Beijing or Bust

My Home Village

2010-05-23T22:44:00.011+08:00

Last month, I accompanied my father on a visit to his home village. In China, one would call the hometown on the paternal side of be one’s own. However, in my thirty-(big) plus years of existence, I had never before been to “my” home village.My father had not been back for 29 years either, due to various unfortunate reasons. We had to stop several times on the country road to ask for directions.

Speaking of integrity

2010-01-21T00:45:00.003+08:00

A good friend of mine, who's a high-level executive at a local Internet company, had an emergency toothache. His assistant arranged an emergency operation for him at one of the best dental hospitals in Beijing, via her father's old friend who knows one of the dental experts there.They did not have to make any appointment and just walked into the office. The old friend of the assistant's father

Acceptable Stereotype

2009-12-14T23:09:00.001+08:00

The later years of my stay in the US, I was an indoctrinated listener of National Public Radio. Every liberal intellectual type seemed to have the local NPR station preset on their radios, so I followed suit.But lately, every time I visited the US, NPR increasingly annoyed me. China is becoming an ever popular topic, and every other day, some China expert would be talking about what this “China”

In Search of Chinese-Chinese

2009-11-22T14:30:00.000+08:00

One day last week I went to a private clinic in Beijing. As usual the clinic was quiet and only a few clients—half of them foreign expats—sat around waiting. A tall Scandinavian-looking guy came and sat in the couch next to me. We stroke up a conversation about the newspaper story I was reading. Then he asked,“Are you Chinese Chinese?”Reflexively I explained that I had lived and worked in the US

20th Reunion

2009-08-11T21:18:00.002+08:00

I flew back to Chengdu for my high school 20th reunion. Of the 360 students in my graduating class, more than one third showed up. Most I had not seen for 20 years and had a hard time remembering. It was embarrassing but also a source of rapturous laughter once the identities were revealed. The reunion ran in style. We formally signed in and then were seated in a banquet hall. Three MCs

In Pursuit of Tai Chi

2009-06-14T08:22:00.000+08:00

I was in Boston for a short trip and my old friend Mary, whom I hadn’t seen for a year, visited me from Philadelphia. Over the weekend, she could not stop talking about Tai Chi. I took my first English writing class from Mary 12 years ago. We have been close friends since. She witnessed my various attempts to fit in America, and I kept her company through her various heartbreaks. Still, her

To Catch a White Wolf with Bare Hands

2009-05-14T09:59:00.002+08:00

The cliché goes—in the new Wild Wild East of China, anything is possible. Tiring as it is, clichés do seem to exist for a reason.In early 2006, Betty, a Chinese screenwriter friend living in Los Angeles, forwarded me a movie script in English and asked if I could help rewrite. I was having a two-year filmmaking stint then. There was a small circle of bilingual filmmakers in Beijing who, like me,

The Lesson of Happiness

2009-05-09T11:53:00.002+08:00

Ben was my Ph.D. advisor in Boston. I have forgotten all of what he had taught me about evolution and molecular biology. One thing I do remember clearly was what he had said to me once at his house party, back in 1994.His family had just moved into a beautiful colonial house in Cambridge and invited everyone working in his lab over for a party. While all the adults chatted over free flowing

Shredded Pork with Sweet Red Pepper

2009-04-29T00:06:00.008+08:00

I went back to Chengdu, my hometown in southwest China, for my dad's big 69th birthday over the weekend. Since it's big, we basically ate for two days--Saturday lunch and dinner with close family, and Sunday lunch and dinner with extended family.On Sunday we lunched at a very nice restaurant in a private room, with two tables for 24 people. Then befitting the image of leisured Sichuanese who

Time Would Never Tell

2009-04-23T22:43:00.000+08:00

I arrived in the US a year after the Lu Gang incident, yet it was still a frequent topic among overseas Chinese students. On November 1st, 1991, Lu Gang, a Chinese student who had just received his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Iowa, shot and killed five people on Iowa campus, including his advisor and a fellow Chinese student, and then killed himself. I remember reading about him in

The Hierarchy of Dreams

2009-04-09T13:59:00.000+08:00

At the Miami restaurant where I worked part-time back in 1993, a hierarchy existed among the staff to serve customers in style. At the very top was the manager in suit. Waiters were next in line with their bowties and velvet vests. Down below were bus boys cleaning the tables after each meal. We, the four food runners in plain white shirts and regular ties, were next to last, just above the

Inner City

2009-03-26T09:33:00.001+08:00

Even before I left China in 1992, I had had a fascination with working in a Chinese restaurant in the US. That seemed such an essential American experience for any Chinese immigrant, at least according to such popular novels as Beijinger in New York and Manhattan’s China Lady. Soon after I arrived in Miami for graduate school, I began searching for a restaurant where I could fulfill my dream of

Farewell, Marianne

2009-03-20T19:08:00.001+08:00

When I first met Marianne, she insisted on my addressing her as “Missis Marks.” “That’s what a properly raised gentleman should call a lady,” she commanded.That, and her German accent, awed me. 1996 was my fourth year living in the US, yet I still did not know how to behave properly in the American way, especially not in front of a silver-haired lady in her 70s who lived in a house frozen in the

