the Beijinger

… or hater Flavor?

Been hearing rumors that Public Enemy has hit some rough spots along the touring road? An email circulating through the inboxes of Beijing’s music mavens entitled, “Why I hate the entertainment industry: Public Enemy cancelled,” certainly didn’t help the buzzing rumor mill.

The mystifying text of the email, sent by a Shanghai promoter, read: “Due to an internal fight in the band, the Public Enemy event has been cancelled. I feel sorry for the organizers in Beijing.”

Read more...

 

“Beijing is not a beautiful place. It just doesn’t look very good on film … Still, Beijing is better than Shanghai”

 

Tell me about where you’re from and how you got here.

I’m from Nanjing and worked there for a number of years before coming to Beijing for film school in 1991. After I graduated, I was Chen Kaige’s assistant and began to write stories, plays, and films. In 2000, I finally wrote and made my first full-length film.

Read more...

Bus Bar has closed. After all the false alarms and red herrings, Bus Bar closed its doors in the wee hours of the morning of August 29. A herd of regulars came out to exchange memories, listen to the old favorites (gangsta rap and African dance tunes), and clear out all the booze. By the end of the night, the white plastic tables were covered in empty bottles. Old patrons roamed around with pints of cocktails they mixed themselves at the completely free final blow-out. It may have been Bus Bar’s finest hour after months of tragedy.

Read more...

Dashan (AKA Canadian Mark Rowswell) is the omnipresent foreigner, the one lurking on the tip of your taxi driver's tongue, the one in the Tang suit, the foreigner that even the foreigners who arrived yesterday love to hate - but he's also a talented media personality, actor, and as it turns out, a really nice guy. He's appearing in Chaoji Bendan, the Chinese version of the farcical French comedy The Dinner Game. Written by Francis Veber, The Dinner Game chronicles a competition among a group of friends to see who can find the most stupid person to bring to dinner (you may have heard of the film version). Tonight (Thursday) and Friday are your last chances to catch it at the Poly Theatre, but the show will be back for a second run in late September at the Ethnic Cultural Palace Theatre (see below for details).

Between performances, Dashan answered a few of our questions about Chaoji Bendan, acting styles in China, and being Zhongguo's No. 1 laowai.

Read more...

Because two adorable cartoon police officers are watching you, from this Saturday. The police officers, named Jing and Cha (following the same brilliant naming scheme that engendered the fuwas), will pop up every half-hour on the thirteen largest China-based Internet portals. City officials have promised that the two cyber-cops will expand their beat to all websites registered in Beijing by the end of the year.

Read more...

For CBD-dwelling Beijingers, Haidian may seem like a distant and unreachable corner, reminiscent of misspent youths, cheap grub and even cheaper beer. Or perhaps it doesn’t even feel like Beijing anymore, with international students from all over the world – and especially South Korea – congregating at Wudaokou.

Still, Haidian is growing up (though there’ll always be zhapi aplenty to go around) and can now justly claim fame for being more than a hip student hangout. Zhongguancun’s glass towers host Google, Microsoft, Deutsche Bank and other multi-national companies. Next to the technological mega-malls are the luxury malls, making this former slice of dusty countryside the place to go for the latest fashions as well as high-tech gadgets.

Immersion Guides’ new Haidian area map brings all this to you, from up-and-coming live music performances and RMB 2 chuan’r to the newest five-star hotel. With over 160 venues, the map is an indispensable guide for Haidian’s residents and short-term visitors alike. Read more...

Music makes the people come together. Or so said a Stetson-wearing Madonna. Not that Madonna has anything to do with Beijing, September, or that’s Beijing, but it’s a tenuous introduction to this month’s issue, which is all about, um, music. An obvious topic, maybe, but it’s not everyday that Nine Inch Nails and Public Enemy come to town and as a result we went music mad, profiling the capital’s finest bands and putting together a web page that allows you to take a listen to some of their best tracks, as well as sniffing around some of the top home studios in town – I tell you, if I had a kuai every time I had my hand slapped away from a mixing desk knob ...

Read more...

The next time you chomp down on potato chips or stuff your face with Oreos, you might want to reconsider. According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institute of Health, consumption of trans fat, which is present in both of these products, increases low-density lipoprotein (LDL), which in turn increases the risk of coronary heart disease (CDC).

Since 2006, US authorities have required manufacturers to list trans fat content on all nutrition fact panels but few people living in China are aware of the existence of trans fat.

Read more...

If you set out from Tian'anmen Square and start heading southwest, after passing through Xuanwu and Fengtai, you’ll finally reach Fangshan District – home to the Peking Man historical site and a traditional source of much of the capital's coal. Two brothers from Fangshan's Jinjitai Village are currently making headlines around the world for their miraculous escape from a collapsed coal mine.

Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou were trapped for nearly six days and survived by eating coal and drinking their own urine before managing to tunnel their way out. At around 10pm on Saturday, August 18, the pair became trapped inside their own illegal coal mine after it collapsed on top of them. Emergency services attended the scene, but on the afternoon of August 20 declared that the brothers had no chance of surviving and the rescue attempt was called off.

Read more...

Tuesday is half-price movie day at all the cinemas across Beijing. Which means, if you don’t have anything planned for this evening, you can head over to your local cinema and catch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the recently released Shrek the Third, or (for the few who didn’t get caught up in all the buzz) Transformers for somewhere between 30 to 40 kuai.

New Chinese horror flick The Nineteenth Gate of Hell or Naraka 19 also opens at Beijing’s cinemas today – so those confident enough with their Mandarin can check out Gillian Chung (锺欣桐), best known for being one half of the HK pop sensation Twins, as she stars in the creepy thriller that begins with a university student receiving a SMS message: “Do you know what the 19th gate of Hell is?”

Take a look at the trailer, complete with English subtitles, here.

See below for times:

Read more...

For those of you out of the loop or newly arrived, ticket sales for next year’s Olympics began this summer, with over 300,000 people applying for tickets at the Bank of China or on-line using their credit cards or Bank of China accounts. Starting yesterday, ticket winners are being informed via e-mail, and those without e-mail will receive their notification by phone.

Read more...

With dark corners away from the bright lights and flashing neon hard to find in Beijing, it could be worth heading out to the western hills to catch a better view of tonight’s total lunar eclipse ... or rather, the second half of a total lunar eclipse. Given the fact that the eclipse begins at 4.51pm Beijing time and that the sun won’t set in the capital until 6.53pm, if you're viewing the eclipse from Beijing, you're going to miss out on the first half of the show.

Read more...

While most Beijingers were laying in bed early Sunday morning, perhaps nursing a hangover or listening to the drizzle of light rain outside, an 8-year-old girl was approaching the capital on foot along highway 107. Her name is Zhang Huimin and she has been running for 55 days, during which she has managed to cover 3,558km. Huimin set off from her home in Hainan and, accompanied by her Dad on a bike, has passed through Guangdong, Hunan, Hubei, Henan, Hebei and is expected to arrive at Tian’anmen Square early tomorrow morning, just in time for the morning’s flag raising ceremony.

Read more...

The Economist: Beijing and Tianjin: Correspondent’s Diary
Living in China for five years may impress the average study abroad student, but this Economist article is written by a real old China hand who lived here in the 1970s and 80s and now shares his reflections on the China of today.

China Media News: Apply to be a CCTV9 Olympic Sports Anchor
We’re not sure if they’re still looking, but this just might be the break you’ve been waiting for.

Read more...

With all the rollercoaster land development of recent years, one thing is becoming increasingly certain: high prices for real estate in Beijing’s city center are here to stay. This year has already seen a 16.34 percent increase in housing prices nationwide with no sign of letting up (US sub prime crisis be damned); and despite new announcements of tighter credit controls and higher mortgage down payments, people continue to snatch up real estate like there was no tomorrow – spurred on, no doubt, by the belief that if they don’t buy now, there may be nothing affordable left for them tomorrow (note the irony).

Read more...

It’s that time of the year again - a new batch of eager-eyed freshmen have been busy enrolling at China’s elite Tsinghua university, all but signing their ticket to fame and fortune (it is after all Hu Jintao’s Alma Mater).

However, despite getting the top marks needed to get into China's equivalent of an Ivy League school, and resisting the pull of the premier Hong Kong universities who have been busy aggressively recruiting the cream of the mainland crop, students are now faced with a whole new set of challenges, not the least of which is making sure that their parents have a place to sleep. Last year’s enrollment week was plagued with controversy after local newspapers published photos of parents sleeping outdoors on the ground of the university as their children slumbered peacefully in their new dormitories.

Read more...

In last week’s newsletter, we mistakenly reported the statistic that China goes through 45 million disposable chopsticks per year - it's actually 45 BILLION. If saving the trees (25 million of them per year) isn't enough reason for you to start bringing around your own pair, maybe this is: Beijing News reports that police recently shut down a factory selling unsanitized used chopsticks as new.

The factory allegedly sold 100,000 pairs of recycled kuaizi on a good day. That number sounds a bit inflated, but we still advocate stashing a pair in your jeans. At best, it'll help the environment and stave off la duzi - in the very least, it'll make for some quality junior high school-level jokes.

Read more...

Beijing
10.4%
The average rise in Beijing housing prices over the past month

15
The number of trees blown over on Dongzhimenwai Dajie during the freak storm that hit Beijing two Sundays ago.

40
The maximum number of students that Beijing's Municipal Education Commission has set for primary and middle school classes across the city.

153
The number of bottles of fake alcohol discovered at a Houhai Bar this week

Read more...