a Guangdong province bus driver is shown cutting his fingernails, pouring water and in general seeming to pay very little attention to the road. After the local news aired this video, the driver was fired and other bus companies and drivers were put on notice: Keep your eyes on the road! Officials say that soon all long-distance buses originating out of Guangzhou will have cameras on board to monitor driver behavior.

A Beijing Hospital Traffic Jam

We got so much fresh air during Olympics. Now the traffic is back. Although one car drives one less day a week now, I still don't see much of a difference. The traffic jams still go on and on. And I don't see Beijing's hospital traffic improving either. No one likes to go to the hospital. But you go when you have to. What do you do? First, you register. Second, you wait in a line. Third, the doctor tells you what's wrong with you. Fourth, you either stay in the hospital to have more tests. Or you take your giant bag of medicine and leave. Sounds pretty normal, I'd say.

But there's no such thing as normal in Beijing. I went to a hospital at 10 am a few days ago find the registration window packed. It was worse than Beijing subway train at rush hour and certainly smelled even worse. People waited anxiously... those that could actually fit inside the hospital, that is: lots of people were squeezed out of the waiting area with phlegmy gusto. I tried to register and was told that even the afternoon appointments had already been booked. What could I do? I had to go home and come back early the next day. But I wasn't sure how early I should arrive. I decided to talk to a friend that spends a lot of time at hospitals.

She told me that I should get there at least 7 in the morning or I'd be out of luck. She also relayed some disturbing information: when she takes her son to a local eye hospital, she gets up at 5:00 AM and waits in line for a number. This is not a registration number, mind you. By 7, she says, she's in the registration line with her "registration number"in hand. And just so you know, they will not let you register if you don't have the number. If she isn't lucky, she will have to wait until the next day to start the process anew. She said a lot of people arrive at the hospital at 4 AM--some even spend the night just like Americans do for the opening night of Star Wars films.

I learned my lesson and got there early the next day. Fully registered, I put my number on the doctor's desk, and realized that I was close to the last patient of the morning. I knew I would need to wait an eternity. While sitting in the well-worn chairs in the corridor, I watched other patients going into the doctor's office to check their number while other patients were still in the room. If I were a doctor, I would be annoyed by the intrusions, but the doctor seemed to think all was right and normal. Morning came to noon and the doctor told me that I should have an Ultrasound to see if I have a serious problem. But she said I have to go to upstairs to book the time. I went upstairs and they told me the earliest time I can do the ultrasound will be a month and half later. I was so worried that I wound get more serious if I waited that long. The nurse suggested that I go to a small hospital, so I wouldn't have to wait.

I took her suggestion and went to a small one. I got there at 11 in the morning and still managed to register. It was amazing. I got to see the doctor in 15 minutes, and when I went to do the ultrasound, there weren't many people around at all. I only waited 10 minutes and it was done. It was very efficient. I asked the doctor some questions and she told me she needed to ask someone else. She went out to ask some doctors and it didn't seem they knew. So she talked to someone on the phone and got the answer for me. Before I left, she told me to ask more doctors to make sure the answer was right. Now I know why there were not many people and it was so easy to register.

When I was a kid, I was very brave. I seldom cried when I had shots. I was never afraid of going to the hospital. But now I'm very terrified. It's the last place I want to go. I'm reluctant to go to the hospital, it't not because I'm worried about my health. I'm more concerned about what I'm going to face in the hospital. I think it might be just my bad experience. It may not be the same to others. At least, I hope so.

Some of my friends go to international medical centers, they don't have to wait and the service is a lot better. But it's very expensive. And not everyone can afford it.

I'd better go to bed now, so I can get up early and go to the hospital to try my luck.

If you have the same problem as me, I just found a website that can help you book an appointment as most of the hospitals in Beijing.

Crazy Flying Machine

This looks real, or else it's a great job of using a greenscreen. I don't think that I would ride in this contraption. I got this from a link Kaiser Kuo posted on his Facebook page.

More Subway Lines Open in Beijing

Three additions to Beijing's urban transport network opened over the weekend. The new line 10 connects Beijing's Central Business District with the city's high tech area in Haidian, running for a long stretch under the third ring road. A short spur runs north from Line 10 for 5 km into the heart of the Olympic venues. Also newly opened is an airport train that starts at Dongzhimen, then stops at Sanyuanqiao before heading out to both terminals of the new airport. I took a ride on Line 10 on Saturday and it is quite similar to the recently opened Line 5, which Mia Lee reported on for the Hard Hat Show late last year.

In addition, yesterday (July 20) was the first day of Beijing's odd-even traffic policy. Those with license plates ending in an even number, can only drive on even-numbered days, while those with plates ending in an odd number can only drive on odd-numbered days. According to a Reuters article in the Guardian, extra commuters on the subway caused a partial closing of subway Line 2 today.

Beijing's new airport train station

Fake Smart Cars Proliferating

In the last couple of months I started noticing a lot of Smart cars -- the Mercedes-built mini car popular in European capitals -- popping up on the streets of Beijing. But upon passing by a parked one the other day, I realized they are not actually Smart cars, but a Chinese knock-off known as the Shuang Huan Xiao Gui Zu (双环小贵族).

These Hebei-province built cars differ a bit from the Smart Fortwo, despite the fact that the exterior styling is almost identical. The Xiao Gui Zu features a microscopic back seat and is front wheel drive, while the Smart Fortwo is a rear wheel drive two seater. The interior is also different and the prices are very different: a fully outfitted Xiao Gui Zu retails for 50,000 RMB (US$7,250) in Beijing while the imported Smart Fortwo could easily approach three times that price.

Shuang Huan is trying to use these points of difference to argue that there is no intellectual property violation happening despite the fact that there obviously is. And, predictably, Mercedes lawyers have been on the case, blocking the Xiao Gui Zu from showing at the Bologna auto show last year and threatening further legal action to keep the car out of the European market.

Shuang Huan is no stranger to copying German cars. One of their other cars, the SCEO, is a knock off of BMW's X5 SUV.

Sexy Beijing on a Boat

There is no shortage of filmmakers in Beijing. In our effort to bring some of that great talent together, we organized a night of film at the Stone Boat bar in Ritan Park--thanks to bar owner Jonathan Ansfield. The night included short films by: Zhao Chunliang, A Gui, Selena Hsu, Mr.Bombdi, Hong Feng, Zhang Lu, Rachel Dubuy, Tian Chaoyu and Sexy Beijing.

Here's a City Weekend blog post about the event.

Beijing filmmakers

Rachel's Jaba and Jecka

Sufei, Zhao Chunliang and Zhou Long

Sexy Beijing and NPR Talk Trash About Bi-cultural Dating in Beijing

This episode is the second in a four-part series we produced with the radio program All Things Considered, on National Public Radio. The radio version aired July 4, 2008 on stations across America. You can listen online here.

Sexy Beijing on National Public Radio

Hear our first radio piece Forever Tango on National Public Radio program "All Things Considered." It's the first in a four-part Sexy Beijing series we produced for the radio.

For the video go to Forever Tango on our site.

Hot Off The Presses! The Beijing Olympic Games Legal Handbook For Citizens

Our local neighborhood grannies came knocking on my door this week to make sure I have a copy of the Olympic Legal Handbook. So forget about getting around the city on your skateboard this summer--according to the handbook, skateboarding on the street is now illegal, along with a host of other activities like hanging clothes outside your window and dumping garbage in the gutter. If all goes as planned it will take just six short weeks to clean-up Beijing so it makes Singapore look like Sin City.

The handbook's five chapters include: Olympic IPR protection, Sports Law and Maintaining Order at the Games, Traffic Laws, Maintaining Order in the City, and the History of Olympic Games.

Here are my favorites do's and don't in the handbook...well, mostly don'ts actually:

DON'T

1. use skateboards or roller skates or any other things that glide.
2. sit, hangout or frolic on a car or bicycle lane.
3. chase or throw things at a vehicle.
4. climb a fence, sit on a fence, climb on or try to stop a vehicle.

行人在道路上不得有下列行为：
１在道路上使用滑板、旱冰鞋等滑行工具
２在车行道内坐卧、停留、嬉闹
３追车、抛物击车等妨碍道路交通安全的行为
４行人不得跨越、倚坐道路隔离设施。不得扒车、强行拦车或者实施妨碍道路交通安全的其他行为。

It is forbidden to hang things outside the windows or balconies that are below the standard view. It is forbidden to to pile things in the corridors or on top of buildings. Things piled up on balconies must not be higher than the fence.

