Tonight was one of those nights when I wonder why the fuck I play in a metal(ish) band in China. We 'headlined' an all-Metal show at the new Get Lucky, which meant we played last out of six, count 'em six bands. That meant we went on just before 1am on a Sunday night -- a Monday morning, more precisely. The bands before us save one or two were ( Read more... )

I was doing a bit of research for a China Economic Review story and looking into China's QFII (Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors) policy -- letting foreign investment funds play the local stock market, but not individual investors -- when I came across this guy, the CEO of Great Wall Securities. Check out the pinyin for the poor guy's name ( Read more... )

Yang Meng, the singer of my band, got off on the wrong foot with Fanfan: When I told him by phone that I was getting married, he asked -- loud enough to be heard by Fanfan, who was well known to him and happened to be standing right next to me -- "Really? To whom?". She's never been openly hostile to him, and he's still completely clueless about ( Read more... )

I was just alerted to this story on a Chinese guitar Website here , which features a long interview about music I did in Chinese; thankfully, the editor saw fit to turn my clumsy utterances into something that makes me sound at least quasi-literate in Mandarin. Believe me, I can't speak with diction nearly so precise or grammar so correct. There ( Read more... )

So my commencement speech at the Beijing BISS International School went well, thanks in part to a good kicker last joke that bokane supplied when we met up yesterday at the Bookworm. I managed to get good laughs and didn't come off as nervous as I actually was. Amazing how after all these years I still suffer from such terrible stage fright. I still ( Read more... )

The in-laws spirited away my wife and daughter to their home in the remote suburbs for a couple of days, so I'm on my own 'til Saturday. Last night was Steve Terry's 35th birthday party at the Hidden Tree and I had one of the more pleasant evenings out I've had in quite some time, putting down delicious Belgian beers and chatting with all sorts of ( Read more... )

We had a great time at Rich and Cherry's place this afternoon, even if I lost two croquet games. Big turnout of couples with their babies and toddlers -- something like 15 all below the age of three. Unbelievably, Guenevere was the only "pure Chinese" baby (though of course her father is an American citizen). There were two belonging to Wang Xin ( Read more... )

My daughter's a bruiser. Yesterday at the hospital we ran into a couple who checked into the hospital when we did, early morning on April 12, and their daughter was really quite petite next to Guenevere. Fanfan declared that Guen looks like a dashou (打手), which means something like "hatchet man" or "hired roughneck" -- a goon, a thug. Today I did a ( Read more... )

Live Journal pays off! An Irish radio producer-and-presenter team was in town recently and "interviewed" me -- it was really a pleasant conversation over a leisurely lunch at Wangfujing -- and what should they have brought as a present but a bottle of Balvenie! Happens I had mentioned here on LJ my need to replenish my single malt supply, and these ( Read more... )

Read this very sensible commentary in today's IHT. The author, WeiWei Zhang, senior research fellow at the Modern Asia Research Center, Geneva, offers a good argument that the reform and opening of the last 25 years has "dismantled the economic and institutional foundations of totalitarianism," and that to describe China as having undergone ( Read more... )