the Beijinger

There’s lots happening around Beijing in the world of film over the next week – here’s the run down on gossip, Tim Burton’s latest and indie screenings around town.

First of all, news on a massive party that only came out after our March issue went to print. The next YEN White party has been set for next Friday, March 26 at The Star Live. YEN regulars like Mickey Zhang, Patrick Yu and Blackie will be playing. Limited discount advance tickets are available from Lush or at ClubZone and cost RMB 50, regular advance tickets are available at RMB 80 from ClubZone, and tickets on the night are RMB 150 (including one drink).

View The Beijinger's 2010 Reader Restaurant Awards in a larger map

The balloting is finished, the winners have been announced, and the plaques awarded ... but the restaurant awards are not over yet. Over the course of the next couple of weeks we'll be taking a closer look at the winning restaurants in an attempt to offer deeper insight on the winners.

Our first step is to show you where all these places are - sure you know your neighborhood Annie's, but do you know where all the best Hot Pot spots are in relation to where you live/work/play?

Our favorite blog ChinaSMACK has a very amusing translation of a post on the Chinese site MOP, detailing the attempts of a portly naked Chinese man to bring the modern world to a halt, one taxi at a time. “Evil and ugly modern society, retreat!!!!” the man reportedly declared, while attempting to lift a cab from the road.

Bang! Bang! It’s a duel of the DJs! There's a clash of techno titans tonight at Lantern as Acupuncture Records’ Chinaboyz (Terry Tu and ELVIS.T) celebrate their crossover project with UK label Mothership’s Italoboyz (Marco Donato and Federico Marton) in a double feature back-to-back set. We sought a few words of wisdom from the visiting Italians to see what they have to say ahead of the party ...

George Zhou, who you voted "Best Bartender" in the Beijinger's 2009 Reader Bar & Club Awards, has left Q Bar, the massively acclaimed bar he created with long-time sidekick Echo Sun. A press release we received from Q Bar this morning states:

Despite the fact that big international bands keep failing to make it here (by "big" I mean famous, not necessarily good), promoters are still trying their best to bring quality acts to Beijing. Krautrock trio The Secret Machines (see interview here) and singer-songwriter Julie Doiron (see interview here) are playing tonight at Yugong Yishan and 2 Kolegas, while Zuoxiao Zuzhou (see interview here) performs his first solo in eight years at Century Theater. On Saturday, Japanese synth punk band Triple Nipples drive into 2 Kolegas for a night of god-know-what-would-happen. On other sides of the town, French folk duo Vialka and world music group Dawanggang jam at Tiny Salt Coffee Club, whereas Low Wormwood frontman Liu Kun releases his solo debut at D-22 with supports from some of Beijing's best folk musicians. Heavy weekend for live music, so take out your wallet now, you know musicians need money more than faith to keep rocking. 

The net is abuzz with chat about The Beijinger’s Annual Restaurant Award results which were officially published yesterday morning – here’s a roundup of online reactions.

How much do you know about the latest e-readers?  There's Amazon's Kindle, of course, and the Apple iPad has gotten a lot of people excited about its potential to revolutionize the book publishing industry. Meanwhile, there's several other e-readers on the market that offer very similar features for a lower price.