主要街道两侧和重点地区的建筑物的顶部、阳台外和窗外不得设置不符合容貌景观标准的设施，不得吊挂、晾晒和摆放物品。建筑物的顶部、外走廊等应当保持整洁、无堆物堆料。平台、阳台内堆放的物品须保持整洁，不得超出护栏的高度。

It is forbidden to dump restaurant garbage in rain gutters, sewage conduits, rivers, public restrooms or dumpsters.

不得将餐厨垃圾排入雨水、污水排水管道、河道、公共厕所，也不得与其他垃圾混倒。

It is forbidden for anyone to use the Olympic images without permission for commercial interests or potential commercial interests.

未经奥林匹克标志权利人许可，任何人不得以商业目的（含潜在商业目的）使用奥林匹克标志。

The Administration Bureau for Industry and Commerce has the rights to seize or confiscate any goods, once proven to be violating Olympic IPR.

工商行政管理部门有权对有证据证明是侵犯奥林匹克标志专有权的物品，予以查封或扣押。

The handbook also listed activities that will be fined during the Olympics: Attacking athletes, referees or any staff member -- 500RMB maximum;
Throwing things into the stadium -- 500RMB maximum;
Sticking up posters in public places or giving out flyers without permission -- 10,000RMB maximum;
Organizing people to stick up posters or give out flyers -- 500,000RMB maximum.

Architect Ma Yansong Sells Out

Beijing's biggest media darling architect, Ma Yansong (马岩松), is now pimping stainless steel stovetops on Gong Ti Bei Lu (工体北路) billboards. He is hyped on the billboard as the "Designer of Canada's Marilyn Monroe Tower." The ad is for Fotile (方太), a domestic Chinese kitchen appliance manufacturer.

Check out Jeremy Goldkorn's interview of Ma during the Danwei TV days.

A Million Views, the New York Times and Other Self Promotion

Over the past weekend, the New York Times website posted a piece about Sexy Beijing.

Around the same time, our very first episode, "Looking for Double Happiness," busted through one million views on Youtube.

We were pleased that James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly wrote us up on his blog recently.

Sexy Beijing was also featured on the PBS show "Global Watch" which aired last week across the U.S. Apparently, you can watch the episode on their website.

In London, at the Victoria & Albert museum, some of our videos are being presented as part of the China Design Now exhibit.

And we won a Tudou.com Oscar for "Best Documentary".

And a good site of security where learning.

More exciting self promotion coming soon!

What Torch Problems?

I suppose it will surprise no one that the ongoing Olympic torch relay is being portrayed very differently by the Chinese media than by the world media. A couple days ago I walked past this massive outdoor TV screen on the side of Beijing's Poly Plaza (保利大厦) at Dongsi Shitiao (东四十条). They were broadcasting news of the Paris leg of the torch relay and the upcoming San Francisco leg. The Paris they showed was all smooth sailing. No mention of protests and torches being extinguished. San Francisco was all about the Golden Gate and China Town. No mention of critical banners hanging from the Golden Gate Bridge.

Harmonious sailing in Paris.

Banner free bridge.

Watching a bit of outdoor TV after work. Doubt they have CNN or BBC at the crib.

Another Destroyed Relic

A Youtube user named akeyking has posted a video response to our "Throw Away Temple" Hard Hat Show. It's footage of a beautiful 600 year old imperial guesthouse being destroyed recently in Xuanwu district. Not far from the Xie Fangde Temple featured in our piece.

These Are Our Viewers

A funny song by a Canadian guy in Zhengzhou taking some gentle swipes at Sufei.

Check the original Youtube page for an English translation of the song. He also has a blog.

One More Thing That Makes the Beijing Olympics So Special

Banners bearing slogans will be banned from all Olympic events with BOCOG saying that they "might block other spectators' views". There must have been a lot of audience members complaining about those "Go China!" banners at past Olympics. Beijing game goers are so lucky!

On March 24, BOCOG Security Officer Liu Shaowu explained why a list of 20 categories of items are banned from any Olympic events. Banners are banned so that the spectators' views won't get blocked. Radio transmitters are banned so they won't interfere with signals sent by media groups. Bottled drinks are banned to protect the athletes. Sharp objects like screws are also banned unless reporters need them for technical reasons and register them beforehand.

Interestingly, the English version of this piece of news is no where to be found under the same category --"Olympic Cities/Beijing"-- where the Chinese version is on BOCOG's website.

If you are lucky enough to get a ticket to go to one of the events, be prepared to go through a possible ID check, bag check and X-ray (seriously) check. And if you have a really good slogan, wear it on a T-shirt.

Youtube Back! Our Video Featured!

Strangely coinciding with our "Women Make Noise" video being spotlighted on Youtube's music section, at least for the moment, Youtube is available in Beijing. I guess the wankers with their hand on the lever decided that promoting Chinese women rockers trumps supressing info on festering wounds in their country. Probably only a matter of time until they close the pipes again. Thank god for proxies.

Here is the screengrab from Youtube:

Air Quality and Olympic Timing

Beijing officials are again touting the massive improvements in air quality in the last 10 years. This drumbeat of positive news was thrown into question last month by the revelation that officials had changed the rules of the game by moving the measuring stations for air quality to less polluted areas.

But few people mention what would have been the simplest solution for the Olympics: If the powers that be had just moved the games back three weeks, the likelihood of nice weather would have gone up greatly. Anyone who has spent an extended period in Beijing knows that September invariably has many beautiful days with warm weather and crystal blue skies, whereas in early August the city is still trapped under a windless dome of overcast skies and stifling humidity that I believe has something to do with the Asian monsoon. But party officials, far too rational for superstition, had to open the games on the auspicious date of 8/8/08 (at 8:08 p.m.), so that the spirits would smile upon the games, seasonal weather patterns be damned.

Obama on China and Global Warming

Obama says the U.S. has to lead on Global Warming if it expects China and India to get serious about carbon emissions:

Green Brothers on Solar Water Heaters

American Fullbright Scholar "Sustainable John" and his Chinese partner Shane Zhao, are doing a series of videos and blog on the environment in China. In their latest episode they get funky on the topic of transportation in Beijing. I prefer "Rooftop Revolution", the video they did on rooftop solar water heaters, China's most widely adopted green technology. China leads the world by a wide margin in this type of solar power, according to the video. U.S. citizens, your tax dollars at work through the Fullbright program:

Sexy Beijing Featured on Front Page of Youtube!

Sexy Beijing's latest episode, "Hong Kong or Beijing," is currently featured on the front page of Youtube! Screengrab below:

Thanks Youtube!

"Lost in Beijing" Getting Play in the Provinces

In Qingdao over the Chinese New Year holiday, I ducked into a movie theater to escape the arctic winds, and was surprised to see that the recently banned movie "Lost in Beijing" (苹果) was playing alongside the latest Stephen Chow and Jay Chow blockbusters. While the hot new movies were occupying the main screens, "Lost in Beijing" was tucked into one the cinema's lu xiang ting (录象厅) a sort of DVD screening room with only a couple dozen seats. The banned film's title and screening times were prominently displayed above the ticket booth along with the rest of the offerings. While certainly not a high-profile defiance of Beijing's ban of the film, it is an indication of how much harder it is to maintain control in this digital era. I wonder how many other theaters in the provinces are still screening "Lost in Beijing" and if the authorities even care. Of course, the uncensored pirate DVD version has been continually available throughout the censorship and banning process, showing that there are many levels to this control game. I didn't buy a ticket to see whether the theater in Qingdao was showing the censored or uncensored version.

For a great summary of the reactions of the filmmakers and critics to the banning of "Lost in Beijing" last month, check out Joel Martinsen's in depth post at Danwei.org.

Sexy Beijing featured on iTunes

Apple has been kind enough to feature Sexy Beijing on the front page of the iTunes podcast section (U.S. version). We are trying to get them to put a groovier logo banner up, but here is the current screen grab:

Be sure to pop over to our podcast page to see the latest goodies we have posted, including Bad Boys of Beijing and Beijing Caucus. You can also subscribe to our podcast via iTunes.

We'd also like to thank Andrew Leonard at Salon Magazine for putting the latest Sexy Beijing episode, about the U.S. election, on his How the World Works blog.

Sexy Beijing at the MacWorld Expo

Thanks to Larry Reich, one of Sufei's fans who was kind enough to bring
her to the MacWorld Conference and Expo at the Moscone Center in San
Francisco last weekend. Sufei didn't actually get to fly to the warm
California coast--no, she's still braving Beijing's snow flurries--but
she did make an appearance at the conference via Youtube when he logged
into Sexy Beijing on a Pioneer Plasma screen in the Apple booth.

