Complicated Romances and Bloodthirsty Pencils: Two New Chinese Movie Posters

Two of the movie posters outside a theater at the Fengdu Road Pedestrian Street in Shaoguan especially caught my eye during recent days. One, for the poses and expressions:

Youth Never Returns (既然青春留不住) premiered at the Montreal Film Festival, which provides this synopsis:

When Wang Jinhui enters university, he immediately becomes one of its most popular students, certainly to the girls. But not Zhou Hui. When he asks her to help him cheat in exams, she reports him instead. Still, she does help him study, and eventually they warm to each other. They become a couple. An unsteady couple, with ups and downs -- lovers, enemies, lovers again. And finally a breakup. Years later, having become a successful restaurant operator, Wang Jinhui learns about Zhou Hui’s ill health. He comes to help, but once again they separate. Is there one more reconciliation in the cards?

And if Wang Jinhui now becomes ill, will Zhou Hui run the restaurant in his absence? Or given how the cheating incident worked out, will she instead report him for tax evasion to help rekindle their love yet again? Indeed, more ups and downs could be in store. Youth Never Returns opens in China on October 23. If offered free tickets, popcorn, and really good beer, I will consider going.

The other movie poster caught my attention because it reminded me of the Death is Here 3 movie poster I saw last year in Zhanjiang. Yes, folks, the terrifying giant pencil is back.

In addition to gratuitous cleavage, other movie posters for Campus Mystery (笔仙魔咒) include gratuitous gore, upskirt views, and water. I haven't yet seen them displayed in Shaoguan.

For reasons I can't explain, this movie did not premier at the Montreal Film Festival, so I will not share a proper synopsis. Instead, I will share a guess about the plot:

After Wang Jinhui enters university, an evil giant pencil convinces him to cheat in exams. But Zhou Hui, his occasional lover who has an interest in tax law, discovers it isn't a number 2 pencil as required and . . .

Wait, maybe I shouldn't confuse films. Anyway, whatever the real plot, if any, presumably a really big pencil appears in the movie, which is all you can ask for. Campus Mystery opened in China last Friday, and I will consider seeing it as well, assuming similar conditions. Given my curiosity about the pencil, though, I am willing to forfeit the popcorn and beer in a plastic bag is good enough.

These two movies probably don't best represent the overall state of movie-making in China today, but they still remind me of a recent conversation I had about Chinese movies with a high school student in Zhongshan. She said she used to only enjoy foreign movies. But now she was finding more Chinese movies she enjoyed and believed they were getting much better. She is definitely not alone in her opinion

On its opening weekend in China, Campus Mystery didn't captivate as many viewers as a number of other movies and only grossed U.S. $840,000. Recent domestic success stories for the Chinese film industry, comedies Goodbye Mr. Loser and Lost in Hong Kong, fared much better though. And showing that ants can trump pencils, even in a market clearly gamed to benefit domestic films, the foreign film Ant-Men, also opening in China this past weekend, came in number one grossing over $43 million.

The Great Acceleration at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Two months ago I entered the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and paused for a few moments as I looked at the sign listing the current exhibitions:

Needless to say, I was both surprised and disappointed to learn that the vast majority of the museum was closed in order to install a new exhibition. My visit proved to be rather brief.

Fortunately, I recently was able to return and see the new exhibition "The Great Acceleration". Not only did my visit last much longer, but I needed a second day to make a first pass through everything. As described in Art Agenda:

“The Great Acceleration: Art in the Anthropocene,” curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, casts human subjects as both increasingly ghostly, stressing limitations and finitudes, as well more aligned with the organic, strange, and sensory. In other words: both more dead and more alive. These qualities have been thrown into relief by the ascendance of the machinic technologies and algorithmic logics that have come to condition much of our activity and attention. Expanding on these issues, the biennial, held solely at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, features 52 artists and collectives, finely installed. As one might expect from Bourriaud, known for coining terms and corralling practices such as “relational aesthetics,” “postproduction,” and “altermodernism,” artistic approaches, rather than particular geographies, histories, or politics, connected the works in the exhibition.

And as described by exhibition curator Nicolas Bourriaud:

Human activity has been transforming the planet for millennia. All the ecosystems now bear the mark of human presence, but the scale and speed of change in the last 60 years, called by scientists The Great Acceleration, also led them to name anthropocene this new geological epoch — an era marked by the strong impact of human activities upon the atmospherical and geological evolution of planet earth.

