Weblog
May 03, 2008
Mini Midi in Shanghai
The Midi festival was cancelled this year, another annoyance you can blame on protestors lunging for the torch. Wonder if those guys thought "By throwing junk at that Chinese girl in a wheelchair we are taking away the chance to see good indie music for the people who happen to live in China, and make if a pain in the ass to deal with visas." Guess not.
Yuyingtang sponsored a weekend of bands who were supposed to play at Midi. On Friday there were about 6 bands. Bryce and I met up with Rob, a concert promoter, and we sipped on Buds and watched a young crowd enjoying good loud music. A good Friday night thing to do.
Overdose's drummer, a mohawk clad tattoo covered Sid Vicious kind of character grabbed the mic and I was sure he'd say something offensive or at least a bit rude. But instead he said "I'd like to thank you all for coming here tonight....and I'd like to thank my mom who's in the corner....and all you guys should move around and get sweaty....we'll play some good music for you..."
Bryce looked over and gave me a funny look, "Wow, these guys are the polite punk bank from Beijing."
May 01, 2008
Brubeck Braid
Scott told us about this nice Sunday afternoon jazz concert with Matt Brubeck and David Braid. I thought it'd be cool to hear one of Dave Brubeck's sons play, while looking out over the Bund. Ran into JQ and Lawrence as well, so the Shanghai jazz contingent was well represented.
It was great just lounging there, enjoying this sort of jazz recital with like minded people who wanted to lounge around and enjoy something well done and nice as well.
Brubeck had a really cool carbon fiber cello set up that fed real well into the PA. Braid played a nice blend of Chopin styled jazz charts and tasteful solos. I liked the way they arranged their material to work as classical pieces and in an AABA (no not the Swedish pop group misspelt) jazz format with solos and a head.
There was one tune mid-set where a truck horn blared through the windows right at the perfect moment, a half step off.
Here's the head to the Monk tune, In Walked Bud.
Dizzie, he was screaming
Next to O.P. who was beaming
Monk was thumping
Suddenly in walked Bud and then they got into somethin'
Oscar played a mean sax
Mr. Byers blew a mean axe
Monk was thumping
Suddenly in walked Bud
And then the joint started jumping
Every hip stud really dug Bud
Soon as he hit town
Takin' that note nobody wrote
Putting it down
Dizzie he was screaming
Next to O. P. who was beaming
Monk was thumping
Suddenly in walked Bud
And then they got into something
April 27, 2008
Twitterpated
I ran into Kaiser and Paul at their personal Starbucks over at Wanda in Beijing, and they were telling me the virtues of Twitter. I said, "I've got enough distractions already. Girls wear white gogo boots in Shanghai. That's distraction enough." Silence.
Obviously neither Paul or Kaiser notice girls in white gogo boots, so we went on to talk about Social Distraction Software, and when I got home I actually installed a Twitter client on my Nokia so I can never have to talk to anybody at a cocktail party again if I don't want to, but can still stand there drinking and looking busy.
Do I need more distraction? No. But I certainly am curious. It feels a bit like those clandestine teenage telephone chat lines where used to dial into a broken number and talk between the busy signal beeps. That was annoying, but when you're 14, you are annoying, so it balances out.
If you feel the need to be distracted as well, my Twitter name is 3q2u.
@3q2u me if you feel like it.
April 22, 2008
20 years and a snack
I'm having a little private celebration today, sitting in a hotel room in Beijing, waiting for a train. Today marks the start of my 20th year here. I stepped off the plane in Taipei in 1988 and thought to myself, "What is that smell?" Now whenever I arrive in Beijing I think the same thing. Actually, to be fair, the past couple of days it's rained the hardest it's had in 40 years apparently (felt like a normal afternoon storm in Taipei to me), so today everything is clear and beautiful and fresh and green with that just rained feel in the air. A good day to mark 20 years.
Anyway, to celebrate this historic event, I went down to the convenience store to pick up one of my favorite snacks, the tasty Twix bar, to enjoy with my afternoon tea and conference calls.
After paying RMB15 for my crunchy chewy snack, I'm thinking, gee how much is that in NT$? Because it seemed to me that a Twix bar in Taiwan costs something like NT$20, which is only RMB5. How's that for Olympic sized inflation?