The Sexy Beijing crew also appeared in the Beijing News this week.

性感北京这周还出现在了新京报上。

Food Prices Up Worldwide

The New York Times takes an in-depth look into the rapid inflation of foodstuffs around the world. "No category of food prices has risen as quickly this winter as so-called edible oils." The article notes that price rises on cooking oil are especially tough on poor people in the developing world: "Food riots have erupted in recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen." The article also mentions the Carrefour cooking oil stampede in Chongqing that claimed three lives in November.

You can see the reaction of Chinese consumers to surging food prices in the latest edition of the Hard Hat Show.

Video Sharing and the Powers That Be

Time magazine looks into online video in China in an interesting new article by Beijing-based staff reporter Jodi Xu.

Xu dissects the ways that Chinese video sharing sites like tudou.com and 56.com are being used to bypass government censorship, share news of political repression and scandal, and broadcast protests, like the recent demonstrations in Shanghai against the expansion of the maglev train.

The Chinese government has recently introduced laws demanding that video-sharing sites be state-owned, and the article says it is still unclear whether the new regulations will be enforced. Needless to say, Tudou CEO Gary Wang sounds a bit nervous.

The article also claims that Tudou streams 30% more video than Youtube. It would be interesting to see someone break down that number a little more thoroughly, because if it is accurate, the size of the Chinese online video market is staggering.

The article leads off with an incident in which a prominent Beijing newscaster accused her anchorman husband of adultery in front of "thousands of Chinese and foreign reporters" covering the inaguration of CCTV's Olympic coverage. The clip was taken off Tudou after 650,000 views, and the woman was tossed in jail, but her several-minute tirade is still up on Youtube:

Street Style Beijing

Sexy Beijing collaborator Rachel Dupuy has done a video for Current TV (founded by Al Gore). "Street Style Beijing" asks a few hipsters on Nan Luo Gu Xiang about their threads.

Rachel is at work on a video about the Chinese snowboarding scene, which should be coming to sexybeijing.tv very soon.

Which is a Developed Country? (High-Speed Rail in China and California)

Americans in China have been known to complain a bit about how China doesn't measure up to the good ol' U.S. of A. In many respects this crew of whingers has a point, but in other aspects China is passing up my home country. Case in point: the rail system.

Around the New Year I was in California, and wanted to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I had waited too long to get a reasonably priced plane ticket and thought, "No problem, I'll just catch a train, zip up the coast and be in the Bay Area in a few hours."

Wrong.

Logging onto the Amtrak website, I found that the only direct train between L.A. and San Francisco (actually nearby Oakland) takes 11 hours and 17 minutes. And that's if you're lucky enough to catch the direct train. Most options require you to take a three-hour busride to the valley town of Bakersfield, then transfer to a train there. In other words, if you need to go L.A. to S.F. at the last minute, and can't waste a whole day, you really have no choice but to plunk down $150 for a fuel guzzling flight.

Contrast my California experience with my October Holiday experience in China. Returning to Beijing from the sea side town of Qingdao (famous for the beer), I caught the new bullet train and was back in Beijing in less than six hours, topping speeds of 200 km/hr (120m/hr) much of the time.

My train from Qingdao to Beijing

Qingdao to Beijing is 830 km (515 miles) and takes 5+ hours. Los Angeles to San Francisco is 559 km (347 miles) and takes 11+ hours. Shandong province (home of Qingdao) has a per capita income of $3,250. California has a per capita income of $38,956. What is wrong with this picture?

But China is not satisfied with a rail system that already thoroughly kicks the ass of the U.S. rail system, so they are investing $41 billion into railways this year. And China is not satisfied with trains that go 200 km/hr so they are building a system that will travel at 300 km/hr.

Over in "green" California, high-speed train proponents in the legislature had to battle to get $21 million to continue studying a high speed train system in the state in 2007-2008. The "green" Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has repeatedly stalled putting a ballot measure to California voters to approve a high speed train system. So the state that is the 12th largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet has been stalled in the "feasibility study" stage for high-speed rail for over a decade.

Meanwhile, China has 16 high-speed rail projects, stretching 5,600 km, under construction, with more in the planning stages.

Wake up Californians. Step out of your Four-runners and put down your lattes. C'mon Arnold, Austria has high-speed rail... Hebei province has bloody high-speed rail. Why can't California?

China Bans Plastic Bags

Beginning on June 1, the use of thin plastic shopping bags will be banned in China. Thicker plastic bags will still be available, but will have to be purchased by shoppers.

According to this article, three billion plastic bags are currently used in China everyday. China is following in the footsteps of countries like South Africa and Ireland that have already put plastic bag bans into effect.

Steps to alleviate the trashing of China's environment are definitely welcome by me, and most people who've spent a significant amount of time in this country. The much vaunted "one billion consumers" mantra that has launched a thousand business books also equals one billion polluters. We should also keep in mind that the average Chinese person still uses a fraction of the resources of the average North American (or European for that matter).

I Thought I Smelled Okay...

From the bathroom of an Air China 747 flying Beijing to San Francisco.

Going Way Out for a Movie

This New York Times article reports on mainlanders flocking to Hong Kong to watch an un-censored version of Ang Lee's newest film "Lust, Caution". The cut being shown in mainland theaters has had 13 minutes edited from it, mostly of risque sex scenes.

I am a bit skeptical of the article's claim that moviegoers are causing a serious jump in mainland visits to Hong Kong, especially since, as the article notes, an uncut pirated DVD version is readily available in the mainland. But the article does have some interesting quotes about censorship in China.

A graphic designer named Yan Jiawei, is quoted in the piece saying that censorship is probably still necessary because, while city folk are ready for graphic sex scenes, country people are not.

Director Li Yu, whose film "Lost in Beijing" (苹果) is playing alongside "Lust, Caution" in cinemas around Beijing, was disappointed that her film was censored, but said "I feel the environment is becoming more and more relaxed."

The censorship of "Lust, Caution" even spurred a PhD student named Dong Yanbin to sue the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), claiming his rights as a consumer were being violated. Last month Joel Martinsen of Danwei translated an article from the Beijing Times about the case.

Sexy Beijing's own Mia Lee was on the BBC program Free to Speak this morning along with artist and media darling Ai Wei Wei, talking about expression and censorship in China.

The Cabbage Season

I enjoyed this post about seasons and smells on a blog called Heart Crossings.
(This is a blogspot so it may be blocked in China.)
During our recent Ask Smacker shoot, the winter season was marked by the smell of cabbage!

No More Golden Week for May Day

The Chinese government has cancelled the May Day Holiday, one of the three "Golden Week" holidays in China. Instead, Chinese workers will get three one-day holidays, which will coincide with three traditional festivals in China: Tomb-sweeping Day, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. Workers will continue to get one day off for May Day.

The Chinese will continue the sometimes awkward custom of working through weekends in order to lengthen consecutive days off. So if the Dragon Boat Festival falls on a Wednesday, everyone will work the preceding Saturday and Sunday, and then take off Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

The shuffling of holidays is in response to the travel congestion that occurs during the "Golden Weeks" when hundreds of millions of Chinese are all travelling at once.

How will this move effect the matching hat tour group industry?

Yi Jianlian on the Celtics?

Watching an NBA game on Chinese TV recently, I saw this peculiar advertisement featuring China's 7-foot hooping pretty boy Yi Jianlian (易建联). In the ad Yi is wearing a Boston Celtics jersey. The funny thing is that he plays for a different team, the Milwaukee Bucks. I wonder what the Bucks, the Celtics and the NBA think about this one:

The ad is for Yi Li, (伊利) a major Chinese dairy company. Yi Li seems to be spending heavily on celebrity spokespeople for their milk, including Chinese Olympic hurdling hero Liu Xiang (刘翔). The company has also splashed out to become the official milk of the Beijing Olympics. It all seems to all be an effort to catch up with rival company Meng Niu (蒙牛) who scored the marketing coup of the (young) century by sponsoring the Super Girls singing contest on Hunan TV. The show went on to be a phenomenon, scoring Meng Niu insane amounts of publicity. Check out this old episode of the Hard Hat Show for a look at some of the Super Girls' nutty fans. Although surely not solely because of the Super Girls, Meng Niu has gotten so strong that there was even recent talk of Meng Niu buying out Yi Li, their neighbor up in the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot.

Stir Fried Wikipedia

Last month we brought you photos of Beijing's own Wekipedia bread.

Now, from the website Evolving Web via Boing Boing, here is Stir Fried Wikipedia:

According to the guy at Evolving Web who found this, this menu is at the South Silk Street restaurant on the Lotus Lane strip in Hou Hai.

