Walking the Path

On Friday I went to see Carsick Cars, Snapline and Muscle Snap at 4Live. Overall the night was really good. But I was kind of surprised with what was the best part.

I was certain it was going to be Carsick Cars — and they were good — very similar to the Ramones in terms of sound and appearance, but not a good band to see live. The lead singer and bassist play like typical shoegazers. I was standing on the second floor looking at the stage when they came on and I could see that the band had to check the set list they had taped to the stage every other song to make sure they were all following the same song — sounds like a bit of uncoordination to me. But I shouldn’t knock them that much. I still bought their CD and a T-shirt. Unfortunately, the CD isn’t playing in my laptop so I can’t upload it to my iPOD — I know this sounds whiny but you should still go see this band.

The highlight of the night for me and again the next afternoon when I saw them play live at ENO, was Snapline. The lead singer worked an 808 drum machine while being accompanied by a guitarist and a bassist. He looked like that Asian kid from high school who you thought got into MIT but later turned out secretly had ADD and had either gone to a liberal art college somewhere on the east coast and dropped out or just not gone to school at all and somehow formed his own band.

The guy jumped all over the stage and everyone else in the audience did too. If you compared how the audience reacted to Snapline with how they reacted with Carsick Cars you really saw the age difference. The older people (that means those over about 25) preferred Snapline and moved to the second floor when Carsick Cars hit the stage. Whereas the younger kids bopped along to Snapline, but really started moshing when Carsick Cars hit the stage.

Maybe I’m just feeling my age.

J.

I thought I’d created the China-focused version of Nerd World, but it looks like this guy beat me to it.

J.

I’ve spent this week watching CNN’s Count Down To Beijing Series everyday before I go to work. And I’ve been impressed by their coverage of the construction boom, the displacement of people and the pollution and environmental problems. What I think has been lacking though is the coverage of the fact that Beijing hasn’t really been living up to its promise of press freedom. In fact on Monday morning, Kristie Lu Stout was talking about how the press was able to work more openly here. But coverage from Imagethief and Richard Spencer plus a host of other media show that isn’t the case. Why oh Why is CNN not putting in its two cents?

J.

I had an interesting experience on my way home yesterday. Winnie and I were walking from my office to a restaurant when someone thrust a flyer in my face. I glanced at it quickly and thought it was something about cosmetics so I took it thinking that Winnie might want to look at it later. When we did open it up we noticed it wasn’t about cosmetics at all but instead it was about plastic surgery. More specifically, it was about breast enlargement.

Even though in my opinion, Chinese girls don’t really look that good with huge breasts, society doesn’t seem to think so. Everywhere you go in the last couple of years be it taxi cabs, washrooms or bus stations you can see ads for plastic surgery — mostly breast enlargement.

That’s why it was so refreshing when I read Danwei’s review of the August issue of Chinese Esquire “Mr. Trends” It comes with a swimsuit supplement to celebrate summer. The difference with other swimsuit supplements is none of the girls are models. They are just average girls off the street and you can even contact them via email — every girl has her email address listed next to her picture (I didn’t try to contact them). And they are average girls, I’m sure you could see them on the street in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou. I don’t expect this to bring about a change in how Chinese women are viewed in the media but it’s a nice alternative. I just hope that most Chinese girls can see the beauty in this. I showed the supplement to Winnie when we got to the restaurant last night and even though she said the girls weren’t particularly pretty, she did seem skeptical that these girls could be considered average. Only after we looked at some of the girls in the US edition of Esquire did she agree with me.

J.

I was supposed to take a trip with my office this weekend to a natural area outside of Hangzhou, but I ended up coming down with a magraine on Saturday morning and ended up spending the day in bed. When I recovered a bit on Sunday, I was able to get up and do somethings like watching Dr. Who and sufing the web. Here’s some of the interesting stuff I found:

• Howard W. French has a new Letter from China in the International Herald Tribune about how IPR issues might destroy China’s development progress.
• The Washington Post has a piece on how market forces are altering China’s prostitution market.
• EastSouthWestNorth translates a piece from Chinese-language media about how to do a sex survery in China.
• Danwei has a two-part Podcast on China’s two big video sharing websites Youku and Tudou.

And finally, I’ve been getting into China indie rock scene a lot recently, so I thought I’d add a couple of Chinese indie rock blogs to my blog roll, so I’ve added Chaile.org and Rock in China.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

J.

Howard W. French has written a Letter from China that many an expat and Shanghaiese can sympathize with.  I had a friend that flew out of Hongqiao on Monday evening on his way to Beijing. His flight was delayed four hours and there were sunny skies in Shanghai.

J.

Time Magazine has a story on China’s Youth Generation this week. It’s written by Simon Elegant , Time’s man in Beijing and a guy with a lot of China experience. The piece is good. It accurately lays out the life of Beijing’s up and coming young people and how they’re not interested in politics because — as my managing director always says — middle class Chinese are living in a golden birdcage. They can have a great life — become rich, travel, buy whatever they want — but they can’t influence the political process. So politics just isn’t part of their lives.

What it doesn’t do is put this in the context of Chinese society as a whole and that can be a problem for people who haven’t been to China to understand it. The lives of people in Elegant’s article are middle class Chinese from a tier one city. They’re not farmers from central or Western China or people from less developed cities. Those people can’t influence the political process either, but they are also not traveling to Hong Kong or outside of China and they are engaging in the rise of consumerism that can be found in China’s major cities. So they really aren’t part of China’s Me Generation.

One question Elegant’s piece does answer though is Kaiser Kou’s piece about why there isn’t any SNS for people over 30. (I wrote about this in my Saturday reading list) The reason is simple. China’s Me Generation is dominating market for online services, (and why Taobao does contests like this) mobile music, extreme sports and nightlife entertainment. People under 30 are using MSN, QQ and Facebook (most of China’s Me Generation is bilingual) to keep contact with their friends and do business — remember Chinese business is based around relationships and that’s what these sites let people maintain. So there isn’t a need of SNS sites for Chinese business they’re already there.

J.