Gunna talk the talk and walk the walk at a bonsai of the vanities this Thurs at the Japan Society. Are you in New York? Do you adore small, expertly curated, finely cultivated things? Any interest in hearing some of your hardest hitting bonsai questions finally answered? Come one, come all!
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.
Continue reading
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
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