The New York Times' David Brooks on China

The New York Times recently stopped charging extra for access to its roster of Op-Ed columnists. I can imagine that it was difficult getting people to pay to read guys like David Brooks.

His most recent column, with a Shanghai dateline, is an imagining of the lifecycle of an elite Chinese communist apparatchik as a way to look at China's "meritocracy." Aside from being written in a weird second-person voice, the article has a variety of other distortions and cliches:

He starts with the old saw of the "little emperor complex".

"Let's say you were born in China. You're an only child. You have two parents and four grandparents doting on you. Sometimes they even call you a spoiled little emperor."

Fair enough, many Children born under the one child policy have been spoiled. However China's elite "corpotacracy" that becomes the focus of the column has zero members of the one child generation, the oldest of whom are just beginning to turn 30. By the time these kids are running China who knows what the country will look like.

"You learn that it takes phenomenal feats of memorization to learn the Chinese characters. You become shaped by China's intense human capital policies."

Learning Chinese characters is certainly difficult, but it is just a matter of time and practice. If it took "phenomenal feats" to read Chinese, I don't see how over 1 billion people have done it without a problem, especially since hundreds of millions of them grew up in households with incomes of not much more than a dollar a day. As far as "intense human capital policies", this phrase is so open to interpretation, that I'm not sure how he is relating it to Chinese elementary school.

"The Chinese ruling elite recruits talent the way the N.B.A. does, rigorously, ruthless, in a completely elitist manner."

Anyone at all familiar with the cronyism rife in Chinese society realizes that if N.B.A. personnel matters were handled in the Chinese manner, there would be more than a couple drunken midgets warming benches in the league.

"Roughly nine million students take the tests each year. The top 1 percent will go to the elite universities. Some of the others will go to second-tier schools, at best. These unfortunates will find that, while their career prospects aren't permanently foreclosed, the odds of great success are diminished. Suicide rates at these schools are high, as students come to feel they have failed their parents."

There is no society in the world where getting into an elite University does not greatly enhance one's prospects for "great success". But failing to test into Tsinghua or Peking University hardly chokes off your chance to have a decent life or even get rich in China. Of course, it is difficult to get rich in China, and most of the population is still poor with very difficult lives. However, in the current climate of free-for-all capitalism in China, possibilities exist for a wide range of people, and I would be very surprised if most of China's huge class of nouveau riche attended elite Universities. I will stress again though, that the majority of Chinese are still struggling just to make ends meet.

"But you succeed. You ace the exams and get into Peking University. You treat your professors like gods and know that if you earn good grades you can join the Communist Party."

From what I have heard of Chinese Universities, professors are often treated poorly by kids who believe they have made it by merely testing into University. I have also heard many stories of trading gifts for good grades and large-scale cheating with authorities looking the other way. Chinese university life is hardly a cog in a ruthlessly efficient meritocracy. Also here, Brooks makes it sound like everyone is striving to join the party. Most university students and upwardly mobile twenty-somethings I know have no intention of or interest in joining the party.

"Westerners think the Communist Party still has something to do with political ideology. You know there is no political philosophy in China except prosperity. "

Brooks gets this right, though it is hardly a new insight.

"In one sense, your choice doesn't matter. Whether you are in business or government, you will be members of the same corpocracy. In the West, there are tensions between government and business elites. In China, these elites are part of the same social web, cooperating for mutual enrichment."

In this regard China does not strike me as so different from America where government and business elites certainly cooperate for mutual enrichment, where Democrats like Robert Rubin and Republicans like Dick Cheney slide from the corporate boardroom to being cabinet officials with ease.

"In the back of your mind you wonder: Perhaps it's simply impossible for a top-down memorization-based elite to organize a flexible, innovative information economy, no matter how brilliant its members are. That's a thought you don't like to dwell on in the middle of the night."

Despite the awkward way he poses this question in this strained second-person voice, this last paragraph has some validity to it, though, again, he is hardly bringing anything new to the table here. In an alternate reality Brooks might have a) led off with China's difficulty in becoming an "innovative information economy", then b) analyzed the many ways in which the one-child-policy generation's coming of age process is totally different from that of the current leadership generation and finally c) made an analysis of how these changes might effect leadership, politics and business in China's future. But I guess that would be expecting Brooks to have something new or interesting to say about China after a three-day whirlwind tour of Beijing and Shanghai.

As it is, all I see here is a series of interesting, valid, and much chewed over, issues, and a lineup of the same old cliches trotted out to illuminate them.

Chinese Girl Wins Miss World Pageant

Zhang Zilin (张梓琳) was crowned the first Chinese Miss World on Sunday night at the finale of the pageant held in China's own Hainan island. The six foot tall beauty hails from the city of Shijiazhuang (known for its pollution) in Hebei province, and now works as a secretary in Beijing.

In this interview, taken from the Chongqing Evening News, Zhang says that she has nice legs and hands, but she thinks her face is nothing special and she won't leave the house without makeup. She also says she likes to wear bikinis, even when she goes to Bei Dai He, the grubby seaside resort a couple hours outside of Beijing.

The Times of London notes that beauty pageants were forbidden in China until three years ago, "frowned upon for their bourgeois decadence."

For more deep thoughts, and pictures, check out Zhang's blog.

Viral Video Shenanigans

Some internet videos go viral because they are unique, crazy or just plain good. Other videos go viral through a lot of manipulation by sleazy internet marketing gurus.

Recently the secrets of one of these marketing douchebags was published on the website TechCrunch. The Secret Strategies Behind Many 'Viral' Videos is an amazingly candid look at the strategies Dan Ackerman Greenberg uses to pump up Youtube views for videos made by his clients. These clients include major hollywood studios, record labels, and consumer brands. Greenberg claims to have gotten over 6 million views on Youtube for these clients.

The talented Mr. Greenberg

The strategies he outlines in the article include starting fake arguments in the comments section on Youtube, paying popular blogs to embed videos, and using scandalously misleading titles for videos, which often have no connection to the video's content.

The point of Greenberg's article is summed up when he says "Content is NOT king". There are too many other factors that go into making a video popular, and many can be manipulated.

I heard about this article through a post by Kaiser Kuo on the Ogilvy China Digital Watch blog. Kaiser has become quite prolific on that blog, and routinely digs up interesting tidbits on internet and technology issues, especially as they relate to China.

Ok, time to go start a flame war in the comments section of the latest Sexy Beijing video on Youtube.

Beijing's Architectural Behemoths

This week this documentary blew my mind. It is Discovery Channel's version of Big Buildings of Beijing titled "Beijing's Urban Makeover". It is a 40-minute-long episode of the Discovery series "Man Made Marvels". It has Chinese subtitles and is cut into 5 parts on Youtube. It tracks the design and construction process of the major big buildings getting built - the bird's nest, the egg, the water cube, the CCTV and the TVCC (Television Culture Center) and a building that didn't get built - the Wukesong Basketball Arena with the world's biggest TV wall.

"China is a place the architects go and get their fantasies paid for", says one architect. Beijing is going all out for the the 2008 Olympics, which "is not just a game anymore". In this video you will see interviews with the design and construction teams, the Chinese architecture critics and construction process vividly explained with amazing animation. It is truy mind-blowing, or mind-bending like the CCTV tower, to know that how much it takes to actually pull off these projects. The Chinese are, indeed, a very determined nation, if not anything else.

"Any massive project in China seems to go through a similar pattern: Grandeur to begin, a bit of reality sets in as the budget numbers roll past, a shift in public opinion again, construction and then wild praise", says American China Hand Mike Meyer. Let's see how loud the praise will be in 2008 when Beijing turns the wet dreams of architects into dazzling realities. Time will tell and we don't even need that much of it anymore because 2008 is just around the corner.

Latin Love in Beijing

Two recent items highlight China's increasing influence in Latin America:

1) Last Friday, a Mexican-Chinese joint venture broke ground on an automobile plant in the Mexican state of Michoacan. The partnership between FAW, one of China's state-owned automotive giants, and Mexico's Grupo Elektra, will produce FAW-branded cars for sale in Mexico and beyond.

2) Yesterday the China-Latin America Business Summit opened in Santiago, Chile, bringing Chinese officials together with representatives and businesspeople from 16 Latin American nations.

In a speech opening the Santiago summit, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet said that "China has replaced the United States as Chile's biggest trading partner," adding that Chile's exports to China have jumped 140% since the enactment of a free-trade agreement between the two countries last year. Total Sino-Latin American trade has jumped 44% through September of this year.

