In yet another sign that China is well on its way to conquering every sport on the face of this planet, a husband-and-wife team of figure skaters, Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo, has claimed China's first ever Olympic gold in the sport at the ongoing Vancouver Winter Olympics. Their compatriots Pang Qing and Tong Jian grabbed silver, edging out Germany's two-time world champions Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy into third place. Together they smashed Russia's 50 year domination of the sport.
Photo by galexkeene
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That was some weekend, wasn't it? For some ideas on how to take it easy the next few days (besides vegging out and watching the Olympics), check out this week's events, from pool to indie music to back-to-back kung fu movies.
Monday: Swan Lake
Swan Lake is back in the city, again. Enjoy the classic story of Odette the swan princess, set against Tchaikovsky's beautiful score and performed by the stellar dancers of the Russian National Ballet.
7 PM. Shanghai Grand Theatre, 300 Renmin Da Dao near Huangpi Bei Lu (人民大é“300å· è¿‘é»„é™‚åŒ—è·¯) Tickets Â¥180-880
Tuesday: Sub-Cinema Double Feature
Film screening group Sub-Cinema are now becoming a weekly staple at Dada, and to celebrate they're turning this week's movie night into a kung-fu double feature. First up is 1978's The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, followed by 1975 flick The Master of the Flying Guillotine. Both are considered highly influential staples of the kung fu genre- so any self-respecting fan of Kill Bill better be out there.
8 PM. Dada, 115 Xingfu Lu between Fahuazhen and Pingwu Lu (幸ç¦è·¯115å· è¿‘åŽå±±å’Œæ³•åŽé•‡è·¯) No cover
Wednesday: Pool Tournament, Swap Meet
Get over that mid-week hump by whacking around some sticks and balls. This weekly double elimination 8-ball pool tournament is free to enter, and the winner receives a ¥300 food and drink voucher valid for a week.
8 PM. The Spot, 331 Tongren Lu near Beijing Xi Lu (é“œä»è·¯331å· è¿‘åŒ—äº¬è¥¿è·¯)
Afterwards, check out Swap Meet, a weekly night devoted to chill. Enjoy cheap drinks and sets by fave local DJs, art installations, and video games on the club projector. Get your Street Fighter on.
9 PM- 3 AM. The Shelter, 5 Yongfu Lu near Fuxing Lu (æ°¸ç¦è·¯5å· è¿‘å¤å…´è·¯)
Thursday: Irish Business Mixer
The Irish Business Forum hosts their monthly business mixer, a chance to mingle with the Irish Consulate and network with other professionals. Supporting the Irish business community while enjoying happy hour drinks- that's a win-win.
7-11:30 PM. Ritz Bar, 2/F Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel, 1376 Nanjing Xi Lu near Tongren Lu (波特曼酒店2楼 å—京西路1376å· è¿‘é“œä»è·¯) No cover
Friday: Shelter Website Launch
Shelter has announced the launch of shelter.cn, their new site full of music updates, downloads, giveaways and more. To celebrate, they've organized a night with a line-up of local staples and recognized names like Drunk Monk, V-Nutz, Void, Antidote and more. Welcome to the interwebs, Shelter.
9 PM. The Shelter, 5 Yongfu Lu near Fuxing Lu (æ°¸ç¦è·¯5å· è¿‘å¤å…´è·¯) Â¥30
Photo by Warren Elsmore.
Londonist marveled at pictures of a LEGO model of St Pancras, before getting busy with their own cameras and shooting rare views from the tops of Tower Bridge and the Cromwell Tower.
LAist was at anything but a loss for words when two politicians should have chosen theirs more carefully: Ms. Palin and your "snake oil science" and our local "proud racist" we're talking about you!
SFist wondered if filmmaker Kevin Smith was too fat to fly.
Phillyist longed for summer in the midst of two blizzards, and in so doing incited a debate about ice cream toppings.
DCist rolled its eyes when MSNBC's Chris Matthews, a Maryland resident, started complaining about D.C.'s response to last week's historic snowfall.
