Announcement
- Finally started really reading "Walden." According to Thoreau's "Economy," changing clothes should more reasonably happen at important junctures in life; similarly to molting, or leaving a chrysalis.
My blog
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book about shyness
Thursday, May 14, 2009 2:51AM / Standard Entry
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an old article
Tuesday, May 5, 2009 11:44PM / Standard Entry
Was hunting for images of pingfang online, and came across this article I wrote for Theme in 2006 - I didn't know it was online. Here it is if you want to check it out, but it's already old - if anyone has any updates on Beijing rock, I'd love to hear about it.
The layout of the article looks better here...
http://www.thememagazine.com/stories/beijing-rock-scene/Theme
Beijing’s Underground Rock Scene
By Wendy Cheng | Issue 5, Spring 2006
Photos by Joe Magliaro and Shu Hung
“I used to tell people I was an idiot because then they’d all shut up. I would hide my glory, my soul in my bones—but I’d know who was the winner.” –Xiao Rong, lead singer of Brain Failure
Twenty-first century mainland China could easily be the landscape of an oddly anachronistic musical, with a bizarre medley of characters. An Oliver-Twist-like beggar boy in a coal-stained city entreats subway passengers by placing his hands on their laps, singing a capella with disarming sweetness. Ten thousand Buyi minorities wear brightly-colored costumes on a mountaintop, singing songs to gods for a crowd of watching tourists. In back-alley KTV rooms, foreigners croon karaoke Carpenters covers from English lyric songbooks. And last but not least, long-haired boys in basements set aside their electric guitars to take a break from rehearsing, and squat outside with cigarettes and shishkebabs, the echo of rock still ringing in their ears.
That “bone soul glory” is very emblematic of the atmosphere of China today, the way it is trying to develop steadily and carefully—a kind of glory that comes from wallowing in obscurity, both enjoying it and hoping it has a latent payoff.
Since the days of Beijing’s Friendship Hotel, a haven for the international community in the late ’70s and early ’80s where expatriates influenced the birth of rock and live music, those boys (and girls) with guitars have sprung up tenfold, armed with pirated musical influences from around the world. From Shen Li Hui’s Modern Sky label, which represents more British-influenced bands like the Radiohead-resembling Convenience Store, to Secondhand Roses, a drag queen band with roots in a northeastern Chinese folk music called er ren zhuan, to Hang on the Box, a seminal girl punk band, the scene spans a number of genres and appeals to both locals and expats living in the city.
It is obscurity, the nooks and crannies, the feeling of a genuine frontier, that is so seductive in Beijing. A punk club entrance down a crumbling brick alleyway, illuminated by drapings of red and green fairy lights. Underground practice rooms for rock musicians in sewer-like spaces full of serpentine pipage. A music school where rows of minimalist white buildings fan zephyrs of guitar, piano, and flute into the air across a backdrop of cobalt blue mountains and the occasional fuchsia-blossomed peach tree. Mics and amps set up in pingfang (traditional Chinese shacks), artists from around the world living in refurbished siheyuan (traditional Chinese courtyard houses).
Bands like Brain Failure, the first punk band in China ever to self-release an album, has been playing Beijing venues since 1998. Xiao Rong, the lead singer, is a punk with hair shaved and dyed into something resembling a leopard. On stage, he is primal and charismatic and self-possessed, exuding dangerous charm. In one of the bigger recent events in China, Brain Failure played in Inner Mongolia last summer with Cui Jian, the founder and “godfather” of Chinese rock music, in the second of a widely publicized “Chinese Woodstock” series of concerts.
Last year Brain Failure traveled the States opening for the Dropkick Murphys, a Boston-based punk band that’s generated enough heat to pop up on “Conan O’Brien.” “Not only did we play for a bunch of drunk Irish men, it was in a cool club called Avalon and there were 2,000 people there,” says Xiao. “On Halloween we went to Avalon again, to open for Big D & The Kids Table. The audience [recognized us and] all started to scream our name.”
Brain Failure later asked Murphy’s singer/bassist Ken Casey to produce their album, American Dreamer, and then they went on a tour of their own.
American Dreamer is solidly produced and has a tone of lightness and celebration. Its English lyrics are sometimes too blaringly straightforward (“Coming to the USA” and “Gimme the Cash”), without any of the cute eccentricity of Japanese bands; musically, American Dreamer has comfortingly familiar roots in the Clash and the Sex Pistols, and a few songs like “Such a Dangerous” feature sunny, ska-like offbeat guitars.
Brain Failure is due to produce six songs from their 16-track demo with Ken Casey in February, followed by their fourth US tour in the spring. One of the tracks will be a cover of “Cynic,” an old rock and blues song by a Chinese singer named Wang Di, and a slow ska song about the 2008 Olympics.