While U.S. trade with Latin America is still much bigger than Sino-Latin American trade, the lion's share of U.S.-Latin trade is between the U.S. and Mexico. In South America, China has aggressively pursued commodities deals, often tying them in with Chinese investment in infrastructure. Meanwhile, U.S. relations with Latin America have chilled, typified by Hugo Chavez's many public spats with George Bush and a region-wide disgust with U.S. unilateralism in Iraq stirring memories of a history of U.S. colonial incursions in Latin America.

The $150-million FAW auto plant under construction in Mexico is a concrete example of Sino-U.S. economic competition in Uncle Sam's backyard. The plant will eventually churn out 100,000 cars a year, and the entry level FAW vehicle will sell for almost $1000 less than General Motor's cheapest Chevrolet model available in Mexico, according to the Associated Press.

China's growing influence has also spooked the U.S. defense establishment. In May, Assistant Secretary of Defense Stephen Johnson, in charge of the Western Hemisphere, warned that the U.S. must maintain its military spending in Latin America or risk leaving a "vacuum for powers like China and Russia to fill."

And while Latin American governments seem to be welcoming "South-South" trade deals with China for the moment, it remains to be seen whether they will come to view China as an exploitative power, simply after sweet commodities deals and a place to sell Chinese-produced manufactured goods.

For the moment though, the fact that China is not the U.S. seems to be helping to grease the skids for a continued expansion in trade.

From a more selfish standpoint, here's hoping that the growth in Sino-Latin trade brings a decent Mexican restaurant to my neighborhood in Beijing.

Money, Love and Numerology

One often hears that Chinese women are very "practical". One sometimes wonders if that is a codeword for "golddiggers".

Now there is some data on the interplay between love and money in hearts of young Chinese. According to the China Daily, a "growing number of the country's young adults" consider money to be a determining factor when looking for a partner.

"Nearly half the 8,932 respondents said that money and other financial packages are the most important preconditions for love."

A poor sap named Lu Yun tells the paper that his girlfriend recently dumped him over housing. "She made it very clear: An apartment works. No apartment, no-go," he told the paper. The guy is only 28 years old!

I think back to my 28-year-old self, chasing around mice with a frying pan in a shared tenement in New York's Chinatown. I wasn't exactly on the verge of plunking down a $200,000 down payment on a Soho loft. And, come to think of it, the girls weren't lining up at my door (which had no buzzer and required me to throw down a key in a sock from the fourth floor to let guests in.)

Yes, it's true, American women are hardly immune to the siren song of nice real estate and high-limit platinum cards. Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw was hung up on an emotionally unavailable real estate mogul, not a romantic but underemployed security guard from the Bronx who still lived with his mom.

But still, home ownership as a pre-condition for love at the age of 28 would surely rule out about 99% of young singles in New York or San Francisco. Little wonder many young Chinese complain that the pressures of life are mounting in contemporary Chinese society. (压力太大了!)

But the survey also reveals a romantic streak in young Chinese: "40 percent of those polled considered true love paramount in a relationship, while 40 percent still believed in love at first sight."

Just another in the endless confrontations between the two forces, love (or sex) and money, that seem to hold the tightest grip on human consciousness.

Meanwhile, for those who've managed to lock down a mate with all the right qualities, financial and otherwise, 2008 is shaping up to be a big year for marriages.

Again from China's finest (and only) national English daily: "In Shanghai alone, nearly 120,000 young couples have so for [sic] decided to marry next year, some 30 percent more than this year."

August 8, 2008, the day of the Olympic opening ceremony, is considered the most auspicious day to get married next year. Eight is a lucky number in China so the profusion of eights on 8/8/2008 will not be topped until 2088. Apparently 2008 is also a "metal year" in Chinese astrology, another auspicious touchstone for marriage in the Middle Kingdom.

Others are looking at the rise in weddings from a scientific perspective: "The wedding surge of 2008 is a chain reaction of the birth surge in the 1980s, because next year, about 280 million youngsters in China will have reached the age of getting married," said Shi Kangning of the Committee of Matchmaking Service Industries in China.

In any case, perhaps the confluence of so many forces, both cosmic and demographic, will make this Sufei's lucky year.

Bin Laden Captured on Tudou?

This video is from V哥, a prolific poster to Tudou. It's a satiric piece about the U.S. Army actually capturing Osama Bin Laden.

Tudou's Shaolin Bunny

These are the adventures of the 功夫兔 ("Kung Fu Rabbit"), an entertaining animated series on tudou.com. This was another of the works presented at Saturday's tudou party by its creator, Vincent李.

More Tudou Goodies

Today we got an e-mail from a fan whose tudou name is 迪迪(didi). Turns out he has some pretty cool videos on tudou.com. In the spirit our mini tudou film fest, below is an example.

Tudou Party in Beijing

On Saturday, the Sexy Beijing crew went to a party thrown by Tudou.com in Beijing. It was a good opportunity to meet other folks who are doing online video here. Tudou has posted some clips filmed at the party onto a playlist on their website.

We showed the "Bling Bling in Beijing" episode of Sexy Beijing and got a nice reception from the crowd. Some of the other filmmakers at the party also showed clips to the audience and this week on the blog, I'd like to present a few of them.

The clip below is from a crew of guys who call themselves runpic. It's a funny little piece with some interesting special effects.

They Can't Pronounce His Name, But They Like Yi's Game

Chinese rookie NBA phenom Yi Jianlian has pleasantly surprised a lot of observers over his first couple weeks in the league.

ESPN writer David Thorpe makes the case that Yi is in fact the NBA's rookie of the year up to this point. Thorpe really pours it on in his praise:

"Yi's play has been both surprising and inspiring. Surprising in that no one has a bigger cultural change to adjust to, yet Yi looks like he's been an NBA pro for years. He has a clear plan for success and has executed that plan with discipline and talent."

Elsewhere on the ESPN website, Bill Simmons, in his popular "Sports Guy" column, admits that he was wrong about Yi, who he had earlier skewered as a likely bust in the league:

"As it turned out, Chairman Yi can look good even when he's posting up a human being instead of a chair. He's athletic and polished and does a surprisingly good job of protecting the rim; when you throw in the financial upside from the Far East connection, that turned out to be a savvy gamble by the Bucks."

Jordan Rivas on the Hoopsvibe.com, also admits he was wrong about Yi, and pinpoints the source of his initial skepticism:

"Unintentionally, unknowingly, subconsciously or otherwise, I allowed my opinions of off court issues to cloud the sight of the on-court talent that exists."

Yi's coming out party was when his Milwaukee Bucks faced off with compatriot Yao Ming's Houston Rockets. Yi racked up 19 points and 9 rebounds in the game, which was widely hyped as one of the most viewed NBA games ever (though I doubt China has any reliable TV ratings system). Although the Bucks lost the game Yi hit three pointers, rebounded and changed minds in his first game on a major stage.

As a bonus, it is great comedy for someone living in China to hear red-blooded American jock sportscasters butcher Yi's name, which usually comes out something like Ee zheeyon leeyon.

It's a long season, and Yi is definitely going to hit some bad patches. So big Yi, enjoy the feel good stories while they last and when negativity does hit, be grateful you're in little ol' Milwaukee and not on the back page of the New York Post.

High End Luxury Convention in Shanghai

Last month Beijing held China's 17th Communist Party Congress. This month Shanghai is hosting the Top Marques Shanghai 2007 exhibition of "extravagant merchandise."

"The show gathers the world's most exotic luxury and supercars, private jets, yachts, watches and jewelleries, fine wine and cigar, and real estate," according to the exhibition's web site. The Marques exhibition originated in the millionaire's playground of Monte Carlo, and first came to Shanghai in 2005. This year's Shanghai event runs November 14th to 17th at the Shanghai International Convention Center.

"Price is no object," shopper Vivian Song told the China Daily as she browsed the exhibition and bought a diamond watch.

According to the China Daily article, in addition to Italian Yachts and sports cars, goods on display include a Swedish mattress worth 800,000 RMB (US$107,000).

From what we've heard from Smacker, there are sure to be some Shanxi province coal mine bosses in attendance, and I guess Warren Buffet's coffeemaker (see picture below) might very well end up in a penthouse in Datong.

Good news for Sufei

From Xinhua news service:

Males at marriage age 18 million more than females in China

Real Estate for Big Noses

I saw this ad recently in Air China's in-flight magazine, "Wings of China". Aside from the "chinglish" humor, it is also another example of a trend in China's booming real estate ad market: Hype your development as a place to rent to foreigners.

Last year, Dongzhimen Wai Street in Beijing was plastered with ads urging Chinese to become the landlord of a 老外 (Lao Wai), as documented in the China Machete blog.