Naked

2008-11-23T22:08:00.002+08:00

I haven't been blogging much because I recently started a new job. And some other things in life... But mostly, because colleagues at my new job, being American and adept at googling, found out about my blog, and hence, my past.They didn't mind my past, just as my previous Chinese employer. But they do read English, so they know some periphery of my thoughts by reading through my blog.So I feel

The Sophistication of Art

2008-08-26T20:24:00.005+08:00

To show off my urbane sophistication, I took my parents and my 10-year old niece to 798, a post-modern (or modern?) art district transformed from a decommissioned military factory compound.The three diligently studied the art work in gallery after gallery--a true miracle for my mother who spends all her time cleaning.She points at a huge oil portrait, hanging on the wall, of a steely and

Beautiful Games

2008-08-18T21:40:00.012+08:00

The Games, are a beautiful thing. The audience cheered for a forceful US strike on the beach sand transported from Hainan, for the Slovenian who won the first-ever track-and-field gold for his country, and for the Russian woman who broke the world-record in 5000-meter steeplechase.The jumpers led the crowd to clap for him before he set off. The audience ahh'ed when he failed.Then there's the

To Villainize, or not

2008-08-11T22:32:00.002+08:00

One day after I hoped that China not be villainized more than John Edwards, I found out a friend was taken away to make the Olympics more peaceful and harmonious.It's a tricky business to love this place. For there are always many reasons not to.

John Edwards the Villain

2008-08-10T20:09:00.004+08:00

This morning an American friend called from San Francisco. We hadn't talked for a while so we chit-chatted about his job pushing ethnic studies in 9th grade, Obama, and the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. He is a school teacher and a big-time Sinophile, having spent a year learning Chinese in Beijing and coming back almost every year during summer break. Invariably, our conversation

My Mother is in Town for the Games

2008-08-08T00:29:00.003+08:00

My parents arrived in town yesterday for the games. As soon as she put down her luggage, my mother started dusting, cleaning, laundering and having my dad hang a string in the kitchen to line dry the laundry. And she complained about her knee, about my niece being too loud, and about me not making enough money. The same old mother despite my many tete-a-tete regarding the importance of

Muddy water and live fish

2008-07-15T22:39:00.005+08:00

When I worked as a product manager in Silicon Valley, the business rationale ran something like this--let's find an unmet need, figure out an innovative way to satisfy that need, and voila, we'll make a lot of money in the process.Now more than 4 years back in China, I'm still struggling with the Chinese business rationale--let's find something to sell, pile on tons of superlatives and expert

The Residents are Angry

2008-06-15T22:21:00.008+08:00

For days, residents chatted excitedly among themselves in the apartment complex where I'm staying, while cops watched wearily from their patrol cars just outside the gate. The compound is perhaps the most expensive in the neighborhood, beautifully landscaped with lush plants and flowers and with a tiny muddy river running through it.The agitation came from the river--the government wants to

Christian Asylum

2008-06-10T23:38:00.002+08:00

At one of my previous companies in Beijing, we sent one of the young colleagues to the US for training on a business visa. It took us quite some effort to get the visa for her. After she came back from that training, she worked for us for a few more months and then quit and used the same visa--not expired yet by then-- to go back to America.She taught Chinese at some community center on the

The Confused Filmmaker

2008-05-26T23:44:00.004+08:00

On Sunday I went to visit a filmmaker friend whom I hadn’t seen since my long leave of absence in 2006. Unsurprisingly he dropped many curious questions about my absence. Our conversation then stayed on politics. I mentioned the recent sentences of several dissidents, including Hu Jia. He said, “Don’t you think Hu Jia is a little too much? I watched his documentary online. He was…

The Aftershock

2008-05-12T23:27:00.002+08:00

The tremor hit this afternoon at 2:30pm. The floor began to undulate under my feet. Then people started to yell one by one--"It's an earthquake!"Few ran. We were working on the 24th floor in an office tower in Hangzhou. Perhaps others were as scared as I was, but there's no time to get down to the ground floor anyway. Despite my nausea from the unsteady floor, I also had the vague confidence

Gay Marriage, China Style (II)

2008-04-23T23:45:00.003+08:00

Sunday afternoon I came home and found Jim lying over our living room sofa, his head dropping almost to the floor, his eyes blank. I guessed right immediately that he’d just had another big fallout with his budding celebrity boyfriend. Once again befitting the temper of a prima donna, the boyfriend destroyed his fancy mobile phone. Only this time he hammered it to pieces, and in a continuing

I heart China

2008-04-16T23:30:00.005+08:00

As soon as I got to work this morning, I began receiving invites after invites on MSN messenger to add a "(red heart) China" next to my name on the messenger. Apparently people all over China are doing this today to show solidarity in face of foreign media's recent antagonism against China. I didn't add the red heart to my name, feeling not particularly patriotic this week. I read my friend

