(no subject)
Shit, I really need to update more frequently. I figure with the new that's Beijing website unable so far to display magazine content it might be nice to throw some recent columns on LJ for people who haven't picked up a hard copy yet. I'll do that. But first, the banal details of my life you're surely all dying to hear!
We've finally rented out Fanfan's old apartment, and to a terrific guy from Dublin studying Mandarin at the Central Drama Academy--coincidentally, the school where my mother-in-law teaches directing. He moves in today. Speaking of the in-laws, the CNY holiday, much of which has been spent in their company, has been nearly perfect: just the sort of eat-drink-and-laugh-heartily family time that helps me get past the CCTV gala and all the annoying SMS holiday greetings. (That said, I did at least manage to milk a story out of the SMS thing).
My folks, meanwhile, are in Cairo on holiday and I'm a bit freaked out that I haven't heard from them--not a single e-mail--since they left on the 9th. I'm sure they're fine, but hey Dad, if you see this please give a signe de vie.
Andy Cunningham and Rick Widmer came by last night. Andy's endowed with a massive IQ (seriously, genius level at least) but keeps up this maddening modesty. He's an environmental engineer by training, great Mandarin, hugely well read--but he's a luthier at heart and now makes excellent guitar pickups that he's installed in my US-made Jackson and in a new crappy Fender Squire that I'll probably never play until I get a decent neck for it. The pickups sound great, but the thing is impossible to actually tune. His pickup business has tremendous promise (not just as a business, but more selfishly as a potential subject for a good business piece or even a book, replete as it is with all the classic China business elements). Guitarists out there - check his shit out. Niu fucking bi sounds.
Rick's a documentary filmmaker working as an editor in Boston for Discovery & History Channel docs plus PBS's Nova, which is pretty fucking cool. He's about to start working on a massive Zheng He documentary. Zheng He, and apologies to those who know all this, was the Chinese Muslim eunuch who served as admiral for a huge fleet of ships that sailed from Nanjing as far west as the east coast of Africa (north to Mogadishu, Somalia) and up the Persian Gulf to Hormuz and other towns in the early 15th century under the Yongle Emperor. Great stuff. Rick and I worked together on a video for Tang Dynasty that never got made, though I still think the idea was splendid. The three of us watched an insufferably bad Chinese documentary on a little Kazakh shepherd girl in Xinjiang, had some good Scotch, and talked until very nearly 4am.
I came in for scathing but confessedly well-deserved criticism from Andy about my band last night--mostly on our singer's anemic pipes, but also on my conspicuously hegemonic tendencies when on stage. We talked about the band for maybe half an hour, and I said without exaggeration that that was more time than I'd spent actually thinking about the band over the last half a year. We had a nibble from a Japanese company--actually, the president basically said flat-out he wanted to sign us--but then after a barrage of e-mails back and forth, with MP3s and resumes and press write-ups all sent along in mid-January--suddenly I heard nothing more. I'm still hoping that actually recording something will give the guys the morale boost they need; I'm in no position right now to do any reinvigorating.
Pitched a story to the editors on fuel cell technology in China. Waiting to hear back.
We've finally rented out Fanfan's old apartment, and to a terrific guy from Dublin studying Mandarin at the Central Drama Academy--coincidentally, the school where my mother-in-law teaches directing. He moves in today. Speaking of the in-laws, the CNY holiday, much of which has been spent in their company, has been nearly perfect: just the sort of eat-drink-and-laugh-heartily family time that helps me get past the CCTV gala and all the annoying SMS holiday greetings. (That said, I did at least manage to milk a story out of the SMS thing).
My folks, meanwhile, are in Cairo on holiday and I'm a bit freaked out that I haven't heard from them--not a single e-mail--since they left on the 9th. I'm sure they're fine, but hey Dad, if you see this please give a signe de vie.
Andy Cunningham and Rick Widmer came by last night. Andy's endowed with a massive IQ (seriously, genius level at least) but keeps up this maddening modesty. He's an environmental engineer by training, great Mandarin, hugely well read--but he's a luthier at heart and now makes excellent guitar pickups that he's installed in my US-made Jackson and in a new crappy Fender Squire that I'll probably never play until I get a decent neck for it. The pickups sound great, but the thing is impossible to actually tune. His pickup business has tremendous promise (not just as a business, but more selfishly as a potential subject for a good business piece or even a book, replete as it is with all the classic China business elements). Guitarists out there - check his shit out. Niu fucking bi sounds.
Rick's a documentary filmmaker working as an editor in Boston for Discovery & History Channel docs plus PBS's Nova, which is pretty fucking cool. He's about to start working on a massive Zheng He documentary. Zheng He, and apologies to those who know all this, was the Chinese Muslim eunuch who served as admiral for a huge fleet of ships that sailed from Nanjing as far west as the east coast of Africa (north to Mogadishu, Somalia) and up the Persian Gulf to Hormuz and other towns in the early 15th century under the Yongle Emperor. Great stuff. Rick and I worked together on a video for Tang Dynasty that never got made, though I still think the idea was splendid. The three of us watched an insufferably bad Chinese documentary on a little Kazakh shepherd girl in Xinjiang, had some good Scotch, and talked until very nearly 4am.
I came in for scathing but confessedly well-deserved criticism from Andy about my band last night--mostly on our singer's anemic pipes, but also on my conspicuously hegemonic tendencies when on stage. We talked about the band for maybe half an hour, and I said without exaggeration that that was more time than I'd spent actually thinking about the band over the last half a year. We had a nibble from a Japanese company--actually, the president basically said flat-out he wanted to sign us--but then after a barrage of e-mails back and forth, with MP3s and resumes and press write-ups all sent along in mid-January--suddenly I heard nothing more. I'm still hoping that actually recording something will give the guys the morale boost they need; I'm in no position right now to do any reinvigorating.
Pitched a story to the editors on fuel cell technology in China. Waiting to hear back.