Whereas that ad uses the extremely informal 老外 (Lao Wai), (perhaps the equivalent of "Gringo" in Mexico) this latest ad uses the extremely formal 外籍人士 (Wai Ji Ren Shi), which could translate as something like "Ladies and Gentleman of Foreign Nationalities."

China's Industrial Machine

China's economic rise is arguably the biggest story of the early twenty first century.

Journalist James Fallows delivers the best concise snapshot that I have heard of China's economic machinery and its integration into the world economy in this interview on the NPR program Fresh Air. Definitely worth a twenty minute listen.

"The Pearl River Delta of Guangdong province (the old Canton region), just north of Hong Kong... might have a manufacturing workforce larger than America's," Fallows notes in his Atlantic Monthly piece that he discusses in the interview.

Fallows also has a blog on the Atlantic Monthly website.

Sex Guide for Newlyweds

This is my favorite video of the week -- Sex Guide for Newlyweds (xin hun zhi nan). I noticed it because when I was a kid in the 1980's, it was the title of every soft-core porn video on the shelves of video stores where I rented movies. And as far as the Joy of Sex goes, that was all you could get in China back then. We weren't supposed to see these videos until we tied the knot, but plenty of horny young Chinese girls and boys would go to any lengths to get their hands on a Sex Guide for Newlyweds just for the hot lovemaking scenes.

I found this video--a very tame spoof of the original "Sex Guides" from the 1970s--on a site promoting the movie Two Stupid Eggs, which will hit the theatres in China around Christmas 2007. Two Stupid Eggs is a Chinese adaptation of the Spanish movie Torroemolinos 73 (2003). The movie stars Guo Tao (Crazy Stone) and is a sequel to director A-Gan's Big Movie.

There is none of the nudity or sexual positions featured in the original videos, but a guy in a suit lectures: "In Freudian theories, the urge to have sex is called 'Libido'. Before marriage, this energy should be channeled into hobbies." He also advises that "there are many ways to improve your sex life, like giving your wife a massage, doing hola-hoop and eating garlic". At one point a newlywed goes in for a physical and the doctor asks him to bring out his "sex organ" to which he produces his index finger and his tongue.

The video is entertaining, it's just too bad it doesn't even approach the soft-core porn status of the original Sex Guides for Newlyweds distributed back in the 1970. Back then, marriage applicants in Chinese registration offices were shown the video as part of their sex education. At that time pre-marital sex was a big no-no in China so the government provided a handy "how to" manual on video on your wedding day. I'd like to see one of the original Sex Guides for Newlyweds on tudou, coming soon. -- posted by Mia

From Sexual Leaps to Journalistic Liberties

Journalist Zhang Lijia's article for the English language, UK-based, Sunday paper The Observer called: China's Sexual Great Leap Forward was picked up a couple of days later by Xinhua and posted on their site in Chinese with no byline.

The article caused quite a stir this week and quickly started an online debate on Sohu. One comment read: "There are a lot of sluts in the UK too so maybe the newspaper should talk about that before it comments on the situations in China."

Ironically, seeing as the author, Zhang, is both a Chinese woman and a Beijing resident, Xinhua could have saved everyone a lot of trouble by simply asking her to translate the article in the first place.

Ladies, Start Your Webcams

As most people know by now, Youtube is back online in China. Yay! To celebrate we're posting a video to heat things up a little as you go into this chilly Beijing weekend.

This video often appears in the "Related Videos" tab next to Sexy Beijing videos on Youtube. It seems to be one of the most watched videos in the popular Youtube sub-genre of Webcam Dances by Hot Chinese Girls. This girl dances a lot better than most of the rest.

This video seems to have been ripped from Youku, and then re-uploaded by a Youtube user in Canada. If you can find the original Youku video, please leave a comment with the link.

Even better, if you know this girl, or are this girl, holler at us. Sufei is looking for backup dancers for a little project we've got cooking, so if you are interested in auditioning, drop us a line at info -at- sexybeijing.tv .

Let Them Eat Bread

We might not be able to access Wikipedia in China (or Youtube or Blogger or...) but at least we can wake up in the morning and get a piping hot loaf of "Wekipedia" bread.

Eazy Yi in Milwaukee

China's newest basketball phenomenon, Yi Jianlian, has been getting some sympathetic coverage lately in his now hometown Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The 7-footer from Shenzhen, playing in pre-season for the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, was recently praised by his coach Larry Krystkowiak who told the Journal Sentinel, "I love what he's doing... I think he's really going to blossom."

Yi raised a typhoon of controversy this summer by initially refusing to sign with the team, with his agent sending out messages that Milwaukee is too small of a market, there are not enough Chinese in Wisconsin and he wouldn't get enough playing time with the Bucks. Beijing-based journalist and Milwaukee native son Jonathan Ansfield summed up the whole drama better than anyone on the Spot On website, calling the whole mess a "go-nowhere charade." The Bucks finally convinced Yi to put pen to paper when the team's owner, U.S. Senator and department store mogul Herb Kohl, personally flew to Hong Kong and reportedly guaranteed Yi that he would play 25 minutes a night.

One of the oddest assertions made during the drama around Yi's signing was that Yi wouldn't be able to meet any nice Chinese girls in Milwaukee. First off, as Sufei might ask, does a Chinese guy have to stick to Chinese girls? Who's to say Yi doesn't "like 'em brown, yellow, Puerto Rican and Hatian," like Phife from a Tribe Called Quest? (I guess in Milwaukee you might add pasty and chubby into the mix.) And if he doesn't I'd suggest experimenting a little. Secondly, somehow I think an international celebrity, easily pulling in $5 to $10 million a year with endorsements, would not have any trouble convincing a cute Chinese girl from L.A. or Beijing to spend some time in his McMansion in Milwaukee.

I didn't hear anyone shedding any tears for my man God Shammgod (best basketball player name ever) when he was playing for the CBA in Shanxi province because there aren't enough African-American girls in Taiyuan. (Under "interests" in his Myspace profile Shammgod lists "big bootay hos" )

God Shammgod outside a McDonalds in Taiyuan

Whatever progress Yi is making in Milwaukee Buck's preseason games, he is sure to face intense scrutiny in his rookie year, from both Chinese and US fans and media. His prima donna act over the summer will only heighten the criticism when he inevitably hits rough patches as he adjusts to the best league in the world.

I guess spending a few years in China has turned me into a homer, but I have to admit I'm rooting for Yi to succeed on the court. As far as his lovelife goes: Yi, if you're striking out in Milwaukee, I'll be your wingman if you want to hit some clubs in Beijing.

Youtube Block Party in China

Here at Sexy Beijing headquarters the Youtube block in China has obviously thrown a wrench into the gears. Blocking Youtube doesn't strike us as a very harmonious thing to do, and we are not very happy with the Net Nanny right now. But we are also trying to rejigger things so that people in China have access to the English language versions of our videos. It takes time to redo everything without using Youtube, so please bear with us.

For now, you can find a lot of our videos on our Tudou page. Some of the Tudou videos don't have English subtitles, but many of the earlier ones do. We have also started posting some of our episodes at Brightcove.tv, which is working pretty smoothly in China at the moment. The Shanghaiist has recommended the Hotspot Shield as an anonymous proxy to get around the Great Firewall. There are Mac and PC versions and so far it has worked well on my computer. Youtube is a bit slower with Hotspot Shield but you can still watch videos with a bit of patience.

We are still hoping that now that the 17th party congress has wrapped up in Beijing, the good ol' days of carefree Youtube surfing in China will return... and hoping that last statement didn't just jinx the possibility of that ever happening.

What Chinese Girls Want--A Certified Wanker Test

"What Chinese Girls Want" is my new column about dating from the perspective of Chinese women. I welcome comments and stories from other Chinese ladies looking for love in Beijing.

On sites like Facebook I've been hearing a lot about what Western men want in Chinese women, but not a lot about what Chinese women want in Western men, so I thought I'd compile an easy to read list for all of you wankers out there.

Take the test below and see how many qualities you have that Chinese women DO or DON'T want in a man. And girls, maybe you should pass this test out to your girlfriends who are dating losers!

1.
WE DO WANT

men who are open-minded enough to appreciate the difference of cultures and are ok with when things being done the Chinese way.

WE DON'T WANT

men who want things done only in their way and always have a lecture ready that begins with "in the West" anytime ready for anyone.

2.
WE DO WANT

Men who enjoy sex with us and interact with us.

WE DON'T WANT

Men who make us do what their Western girlfriends didn't want to do to them.