Shame

2008-04-03T17:23:00.002+08:00

China jails rights activist outspoken on TibetBy Chris BuckleyGuardian - UKBEIJING, April 3 (Reuters) - A Buddhist Chinese dissident outspoken on Tibet and other sensitive topics was jailed for three-and-a-half years on Thursday, a conviction likely to become a focus of international rights campaigns ahead of the Beijing Olympics.Hu Jia, 34, was found guilty of "inciting subversion of state power

Paranoia

2008-03-28T01:50:00.001+08:00

One day after I cursed the idiotic Olympics-induced paranoid that triggered the flight restriction to Beijing, I seethed again with anger at the security checkpoint at the Shanghai Hongqiao airport. I had traveled by train from Hangzhou to Shanghai in order to catch a flight back to Beijing, for ever. Now the guards were taking forever examining my toilettery bag, opening and sniffing at

The Tibetans

2008-03-26T23:50:00.003+08:00

I'm so swamped with work in Hangzhou that I've been almost oblivious to the heated media war between China and the West over the reporting of the recent riot in Lhasa. Only through reading my friends' blogs did I realize that it's actually a BIG deal out there. (Of the few I read, Rebecca's post here I found most close to how I feel.)Honestly though, I don't understand what the big deal is--

What if?

2008-03-02T09:21:00.006+08:00

A friend of a friend who's a well-known British TV journalist and presenter has been commissioned by this foreign broadcaster to make two long and five short documentaries. He asked if my film partner and I would like to make one of the ten-minute short. We jumped at the opportunity.We proposed to follow three university seniors of different social and economic background for a day and see how

Prison Break

2008-02-25T08:57:00.002+08:00

The management invited a senior executive from an international market research firm to talk about Internet usage in China. The executive told many interesting anecdotes after his formal presentation. He said when I first came back to China in 2004 from years studying and working in the US, my firm had big ambition to make it in this vast market. Then in January 2005 Zhao Ziyang died. His

Holidays and Lies

2008-02-09T09:40:00.000+08:00

Holiday time is the time for lies. Everyone wishes each other lots of money in the new year (despite the fact that the average salary raise for Beijing’s IT industry is only 10% and that is to accommodate the recent high inflation) and every dream coming true (when do they ever?). Since the zodiac sign for 2008 is rat, a synonym of the verb “count” in Chinese, half of the group-sent sms greeting

The Day After Tomorrow

2008-02-03T14:03:00.000+08:00

A rare snowstorm has hit Southern China and paralyzed the train system, leaving millions of passengers going home for Chinese New year stranded. Air travel has been affected less. Still, it took us three trips to the airport and two days' waiting before we got our boarding pass.The airport is a mess--people sleeping on the floor, crowds pushing and shouting "We want to go home!", armed police

Misnomer

2008-01-19T09:46:00.000+08:00

The Chinese blogosphere (at least on Sina's blogs) has not been completely silent on Hu Jia's arrest. One thanked Sina for having not deleted his post immediately. Another two (here and here) somehow passed through the censor.Of course there are those representing the government's view cheering (here and here).Hu Jia was living in an apartment complex called Bobo Freedom City. What an apt

Zara

2008-01-15T08:36:00.000+08:00

Even after almost four years back in China now, I was still often branded "American" by my colleagues. When I showed physical impatience at four-hour-long weekly meetings, argueded with my boss about some of his not-so-wise decisions, or asked questions about details of some business that people at my level are supposed to know and not to inquire even if don't know, I would be told--"Only

Hope for the New Year

2007-12-31T18:38:00.000+08:00

Just learned last night that one person I became connected to almost two years ago was taken in, under one of the shakiest pretense in this country. He was stubbornly honest to himself-- some called him nutty--so he was accused of inciting something something.Alas, this brand new year of 2008 with all the Olympic glory and the obligatory house cleaning to welcome foreign guests.Many have asked

Will the Real Bourgeois Housewives Please Stand Up?

2007-12-08T15:59:00.000+08:00

The apartment compound I live in is called Gold Field in Chinese. By the time we moved in, its English name had been changed to Gemdale to deflect some of the tackiness. The complex is not among the very top of Beijing's luxury apartment offerings, but it has all the Western amenities and it's exclusively residential (unlike a few other expat-friendly complexes nearby). In addition, both

The Usual Suspects

2007-12-06T16:10:00.000+08:00

Got a call from a reporter friend while slaving away at my desk. She's helping a big European broadcaster organize a global panel on Freedom of Expression. They want someone in Beijing who speaks English well and is willing to discuss the topic on radio. I said Good luck.Last night went to a banquet thrown in honor of John Major, the ex UK Prime Minister. Sir John

The Shrubbery Divide

2007-09-26T11:46:00.000+08:00

During the dinner we chatted about the difference between the US and China. My friend said that in the US, the poor are tucked away in some hidden rundown neighborhood so the middle class can continue their glamorous life without too much of a guilt; in China, however, the rich and the poor often find each other within breathing distance, so one has to learn how to not pay too much attention to