April 21, 2008
Kill spermatozoom?
The fifth circle on the right is quite interesting...
Thanks to Marc van der Chijs' Shanghaied Blog
April 20, 2008
Saturday night in Beijing
It took over an hour to get out to Haidian in Beijing to see some live music at D-22. Bryce hadn't been out there in 21 years, when he was teaching English at one of the colleges. A-Jie and Paul were along for the ride after some good Italian at Annie's. I'm the one who squeezed everyone in the cab since I have to see live music at D-22 whenever I'm in town.
We wanted to stay to hear Carsick Cars, but the bands didn't start until 11:30, so we petered out after the third band.
13 Dogs played the best set. At least it was loud and interesting and fun. They played short fast songs, the shortest being one a half measure, "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, caonimadebi!" The other two bands, LABF and Fire Balloon were pretty hurting. LABF had a cute keyboard/accordianist, who was their real redeeming quality. Fire Balloon's lead singer had a killer afro but he couldn't sing, and between each song he kept reminding us "Wo ai guo" (I love my country), which means a lot if you've been keeping up with the anti-French, anti-Carrefour, anti-foreign news sentiment building up lately.
13 Dogs
Click here if you are in China and YouTube is blocked.
April 15, 2008
China Business Network
I was asked recently by the China Business Network to to chat about doing business as a foreigner in China. I sound pretty goofy, but hey, it was early. They've got a terrific website with tons of interesting interviews, content, and articles about doing business in China. Definitely check it out.
April 10, 2008
Chinese Hospital Sign
Now that's a bit rude!
April 06, 2008
Quality Fade
Quality Fade
A 3q2u Production
A John Woo Film
Starring: Denzel Washington, Tony Leung, Maggie Q, and Clint Eastwood
In the wake of the devastating US financial crisis, the Chinese government steps in and buys all of Wall Street for 1.4 trillion in cash. Hu Jin Tao (Tony Leung) is now head of the US Treasury, and battles with the newly elected President (Denzel Washington) over who should be blamed and executed for causing the crisis. Hu's mistress, Maggie Q, seduces the President, leading to his resignation, and a hard boiled war veteran (Clint Eastwood) is appointed to now save the country.
Who do we shoot now?
Paul Denlinger has a great blog entitled The China Vortex, and says some really interesting things. I told Paul I liked the way he got into a topic, made a point, and got out, not talking down to his readers.
I've known Paul for a long time, and he's the one who convinced me to get a Mac when he said "Did you know it's built on the BSD kernel?" That was all I needed to hear because my admin had set up BSD servers on Linux boxes many years ago, and they were unbelievably fast and stable, running on anything.
Anyway, recently he wrote something I found very amusing. "So, while Chinese factories have on occasion exported defective products, the US has exported defective financial products. And the US government participated because Treasury sold T-bills which were backed by these defective financial instruments."
Quality Fade: American or Chinese, Which is Worse? - Check it out.
March 23, 2008
The Honeys in Shanghai
I'm still scoping out the live music scene here in Shanghai. After 9 years of owning a music club I guess it's in my blood. Tonight Jimi SMSed me about a show in The New Factories (Tonglefang) which is on Yuyao Lu, way north of where anyone really likes to go. The group was called The Honeys.
I was ready to go because this gave me reason to have a blue plate special at The Moon River Diner, and check out a new live space, and it was free. Who could say no?
Finding the space was a bit like feeling around in the dark since there wasn't any real directional signage. You just followed the rumbling window panes up stairs until you figured it out.
The room was cool in the sense that it was just a square simple gray brick lined space with a stage at one end and a bar at the other. Perfect for a rock show. The sound was lacking for all the equipment they had. Bit like sticking your ear into a bowl of reverberated oatmeal. They tried to phase the vocals in a weird way and forgot that there was no real need for long reverb in a room which was essentially a big echo chamber already. And as always at a Chinese rock show, the main instrument was the kick drum. The sound got progressively better the further away from the stage you got.
I think I was the oldest geezer in the room, but I had the hottest date (one of my wife's staff) which meant this time I was getting the "Why is that young chick with that old fart?" looks from the other guys. If I had a black Trans Am I would've parked it out front.