3.
WE DO WANT

men who enjoy going out and meeting new people.

WE DON'T WANT

men who put a hand on a girl's butt, get slapped and scream: "I just wanna have some fun".

4.
WE DO WANT

men who are trying to learn a bit of our language and have the interest in communicating with Chinese people in Chinese.

WE DON'T WANT

men who say: "It's 21st century! How about learning some English? "

5.
WE DO WANT

men who come to China because they want to see China or start their own business here.

WE DON'T WANT

men who come to China to get away from all the pressure back home and complain about the air, the people and the "dysfunction here" every second.

6.
WE DO WANT

men who are getting to know some Chinese people and hang out with them.

WE DON'T WANT

men who hide in the expat community, panic the second they are out of the embassy district, never have Chinese friends except colleagues and still make all kinds of remarks about Chinese people.

7.
WE DO WANT

men who know their way around China when they need to go to the bank, book flight tickets or negotiate with their landlords.

WE DON'T WANT

men who use their girlfriends as free interpreter to take everywhere.

8.
WE DO WANT

men who have hobbies other than watching DVD and shooting pool and have at least one artistic way to express themselves.

WE DON'T WANT

men who don't know what they are doing with their lives and plan to teach English for money for 40 years here and sleep with a lot of women.

9.
WE DO WANT

Men who have investment plans

WE DON'T WANT

Men who spend all their money on booze or drugs because "in this country, being white is my financial security".

10.
WE DO WANT

Men who have a little knowledge about Chinese history.

WE DON'T WANT

Men who say shit like: "get over yourself" when we demand an apology from Japan (again I have to say I have absolutely nothing against Japan but everything against war).

11.
WE DO WANT

men who work out and take good care of their bodies.

WE DON'T WANT

obese men who say: "only women get fat; men are just...men."

Letter From A German Neurologist

The best thing about interviewing my father for The Freudian Episode was how awed I felt by history and by the courage and foresight of my grandparents. I never met them, yet the choices they made completely altered the course of my father's life, and probably saved it, which is why I'm here. Furthermore, the older I get, the more their plight hits home. They were around my age and newly married when they decided to pick up and leave Germany. My grandmother Sophie wasn't even a Jew when she met my grandfather Richard. She converted to marry him. That was the pre-Nazi era and she had little idea what marrying a Jew would mean for her future or the future of her son.

I was both intrigued and touched by this letter from a German neurologist who watched the show and shared with me another piece of my grandfather's story.

Hi Sufei,

Your grandfather is mentioned in the History Section of the Hamburg
University Department of Psychiatry homepage. It says that he was fired
because of a Nazi law. Here's a link to their webpage in German

Weygandt mu?trotz nationaler Einstellung und radikalem erbbiologischen
Denken sein Amt auf Senatsbeschlu?r?men, vermutlich auf Betreiben des
Hamburger "?ztef?rers" Willy Holzmann, der f? sich einen Konkurenten
in Sachen rassenhygienischer Kompetenz ausschalten wollte (van den
Bussche, 1989b). Aus antisemitischen Gr?den im Rahmen des "Gesetzes
zur Widerherstellung des Berufsbeamtentumes" wurden ferner Professor
Hermann Josephy (Prosektor Pathologie), Professor Victor Kafka
(Abteilungsleiter des Bakteriologisch-Serologischen Institutes) und Dr.
Richard L?enberg (Assistenzarzt) entlassen. Diesbez?liche Angaben zu
anderen Mitarbeitern der Klinik sind nicht bekannt.

I found your "Freudian Episode" highly interesting. Being a German
neurologist and psychiatrist I was very moved by your story. I wondered
whether you would be interested in researching more about your
grandfather? biography. I have some contact to German Historians of
Medicine and if I can be of any help in this regard, please, do not
hesitate to let me know.

I enjoy watching "Sexy Beijing" and wish you good luck for your future work!

Sincerely,
XXXX, MD

Neurologist and Psychiatrist

Say Goodbye to Pacific Time

KQED has canceled Pacific Time, the only nationally syndicated radio program about Asia and Asian American affairs in all of the U.S.A.. The show covers news, cultural trends and entertainment stories across Asia. It holds a special place in my heart, not only because I stream it live every Friday morning in Beijing, but also because the producers gave me my first break in radio back in the days when I was a journalist working in San Francisco.

According to a San Francisco Chronicle article, after 7 years on the air, KQED canceled the show due to lack of funding. It's a real shame because Pacific Time offered extensive, nuanced coverage of Asia, something which is sorely lacking in the mainstream media. With China rising as a major economic player and the Beijing Olympics around the corner, the mainstream media is all too eager to cover China's toxic toothpaste and lethal dog food. Sure, we're getting more news about China, but with Pacific Time gone, we'll be missing an important chunk of the story.

You can hear their last show on October 11, 2007.

In Beijing, you can stream KQED radio at 9:30 AM on Friday, October 12 to hear the show live.

And for all of those Chinese music geeks out there, here's a shout out to one of the show's creators, Nina Thorsen. The last time I saw her was at a Cui Jian concert in San Francisco. She made sure that Pacific Time used music featuring Asian and Asian American artists, week after week. Much of this music is in an archive that will be up indefinitely on the site.

The latest on fake ipods and other gadgets

China is one of the few places in the world where the ipod doesn't have a stranglehold on the MP3 player market. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of manufacturers cranking out all types of MP3 and MP4 (video) players. Many are knockoffs of ipods, Sonys etc. but many are original devices that offer features that I wish my video ipod had, like support for almost every imaginable video compression format.

Anyone who has ever been to the Bainaohui or Zhongguancun electronic markets in Beijing has seen this vast array of gadgetry, the problem has always been trying to figure which brands are reliable and which brands actually deliver what they advertise.

Today I discovered an English-language website called PMP Today which has reviews of many Chinese brands of PMPs (portable music players). The site has a China section which includes reviews of bizarre only-in-China products like a digital picture frame that plays MPEG and MP3 files. And, of course, there are already Chinese knockoffs of the latest ipod nano.

If there are any Beijing-based gadget geeks out there who would be interested in collaborating with Sexy Beijing on a monthly China gadget show for our website, send an e-mail to info -at- sexybeijing.tv.

Abigail Washburn at Yu Gong Yi Shan

Making her annual pilgrimage to Beijing, Nashville-based Abigail Washburn is bringing her banjo and her country, bluegrass, Chinese, folk music to the new Yu Gong Yi Shan tonight. She will be joined by a collection of young Chinese musicians playing traditional instruments.

For a taste of her music, check out this short piece we filmed last year with Abigail and her sometime collaborator banjo legend Bela Fleck. It features a rooftop jam in Nan Luo Gu Xiang together with the Mongolian folk band Hang Gai.

The new Yu Gong Yi Shan is near the intersection of Ping An Da Jie and Dong Si Shi Tiao. As usual, Abigail is in cahoots with Beijing music impresario Jon Campbell. His production company is called YGTwo.

A Classic

Here is one the best-produced Youtube videos every done by a crew of college boys. In the predictably named "Yellow Fever", these guys at UC San Diego tackle a question not exactly foreign to Beijing: What's up with all the white dudes with Chinese girlfriends?

I believe they've graduated and are operating under the name Wong Fu Productions.

Ain't sayin she's a goldigger, but...

She ain't messing with no waidiren.

Here's a funny Youtube video of a self-proclaimed "didao" (authentic) Beijing girl, talking about her travails in looking for a suitable man in Beijing. There are no English subtitles, but there are a number of entertaining lines in the video.

First off, you genmenrs without cars need not apply. She is not trying to take the bus home after a date. Worse yet is guys without their own place.

She breaks down her many good qualities: she's pretty, she's got her own job, as an only child her parents have a nest egg waiting for when she gets married. Then she gets down to the bottom line: Unless a man makes a million Chinese Yuan a year she can't consider him as a suitor.

Finally, she has a message for all the no-car-having, momma's-house-living, 5,000-yuan-a-month earning scrubs in Beijing: "Gŭn!" (Translation: "Bounce!")

CRI Interview with Sufei and Luke

China Radio International talk show host Su Xiaowei (the Terry Gross of Beijing) came by Sexy Beijing global headquarters last week and interviewed Sufei and Sexy Beijing cameraman/producer Luke Mines.

You can listen to the interview on the CRI page dedicated to Su's show Voices from Other Lands.

Worst University in America - Our Alma Mater

This post is from the Sexy Beijing production team, proud graduates of what Fox News pundit David Horowitz calls "the worst university in America."