To get my hukou back

2007-09-16T23:18:00.000+08:00

Many of my fellow countrymen have problem figuring out who I am, cause I don't have a hukou. I got the "Are you still Chinese?" question a lot. Each time I had to explain that no, even though I have a US green card, I still hold a Chinese passport and thus am still Chinese; and yes, green card allows one to live in the US permanently, so it is kinda like a hukou.In China, however, hukou is a lot

Harmoniously Competitive

2007-08-09T18:16:00.000+08:00

Compare to our competitors, my company is very late to the Olympics bandwagon. We don’t even have a channel dedicated to 2008, only a sub channel. The day before yesterday, one day before the 1 year count down, a VP mentioned that we ought to have at least a count-down clock on our home page. So the web team scrambled to get it up, a few hours before the start of the official celebration party

Impression: Lugu Lake

2007-07-29T19:16:00.000+08:00

The Lugu Lake on the Sichuan and Yunnan border was a bumpy 7 hour bus ride away from Lijiang. Relatively few tourists visit there, and those who do, usually take the two-day tour arriving at the lake around 4pm and leaving the next morning back to Lijiang at 10am. Most of these tourists stayed in Luoshui, Falling Water, the most developed village around the lake, for staged bon-fire parties and

Impression: Lijiang

2007-07-25T22:52:00.000+08:00

No, I'm not talking about the Zhang Yijiang extravaganza at the foot of the Jade Dragon Mountain, which, even though I've heard many great things about, I refused to pay to watch as a matter of principle.What I'm talking about is this fantasy of Lijiang, as this tranquil backpacker heaven. At least, according to my Chinese friends, a place to rest and rejuvenate.Many amateur photographers

Joker

2007-07-19T20:19:00.000+08:00

A week ago everything was ok, over, finito; a week later for various reasons, the chains have to be pulled tighter again. Just like that.Life in China has definitely been more interesting than back in the US, not the least because it's oo often like an arbitrary joke that I don't know how else to react, except to laugh.What great misfortune of you having to be Chinese?!Oh well, I am Chinese.

Kevin Bacon's Dance

2007-07-12T23:09:00.001+08:00

Yesterday afternoon I sent email and sms messages to my friends, inviting them for a drink out at night. The excuse? "I'm finally officially free!"One friend asked, "What do you mean? Did you break up with your boyfriend?"Another wrote back also in confusion, "Didn't you just take a vacation in Yunnan from your unemployment in Beijing? How much more free do you need to be?"The word Freedom

A Teacher for Life

2006-02-22T11:47:00.000+08:00

During the recent trip to Chengdu for Chinese New Year, as usual I met up with my high school friends for a drinking feast. We invited Teacher Chen, the head teacher of our class, to join us as well.When we started our high school in 1986, Teacher Chen was given the chance for the first time to head a high school class. In today’s standard, Teacher Chen might have been considered a 愤青 (angry

All Quiet on the Chinese Front

2006-02-20T17:47:00.000+08:00

I've started working for Global Voices Online (GVO) as their East Asia editor. Here's a piece I wrote for the site today on the reaction from the Chinese-language blogosphere on the issue of media censorship in China. GVO seeks to amplify, curate and aggregate the global conversation online - with a focus on blogs outside the U.S. and Western Europe. It's a cool and worthy service. Check it

All About My Mother

2006-02-20T11:29:00.000+08:00

About ten days ago I had a big argument with my mother. Huge argument. Tears and swearing got in the way. The issue was some family stuff, as always. The unreasonable requests from her were so obviously morally wrong and I shouldn’t even have to explain my stand. Instead, I kept on calling her back, apologizing for my behavior and comforting her.What could I have done? She’s my mother.Which made

Do I Have To Take a Stand?

2006-02-17T03:13:00.000+08:00

Recently I found that because I’m Chinese, living in China and speaking decent English, I’ve been increasingly invited by foreign media to comment on China, especially on the red-hot Internet censorship issue since I’m also blogging. (Oh, being a “filmmaker” helps.) A Scottish paper profiled me for their Chinese New Year’s special. Business Week asked for my view on using proxy servers to get

Overheard (I)

2006-02-15T11:42:00.000+08:00

10:30am. I was riding in a taxi to the aptly-named Fortune Plaza for a meeting. No traffic jam on the narrow Guang Hua Road which is usually jammed like a parking lot during rush hours.I gratefully noted my observation to the driver. The driver concurred that we should be thankful whenever traffic in downtown Beijing is bearable. Then he pointed to the right hand side of the road where CCTV (

The Problem With Piracy

2006-02-15T00:42:00.000+08:00

Last month I wrote a piece for a popular American radio show defending piracy in China. Here's the (relatively) short piece:Last summer I went to a workshop on digital video production. A professor from the Beijing Film Academy reminded us one day to rush out and buy pirated DVDs of all Hollywood classics. The government would start cracking down on piracy sooner or later, she said, and it would

