Picture me Laughin

Political ads ... why am i headed back to the US again? the McCain girls are great for a morning pick-me-up ...

Old News and Forgiving Old Friends

Although we may already know that Bush's policies on pretty much everything have been resounding failures, this in depth analysis of the incompetence and duplicity of the Bush Administration is a good place to look if you want to get angry. Remember: McCain will be the same type of leader, haplessly sure of himself in a world that left him behind decades ago.

i had a conversation with my man Su Wei last night at his small bar on the outskirts of Chengdu. Its a beautiful place called Orange -- if you are in Chengdu go to the Hemp House and ask about it ...

He said that China's development has been all brain and muscle, no heart. He said Deng Xiao Ping mentioned back in the 1980s that China needed concurrent "civilizational revolutions" -- as in an economic one and a spiritual one. So far the spiritual has not manifested itself across the nation the way the economic one has, and Su Wei lamented this.

I played devil's advocate and said the government had provided one "religion" in the form of China itself -- the patriotic love of an ideal motherland.

He brushed this off slightly and spoke of "forgiving the culture of the past ..." for him, the resuscitation of the Buddhist and Daoist religions would be the greatest step forward. Right now, most temples and monasteries are tourist attractions and the "real" Buddhists in Tibet are under the thumb of the Party.

Su Wei looked wistfully into the night and said, "Imagine if all of the temples were alive again, and people went there to worship like they did back in the day .. how beautiful would that be ..."

Serendipity

I have been talkin about getting portland and china together for a long time on this blog, and look what Mayor Adams is up to RIGHT NOW ... its pretty exciting. Too bad he isn't coming to Chengdu ...

Eli Sweet, An American Rapper in Chengdu

Here is Eli and my main man Kaffe doin their thang on NPR. Peep it and pass it on. Its the real deal ya'll!!!!

peep this

Yo: I urge you all to check out this video by the Hanyuan B-Boys ... they put it down for their town and have all of China writing to them about the merits of breaking amidst the rubble ...

here is an edited version of what i have been writing here on the Brave New Traveler site ...

The Aftermath

This will be my last post with Olympic connotations.

The Western AND Chinese media are starting to evaluate for themselves what the meaning of this vast spectacle that went down in Beijing really is. I will just lay down a bunch of links and let you get down on it:

This article in Time is actually pretty good and lays down a few of the real issues that China has to face now that the party is over.

The other night i watched the movie Little Red Flowers about Chinese kindergarten. Beanmilk sang along with all of the little kids and told me that -- except for a slight improvement in amenities -- nothing has changed. This movie is an adaptation of the book by Wang Shuo. The book is widely read in China, but the movie can only be found amongst the pirates slanging them DVDs from out of the back door ... This article here talks about the growing courage of the Chinese art community and the government's tacit approval (or ignorance of) the works that speak out about this society. This interview with the famous crime novelist Qiu Xiaolong also touches on these issues ...

Some people are unsure about what the true aftermath is: some believe that the Chinese are already "affected" and will take their business into their own hands, while others are sure that this is the continuation of the CCP's drive to crate an Orwellian society based on their "experiment" in Shenzhen ... the experiment aint working, as this article tells us.

The reality is too complex for me to comprehend and I am sweating n the Sultan anyway. So here are some more links for ya, keep reading and wonder how this has anything to do with you:

Here are some "reflections" by a favorite target of the ChiCom trolls Geoffrey York. I like what he says: it happens to be true. Thats why ChiCom trolls hate him so much. It probably also has to do with the hard lean of the Western media toward China bashing, but I argue that the hard lean is a function of the Chinese media's overall lack of courage and freedom in covering their own affairs. Other than the Southern Weekend, of course ...

So thats why the media is filled with stories about China's corruption, the Bank of China's nefarious dealings, the insecurity of the government and on the other end: uplifting stories on how the city with the second-most cameras in the world will stage a better Olympics by highlighting .. democracy ...

Here is some interesting commentary on The Fat Teacher and Dongpo Pork (which I have eaten and relished in its hometown of Meishan -- actually a small village outside of Meishan) ...

And last, for no reason other than i could not find a proper category for it now: an idea of "what happens next," in this story about China's forays into the Dark Continent.

Mad love.

Back in the Du part Du

So I am back in the Du and it feels all right. As soon as I get here and start meshing with my real people again i realize that my work in China will never ever be done. There is so much to write, create, document and promote ... I am tied to here forever. But as I decided a long time ago -- I can do these things best from afar, bring that which i know to people who aren't in the know.

anyway. I spent two days in Qingdao ostensibly to attend the showing of a collection of Qingdao and Chengdu paintings. The art was pretty amazing.

There was one piece in particular.

a gray city scape of your average Chinese town: rickety stone staircase leading down down down through stacks of shamble houses with aluminum garage doors on either side. An old man is squatting on the left hand, just a few concrete blocks above a prostitute all in red, smoking a cigarette as she stares at nothing. further down is a man in shorts, looking down and rubbing the back of his head as he stares at the oven that makes him his living. He is skinny enough to have his ribs stick out, but hardy enough to look stacked not thin. the wires that bring them their daily opium from the TV coil down the staircase into the shadows below, tangled impossibly until they reach a node, where they are attached expertly, then tangle again as they head down pell mell to the next node.

I thought of the city of Hanyuan immediately. Hanyuan is where my gong fu brothers live, The place was hit by the earthquake in May and is a den of gangsterism, corruption and random ass beatings. Here is a video of the local cats doing their thang amidst the rubble .. peace to my man Faryao ...