Chicagoist had a butchering theme this week. Under pressure from politicians and media, millionaire pawnbroker/Democratic Lieutenant Governor candidate Scott Lee Cohen dropped out of the November general election after his dirty laundry was aired. Meanwhile, one of their food writers was on the scene to see a whole pig broken down in a restaurant kitchen.".
Torontoist gets to write about political sex scandals sometimes, too! Namely, that of Adam Giambrone, a leading mayoral candidate—and chair of the city's transit system—who this week admitted to one "inappropriate" relationship with a woman who wasn't his partner, then admitted to other ones, and then dropped out of the race.
Gothamist learned that parts of Times Square will permanently closed to vehicular traffic.
Seattlest mourned the passing of locally-based Captain Phil Harris of Discovery's Deadliest Catch.
We spotted US missionary Robert Park coming back from North Korea. Speaking of which, what's up with that country anyway?
We told you not to watch Confucius - it's long and tedious and very, very boring.
We found a great Chinese contemporary art wiki, an amazing burger deal and some ridiculous videos of Shanghai kids clubbing.
We were interested by a story of a woman who was unconscious for 20 minutes after falling off an escalator without anyone coming to help her... mostly interested that it was a story at all.
We gasped in glee at Jin Xing's Shanghai Beauty, which we called an intense joyride of dance, dance, dance.
We also checked out photos of the Patriot Cheerleaders, who made a stop by Malone's before the Super Bowl.
We wished you a Happy New Year with Super Baozi, the CGI animated rapping, dancing steamed bun.
Photo from Hollywood Reporter The 60th Berlin Film Festival began yesterday with a focus on Chinese cinema, and particularly, Shanghai - director Wang Quan'an lead the opening ceremony with a special screening of his new film "Apart Together (团圆 Tuan Yuan)"
It is a story about "a reunion of a family that separated years ago," festival director Dieter Kosslick told Xinhua. Because 2010 is the 20th anniversary of Germany's reunification, he said the film is "very symbolic to us, and we really like it."
Says the Hollywood Reporter:
Wang Quan'an's fifth film "Apart Together" is another variation of his recurrent set-up of one woman flirting with two husbands (or boyfriends), torn between obligation and love (or attraction). Small in scope but tightly structured, gracefully acted and directed, it opens up deep historical wounds and generational traumas created by China's civil war, but does not press on them, exploring instead more universal human dilemmas lightened by scrumptious culinary episodes.
Generally engaging but moving at an even-keeled, slightly flat pace, it probably cannot repeat the international market buzz of Wang's Golden Bear winner "Tuya's Marriage," but should still get respectable fest-play and niche release.
Here's a sneak peek below. Luckily, while the commentary of this news piece doesn't come with subtitles, the scenes do:
Contemporary and renowned Chinese director, Zhang Yimou, will also make an appearance in the festival with his new film "Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop，" also simply known as "A Simple Noodle Story."
Although Zhang won the first Golden Bear for Chinese filmmakers in 1988 with his directoral debut, "Red Sorghum", his new film has been an utter disaster. "Woman, A Gun and a Noddle Shop," was voted as one of the worst films in China last year. Zhang himself was anointed with the inaugural Golden Broom award for Most Disappointing Director, the Chinese version of Hollywood's Golden Raspberry.
Whether Berlin audiences will agree is yet to be determined.
Photo by Terrence Lloren/Growing Up With Shanghai Last summer, we brought to your attention a movie called Building 173, which profiled the transformation of a certain Shanghai apartment block from high-society penthouses to middle class family homes and finally to tenements for the working poor. Highlighted, too, were the external factors - namely war and politics - which underlay and, in some cases, directly caused this metamorphosis, narrated in the most accurate and vivid way possible: directly from the people who lived in the building through it all.
Terence Lloren, one of the creatives behind Building 173, has taken the concept a step further in his new, self-published book Growing Up With Shanghai. Accompanied by an interactive, multimedia-laden website of the same name, the tome is a logical extension of the movie that preceded it: Building extrapolated from a very small cross section the story of Shanghai as a whole during its dramatic transition from boom town to war town to just another communist town; Growing Up is composed of "soundwalks" with local Shanghainese born after 1978, when a post-Mao China began walking the road to reform.