From Turkey to Riceballs

2006-02-13T00:08:00.000+08:00

When I first arrived in the US in 1992, the food I had the most difficulty getting used to were cheese and turkey. I overcame the aversion to cheese after some persistent trips to the neighborhood McDonald’s. Back in China, I had never had the luxury of visiting the McD; the few outlets pioneering in China then were grouped in with Michael Jackson and Coca Cola as symbols of America, the top of

A Different Kind of Spam

2006-02-09T14:20:00.000+08:00

Last night around 7pm the land-line phone rang in my Beijing apartment, as I was getting ready for a dinner party. The caller ID indicated a number from overseas. I picked up the phone and found a pre-recorded Chinese program coming through the line. I was about to hang up on the spam call before I heard the name “Gao Zhisheng” mentioned in the program. Gao was the dissident human rights

Cultural Misunderstanding

2006-02-09T14:17:00.000+08:00

I was waiting for the bus with my dad a few days ago on a cold Chengdu evening when Terry called from Beijing. After exchanging some greetings, she said I have a cultural question for you. I cringed in silence – please not another question about how to exchange business cards in China. Terry is a friend of a friend from the US. She had just finished her MBA degree and decided to brave the

Pay Per Fortune

2006-02-02T16:13:00.000+08:00

A good friend called from Taipei on the 2nd day of the Chinese New Year to wish me a happy new year. I should go to a temple, he said; the 2nd day of the new year was the day to seek gods’ help in suppressing the evil spirits (压太岁), otherwise the spirits would harass me for the entire year. I hung up the phone and realized that I had forgotten to ask whether I should go pray to Buddhist or

Cured Memory

2006-01-29T20:15:00.000+08:00

When I was in primary and high schools in the 1980s, preparation for the Chinese New Year would start one month before the holiday. My family, like every other family in the work unit, cured our own pork and made spicy sausages. I still remember watching my mom’s frost-bitten fingers massaging spices and salt onto pork chunks, and my dad, with the help of chopsticks, stuffing ground pork mixed

What's Truth Good For?

2006-01-29T20:11:00.001+08:00

[Below is a long comment from a Chinese blogger on my blog entry What’s Memory Good For? on MSN Spaces. I’m not sure being a statistic sample of one, how much of it could represent the opinions of young people born in the 80s. But I greatly appreciates its sincerity and thus translated it below for those who can’t read Chinese.]This is a warm article. I could even feel your compassion. “What’

Sayonara, Chinafool

2006-01-26T22:14:00.000+08:00

The editor of Beijing Weekend, the English weekly I'm writing a column for, considered my pseudonym Chinafool unbecoming. So I chose a new pseudonym, Beijing Loafer, for both the column and my MSN Spaces mirror blog which the column links to. Right before I moved to Beijing, I read W. Somerset Maughm's Razor's Edge. In that book, when asked what he planned to do in Paris, Larry replied, "to

What's Memory Good For?

2006-01-24T11:56:00.002+08:00

(All quotes were transcribed from my video footage.)Before I went to the seminar on Memory and Literature last Saturday, I had lunch with a friend of a friend who’s writing an article on urban Chinese for a British newspaper. She asked what I thought of the generation gaps. I’m not familiar with the mindset of the younger generations, I said; my observation was that they seem more into

Borrow A Mouthful

2006-01-20T13:59:00.000+08:00

[Below is the transcript of part of the dialogue I had with a Beijing cabdriver yesterday, thanks to my tiny MP3 voice recorder which I carry everywhere now with me. Mr. Wang is in his late 40s. He’s been driving cabs in Beijing for 20 years. Ten years ago, he made 3-4000 yuan a month, which was a lot of money. Now he makes only 1800-2000/month (US$200-250), below the average income for

The Good Shots

2006-01-16T17:46:00.000+08:00

I fell asleep while waiting for the cops to come. I had planned to visit a family church in Hebei province over the weekend. On Thursday, however, I heard that on the previous Sunday, several cops harassed the family church in Beijing that I’ve been following. They visited the church after most of the congregation were gone, and copied down the ID card information of the person in charge. Nobody

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

2006-01-11T12:20:00.000+08:00

My friend Lynn, an American reporter based in Beijing, introduced me to two Qi Gong master friends of hers at her Christmas party. “You really believe that?” I asked her quietly in the kitchen after the introduction. “Yeah.” She replied with the usual enthusiasm, “Last time when Mr. Liang used his Qi on me, I felt a strong force pushing me. Her wife over there,” she pointed at a plain-looking

Work Team Is In Town

2006-01-09T01:02:00.000+08:00

When George Bush visited Beijing recently, I was in Shanghai translating for an American production company that was bringing a kick-ass music production to China. I had completely forgotten about his visit until I arrived at the famous outdoor Xiangyang market with a group of American colleagues. Knockoffs of the most famous brands were nowhere in sight. Instead, hustlers approached us in hushed

China, a semantic problem?

