Took an all-expense not-paid roadtrip back to Hong Kong this morning, complete with bubble tea, dumplings, far away smoldering looks into the sky under heavy-lidded eyes, dreams of typhoons, and all that music by Utada Hikaru, who broke out in the summer of 1997. Utada—your pain! Your throaty longing! All your wild hair! Sister, you are not of Hong Kong but we loved you then and I still do. Continue reading
Category Archives: Asia
Chongqing Is The Most Hospitable
Chongqing’s traffic is unpredictable. Cars and trucks freewheel around pedestrians. Carts stacked high with produce do tottering loops. All is constant flux and motion, heedless of street signs: the ceaseless ebb of red, the flow of green.
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Parts of (Chinese) Speech
Was I seeing the so-called ‘real China’, was I seeing the China I wanted to see, or was I seeing some weird third China, a convoluted mix of adrenalin and random vocab, of grinding poverty vs. the sudden rise, of foreigners gleaning stories from taxi drivers? Via the Farmer General, read more
On Anwar, from Oppenheimer
The Act of Killing has just been nominated for an Academy Award. Congrats to Joshua Oppenheimer and the entire crew. I am reposting the following message that came to me from Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing. I write about the film for Guernica here. Continue reading
Drive Your Own Red Whale
Take good and extra precautions when wiring money from Jakarta, Indonesia to New York. Ensure everything is signed off, declared, stamped. Pressure Javanese officers for assurance and make telephone calls from one Batavian landline to another that will be picked up when the phone rings in Manhattan. Make the phone ring in Manhattan.
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Indonesia is One Tasty Jam
What deliciousness! In which we hop a ride on the Radio Magnetic audio rocket—produced with tremendous bravery by me, you will hear what I mean—to Padang in North Sumatra, Indonesia where we eat our hearts, minds and stomachs out. Padang food you are the keeper of my soul.
130 Years of Krakatoa
A hundred and thirty years ago this month Indonesia’s Krakatoa volcano erupted, sending plumes of ash so high it discolored the horizon in San Francisco. The explosion killed nearly 40,000 people and dispatched pumice as far away as Zanzibar. The boom is reported to have been the loudest sound ever heard in modern history. Via The Jakarta Post, read more
The Act of Seeing The Act of Killing
A new doc on Indonesia’s 1965-66 anti-communist genocide takes the international film festival circuit by storm. But in the country that most needs to see it, the film is underground, its crew largely anonymous. Via Guernica, read more
Protect the Freshness is Over
A Henan jaunt to investigate a Chinese Communist Party campaign sheds little light on how the world’s largest political party maneuvers at the local level. Or it shed a lot of light. Or it cast shadows. Or it threw spotlights. I think everyone just felt better when I left Jiguan. Via The Farmer General, read more
Family Common Eats
In the winter of 2005, I took a job as a research reporter for the New York Times Beijing bureau. The capital was blustery and bitter cold, coming off another long haul winter. A fresh round of yellow dust kicked up across the city. Via The Farmer General, read more
Caroline M Cooper 