Explore Beijing from the comfort of your living room with Baidu’s 3D maps:

I used to live in the future...

I can only assume that Google is still reticulating splines for NYC…

The map ends a few short blocks from Rem Koolhaas' CCTV building...

PBR: three letters that spell the beginning of the End for Eastern Civilization.

However, as with just about every Chinese variant, the adjective ‘bizarro’ prevails: Evan Osnos of the New Yorker applauds Danwei’s eye for PBR’s PRC rebranding as Blue Ribbon 1844 (蓝带啤酒), a premium craft beer.

That reliably blue-collar Milwaukee lager, later adopted by unbearable hipsters on the coasts, has turned up in China. And P.B.R., best known in the U.S. for being the cheapest beer on the grocery-store shelf, has—like so many expatriates before it—taken the move as an opportunity to change its image. For a beer, that appears to involve an elegant glass bottle and a fantastically ridiculous price tag. One bottle: forty-four dollars.

–Evan Osnos, Pardon Me, Would You Have Any Pabst Blue Ribbon
Letter from China blog on The New Yorker, July 19 2010

Osnos, ever duly diligent, also includes this link to PBR [advertising] through the ages. In fact, the story is so fascinating that he has just posted a follow-up post with a few choice quotes from PBR / BR1844 Brewmaster / Chief Representative – Asia Alan Kornhauser. Short of outright plagiarism, the relevant excerpt is reproduced below:

I formulated a special high-gravity ale called “1844.” It’s all malt, and we use caramel malts from Germany. The initial aging is dry-hopped rather heavily. Then we do a secondary aging in new uncharred American oak whiskey barrels. We bought 750 brand new barrels to the tune of $100,000. This is a very special beer; it’s retailing for about over $40 U.S. for a 720 ml bottle.

–Interview with Alan Kornhauser, All About Beer, July 2010

Indeed, Osnos’ colleague (New Yorker Beer Correspondent) Jesse Rodriguez notes that:

Traditional P.B.R. is light and fizzy with a distinct cloying malt profile, while the B.R. 1884 [sic] has a rounder mouthfeel with a notable hop presence on the front palate and finish. Is it worth the money? Probably not, but it’s definitely not a P.B.R.

–Jesse Rodriguez in Pabst in China, Continued,
Letter from China blog on The New Yorker, July 21 2010

The interview continues with a few more telling tidbits:

There’s an audience there for it?

There’s the nouveau riche, and in China, perception is everything—look at me, I’m rich. Then also, there is another group that may be part of our market, and that’s state banquet dinners. Normally, you’d drink brandy, and this beer kind of has the look of brandy—it’s a reddish-brown color, but it won’t hurt you as much.

The beer combines a new flavor and a Western status symbol. Apart from the prestige, how are you selling these new tastes?

It’s new on the market, so I’m not sure exactly how it’s going—I have very little to do with the sales side. There is a TV commercial that’s quite attractive, that uses old still photos of the early days of Pabst, back when they used wooden barrels there.

What’s Pabst’s story in China?

We were the first foreign brewery in China, since the liberation in 1949—as it’s called there. We’re doing about one and a half million barrels there. Our first brews were, I believe, 1993; I didn’t get there until 1998. At that time, the largest-selling foreign brand in China was Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Read all about it…

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Possibly more related than one might think: the hipster fashion cycle.

I would hypothesize that Chinese fashion fundamentally differs from Western trends (to which the infographic applies) at the mainstream and conservative stages, where the former tends to correlate with (said) nouveau riche and the latter is either mainstream in the Western sense or more traditional Chinese. Nostalgia, then, would be informed by Western trickle-down imagery, while the ironic stage is virtually non-existent.

Though there are examples of ironic style on display in China—Mao’s face, red stars, military regalia are today worn with something less than earnestness—there is also more at stake in young people’s fashion choices.

–J. David Goodman, Are There Really No Hipsters in China?, Slate, April 21 2010

Flavorwire via PSFK

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Why the FCH is still a rare breed: Smart, Young and Broke; insert bad pun about higher education not necessarily being hire education. (Thanks Eugene; cf.)