Taipei Biennial 2014 uses this image in order to examine how contemporary art adresses this new contract between human beings, animals, vegetals, machines, products and objects. How does today’s art define and represent our space-time ? The exhibition will highlight the way artists focus on links, chainings, connections and mutations : how they envision planet earth as a huge network, where new states of matter and new forms of relations appear…

See the above links for more on the exhibition.

If you are in Taipei before the exhibition ends on January 4, 2015, I highly recommend spending at least an afternoon there. Below I will share photos of just a few of the installations along with excerpts of descriptions provided by the museum. The photos are not intended to be fully representative of the pieces and don't show any of the art videos. But they do provide a hint of the incredible diversity of artistic expression on display.

Formasa Decelerator — Opavivará! (Brazil)

Opavivará! is an art collective from Rio de Janeiro, which develops actions in public places of the city, galleries and cultural institutions, proposing inversions in the use of urban space, through the creation of relational devices that provide collective experiences.

Specially conceived for the Taipei Biennale 2014, Formosa Decelarator is also contaminated by local Brazilian traditions, rituals and tea ceremonies. . . .

The idea revolves around a sort of temple of idleness, an invitation to inactivity, a space that worships the non-productive and non-active and that stands as a counter-proposition to our accelerated, superficial and volatile times. It aims to evoke a collective ambience based on sharing and on the relationships that arise through the interaction of the public, a tool to transform the challenge of living together into a vibrant and pulsating exercise of pleasure, congregation and creative idleness.

Yucca Invest Trading Plant — Ola Pehrson (Sweden)

Every plant is in itself a perfectly economical system, with a minimum of waste, with its own resources, something which certainly can’t be said of many companies. A yucca palm tree has been chosen as a representative of a typical plant for a young urban businessman. The plant has been exposed to six months of intensive market education, during which it has been fed with stock market rates encoded into electric currents, combined with an index-related conditioning diet of either rich or meagre rations of water and sunlight. This is an attempt to stimulate a market-adapted habitus, similar to that which years of financial transactions develop in the experienced stock brokers’ nervous system.

Zoo — Ching-Hui Chou (Taiwan)

Zoo is a space full of imagination and conflict. It symbolizes a time of joy (for visitors), yet it also symbolizes a time of confinement and segregation (for animals). It symbolizes the convenience and marvels of modern life (a collection of rare animals from all over the world), and it also suggests a hint of the apocalyptic salvation of Noah’s Ark (protecting species on the verge of extinction). Cages in zoos are used as an allusion to modern people’s lives in cages.

Mobile Phone and Stone Tool — Shimabuku (Japan)

A mobile phone is one of the newest devices of humankind, and a stone tool is the oldest. Actually, they are similar in some aspects. Firstly, the size is similar. When held in a person’s hand, some of them feel very much alike. Stone tools also have “memory” just like mobile phones. You could imagine “calling” or “taking a photo” with a stone tool.

Dangerous Computer Virus — Abu-Bakarr Mansaray (Sierra Leone/Netherlands)

Mansaray’s creations particularly focus on unusual yet sophisticated drawings and machines based on his scientific background. His preparatory drawings, created by pencil, ballpoint pen or crayons, seem to be blueprints, but they can be regarded as the characteristics of his artwork, as evidenced in the works shown at the Taipei Biennial 2014. There is no doubt that the conflicting, warring circumstances of Sierra Leone play an influential role in shaping Mansaray’s creative imagination and futuristic point of view. Even though his works, to some extent, bear witness to the horrors of war, it is still evident that Mansaray attempts to express the power of creation.

Decriminalization of Taiwanese Indigenous Hunting Rifles — En-Man Chang (Taiwan)

The term “decriminalization” refers to a situation where a previously illegal activity or action is designated legal. When legal behavior is suddenly reclassified as illegal, that is called “criminalization.” In a civilized society, how is it that the traditional hunting of indigenous peoples results in them being subject to the legal system of a different culture? In the past, hunters were the pride of the tribe, but they are now labeled criminals by the legal system because the prevailing political-economic system declines to respect cultural diversity.