2006-01-04T02:52:00.000+08:00

I posted the story Hung Up on Dec 21 about the Beijing cops shutting down a Gay & Lesbian Cultural Festival billed as China’s first. Danwei, a well-known blog on media in China, quoted my blog in their story “Chinese government: It's OK to be gay, just don't make a fuss”. The author of that story noted that the state-owned Beijing Review had just published a front-cover article about the

Google, please bribe the government

2006-01-04T00:46:00.000+08:00

I sent up a mirror blog on MSN at the end of December to make my writing accessible in China (China blocks almost all the other blog providers that I know of). When I tried to copy my interests over from Blogger to MSN Spaces, MSN blocks me from including the word “bondage” as in the title of one my favorite books, Of Human Bondage. I could use the world “sex”, “threesome” or “S&M”, just not “

Rent For The New Year

2006-01-01T20:59:00.000+08:00

It greatly saddened me that on New Year’s eve, my favorite Broadway musical, Rent, did not pack the house with all the rebels in Beijing, however many there are. The seats were only 60-70% full. The show was supposed to run for 3 nights in Beijing with the possibility to extend for 2 more, depending on ticket sales. But on the first day, the performance was cancelled 4 hours before show time.

Matrix Sucks

2005-12-31T02:17:00.001+08:00

I’ve been pitching an idea for a documentary series on Olympics lately (I know I know – all talk, no action). The idea is to follow eight Beijing individuals in the last two years of Beijing’s preparation for the 2008 Olympics. I thought this would be totally PG. No discussion of politics. No criticism of the government. No prostitute, or AIDS patient, or displaced migrant worker. Just 8

To Receive Tip Is Glorious

2005-12-28T22:27:00.000+08:00

Since Deng famously declared that “to get rich is glorious”, the only money that my Chinese compatriots still refuse to take seems to be service tip, which is bizarre because first, it’s completely legit, and secondly, it does not hurt anybody in any conceivable way. When I first moved back to China in the summer of 2004, I was constantly intrigued by the military-style training of restaurant

Christmas underground

2005-12-27T00:14:00.000+08:00

My first experience with a Chinese underground Christian church was very above the ground; in fact, 20 floors above. I went there with a friend yesterday, on Christmas day. We arrived at an apartment complex just outside the 4th ring road at 2pm. The buildings looked no different from any other dotting Beijing’s expanding footprint – new on the outside but quickly decaying on the inside.My friend

What Lies Beneath

2005-12-23T00:00:00.000+08:00

By the time I met up with Hoo for lunch today, I was exhausted by the interview in the morning. Hoo had helped me identify candidates for my documentary on “gay marriage” in China. After we met, he suggested having lunch at Party World, an upscale KTV chain, which is close to his office and offers free buffet lunch. My interview was actually not about gay and marriage in China. This morning I

Stupid Gay Writer and Disgusting Sunny Morning

2005-12-20T09:48:00.000+08:00

I woke up late this morning so I hurried to get myself a cup of coffee, start Yoyo Ma's Baroque music and begin writing. Between coffee sips and writing fits, I glanced at the sunny day outside and through my window, the same view of the shiny new Beijing TV Tower in construction. At 9:40am my cell phone rang. The call was from a number I didn't recognize. "Hello?" I answered."Hi. In our

Hung Up

2005-12-17T12:21:00.000+08:00

Friday, December 16, 2005[11:00am]Received a text message from my friend Bill that the first gay & lesbian cultural festival has changed venue. It was supposed to start this evening in 798, the hip art warehouse district. Not really surprised because back in the summer, the 2nd Beijing Gay Film Festival had to change venue at the last minute from Peking University to 798. Police and politics

Gay Marriage, China Style (I)

2005-12-15T01:11:00.000+08:00

Desperate to start my next documentary after too many false starts, I went to www.bjboy.net, a popular Beijing gay website, to look for a gay angle. I found this posting on their bulletin board:“ [seeking marriage material] Wonderful Beijing lesbian ISO gay for nominal marriageMy girlfriend: Beijinger, 26 yrs old, 172 cm, master’s degree, financially independent, cultured, good temperament,

A grain of salt

2005-12-11T13:30:00.000+08:00

I hadn’t had the desire to read Jung Chang’s Wild Swans until her Mao: The Unknown Story came out and caused a heated public debate. Wild Swans seemed to me yet another Cultural Revolution tear jerker which we Chinese had swallowed enough of. Recently, however, I became more and more intrigued by her book on Mao and decided to tackle the Wild Swans first. The read has proved extremely

The Illusioin of Lonely Planet

2005-12-06T17:51:00.000+08:00

We wrapped up shooting at 3am Sunday morning in Old Town Shanghai near the Yu Garden. It was freezing and I was hugging my latte tightly. The water truck was coughing its way through the streets to create the effect of a recent rainfall when I had a revelation – “See,” I said to a fellow assistant standing next to me while pointing at the lights and the extras that were producing the illusion

