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Following a wave of negative reaction from local residents and coverage of the controvery in the state and foreign media, Dongsi Batiao has been granted a temporary reprieve. “Redevelopment” of the area is suspended pending further negotiations with residents over compensation and with preservation authorities over the nature of the proposed development. Sometimes you can fight City Hall, even in China. Thought that would get your attention. Last week I suggested that a certain Italian-American play Mao in an upcoming movie. Now it seems you don’t even need to be a dude to impersonate the Great Helmsman. A 51-year old woman from Sichuan named Chen Yan has been amusing crowds with her Chairman…er….woman impression. Her biggest challenge? According to The China Daily, at 5’1 Chen needs special platform shoes to elevate her closer to the lofty heights of the historical Mao (in this case about 5’11). Last night YJ and I went to the Forbidden City Concert Hall for the Nine Gates Jazz Festival, running in Beijing through next weekend. It was one of the only nights we had free, and–turns out–we picked a good one. I like jazz but I really haven’t explored the, uh, Beijing scene. I was prematurely dismissive. The “opening act” was Beijing jazz legends (a sentence I can now write without smirking) The Golden Buddha Trio, led by pianist Kong Hongwei (A.K.A. Jin Fo 金佛). There was no contest. Jin Fo and the boys blew the headliners, the Austrian-based modern jazz quartet The Philipp Nykrin Quartet, out of the building. I mean really. A group of foreigners haven’t been this caught out in Beijing since the Boxers were last in town. I’ve played piano all of my life and I’ve seen a lot of good players. Kong is absolutely one of the best. In a perfect world—where taste and talent rule—Kong would be playing Carnegie Hall and nobody would have ever heard of Lang Lang. He’s that good. Today in jazz it’s too easy to play “guess the influence” with musicians. The aforementioned Philipp Nykrin Quartet was I’m pissed. From today’s Guardian: Endangered, hunted, smuggled and now abandoned, 5,000 of the world’s rarest animals have been found drifting in a deserted boat near the coast of China. The pangolins, Asian giant turtles and lizards were crushed inside crates on a rickety wooden vessel that had lost engine power off Qingzhou island in the southern province of Guangdong. Most were alive, though the cargo also contained 21 bear paws wrapped in newspaper. According to conservation groups, the haul was discovered on one of the world’s most lucrative and destructive smuggling routes: from the threatened jungles of south-east Asia to the restaurant tables of southern China. The animals were found when local fishermen noticed a strange smell emanating from the vessel, which did not have any registration plates, on Tuesday, the Guangzhou Daily reported. When coastguard officials boarded the 25-metre craft, it was reportedly deserted and stripped of identification papers. They found more than 200 crates full of animals, many so dehydrated in the tropical sun that they were close to death. This isn’t about some farmers in China being “too poor” to worry about conservation. This isn’t about the need for economic development in struggling areas even I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to understand Chinese history. Confucius himself once said: “To know that you know what you know and that you don’t know what you don’t know, that is true knowledge.” Later scholars in China’s history wrote insightful commentaries on this passage to assist future lao wai historians. All of which could basically be summed up as: “We have 5000 years of history. Call us when you realize you’re completely screwed.” And it’s true. My colleagues who study American history have no idea how lucky they are to know exactly what is meant when a source refers to an honest “Abe,” a scheming “Judas,” a traitorous “Benedict Arnold” or an unfortunate soul pulling a “Nathan Hale.” They don’t have to check every obscure reference through 12 different dictionaries and encyclopedias each with arcane indexing systems, a preposterous chapter/page organization, and two different Chinese scripts. And that’s nothing compared to the joy of asking my Chinese colleagues for help and watching them roll their eyes and say things like, “For the last time and the love of Buddha… Xuanzong was a Tang emperor, Xuanzang hung out with a monkey. How hard is that to remember?” Sometimes |
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Copyright © 2012 Jottings from the Granite Studio - All Rights Reserved
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