When asked to tell a story about his childhood that reveals his true nature, Xiao Rong says, “I used to tell people I was an idiot because then they’d all shut up. I would hide my glory, my soul in my bones—but I’d know who was the winner.” That “bone soul glory” is very emblematic of the atmosphere of China today, the way it is trying to develop steadily and carefully—a kind of glory that comes from wallowing in obscurity, both enjoying it and hoping it has a latent payoff. “When I was in high school I was a big fan of all the big Chinese rock bands and musicians, like Cui Jian, Tang Chao, Hei Bao,” says Xiao. “In 1994, I discovered foreign music from a music program called New Rock Magazine in Beijing. DJ Youdai used to play all kinds of artists on his program. The Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Metallica, Nirvana, Green Day, and more.
“In 1996 there was still not much foreign music for sale in China, but we used to get them in an underground way: dakou CDs.” (Dakou CDs or literally, “saw gash CDs” are a phenomenon whereby CD retailers in various countries throw away unsold CDs. To mark them as trash, the CDs are notched with saws, taking a small chunk out of each disc. These notched CDs—which are still playable, minus a couple songs—are often shipped to China as landfill. Scavengers pick them from the trash and sell them to re¬tailers, giving them a second retail shelf life.)
There’s a rich vein of material in Chinese culture analogous to the medieval/fantasy stuff that western bands tapped into—successfully romantic, heroic, ass-kicking. It supplied some inspiration for the look of the band [Tang Dynasty], for the visual images we wanted the band to conjure up with its music.
One of the Chinese bands that Xiao Rong mentions as an influence, Tang Chao, or Tang Dynasty, was the first heavy metal band in China and was co-founded by American-born Kaiser Kuo back in 1984. Kaiser is a longtime veteran of the scene and even helped foster it.
“Most people in the music scene of the late 1980s,” explains Kaiser, “didn’t really understand the different genres and sub-genres of rock and the ideologies they were intimately tied up with. It was easy enough to understand that punk was about iconoclasm and maybe even nihilism, but it took some explaining to make my friends in Beijing understand why the average devotee of a hair metal band like Poison or Warrant tended to be very different than, say, an Iron Maiden fan.”
Part of the search for a unique voice seems always to have been related to finding the right blend of East and West:
“There’s a rich vein of material in Chinese culture analogous to the medieval/fantasy stuff that western bands tapped into—successfully romantic, heroic, ass-kicking. It supplied some inspiration for the look of the band [Tang Dynasty], for the visual images we wanted the band to conjure up with its music. It’s not like we took to the stage wearing armor and Chinese battle gowns; it was hairstyles we sometimes wore, a red sword tassel I used to hang from my guitar, that sort of thing. The videos from the first album had lots of this sort of wuxia imagery.
“I don’t think this idea was fully realized in Tang Dynasty, and so I’ve tried to keep part of that alive in my current band, Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn). Other elements of ‘Chineseness’ in it include lots of pentatonic-based melodies, harmonies based on fourths and fifths (very common in Chinese music), and Chinese-sounding instrumentation.”
While the possibilities within Chinese rock loom large, perhaps it has yet to truly succeed. Like other types of artists in China, bands are often shackled by a reliance on imitation, or they replace creative risk-taking with political statement.
“The ecosystem necessary for the development of a real rock scene isn’t in place yet in Beijing, let alone other cities of China,” continues Kaiser. “By contrast, there’s a very advanced rock music ecosystem in the States: venues, equipment vendors, shops, teach¬ers, studios, you name it. And a much, much bigger market. It’s more competitive, too, forcing bands in the States to work much harder to get gigs, and to promote yourself.
“It’s not like in Beijing, where on a typical night there are six or seven bands playing, each with only a 20-minute set, so bands can write five or six songs and just play those same tunes again and again. In the U.S., if you can’t play a 90-minute set, you’re not a real band.”
When it comes to rock, what saves us all, is the emergence of boldly unique sounds. And while that has to do with awareness and availability of resources, it is equally if not more important to give ourselves up to the sudden emergence of unusual combinations of influences (a factor which is not at all lacking in Beijing) and most of all, to stay true to and believe in one’s impulses.
After all, the greatest value of obscurity comes more from observing the faintest murmurs of our souls, rather than in biding time toward glory.