Squeeze the Bubble

2005-12-02T11:02:00.000+08:00

The Chinese government has taken this year's World Aids Day seriously. Most newspapers had extensive coverage of events marking that day before, on and after Dec 1st. In today's Oriental Morning Post (a Shanghai newspaper), reportage ranged from a new AIDS-themed restaurant that gives out condoms to diners, junior high students volunteering to educate their peers, Fudan University students

Not So Fast

2005-12-01T16:10:00.000+08:00

The positions on a Hollywood blockbuster production seem to me finely defined, and the pros work with great efficiency and precision. Because of that efficiency, people idle on the set when their services are not called for.Last night in Lujiazui, the skyscraper central of Shanghai’s Pu Dong district, there’s much idling during the night shooting. I had a long conversation with a 40-something

Sandy and Peter

2005-11-26T19:16:00.000+08:00

I felt sorry for Sandy, my boss’s wife, on our ride from Shanghai to the small Zhejiang town for shooting on location. Sandy, who’s riding with me and my boss’s personal assistant Peter, was told that the town we were heading towards had great scenery. Instead, all we found outside the car windows were highways, construction sites that turned the earth upside and down, drab concrete housings

Tough Week Rap

2005-11-21T01:00:00.000+08:00

It’s been a tough week. Last Sunday I went to a farewell party, a regular scene in Beijing for the transient expat crowd. I had an argument with a Singaporean about the riot in the Paris suburb. The Singaporean, living in the fancy expat compound and making good expat salary, was genuinely confused by the fact that the rioters would still riot when their per capita income is so much higher than

Same old story

2005-11-13T15:17:00.000+08:00

Let’s say Mr. And Ms. Lee had been friends of your family for a long time, maybe since when you were born. Maybe you had been their only son’s best friend since high school, the two of you having gone to college, then to the US together. Let’s say that Mr. Lee’s son hated to visit China, because he hated the rotten Chinese family he had. So every time you went back to Beijing, you would visit

No Ask, No Tell

2005-11-09T13:59:00.000+08:00

When we moved into our new three-bedroom apartment, our friend Clayton reminded us every chance he got, “oh oh, you’ve got to hire Xiao Luo as your Ayi (maid). He’s so good at cleaning, doing laundry, and everything else in the household. He even pays the phone bills for you. And he needs the money right now cause his wife is pregnant with their second baby.”Clayton is the kind of friend who’d

Chinese are not racist (Part II)

2005-11-04T19:30:00.000+08:00

I’d been trying to get into Maggie’s for the past one year and a half since I moved to Beijing. It’s not that I desperately needed to hookup with Beijing girls (Heaven forbid!). But Maggie’s reputation as the ultimate pickup joint in Beijing intrigued me. I imagined a place draped in aged velvet and lit by red lanterns, a cross between Moulin rouge and an opium den. In the summer of 2004 I

Chinese are not racist (Part I)

2005-10-31T22:39:00.000+08:00

Overheard while walking home in the evening darkness – Two young women and one guy, all white-collar office worker type, strolled behind me, looking like having just finished dinner together. Girl 1: Now it’s your turn to tell a joke. Guy: Ok. (Thinking for a beat) Here’s one. A Chinese guy prayed to God, “God, please let me fly.” God heard his prayer and granted his wish. He gave him two

One needs patience in China

2005-10-26T21:04:00.000+08:00

Eight fifty in the morning, while still brushing teeth, I got a call from a reporter. I had sent my resume to all the foreign correspondents in Beijing to look for freelance interpreter job. Eric was the first one called. He had just been granted an interview with the CEO of Phoenix TV at the last minute. Phoenix TV is the largest Chinese-language satellite TV provider. Partly owned by

The Future Ahead

2005-10-24T12:55:00.000+08:00

It’s 10 am in the morning and I’m listening to KQED (the San Francisco public TV/radio station) streaming online and doing my part-time job. Directly ahead outside the window of my study, two construction cranes are waltzing away on the site where two business towers will stand one day. Behind them is the soaring Beijing TV Tower in construction, its empty metal frames glistening in the morning

Blame it on Maria Callas

2005-10-18T11:05:00.000+08:00

I got up in the morning with a cold. After finishing breakfast, I sat down in front of my computer with my coffee to start my daily routine – an hour’s part-time work for Google to make my meal money, then writing, and stressing over not being able to write. I listened to Maria Callas and surfed the web a little. There’s news that the famous writer Ba Jin had just passed away. I read a long

The place is gay no more

2005-10-12T21:33:00.000+08:00

I’d been away from Beijing for two weeks this time and nothing had changed in my neighborhood, except that the construction site for the Ritz Carlton has more glass windows on it now. That was strange. Usually there should at least be some restaurants popping up here and there. Or perhaps I’ve been staying inside all day since I got back thus haven’t noticed any change?I spent the past two days

Coming home

2005-10-10T21:24:00.000+08:00

On this trip to the US I stayed for two weeks, and it took me a week and a half to clear my lungs off the dust deposited by the Beijing air. Pedestrians would turn their heads when my itchy throat involuntarily gave out loud hawks. I often felt like a migrant worker in Beijing under the stare of the nice old American ladies, and had the urge to spit even though I don’t do it in Beijing.

