new advice new look

This is the latest column. It has a new photo. they have a bunch now and hopefully they will rotate them. I alsohave moved to a better page i am inside the last page intead of randomely in the middle. I don't know anything about newspapers so in my opinion that is a better spot. I think my column is getting more popular I seem to be getting a lot more letters. For those of you back in US of A that are sending me letters ( there are a lot of you ) please make them a tad more subtle. my editor keeps sending me e-mails about these. I don't want you to stop em just make them sound like they come from a fucked up chinese college kid.

Hutongs

The other day i attended a lecture on architechtural design of hutongs. Hutongs are the traditional living quarters in beijing. These are fancy rich people hutongs. They are tearing most of these down in beijing and the ones that are left are worth a ton of money. i heard ruppert murdoch just bought one for 10 million dollars.

I am takiing a lot of holga photos of hutongs before they are torn down. the tungsten photos were taken in the hutongs. these are just some quick digital ones i took before i go back with my holga on a day with good light.

Monday Morning Propaganda

fashion show

A local t-shirt shop specializing in quirky off beat designs had a fashion show to introduce its new line. There were a few cool designs i like the original ones the best though. Anyways they had this fashion show in the middle of the hutongs. no permit just invited a few hundred people then blocked traffic tied some rope to the trees. The lacked proper lighting so the handed out flashlights to the crowd to light up the models. my favorite was the disco ball a guy shined a flashlight on it and knocked it around with a broom to get the desired effect.

the t-shirt shop

The shop has tshirt featuring unique but overlooked things in beijing that all foriegners think is funny. Like t-shirts that say kung pao chicken in chinese characters. Others have the subway logo or law enforcement signs. T-shirts are high quality and cost 90 kuai. a little pricey if i didn't offset the cost with a large amount of free beverages that night.

fashion show after party

This is the fashion show afterparty. Anyone who wore or bought a t-shirt from the shop got to drink for free all night. I bought a t-shirt and made them rethink the all-night part.

handjob cooks

Gordon made a fine dinner of american cuisine. whited bread covered in hotdogs, cheese slices, chilli, and onions.

wo de lao shi

This is my chinese teacher. I have been here 6 months so far and i still cannot figure out why chinese girls do the finger thing when their photos are taken. I am told that they put their hands in front of their face to make their head look smaller.

hen hao chi

Anyways more stuff I went by wangfujing today and spent my check on some books. I also swung by food alley to get a kebab. thats where i saw these. yes people eat this. hen hao chi!

Dr. Strange Love

Here is the latest article. I went to the newspapers office today for the first time to see what was going on. Kind of cool. Not as cool as the sports illustrated office but still cool. I also got my first paycheck 600 kuai. I guess this means i am technically employed. but considering it only takes about 30-40 minutes i am not sure if it counts. I am not to sure if i like this gig or not. i really have no clue what i am doing and since i only get 550 words its hard to make them as funny as i would like. any ways the picture will be changed next week. i gave them a bunch and told them to rotate them each week.

donkey dumplings

Last week i learned how to say the different types of meats in chinese. I learned beef, chicken, lamb, pork, and donkey. Yes donkey i was a bit taken back with this as well. I asked the teacher if she liked donkey or lu rou as its known in chinese she replied that it was hen hao chi. hen hao chi. literally translated hen = very, hao = good, chi = eat. since most words are made by combining characters these 3 characters combine to mean delicious. anyways last night we went to a north east chinese restaurant that specializes in exotic dumplings i saw they had donkey meat filled dumpling and decided to try lu rou for myself. We also tried these pork legs that you suck the marrow out with a straw. both were hen hao chi

So you Want to be an Animator....er Lighter

So anyways somehow through a friend of a friend of a friend I ended up talking to an expat highschool art class about careers in art. The local expat magazine wrote an article about it and published it in their children's section. My goal is to be the ghetto king of all media, like howard stern but ghetto-er.

I want to emphasis that the article was based upon a casual Q&A with high school art students.

calligraphy class #6

This is li style. This is the style is 2000 years old and was carved into stone steles.

the characters are zhi & zu

zhi - to know

zu - enough

the combined worke means:

to be satified with what you have gained

Monday Morning Propaganda

llama temple

This is the llama temple. It is a tibetean buddhist temple close to where i live. i skipped my chinese class on friday grabbed my holga and headed over there to shoot a few rolls of film.

becka & sophie goodbye sushi

We hit all you can eat and drink sushi for 150 kuai. Sophie ( on the left )& Becka ( on the right )have been here in beijing visiting my friend anna and nanjie on a daily basis. A fun time was obviously had by all. afterwards the party moved its way to nanjie where we bumped into the dutch girls and some other familiar faces. I was a little sakied out so i headed home after around 20 minutes of nanjie.

more holgas

not so good but i am posting it anyway

more shennanigans

Last night went to see a play called I heart Beijing. It was bout the complex difficult lives of westerners living in beijing. The was the abc who struggled with chinese the western girl looking for love the whiteboy with a gaggle of chinese "language exchange partners" yada yada yada. add a little gong bao ji ding and there it is! here is the website for those interested:

http://www.iheartbeijing.com/

after we hit a new club opening. and then i headed to nanjie and saw the rest of the posse.

schwarrr

this is another holga. the photo is not all that good but what it represents is! this is the chinese character for schwar. schwar is basically a kebab or roast meet on a stick. they cost 1 or 2 kuai each and are everywhere. the schwar guys will buy these lights bend them into the charcter and sent up shop on street corners. in any given evening you will see about a hundred of these light up signs! hen hao chi

crazy nights

yesterday i was invited to my favorite resturant to help taste new foods the chef was trying out. cox was originally a buffalo wing resturant then the owners opened rickshaw with the same menu a few blocks away and now everyone is going there instead. Cox is going to try and serve english style curries to make up the lost business. i drank free beer and tasted a variet of curries and spices. all was good until the next day.
last night we went out to an indian resturant and ate more curries then went bowling and polished off a bottle of kaluha. you can't bowl without enjoying a few refreshing white russians. after we met up with some friends and hung out at nanjie then headed to the rickshaw till around 5:30am. beijing is THE place if you dig sunrises. I tend to see about 3 or 4 a week!

i am wondering as I try and document my leisure. is it better with photos or without?
are descriptions of the evenings shennanigans better than photos? i only ask because my batteries were dead.

calligraphy class #5

This week we studied the bamboo style. It is called the Li style the styles is 2500 years old. It is before the invention of paper. It is when the ancient chinese wrote on bamboo reeds and tied them together with string to make an ancient scroll or "ce".

the first character is zheng = straight or right now

the next character is feng = rich or harvest

the third character is nian = year

together they form the meaning:
Rich Year is Coming

my holga has sprung a leak

all of a sudden my holga is leaking light like crazy. these came out king of interesting and i am not sure if i should fix it or start shooting with my hasselblad more often. The last photo is of the apartment complex i live at in beijing.