The website is divided, by neighborhood, into pages, each of which is born of a "soundwalk" with a Shanghainese who grew up there. Audio files on each page, in either Shangainese or the person's own dialect, provide personal perspectives on what most of the outside world can perceive only as "fantastic growth" over the past two decades. For those of us who have enough trouble speaking Mandarin without being bothered to learn dialects, there are lengthy English transcriptions of each walk. Still, it might be worth it to check out one or two of the clips, to better understand the world into which the author takes us with this project, whether for the pauses, sighs and emotions--or the sound of broken glass being stepped on, construction happening at fever pace and the endless stream of car horns, voices and babies crying that pepper Shanghai's soundwaves. As Lloren explains, "the current sounds of Shanghai can be heard behind the dialog and also serve as an audio document for future generations of Shanghainese."
The first publishing run of the book was released at the end of last month. Limited to 200 copies, the hardcover-bound volume features color photographs, transcriptions and supplementary information about each of the soundwalks. It's accompanied by a data-DVD in eBook format, enriched with the audio files themselves. A promotional copy of the book is on display at the Huaihai location of Boonna Cafe, while you can order one of your own directly from the website. Whatever your inclination, we highly recommend that you check out this project in one of its many forms. Lloren himself sums it up best:
Like sound itself, this project can be experienced and interpreted on many levels. On the surface it may just be a field recording of street sounds in another language, it could be everything I mention here, or something totally different. Whatever you get from these recordings, transcripts, and photos is exclusive only to you and your imagination. I hope that it makes Shanghai less intimidating and familiar to you and that if you do come, you try to experience a more intimate side of Shanghai by following one of these on your own.
Super Baozi has returned! Earlier, he wowed us with his sushi busting and Jay Chou rap singing antics and now... he wishes us a Happy Spring Festival Year of the Tiger. Adorable, fun and great to watch!
Though it makes wonder: with guys having the talent to make awesome stuff like this, why exactly does the rest of the Chinese animation industry suck so much?
Source: Neocha Edge
Photo by Spavaai
Shanghai's old people know how to live (and not just longer!) To make sure their mahjong runs go late into the night and into the early mornings, they are binging on ketamine, cocaine and meth! [Guardian]
A Shanghai court has convicted six people Thursday in connection with the Minhang building collapse, sentencing them to terms ranging from three to five years for causing a "criminal major accident." [WSJ]
Well this sounds delicious-ish? McDonalds has said they're going to launch a new hamburger university in Shanghai to train 5,000 employees. [China Retail News]
What exactly are China's hopes for the Olympics? Urbanatomy breaks it down. [Urbanatomy]
The Westgate Mall is currently hosting a beautiful scroll containing the pictures of 2,010 tigers. You should check it out. [CNN Go]
Photo from Stefan R. Landsberger
Oh look, it's like the Chinese media just discovered the 5 mao army for itself and it wants to assure people that, for the most part, they don't exist. Go to the last page for a hilarious list of Dos and Don'ts for internet commentators. [Global Times]
As Google stands shoulder to shoulder with China's citizens to gain more rights and freedoms, the government pushes back even harder to smother would-be social progress. [WSJ]
Chinese internet authorities blame the U.S. for its' porn problems, and use this as an excuse to tighten online controls. [Forbes]
America tries to turn the tables by increasing its' exports to China, despite concern that the exchange rate is less than conducive to good trade. [WSJ]
Speaking of which, at least someone thinks that the U.S. is reacting the right way to all of China's threats to action, by barely reacting at all. [The New York Times]
Oh wow, and this guy even calls China's responses to the US-Taiwan arms "flapping its' jaws again," with threats of military spending increases and the selling of U.S. bonds. [The Market Ticker]
New gateways have been opened for those kooky enough to convert their creative impulses into online videos. From gadget inventors to street performers, many young Chinese citizens are finding ways to put footage of themselves onto websites, gaining both fame and fortune.[CNN]
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