Ying vs. Yang

2005-10-07T03:46:00.000+08:00

It’s 2am. I sat on the beige-colored carpet floor in Ying and Yang’s townhouse in Orange County. The midnight air brought in mixed scents of flowers. The water fountain serenaded quietly not too far away. Yet next to me sitting across from each other, Ying and Yang were mentioning the unthinkable – separation, alimony, child support…They had been together for 11 years, married for 7. Like me

More Easy Money

2005-09-24T00:23:00.000+08:00

When I told my friend Shane the story of the Easy Money, he stared at me incredulously. After several OMGs, he asked me two questions:First, "what did you do that gave them access to your phone number? I didn't get a message on my phone. They couldn't possibly spam everyone to invite the sniffing cops in. Sure you did something..."I swore to god that my memory of all my sober moments didn't

Easy Money

2005-09-23T00:31:00.000+08:00

A few days ago I received a spam message on my mobile. It was different from the regular "airline ticket discount!" or "new apartments at super low prices" spam. It read: Beijing Dynasty Hotel (five star) now urgently seeks three-company misters/misses. Healthy physique and decent looks, 18 to 40 years old. Monthly income over 10k RMB (note: $1.2k US) plus commission. Part-time ok.

A Simple Afternoon

2005-09-18T18:08:00.000+08:00

I was having a writer’s block when Owen called right after lunch, “do you remember the bar TV company I mentioned to you once? The one backed by some Swedish investment?” “Oh yeah,” I answered, always embarrassed at my weak memory. “You should meet them. How about we meet in their lobby in an hour?” he said. Tired of browsing through New York Times online, I agreed. I met Owen a month ago when

A Progressive Education

2005-09-15T10:48:00.000+08:00

There had been two others before I resigned from my assistant position on the movie production set. Simon, the head accountant, left after being fed up with overseeing the “complex” finances of the co-production. I did it in order to focus on my own projects. Yong’s excuse was something novel, I thought at first, in the current day and age. “The school informed me last week that I had to go

Crying Babies

2005-09-09T12:12:00.000+08:00

“Don’t call her stupid,” the director rushed onto the set. He had just learned from the bilingual script supervisor that the Chinese actress playing the nun was saying ƒ„’Ê±Ω°°(you are really stupid) to the female American protagonist. We were shooting a scene in which the protagonist offered to help the nuns take care of the babies. But she had had no prior experience with babies. The nun

Drinking with Chinese characteristics

2005-09-05T23:10:00.000+08:00

Sanlitun is the granddaddy of Beijing’s bar culture. It’s a street in the leafy embassy district, cutting across Chinese residential buildings from after the liberation. Bars and restaurants serving Western fares opened up there, I guess in the 1980s, catering to expats who had the money to seek leisure in the then grey-Mao-suit-only Beijing. Now the main street attracts mostly tourists,

Dinner with Nicole Kidman

2005-08-23T00:38:00.000+08:00

11:00am In the van to the studio for morning crew call with my two bosses. Late start due to a late midnight wrap last night. Read newspaper article on a medical “accident” where a patient died in the hospital after a car accident because his family was 100 yuan (US$12) short for a blood transfusion. The family had 400 yuan total. A blood transfusion cost 540. The wife begged the doctor to

Alaska dreaming

2005-08-14T11:25:00.000+08:00

The film co-production I’m working on assigned a van to each department. Mr. Hong is our department’s driver. The middle-aged Mr. Hong is loud and vivacious, guffawing easily whenever my Australian boss attempts to speak Chinese. Yet unlike the other drivers on the team, he never lifts up his T shirt to cool his protruding belly, no matter how hot the weather gets. “Housing in that area is

Got till it's gone

2005-08-09T14:33:00.000+08:00

I live in a gated community in Beijing’s CBD, Central Business District. It is one of the many high-rise apartment complexes that are shooting up in Beijing’s posh neighborhoods, which are many, catering to expats and rich Beijingers (don’t ask why I’m living there). Where I live, the rooms all have Western-style amenities, and the complex has a gym where half of the people exercising are white

Divine intervention

2005-07-29T19:57:00.000+08:00

(disclaimer: no disrespect to anybody meant in the piece below)I decided to shelf the documentary project on Christians in Beijing for now when I visited the Guangwashi Church again two weeks ago. It was a humid Thursday evening. I arrived at 7:40pm to catch the Youth Congregation which the young Minister Zhao had strongly recommended me attending on a prior visit. I had a lengthy discussion

Chinese words

2005-07-22T20:05:00.000+08:00

On my way to the Beijing Grand Hyatt today, I was busy memorizing Chinese translations of English words. One of my close friends had helped me got an English-Chinese interpreter job at a big seminar on online marketing. I had done a few Chinese-English interpretations before so I accepted the offer with many assurances to him that I could do the job well. It wasn’t until when I got into the