A long-delayed (if not long-awaited) follow-up to Part 1. I would also suggest (re)reading my first impressions of the Beijing indie rock scene, and I strongly advise you to listen to the following track while you read this post (and, hopefully, while you do other things in the future):

» Carsick Cars – 中南海 (6:45) – 11.22MB mp3 @ 232kbps

All photos by the amazing Matthew Niederhauser, who offers an insider’s perspective on the Chinese rock underground, specifically D-22/Maybe Mars:

Wired.com: As an indie rock fan in the United States, I don’t feel like a similar scene could exist here anymore without the bands being marginalized as posers and hipsters. But in your photos there seems to be an authenticity in the subjects that can’t be faked. Is this just my perception as a Westerner looking in, or do you think there’s something about really tough circumstances in China leading to more authentic rock and attitude?

Niederhauser: The socioeconomic circumstances of China cannot be divorced from the music scene.
…
[These musicians] are repelled by and don’t wish to participate in a largely vacuous and inherently unsustainable consumer culture taking hold of China. While they might not brazenly attack the government, their embrace of such a fringe lifestyle along with the music they produce is a powerful statement in and of itself. This choice comes with a social stigma that is hard to imagine outside of China.

–Matthew Niederhauser, Scenes from the Beijing Rock Underground,
Wired, December 2009 (highly recommended)

During my second month in Beijing, I continued to explore the indie rock scene, to the extent that this lengthy postscript to my initial thoughts on ‘Beijing Rock City‘ is a felicitous introduction to this second look at the Fabled Chinese Hipster.

With no idea how to go about pirating music, I went out of my way to catch hyped bands such as ReTROS and Pet Conspiracy at their concerts. Meanwhile, I came to enjoy the likes of Carsick Cars and B6—probably my two favorite Chinese acts, at this point—by purchasing their albums (in retrospect, I should have gone pre-teen rock-virgin style and bought every CD I could get my hands on).

In fact, in many ways, it was like going back a decade in time, to those glorious teenage days when every five minutes on Napster yielded a new rock ‘n’ roll gem. In a particularly portentous coincidence, I happened to discover the likes of the Velvet Underground, early Red Hot Chili Peppers and Radiohead in Chinese bootleg form on the relatively lawless streets of Beijing in the early days of cheap CD-burners—as did many of my fellow countrymen (the rebellious teens of my generation, at least), including Zhang Shouwang of Carsick Cars:

The generation before us didn’t have as many chances to get to know the rock music of Western countries, but nowadays we listen to music from many other countries. I believe that when my bands write songs, we might be influenced some elements of Western culture. I think the next generation of bands will be much different than ours.

Carsick Cars is China’s answer to New York’s (/NJ) holy trinity of feedback-drenched songcraft: Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo; in keeping with the fuzz aesthetic, a couple of their songs from the first album are deadringers for Jesus & Mary Chain. Say what you want about influences and imitation, it’s pure rock ‘n’ roll: guitar tones that are simultaneously warm and bright, backed by thick slabs of bass and unfussy drums—and Carsick Cars a damn good band for it.

I’ve been hooked on their hit single (for lack of a better term) “中南海” since I first heard it last fall, after buying their albums directly from Maybe Mars’ headquarters near where I was staying. It’s a fairly simple song: the lyrics consist mostly of one phrase (”中南海”; literally “Middle South Sea” [Zhōng nánhǎi; sounds vaguely like "drunk not high"]) repeated over a catchy riff; the album version disintegrates into a pleasantly noisy breakdown—just to prove that they can—where the song would normally be truncated for radio, before cutting back for one last uplifting refrain.

And before you know, it’s over.

Is it a question of nature or nurture, as with La Loupe? Am I somehow predisposed to like Carsick Cars based on a felicitous confluence of certain conditions of my birth (i.e., ethnicity) and certain formative cultural stimuli (viz., high school friend Mark burning Modest Mouse, Belle & Sebastian, etc. for me)? Am I just the product of an unlikely punnet square, a cross between Chinese nature and indie kid (read: artsy suburban teenager) nurture?

Well, short answer: no. First of all, I think I can safely venture that Carsick Cars are a legitimately good indie rock band, Chinese or otherwise. In fact, there is absolutely no indication that they’re Chinese on the songs in which Zhang Shouwang sings in English. Yet he clearly feels strongly about his cultural identity, in a bizarro twist on my hybrid nature:

I would say my music is very Chinese, because I China is where I’m from. Because China doesn’t really have a history in rock ‘n’ roll, my generation has grown up on and been influenced by Western music. Thus, our process of making music has been very Western.

–Zhang Shouwang

Of course, if we share two counts of difference—ethnicity and musical taste— he is the one who can truly call China his home (not to mention the fact that he’s a successful musician and not just a fan).

