something serious

thanks to everyone who asked after our well-being here in shanghai. the news recently has just been getting worse and worse, first with myanmar, and now with the sichuan earthquake. if you can contribute, here are some sites dealing with relief and aid.

AmeriCare

Direct Relief International

Red Cross China

so far these are the major NGOs that are responding to the earthquake. i expect in the next few days more will have links for contributions.

jane says that the red cross society of china has also formed a disaster relief working group, here's the relevant information:

An emergency relief hotline, along with bank account information to receive donations to assist their cause:

Account name: Red Cross Society of China
开户单位：中国红十字会总会

For those who want to donate in RMB: you can send money to the RMB account at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China branch below:
人民币开户行: 中国工商银行 北京分行东四南支行
人民币账号: 0200001009014413252

For those who want to donate in foreign currency, you can send money to the foreign currency account at the CITIC Bank branch below:
外币开户行：中信银行酒仙桥支行
外币账号: 7112111482600000209

Hotline: (8610) 65139999

-

from where i was in northeast shanghai, i didnt feel a thing, but folks in pudong apparently did, and everyone downtown was evacuated from the skyscrapers.

i seriously wish this stuff was not happening.

my cannonhead

so, following our weekend of mayhem - during which ali turned 24 amongst a million other dramatic events that took place - a plethora of awkwardly scandalous pictures surfaced on various parts of the web (facebook, picasa, blogs). this unleashed a fury of untagging and threats of blackmail unless certain photos were removed.

i'm as vain as the next person, meaning i partook in the furious untagging and demanding, but once in a while i come across a photo of myself that makes me go, "damn. i really need to do something with that."

case in point:



my initial reaction - as was everyone else's - was: "cotdamn." i mean seriously, what else can you say to a photo like that.

anyway, i remembered looking at this one artist li wei's work and being really amused by all these photos of himself plunged into the earth or his head floating around looking rather confused.






so it inspired me to do something dada with my own head.


namely, fire it out of a cannon.

i still cant look at it without cracking up.

for those of you who asked, i wish i could take credit for the background, but it's actually a corner of an artwork by this graphic design artist fatoe (fatoe.com), whose work rich introduced to me. his stuff is amay-sing!


in conclusion, saturday night was definitely one of those you wish you could forget but know you can't nights. which can only mean it's going to happen again this weekend. haolaaaaaaahhhhh!

happy bday cooch!

they were beautiful. they are beautiful.

nostalgia for all things old and beautiful.

本命年

i'm turning 24 at the end of the year, which means i'll have officially completed two cycles of the zodiac. it's the year of the rat, which means it's my 本命年. superstition dictates that your 本命年 will either be amazingly good, or amazingly terrible.

a few months ago i probably would have said it leaned like the motherfucking tower of 虎丘 towards terrible.

sitting on my couch at 6 in the fucking AM about to leave for taiwan, my conclusion insofar is that this year took its course the only way it could, and it has been insane. insanely great, yes. but mostly insane. and amazingly, a sort of drug-free insanity.

amazing and painful things have happened in the past couple months leading up to now, but i'm about to head home for grampa's funeral, so updates will have to wait. i passed up on this trip about a month ago and missed my sister cousin's wedding, but death's draw is stronger than a wedding's, and i can't imagine not saying good bye to him.

anyway, when i come back, prepare for a post complete with snarky comments in like manner.

♥

island stories.

//

We bring ’Jisan to the crematorium, after the ceremony. His body, wrapped in a white shroud, reminds me of a cocoon. At least he’s warm, I think for a second, then almost laugh out loud at the absurdity of the idea. Leilani hovers behind me, hugging herself, limpid brown eyes staring vacantly ahead. “Say goodbye, Lani,” I murmur. Then the kiln swallows ’Jisan and I see bright orange flames licking at his body, hungry for flesh. Soon there will be nothing left but charred bits of bone.

-

I float in and out of sleep listening. In my daze I think about Lani, ’Jisan, my mother, the butterflies, everything that is falling apart and disintegrating. In the end the island claims everything. If I stay, it would take me as well.

Every time I open my eyes it seems like the ceiling is a little lower. Soon it will press down against my face and suffocate me. I listen for his voice, move to touch him, to reassure myself that I’m still alive, in the guesthouse, but my limbs feel like lead, impossibly heavy. Then I hear him say, “Kanae?” and just like that mobility is restored to my arms. My hand reaches out for his, but I grasp nothing but air.

The ceiling swoops down and darkness swallows me.

//

不是不肯，只是舍不得。

some badass journalism

for the past week, email accounts have been shut down, new sites have been sealed off, youtube has been blocked as the great firewall of china filters through information that might have to do with the t-betan riots.

this is happening to us. people you know. i used to hear about blogs being blocked and wonder "hey, what does the office building of the people who work for the great firewall look like? is it modeled after the great wall hur hur!!"

it's crazy because now we're actually inside the great wall. nuts! and balls!

instead of hazarding opinions of what's right and what's wrong in t-bet, though here's a piece of hot shit journalism (the kind one dreams about while in j-school or interning on some bullshit beat) that slices through the amay-sing propergander that is chinese news:

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10875823&fsrc=RSS

thankfully, i dont have any particular predilections towards any sides of this issue. i think it's too complex a political minefield to navigate without having read in excruciating detail the history and geopolitics of the region. furthermore, most opinions are so deeply entrenched in bias and misinformation that it's extremely hard to distinguish truth from propaganda. and by propaganda, i dont just mean intel that's coming out of china, i mean what is news and what passes for news in highly industrialized nations as well. the longer i'm in china, the more i realize that the opinions formed on most of the issues this country's tangled up in are generated out of just a lot of naivety. not necessarily because we're especially uninformed, but because the history of this nation is so vast and extraordinary that nothing can be predicted, nor fully understood.

to make matters in greater china more exciting, mayor ma got elected today! you go mayor ma!!! that man is a motherfucking rock star! taiwanese politics, of course, are always close to my heart because it's so goddamn hilarious!! so tense!! so fraught with drama!! and (fake) assassination attempts!!! legislators hurling shoes and chairs at each other!!! missiles being fired over the island!!!! it's like watching a really unnecessarily violent korean drama relationship go through ups and downs with the parents (and yes here i mean my own parents) embarrassingly invested. iht.com had this article detailing the election:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/world/asia/22cnd-taiwan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

which, as many grey lady news stories tend to be,GAN!!! ANNA'S FUCKING RABBIT JUST KNOCKED OVER THE FUCKING TRASHCAN AND SPILLED OUT A GALLON OF SUNFLOWER SEED SHELLS!!! FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT RODENT!!!!! a rather disappointingly superficial study of the situation. i also think it's really strange that ma spoke out against china's persecution of the falun gong....i mean seriously, did he really? that's like....barack obama speaking out against the media
persecution of scientology. minus the celebrity involvement. and a lot more ugly photographs.

on gChat:
Clifton: WOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!

me: WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTT!!!!!

DIRECT FLIGHTS!!!!
Clifton: WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!

NO MORE TRANSFERRING IN HK SHIT

me: HAHAHAHAHAHA

Clifton: BETTER ECONOMIC TIMES!

me: ENCOURAGING NATIVE TALENT TO STAY!!!!!!!!!!

Clifton: NO MORE...well, less POLITICAL POSTURING!

i will miss chen shui bian's thick taiwanese mandarin emanating from the dining room tv while my parents hurl vitriol at his square bespectacled face.

"你 看 他 那 鬼 臉 ! 有 沒 有 面 子 啊 ﹐ 那 個 人 ! 真 的 要 死 啊 ! 你 看 ! 真 的 是 要 命! 他 們 把 台 灣 經 濟 掏 空 了還 要 怎 麼 樣 ? ! 再 這 樣 下 去 ﹐ 台 灣 真 的 是 完 蛋 了 !!"

and i fucking love my friends

white man's goddamn burden

attended a gallery lecture last night and a reading today. they should have been terrific, and they were, for the most part, except something was said in both that made me really annoyed.

dr katie hill gave a lecture at twocities gallery about contemporary chinese art. she went through a series of slides that included this fabulous piece of work called "fly calligraphy", fascinating conceptually, but disgusting really, because the artist does, in fact, use actual flies.


yes, actual dessicated fly bodies to form vaguely orthographic shapes. as much as i bow down to the artist's creativity, i still really need to just. like. vomit.

but this wasn't the problem. katie hill pontificated towards the end that the amount of art coming out of beijing was shocking in its sheer commercialization, which "you would never see in the west!"

lies! art basically exists to sell itself. art for the sake of art is bullshit, unless it's never shown to the world, which then begs the question what the fuck's the point? (self enjoyment isn't an answer--who gives a shit when you're the only one who does?) art is a fucking citadel of narcissism and exhibitionism. saying the art out of beijing is more commercialized than art anywhere else in the world is just biased attitude dawwwwwwwwgggggggg.

but i mean, i chatted at length with her later on and she's was a cool lady. but clearly, not cool enough.

well the night ended with wine and a drunk ass jane, so it's all good.




today, howard goldblatt, the god of chinese-english translation, did a reading at glamour bar to the vast enjoyment of the 100-odd losers sitting in the bar clinging on to his every witty word (myself included). he'd recently climbed what he felt to be another steppe in his celebrated career, translating a bestselling chinese novel called wolf totem. everyone was having a great time celebrating this celebrated celebutante when a lone brave chinese man with heavily accented english asked goldblatt, "as a chinese man, i found this book to be rather cliched........................"

actually i dont really remember what he said. what i do remember is that he was trying express something along the lines of wolf totem falling into the done and redone themes of reforms from the cultural revolution ladidadada...actually i dont even know if he had a point, or a question, for that matter. but as his muddled blathering went on, goldblatt looking increasingly irritated, even gesturing for the kid to hurry up and finish his spiel. when the kid finally did wrap up, goldblatt called his question "nasty" and rude and proceeded to repeat many many much times that he disagreed with the kid's viewpoint.

confusing and convoluted his question was, but it wasn't nasty and certainly didnt warrant the assholish reception goldblatt gave it. but it's who gives a fuck about a stammering little chinese buttboy and hey it's fuckin goooolllldbllllattttt you know what i'm saying like the motherfucking KING of translators!!! how you gonna question the main man at his own reading????

what i really am saying, though, is that white people who are heavily invested in the mystical magical far reaches of the far eastern orient will always be blinded in relation to their objectification and tunnel-visioned view of china. and chinese people will just eat that shit up! like steaming piles of delicious shit! crazy!

anyway, this night ended with really really really good food and cococabana cake so who am i to complain?