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Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO
Friday, May 1, 2009 1:55AM / Standard Entry
A little blurb about Margaret Chan, who just raised the Swine Flu to pandemic level 5 for the WHO - she was rated #44 of Newsweek's 50 Global Elite this past December, and back in 2007, she was #37 on Forbes' list of 100 most powerful women.THE GLOBAL ELITE44: Dr. Margaret Chan
Director-General, World Health Organization
With the global spread of diseases more of a threat than ever, Chan represents the world's first line of defense. The well-liked leader of the WHO is known for her interest in women's issues and African health, but her background is in emerging diseases. As Hong Kong's director of health, she handled the avian flu and SARS, ultimately stopping SARS by culling the city's 1.5 million poultry population. One admirer calls her "the James Brown of global health" for her work ethic. In her circles, she's certainly a rock star.
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/11/biz-07women_Margaret-Chan_KERD.html
The 100 Most Powerful Women
#37 Margaret Chan
08.30.07, 6:00 PM ET Director-general, World Health Organization
Switzerland
© SAMANTHA SIN/AFP/Getty Images
Battling outbreaks of avian influenza and SARS is just one aspect of Chan's job description. Chan has dedicated herself to minimizing epidemics before they happen by better disseminating information about diseases and outbreaks around the world. The World Health Organization's new International Health Regulations, which went into effect for member states on June 15, reflects this strategy. Chan adamantly believes these new rules are the only way to stop global outbreaks in an increasingly connected world. She joined the Hong Kong Department of Health in 1978, eventually rising to be director of health. She then moved to the World Health Organization in 2003, and became director in 2006. Her term lasts until June 2012.—Ryan Derousseau
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Joe Wong on Letterman
Thursday, Apr 23, 2009 9:01PM / Standard Entry
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harold koh's transnationalism?
Tuesday, Apr 21, 2009 8:34AM / Standard Entry
this from
http://experts.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/20/international_law_exists_which_is_why_we_need_harold_kohInternational law exists -- which is why we need Harold Koh
Mon, 04/20/2009 - 6:05pm
Yale legal scholar Harold Koh understands foreign legal systems -- that doesn't mean he's going to implement them here.
By Ronald Slye
U.S. President Barack Obama's nomination of Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of Yale Law School, for the position of legal advisor to the State Department spurred uproarious criticism. A number of media commentators argued that his espousal of a transnationalist legal perspective makes him a dangerous choice. The New York Post branded him a member of the "axis of disobedience." The National Review reprinted a letter castigating Koh for saying he could imagine precepts of sharia law at work in the United States.
These critics argue that a transnationalist approach subordinates U.S. national interests to global or foreign ones (an especially timely issue given the global legal wrangling over the United States' "enhanced interrogations" policy). But this view is incorrect and based upon a lack of understanding of this dynamic legal approach.
All transnationalism does, in a nutshell, is work to describe and understand how law develops in a globalizing world. It is not prescriptive, purporting to say how international law and domestic law, or public and private law, should interact; nor does it attempt to answer whether the United States should adopt or reject a particular rule of international law. Instead, it challenges the descriptive power of international law's traditional dichotomies, between public and private, and domestic and foreign law. It recognizes that states are not the only actors in international law -- that organizations such as the United Nations, for instance, play a vital role. It also examines how international actors interpret, internalize, and enforce laws.
This is hardly a radical approach -- in fact it is solidly within the mainstream of academic legal scholarship, legal practice, and U.S. constitutional law. Everyone from corporate lawyers to International Criminal Court prosecutors recognize the dynamic relationships between domestic and international law. And the vast majority of international law scholarship, whether "liberal" or "conservative," concerns the proper relationship between international and domestic law. No one questions that international law exists or matters.
Additionally, the power to create and enforce laws now lies outside capital courtrooms -- and thus requires a transnationalist approach. The World Trade Organization ensures a level playing field for international trade; the World Intellectual Property Organization protects patents globally; and U.N. Security Council resolutions impose financial sanctions on states. The State Department needs a counselor who understands all such global actors.
Finally, since the founding of the republic, international law has influenced U.S. law and vice versa. All three branches of the U.S. government have incorporated, interpreted, resisted, and responded to international law. And, especially since World War II, the United States has played a proud and instrumental role in developing it and ensuring its enforcement. Those interactions are the focus of a transnationalist legal approach to law, and why Koh must understand transnationalism to act as the State Department's legal advisor.
Ultimately, legal transnationalism, particularly as articulated by Koh, falls squarely within the mainstream. Koh himself is a moderate, having worked for both the Republican Reagan and Democratic Clinton administrations. Everyone from Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School to Dean Kenneth Starr at Pepperdine University School of Law, as well as half the country's law school deans, supports him. This is not surprising. We are, of course, talking about the legal office that most directly engages with issues of international law. Why would we not want one of the foremost international law experts in the country in that position?
Ronald Slye is an associate professor of law at Seattle University and the director of its international and comparative law program.