Click here if you are in China and YouTube is blocked.
March 18, 2008
Wizlong
Walking back from the office today I saw this interesting site advertisement.
I tried to figure it out from the sound hui long which didn't sound the same as "wizlong", then it occurred that hui long means "intelligent dragon" and someone very intelligent must've surmised, "Hey, if you're intelligent, then you're a wiz!" thus leaving us with the mutated chinglish "wizlong" which they registered. Now they have a name and a product which if read by an English speaker of any intelligence actually means "a long pee."
Therefore, to be even smarter, they should call their company changniao which is actually "long urination" in Chinese, then no one would ever figure out that this was actually once derived from an intelligent dragon. They could then even chinglish it in reverse and register the site "changpee" which is even funnier because then it means a long fart.
March 14, 2008
Presencing: Mapping our World in 2030
Today was my first time to Three on the Bund. I wanted to get a chance to hear the famous economist Jeffrey Sachs, the controversial President of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, and two other distinguished panelists from Columbia University's International Advisory Committee discuss the topic "Presencing: Mapping Our World in 2030."
You don't normally get to see people at this level speak at all, and today it was for free - in Shanghai. I sat right in the front row next to an important Turkish businessman and Dean of some department (I'm sorry, I didn't ask). There were about 80 smart looking people in a stylish white curtained room, with lots of attractive young women in black walking around who I think were staff. Either way, it was a kind of culture shock from the construction and spitting and normal Shanghai street life just one floor below.
Jeffery Sachs sure can express ideas clearly. They kept plugging his latest book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, which I went to the reception counter (again - attractive young women in black) to try to buy. No one knew what I was talking about.
Click here if you are in China and YouTube is blocked.
Peter Jungen, the Chairman of the European Enterprise Institute said some very interesting things, and you could kind of feel the Chinese in the room fluster when he said that the rise of capitalism was making the world a better place for it's inhabitants. If that were on CNN they'd have blacked it out for sure.
Click here if you are in China and YouTube is blocked.
Later in the evening, I took Brock out to hear some music at the bar at Jean Georges, where I had my first cocktail with cumin in it called The Fez, and we ran into Peter, so we bought him a drink and had a nice chat about capitalism, Marx, Chinese entrepreneurs, his investments, and attractive young women in black.
March 13, 2008
Shay shay, baby!
I introduced Tim, who does the ushering logistics for Emma, to some colleagues who could work the VIP section for him, and in return he scored me some free tickets to Harry Connick Jr. So I took Ker, the sax playing CEO, and Dave, the swinging Aussie, as my dates.
The show overall was lacksidaisical in that it didn't really move into anything. The big band sat for most of the time while Harry played some solos or trio stuff. The tenor player had a great sound and presence and was the most interesting part of the evening as he stalked around the stage in a gnome like way which as a horn player I found real amusing. I mean he was so far crouched over that his horn got down to within a foot of the floor.
Harry has a great voice and personable stage presence ("Shay shay, baby!" was his memorable foray into Mandarin) but it came off pretty much as an end of a nice day in Shanghai now let's get back to the hotel and eat sort of gig. I've had plenty of those kind of gigs, so understand how he might feel, but when tickets run from $60 - $220 you sort of expect more than what was delivered. I would've been disappointed if I had actually paid for the tickets. As the show was only 50% sold I think the promoters took a bath. No local people would want to spend a week's salary to see the show, so that explains why it was 98% foreigners.
The funniest part of the show was when Harry asked around in the all foreign audience - or Chinese as he was experiencing it - if they knew about 'Nawlins and the unusual food they ate there. Some weird and very excited guy from Canada hopped onto the stage to represent Shanghai and "the Chinese," but he didn't even know what Jinmao was (this is the landmark in Shanghai, the huge space-like tower in Pudong), and obviously knew less about Chinese food. Here's a minute or so of that dialogue...
March 07, 2008
700 million
Given the current state of affairs in the US and China's 1.4 trillion dollar savings account, I found this old poster from 1970 quite amusing.
It says roughly "If each person saves one reminbi, the whole country can have 700 million reminbi."
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