I think the songs I write are Chinese in style because I live in China, and no matter how I am influenced by the West my main concepts are based on my country.

This is not to say that there is not or will never be an Original Chinese Sound, though I stand by my thesis that it is still pubescent.

Nearly 60 years of rock and punk was suddenly dumped on Chinese youth about 10 years ago, and how they continue to pick it apart and digest the fragments manifests in many different ways [sic].

–Matthew Niederhauser, Scenes from the Beijing Rock Underground,
Wired, December 2009

So yes, there is a legitimate indie rock subculture in Beijing, whether you compare it to New York (or Portland, London, or wherever) in the 70’s (or 80’s, 90’s, 00’s, or whenever). But I don’t think that it has evolved into a full-fledged hipster culture (at least not of its own accord): that is what supposedly comes next. While the resurgence of, say, 80’s style is regarded as the surest symptom of hipsteria in American cities, Niederhauser (and Goodman, from Part 1, for that matter) seems amenable to Chinese hipsterwear as an overt identifier, at least to the extent that there is some level of risk in aligning oneself with an alternative subculture. If contemporary alt fashion in the Western world—be it punk, hip-hop, skater, whatever—simply lacks the significance that it did when it reflected an original subculture, it does represent an authentic one for Chinese youth.

Other commentators are less sympathetic:

[Kids at rock shows] give cool looks and are aloof, eyes gazing idly towards the bands. They dress retro, hip, bohemian, punk, creative, whatever. Consuming this “alternative” trend has become the mainstream fashion of the day.
…
There was a time when rock meant more. But twenty years have passed… and a more fashionable reason, namely having style, has sprung up and overtaken what the old rockers stood for—freedom of speech and liberalization. Bands now sing about material things, observing people’s opinions on money and the need for affluent lives. Not only this, increasingly more people on the scene need to have an outfit first—an outfit that befits the lifestyle.
…
Like the hipsters who congregate around Brooklyn, Chinese hipsters wear outdated things, conceived by the older generation as cheap, ugly, or simply sportswear for semi-professionals or soccer-flaying boys.

–Alice Xin Liu, Beijing Rock Scene Is Inspired by Hipster Chic,
Huffington Post, May 6 2010

Her commentary serves as a nice cliffhanger/segué into the forthcoming conclusion of this series of essays, but a few more notes on the FCH in Beijing Rock City:

• Young people in Chinese are a secondary audience to Western mass media—i.e., outside observers to the media that caters to, shapes, and all but defines youth culture in the West. The one-time gold standard for that elusive demographic was MTV, since deposed by a series of tubes, which was (and perhaps still is) much a marketing machine as a media outlet, which understood its audience at least as much as its audience understood it. (This must be related, somehow.)

  Perhaps a misguided MTV approach inspired the latest series of grossly overbranded, highly disorganized, and regrettably underproduced music festivals that marked the May Holiday in Beijing.

Westerners working in marketing in China often spout forth that Chinese kids do not mind branding. In fact, our research actually shows that youth in China actually feel safer about an event if there is some level of branding involved. Strawberry Festival organizers are certainly taking this philosophy to the limit.

–Art vs Commerce – A Review of Beijing Festival Weekend,
China Music Radar, May 4 2010

• As with any buzzworthy creative movement, there is bound to be backlash: Max-Leonhard von Schaper of Rock in China, a wiki for rock in China, recently posted a couple of articles contesting the prevalence D-22/Maybe Mars’ media campaign (cf. Pitchfork backlash?) Call me biased, but Niederhauser singlehandedly dismantles these arguments in his intensely passionate riposte (I recommend reading it in full if you’re remotely interested).
• More Niederhauser (between him and Zhang Shouwang: two more things I should just marry already).

Ines Brunn after Li Wei

Some notes on the People’s Republic before the second chapter on the Fabled C[hinese]hipster…

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Wu Yulu’s amazing mechanical men:

After suffering a series of life changing set backs such as a burnt down home, spraying himself with battery acid, and experiencing great financial debt—all in the name of art—Chinese farmer Wu Yulu is finally gaining some recognition for his homemade robots.

–Designboom

DB also has a gallery of Wu Yulu’s ‘Peasant Da Vincis’ for Cai Guo-Qiang’s inaugural exhibition at the newly restored Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai; some images interpolated below (cue egregiously ironic juxtaposition of images + text):

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Click image to see Robo-Pollock in action at DB

Chinese news site Southern Weekend recently sent intern Liu Zhiyi undercover at the Shenzhen site of Foxconn, “the world’s biggest contract electronics maker and a major supplier to Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other companies,” which has been under scrutiny for the suicides of nine workers this year (more background info at NYT):

I know of two groups of young people.