Since sexybeijing.tv works hard to deliver fair and balanced coverage from Beijing and around the world, we'll let you make up your own mind about our alma mater:

Full Disclosure: Sufei has spent more than a few Passover Seders at the Horowitz dinner table.

Asian Flair for Drama by Apple Tang

Asian girls love drama. Every girl does, but Asian girls take on a more passive aggressive approach...something that will cast them as the victim. The more tragic the better.

Korean soap operas are famous for this. And people in China can't get enough of it.

If you walk down the streets of Beijing, you start to wonder whether they're imitating what they see on TV, or if it's the other way around.

Within the first few months of arriving in China, I saw a couple fighting outside a restaurant.

It started with the classic standoff: Girl pouts. Guy says c'mon ?and touches her arm. Girl flings him off and continues to pout.

Except this time it took an extreme turn and the guy grabbed her by the hair.

My gut instinct was that she would twist around and kick him between the legs!

To my amazement, she squatted down.

That's when he dragged her across the street by the hair.

She had many chances to get away before it got to this stage. But she didn't.

This was a more extreme case, but I can't tell you how many times I've been caught on the subway in-between a couple doing the standoff. It's gets more hilarious in such a cramped space and everyone can see it.

As a Chinese Canadian, the western part of me screams out: Why not just tell him what you want and be over with it?

Maybe "he should just know." Or it could be like my temper tantrums when I was five ?and she doesn't know what she wants.

"Well most of them are in high school mode ya?" Ray of Lite types. "It's because they haven't lived through the same experiences as North Americans. So most of us were like that back when we were 14. ?Most of them still live with their parents until they're 30. Plus the single child syndrome doesn't help that case at all."

I remember watching this Malaysian Chinese movie that opened with a girl sitting on the edge of a boat, looking listlessly out to the sea.

A tear rolls down her eye just before she flips backwards into the water.

Turns out her boyfriend didn't respond when she asked him, "Do you love me?"

Did she really want to kill herself? No.

She wanted the guy to know that she loved him enough to kill herself over him. She's hoping her outrageous act will shock his senses and make him realize he actually loves her. The guy magically comes around almost 99 percent of the time in these scenes.

Movies like this aren't seen as crazy in Asia. It's romanticized. And girls try to emulate this. Do something crazy and outrageous so that he will "realize" that you're the one.

These storylines are a staple in Korean soap operas. Its leading men are always the strong silent type ?a high virtue in Asian culture.

This is true even for my parents who have lived in Canada for over 30 years. My younger brother got a lot of flack from my Dad if he wasn't decisive, if he shed tears, didn't help fix the garage door or clean out the gutter ?ya know .. man stuff.

My father never taught us that girls can be weak, but my brother certainly had to live up to a certain ideal.

It is precisely the strong emphasis on "big boys don't cry" that drives Asian men to be more reserved than most. And it could be the reason their women turn to extremities in order to provoke a response.

Behind that tough exterior I think Asian men love the drama as well.

I once met a guy from Inner Mongolia who told me he broke up with his girlfriend of four years because he didn't have money saved up for a wedding.

"Well do you love her?"

"Of course I do."

"So then why can't you wait a couple more years till you make enough money?"

Tommy patiently explained to me as if it should've been "obvious."

"Because she's already 24. I'm still in school and working at a bar part time. She's spent most of her youth with me and I don't want her to waste anymore time. She'll find someone else who will take better care of her."

He looked a bit woeful but had, at the same time, a self-satisfied air about him.

I was stunned.

Here was a living example of a self-made tragedy.

So it isn't confined to old Chinese movies and Korean soaps.

I once dated a guy who wasn't Asian, but certainly wasn't the most expressive about his feelings. I use to pick fights and say nasty things to him just to make sure he "felt." Just to provoke him and make sure he cares. So it must be in my blood.

But after meeting Tommy, I realized that I like drama in my life, just not THAT much.

Here are some segments from three of the most popular Korean soaps in China.

Dae Jang Geum (2005-2006)

Princess Hours a.k.a Goong (2006)

Full House (2006)

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Watch Out!

Hi guys who don't know what to do with your hair, Brush Head Boy (Shuatounan) is here to teach you how to fix your hair into different styles with wax, water or even glue.

Here is more Brush Head Boy for you. This time he teaches you how to make money in the stock market...in his kitchen, because the Chinese call stock trading "chao gupiao (stir fry stock)". Got the joke?

If you like them, Sufei's got some competition. Or do you think Sufei should give him a call? Apparently he knows what to do to look good and how to make money in the stock market. For more information about the creators of this mocumentary series, click here to their home-page.

Bus Too Crowded? Make a Complaint on Your Mayor's Blog!

The Southern Weekly on August 16, 2007 reported on a trend among government officials -- to get on Internet or start a blog to communicate with netizen voters.

This June, Mayor Wang Hongju and Prime Secretary Wangyang of Chongqing City asked citizens' opinions regarding a city planning problem via Internet. Citizen Du Shulin sent the Prime Secretary an email and got a reply immediately with an invitation to meet the Major in his office.

On August 3, Zhao Qizheng, former Director of News Office of the State Council, started a blog on Sina.com, which is known to be the blog started by the highest government official. On the first day more than 5,000 viewers read the first entry.

In Suqian in Jiangsu Provence, more than 80 government officials have started blogs. Other ones include: Zhu Yongxin, Vice Mayor of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, Vice Mayor of Luliang in Shanxi Province.

In August for several times the People's Daily called on all public servants to get on the Internet, calling it an "unblockable information channel".

Kunqu Is the New Chivas

According to Southern Weekly, Kunqu is the new fun thing to do after dinner. But actually, Kunqu is very old. It is one of the oldest Chinese traditional operas with a history of 600 years. Some call it the father of Peking Opera.

The Southern Weekly (In Chinese) on August 16, 2007 reported on Beijing's highly priced Kunqu Show with the producer's comments. This article captured yet another sign of the new Chinese elite trying to bring Chinese traditional culture back in fashion when China is busy "importing" cool things to do from the West.

Since the beginning of May, the Kunqu opera performance takes place every weekend at the red-carpeted "NO.17 Warehouse" space in Nanxincang International Plaza. The ticket price ranges from RMB580-1980 and there are 3 boxes of 8 people priced at RMB12,000 (1,600USD). Targeted at the "New Elite Traditionalists in Beijing", the show has been the same one so far -- Mudanting (Peony Pavilion), the most classic Kunqu show. Only it has been cut shorter and shorter so the audience won't fall asleep. To the producing team's satisfaction, averagely 60%-70% seats are sold every week.

Wang Xiang, the producer, describes his target audience like this: they don't know what Kunqu is; they don't know what "Peony Pavilion" is or who wrote it; they just want to be (or bring their guests-to-impress to be) near something pretty looking and supposedly with taste. The director admits that the show is priced out of common people's reach.

Wang observed that laowai always buys the cheapest ticket available while the chinese always the most expensive ones. "When you had enough of LV, Armani and luxury cuban cigars, traditional chinese culture is a nice change," concluded Wang.

Many celebrities are reported to have seen the show, including the Nobel Prize for Physics winner Yang Zhenning.

The show also caters to tourists groups. As the most classic show of Kunqu, "Peony Pavilion" was brought on stage by many famous directors like Bai Xianyong ("the youth version" at Renyi Theatre) and Chen Shizhong (Lincoln Center NY)

Key words: Kunqu, Mudanting, Baixianyong, new traditionalism, China, yuppie, elite, peking opera

Dodolook- China's First Self-made Internet Pop Star

If you are following the V-logger (video blogger) trends in China, you must have heard of Dodolook.

This now 23-year-old girl made herself a big star through V-logs and became a phenomenon in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. She went from the girl next door to the spokesperson of several websites and online games and a soon-to-be pop singer. Below is a Tudou clip of her being worshipped by pop stars on Kangxi Laile -- the most popular talkshow in Taiwan.

It all started when Dodolook moved to Canada with her parents from Guangxi Province, China and majored in visual arts in December 2005. She needed a new computer for school work but was short of cash. At the same time a Taiwan blog server put out a 5000 USD prize for the best V-logger of the year. Dodolook started her own V-log and stuffed it with funny short GIF videoes with great ideas and choices of music. Here is one of them:

Her V-log got 1,450,000 hits within 3 months and was growing by 30,000 per day. Dodolook became a household name in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. On this another popular talkshow below in Hong Kong, she said to her thousands of fans that she didn't care about winning that prize anymore -- "I did what I loved to do and see how much people loved it too! "

Here's the V-log that made Dodolook famous on the mainland.

CCTV Tower

The CCTV tower is getting close to getting joined at the top.

Here is some animation from the project.