Some Random Notes on Filmmaking, Art, Music, and Identity

I just watched a great film on that very subject, the Banksy documentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop" about the underground filmmaker Thierry Guetta (if you can call him that--film collector is more accurate) who turned his obsession for filming street artists into a career as a "street artist."  I wonder if people who film documentaries about artists aren't themselves aspiring to be the artist in the film.  Of course we can all agree that Jia Zhangke is already an accomplished "artist," in that the films he makes have an artistic quality to them. 

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Excavating China's Collective Unconscious: Some Good Contemporary Chinese Art Shows at Shanghai's Moganshan Art District

JJ's show opened on Sept 6 and I was there to witness his performance piece called "water".  This involved the projection of several historical photos of famous Chinese political figures, including of course Chairman Mao, on a blank wall while JJ used water and a large brush to paint images on the wall.  These images faded along with the projections and were then written over or juxtaposed with each other to form a watery impression of recent Chinese history.  He used water as a motif throughout the performance, painting waves and also projecting images of waves on the wall along with the historic figures.  

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China's Basketball Brawls: Aggression vs. Etiquette on the Courts and on the Road

I'm writing this entry in appreciation of fellow China scholar and Dartmouth alum Victor Mair's analysis posted on the MCLC e-list (see below) of the recent basketball game between the Georgetown Hoyas and Bayi Rockets, which ended in an orgy of violence involving the players and the mostly Chinese audience.  It strikes me that the dark reading of this event by some Western media outlets e.g. "Basketball Brawl Symbolized Growing U.S.-China Tensions" goes a bit too far.  Mair's analysis, putting the game into context with other similar events, has much greater explanatory value.  

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On Chua, Chinese Mothers, and Educating Our Daughter in Shanghai

Recently a Yale Law Professor named Amy Chua published a piece in the Wall Street Journal on raising her children, called provocatively “Chinese Mothers are Superior.”  The title is ambiguous.  What are these “Chinese mothers” superior at doing?  Denying their kids the basic rights and freedoms of childhood?  Forcing them to endure grueling hours of practice on their instruments?  Making sure they get “perfect” grades in school and perform at Carnegie Hall, and humiliating and shaming them if they do not?  All of the above it seems.

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A review of _Shanghai's Dancing World_ in _China Quarterly_

The prestigious journal China Quarterly just published the first review of my new book _Shanghai's Dancing World:  Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919-1954_.  The reviewer, Kerry Brown, was kindly sympathetic to the arduous task involved in researching and writing this book, and he concentrates on describing the effort it took to assemble a picture of the ephemeral and fleeting cabaret industry from so many different sources.  I thank him from the bottom of my heart for his kind words, and above all, for getting the picture!

 

On Reading Peter Hessler’s latest book, Country Driving

I first heard about Peter Hessler several years ago, when his first book River Town, the story of his experience living in a town along the Yangzi River, became widely known.  At that time I had little interest in reading the book, having already lived in China for several years and having just earned a PhD in Chinese history from Columbia.  At that point a book about a young American “discovering” China for the first time was not high on my list of China readings.  Been there, done that was the thought in my mind.  Perhaps others among us “China heads” felt the same way.

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Ah, Those Wonderful Olympics (II)

Yesterday I posted a rant about how the Olympics ought to be depoliticized and treated as a game rather than a political spectacle.  Of course this in itself is a naive aspiration, since (as one of the commenters to my post rightly remarked) by its very nature the Olympics plays into our atavistic nineteenth century nationalisms, with nations sending their best athletes to compete for a countable stack of medals, to be tallied up at the end like coins. 

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Tempests in Teapots: The Beijing Olympics and the World Press

“I wish we could go back to the Cold War so that the Olympics would be interesting.”  Thus spakeAmerican actor John C. Reilly in jest during a mock interview with his co-star Will Ferrel for ESPN. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5ILh9X2wRA)  But the statement got me thinking about how the Beijing Olympics is being treated and mistreated by the international media.  First, there is the false promise, made by who knows who, that somehow the Olympics would CHANGE China.  I mean, let’s be serious.  This is a country of 1.3 billion people struggling over a very limited set of resources.  1.3 billion, foax.  Think on that for a minute.  If you took the entire population of America and subtracted it from China, YOU’D STILL HAVE A BILLION PEOPLE to feed, house, and clothe.  And you think a two-week sporting event is going to change their lives???