One group consists of university students like myself, who live in ivory towers and kept company by libraries and lake views. The other group works alongside steel machineries and large containers, all inside a factory of high-precision manufacturing environment.

–Liu Zhiyi, Southern Weekend via Engadget

The translated article is definitely worth reading, though the Apple connection clearly raises the profile of these otherwise-overlooked incidents.

Skeptics (or fans of Apple) have taken to pointing out that this suicide rate, in a plant with four hundred and twenty thousand workers, is no higher than that in a Chinese city of comparable size.

–Evan Osnos, Items of Interest, Letter from China blog on the New Yorker, May 25 2010

Again, clickthrough for sweet vids on DB...

On a lighter note:

“I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it, judging from the things I’ve made for them,” Chen said. “And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply throw it away. So wasteful and contemptible.”

–Chinese Factory Worker Can’t Believe The Shit He Makes For Americans, The Onion

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Essay Question (10 pts): To what degree does electronic music reflect the alienation of technology and hyperindustrialization?

Let me take this opportunity to explain my music. At first I liked drums, they were fast and noisy and that’s what I first produced. After a while I listened to more electronic, quieter music. I like fast music, but it’s more melodic as a general rule. I added more melody into my music, more baritone. My latest work has slowed down in comparison to my older music. In the past it’s always been very young, punkish, full of joy. Now, I like slower, blacker, darker music. Also, I like the Chinese influence. I cant explain it, I just like it. I add a little bit of Chinese music in everything.

–Sulumi, via Intel×Vice’s Creators Project

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A few more for good flavor:

• Wild Wild Westernization: “16 Items They Only Sell at Chinese Walmarts” (Buzzfeed)

Henri Cartier-Bresson – Shanghai, 1948

• A glimpse into a Chinese toy factory.

Li Wei via the Guardian

Lunzi Lun by Tyler Bowa of People's Bike

I meant to comment on J. David Goodman’s (of the Times‘ Spokes blog) Are There Really No Hipsters in China? when it was first posted on Slate three weeks ago, but (what I intended to be) a brief note has somehow mutated into yet another discursive piece on the ever-vilified subculture that I seem to have buried myself in.

Hence, a three-part discussion on a point I mentioned in passing in my previous open [read: incomplete] comment on hipsterdom: are Chinese hipsters more or less authentic than their Western counterparts? Well, it depends on your definition of hipster—which I glossed over in the aforementioned essay—and whether hip(ster)ness and authenticity are mutually exclusive.

Ines Brunn

The Chinese certainly have history on their side when it comes to bikes; whether or not this is counts as authenticity is less clear. Conversely, there is certainly some degree to which hipsters abuse irony to validate a contemporary subculture that is parasitic on, well, history.

Though there are examples of ironic style on display in China—Mao’s face, red stars, military regalia are today worn with something less than earnestness—there is also more at stake in young people’s fashion choices, making them “less likely to ‘play’ with their dress in a cynical or ironic manner,” Wu explained.

–J. David Goodman, Are There Really No Hipsters in China?, Slate, April 21 2010

In some sense, the overarching pragmatism that permeates Chinese culture seems to preclude irony on principle. Irony, as a fashion statement, falls on deaf ears: it is, in a manner of speaking, like learning another language. Whereas the Western world is one where we (hipsters or otherwise) can afford to be impractical, I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that 99% of the Chinese population would find it inconceivable to spend upwards of two months’ pay on an ostensibly outdated machine for transportation… especially when they are saving up for a car or, at very least, an electric bike (related video).

Ines Brunn

In other words, biking, in and of itself, simply is not subject to irony: it is a way of life, a symbol of tradition—or rather, the past.

A 20-year-old New York hipster can smoke a pipe or drink a really naff drink because it’s funny, but for someone in China, many of their equivalent peers don’t have the history and past knowledge of trends to understand what has been cool in the past.

–Nicole Fall, co-founder of Asian trend consultancy Five by Fifty
(in Are There Really No Hipsters in China?)

To Fall’s point, I would assert that the very concept of the hipster is founded on a highly ‘evolved’ (for lack fo better term) pop/consumer culture, where irony qua hipness is at least one generation removed from brand saturation. (I also have issues with her implication that [New York] hipsters can do things “because it’s funny”; more on this later.) As far as I can tell, Chinese mass culture has just crossed the threshold of postmodernity, at least to the extent that an emerging middle class has recently discovered the joy of brand fetishism.

They prefer brands that are recognizably luxury—Louis Vuitton, Prada, Bottega Veneta, etc.—over more ambiguous fashions.

A bike is not associated with luxury, no matter how expensive its vintage Italian frame might be.

–J. David Goodman, Are There Really No Hipsters in China?, Slate, April 21 2010

Nino by Tyler Bowa for People's Bike

So perhaps the Chinese concept of irony is not yet afflicted with the knowingness of the Western sensibility: once again, we face the question of whether Chinese hipsters are more or less authentic than, well, us. For them, hipster couture is simply another facet of the uncanny process of selective Westernization—even as the process is accelerated in a globalized/digital world—which is at once ahistorical and hypercontemporary.

There is a saying in Chinese: ‘Laugh at the poor, not the prostitutes… Hipster fashion only really works by communicating your irony—in other words, someone needs to ‘get it.’ Hipster irony in dress would most likely be misinterpreted in Chinese society as simple poverty or weirdness.

–Juanjuan Wu, author of Chinese Fashion From Mao to Now
(in Are There Really No Hipsters in China?)

Hipster culture, on the other hand, still seems slightly beyond their comprehension: the values and evolution of rebellious independent music, street art, cyclic fashion, etc., are lost on the Chinese. In effect, the funhouse mirror of Chinese hipness reflects China’s reaction to cultural imperialism in the broad sense, i.e. where Shanzai (cheap Chinese knockoffs) represent a sort of bizarro world of innovation through imitation.

Ines Brunn

So yes, ‘bike culture’—as independent of traditional Chinese culture—has a growing following in both Beijing and Shanghai: (mostly Western expat) advocates have planted the seeds of a grassroots movement, but it remains to be seen whether Chinese youth themselves will embrace fixed-gear biking to catalyze a full-fledged trend.

For many young Chinese today, the bicycle stands for much more than just a means of transportation. It is now a fast-growing culture, that consists of a large community dispersed throughout China. This is especially the case for fixed gears.

–Tyler Bowa, Can Hipster Youth Reinvigorate Bike Culture in China?, January 24 2010

Sandy Ley by Tyler Bowa of People's Bike

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Earlier today, Google announced that it is shutting down Google.cn. (Uncensored) Chinese searches are currently being redirected to Google.com.hk as the Search/Ad Giant hopes to make good on its promise to not be evil by challenging the Chinese government’s policy of Internet censorship.

The Internet was seen as a catalyst for China being more integrated into the world. The fact that Google cannot exist in China clearly indicates that China’s path as a rising power is going in a direction different from what the world expected and what many Chinese were hoping for.

–Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet project at UC Berkeley
Google Shuts China Site in Dispute over Censorship, The New York Times, 3/23/2010

It’s a bold move that has been applauded by many, including myself: the Great Firewall was perhaps my only plaint about my recent stay in Beijing.

However, there are some who sympathize with the PRC, painting Google as the symbol of Western imperialism in the Information Age. I agree that American criticism is inherently biased toward freedom of speech—a constitutionally inalienable right that may still seem foreign to many native Chinese (though perhaps not to the 400m+ Chinese Internet users)—but I’m impressed that Google is willing to sacrifice profit for principle nonetheless.

UPDATE: G vs C on NYT Room for Debate Blog, a fascinating look at China’s internet culture, WSJ on how Brin was forced out and an older essay on the Chinese scholars’ reliance on Google Scholar via Nature.

Back in January, Nowness posted a handful of production stills to mark the premiere of Yang Fudong’s “First Spring.” Well I’ve decided that they’re interesting enough to reblog here, a month and half a late to spite the title of their original source.

Meanwhile, the New York Times recently ran an interesting article on bloggers in Shanghai. The article suggests, in so many words, that Chinese blogs are regarded as documents of unique cultural significance, and that their archives should be dog-eared, in a manner of speaking, for their future historical value as chronicles of first- and secondhand accounts of life in the Web 2.0 era, not to mention a massive body of meta-level commentary.

“The Chinese migrant experience to Shanghai is going to be as important to the future Chinese self-image as the New York immigrant experience was to the American self-image,” he said.

But whatever its gaps and the limits, Mr. Wang said, the broad rise of blogging has meant a welcome increase in available information; and more information means a better idea of what is really happening in the city.