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(mis)Representing Beijing: A Review of _Beijing Time_ by Dutton et al

In an effort to cash in on the Olympics, a flurry of books has been published recently on the topic of Beijing. These include several histories of the city, such as Geremie Barme's _The Forbidden City_ and Lillian Li et al, Beijing: From Imperial Capital to Olympic City as well as books by Stephen Haw and Jasper Becker, all of which have come out in the past year or so. It seems that everyone is rushing to the publisher to get their Beijing book out before the Olympics hit in an effort to boost sales. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does have the potential pitfall of creating a bunch of hastily written thinkpieces.

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Sex and Politics in the Orient: An Interview with James Farrer

 James Farrer is a sociologist at Sophia University in Tokyo.  Author of the book _Opening Up:  Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai_ (Chicago, 2002) he specializes in the study of modern and contemporary sexuality in China and Japan.  For several years, James and I have been collaborating on various projects surrounding nightlife cultures in Shanghai and Tokyo (see my previous blogs on Dr. Sex Life and on our special nightlife issue).  I've been meaning to post an interview with him about his various research projects for a while now.  Finally got round to it.  Here are my questions to James and his responses:

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A Message to China: Stop Eating Shark Fin Soup! 鱼翅汤背后的成本：鲨鱼可能消失

For some years now, ocean scientists and many other concerned citizens around the world have been aware of the danger that shark finning is bringing to the world.  Sharks are being consumed by the millions, just for their fins.  After being brutally definned, their bodies are tossed back into the ocean to die.  This is going on in support of a multi-billion dollar industry surrounding the purported benefit of shark fins for human health—a completely unsubstantiated belief.  China is especially guilty of contributing to the extinction of sharks worldwide.  Here in China, shark fin soup is considered a delicacy, and people pay a premium to consume it. 

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Shanghai in May: A Renewed Love Affair with the City

May has arrived in Shanghai, and with it the best weather this city offers.  The trees are all in full leafy array.  Birds twitter in the parks.  The skies are generally sunny, and the air is warm but not yet hot and sultry.  A cool breeze blows through the city, keeping the air as clean as a metropolis of 20 million residents could be.

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Tintin in the Land of Snow: Tibet, China, and the West

Ah, Tibet.  Land of the high plateau, the monstrous snowy peaks, the lofty lamaseries, and the mysterious Yeti.  When I was a child, I devoured the Tintin books.  The story of how Tintin and Captain Haddock bravely rescue the Chinese boy Chang after Tintin has a premonitional dream of his friend surviving a plane wreckage somewhere in the mountains of Tibet—what an epic tale!  Who could forget the surly Nepalese porter, the wonderfully humane Abbot who harbours Tintin and the Captain after their near death, the levitating seer, the heroic struggle and refusal to abandon their Chinese friend despite all the dangers, and of course, the loveable and misunderstood Yeti?

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Dartmouth in Beijing Presents: Preserving the Hutongs of Beijing

 Last fall, at the end of the Dartmouth in Beijing FSP program, my students delivered several outstanding presentations on the history and contemporary society of Beijing.  I am putting these online so that others may benefit from them.  The file size is a problem, since these are all nearly one-hour presentations, so I've compressed this one in mp4 form, hence the fairly low quality.  If anybody has an idea for doing it better, let me know.  This presentation is about the Hutong neighborhoods of Beijing and what is and can be done to preserve them.

Sparrow Village: A Film about China's Miao Minority People

Two days ago for the NYU program in Shanghai we watched a film about a Miao village in Guizhou, directed by Christine Choy, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who teaches at NYU and is currently teaching for our program.  The film, called "Sparrow Village," focuses on the lives of young girls in a mountainous Miao village who make a three-hour trek every week to the nearest school to be educated. 

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Nile Perch and Blue Jeans: Videographing inequalities in globalized labor in China and Africa

Anybody concerned with globalization and the inequalities it produces ought to be aware of where the clothing and food he or she consumes on a daily basis comes from and who made it.  Yet when it comes to the labor that goes into producing our consumables in the modern industrial world, as Karl Marx understood so well, we are too often in the dark.  Enter two filmographers who have managed to shed some light on the globalizing forces of labor and production.

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