–Maile Cannon & Jingying Yang, “Bloggers Open an Internet Window on Shanghai,”
The New York Times, February 24, 2010

So it’s probably safe to assume that blogging in Shanghai (or Beijing, perhaps) is at once quite similar and quite different to blogging in, say, New York: I find that Chinese blogs are somehow both more and less authentic than their Western counterparts. It probably has something to do with the Western / American dogma of freedom of speech, but I’m not quite sure how or why.

BEIJING — Nearly two dozen artists protesting the forced demolition of their homes and studios marched through the ceremonial heart of the capital before the police intervened and prevented them from reaching Tiananmen Square, the artists said Tuesday.

…

The fight over the future of Beijing’s artist villages coincides with soaring real estate values and ugly scuffles over land expropriation, several of which have led to the suicides of those facing eviction. Widely publicized in the media, the suicides have helped prompt the government to consider modifying the nation’s urban redevelopment regulations.

–Andrew Jacobs, The New York Times

…because state-controlled gentrification is a sure way to prevent a housing crisis…

Full story & Reuters video clip at NYTimes.com. Also on the Guardian.

Handsome Furs are a Montreal indie rock duo who draw musical inspiration from their travels—Russia and Scandinavia for last year’s Face Control and their 2007 debut Plague Park, respectively. For anyone who is familiar with Dan Boeckner’s songwriting/guitar work for Wolf Parade, it should come as no surprise that the synthesis of his trademark punk riffage/yelping and his wife Alexei Perry’s keyboards/electronics over sequenced beats yields jittery indie pop.

The Furs’ second album was good enough to merit CNN’s blessing for an Asian tour last fall, flip-cameras in tow, including a handful of shows in China about a month and a half before I landed in Beijing. Their mission: to create authentic travel content for the Cable News Network.

Of course, it seems like a bit of a stretch for CNN to co-opt the indie cred of the relatively obscure Canadian duo, but Sub Pop pulled it off and I, for one, appreciate the production value: flip-vid footage, when edited properly, can pass for decent amateur cultural interest content. Indeed, each webisode consists of vicarious sightseeing excursions with the Handsome Furs.

Although the winsome pair invariably see Beijing through the eyes of tourists, Dan and Alexei still manage to come off as rather genuine when, for example, they rep Double Happiness (my cigarettes of choice). Similarly, brief clips of a gig at D-22 and a brief cameo by Nathaniel of Splitworks (who I had the pleasure of meeting towards the end of my stay) elicit a distinct personal resonance that, at the risk of sounding completely cliché, really brings me back.

Unfortunately, the videos are not embeddable—apparently CNN doesn’t care for free publicity—so you’ll have to go to the microsite at CNN.com/IndieAsia to watch the videos… and, of course, comment on them.

In response to the critics (see comments to episode 3): it’s supposed to be cultural interest with a twist, more like home videos than professional documentary, and the backlash at CNN’s (admittedly somewhat misguided) attempt to go digital seems entirely misplaced. Indie Asia is as transparent a media partnership as anything I’ve seen, and it’s not trying to be anything more than that.

The casting of the Handsome Furs is obviously an oblique, sublimated bid to attract the hipster demo—contrived, sure, but you can’t fault the network or the label for it, much less the band. CNN gave them some money to record what they do anyway (besides, of course, recording albums): travel and tour. Sounds like a good deal to me.

And to the Beijing residents who allege that Dan and Alexei somehow misrepresent the experience of living in China: nostalgia aside, they aren’t living in China. They’re just having a good time.

I think the cover of the latest issue of Vice is largely coincidental.

Happy Chinese New Year, if you’re into that sort of thing. Hell, happy Chinese New Year even you’re not into it—it’s going down tonight whether or not you observe it.

Tiger (Yang, 3rd Trine, Fixed Element Wood): Unpredictable, rebellious, colorful, powerful, passionate, daring, impulsive, vigorous, stimulating, sincere, affectionate, humanitarian, generous. Can be cold, restless, reckless, impatient, quick-tempered, obstinate, ruthless, selfish, aggressive, unpredictable, moody.

–Wikipedia

I’m not big on the commercialization of the national holiday, but I suppose that merchandising is an inevitable side effect of capitalism, insofar as it is a cheap and easy way to infuse a brand with borrowed cultural authenticity.

Beijing’s Deal, my sneaker spot (it’s TZ for those in the know) during my time in the PRC, has gone all-out with a Tiger / Nike-themed makeover of their façade. It’s a bit much.