Keep Soothe and Carry On — David Douard (France)

The installation Keep Soothe and Carry On, made in 2014, is an installation that takes its starting point in its title, which Douard got from the classic English slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Reflecting present-day reality, this installation is represented in the form of a marketing slogan, with the launch of several derived objects (cups, T-shirts, posters…). That is why Douard has retained the R of a trademark, serving as a powerful symbol in the installation.

He decided to use this advertisement as a tranquilizer in society. The rest of the installation serves as elements of a disordered society which the slogan addresses

Buk — Harold Ancart (Belgium)

Buk is a plastic bucket holding a smart phone that plays “The Ultimate Very Best of Elvis” on a loop. The bucket serves as a soundbox for the smart phone as it amplifies the sound of the music released through the speaker of the phone. This anticipative sculpture witnesses a fictional lifestyle improvement for homeless people in the future. No longer subject to cold, for they will all carry electronic warming systems incorporated into their jackets, the homeless people will reunite and party around Buk rather than metallic trash cans set on fire.

The Deluge – Noah’s Ark — Hung-Chih Peng (Taiwan)

Reflecting ferry disasters, floods and other recent ecological crises, Peng’s work The Deluge – Noah’s Ark attempts to show the impotence of human beings in the face of uncontrollable catastrophic challenges. The rapid acceleration in the Anthropocene era causes climate change, environmental pollution, and ecological crises. All the measures to control these problems seem to be in vain. Human beings are unable to return to the unspoiled living environment of the past, and have become victims of their own endeavors. This work serves as a metaphor exposing the collision between Mother Nature and the accelerated development of industrialized civilization.

*Correction: an earlier version of this post mistakenly referred to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum as the Taipei Museum for the Fine Arts.

Lunar New Year Fairs in Hong Kong

Leading up to the Lunar New Year holiday, Hong Kong holds fairs in 15 different locations for a period of 7 days. A section of the fairs are dedicated to flower markets but much else is also sold. A large number of stalls are run by college students to gain sales experience and to hopefully make some money.

I recently visited two of the largest fairs--one at Fa Hui Park in Sham Shui Po the night of the opening day and another at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay several days later. I also briefly stopped by a smaller fair in Kwun Tong. The Hong Kong fairs reminded me of a Lunar New Year fair I visited in Guangzhou 3 years ago. However, some of what I saw in Hong Kong reflected a culture specific to there and one set of stalls in particular was strikingly unlike anything one could expect to see at a fair in mainland China. I'll save that topic for a later post.

Below are assorted scenes capturing a small taste of the Hong Kong fairs. The first 10 photos are from Fa Hui Park and the second 10 are from Victoria Park. The fair at Victoria Park was larger and, at least when I went, the crowds were far denser. In some sections it required a significant effort simply to cross an aisle from one booth to another. Several Hongkongers said that's part of the experience which draws them there.

These college students at the Fa Hui Lunar New Year Fair tried their best to sell me a stuffed toy.

Fortunately, they found a more appreciative potential customer.

If stuffed toys weren't your thing, perhaps some German Magic Goo would do the trick.

Locally-made spicy XO sauce

Also spicy: Korean kimchi

A small sample of the flowers for sale

Pinwheels are a popular part of the holiday.

If you wanted a giant "no smoking" stuffed cigarette, this was your place.

Like an American fair, food was available.

Although many of the options differed.

Sections of the Victoria Park Lunar New Year Fair seemed completely packed during the day, but one vendor told me it would become even more crowded that night.

High perches were needed by some.

One of the more pragmatic offerings

Shower water filters

More flowers

And more stuffed toys

Many of the signs and names for the students' stalls incorporated a horse theme in recognition of the Chinese zodiac sign for the new year. In this case, they also played on the fact that Barack Obama's name in Chinese includes the character for "horse".

Some college students sold their own creations which they said reflected Hong Kong culture.

A blue-haired man handing out free items had no problem drawing a crowd.

Two friendly high-school students seeking customers in a less crowded area

If You Believe in Jesus You Will Be Rich in Qinghai, China

Last year I shared scenes of nature around Qinghai Lake, scenes of urban growth in Xining, scenes of daily life in Xining, and scenes of religion at the Tibetan Kumbum Monastery -- all from Qinghai province in northwestern China. It's a region of rich ethnic diversity including Tibetan, Muslim Hui, and Han people.

During my time in Qinghai, I had several conversations with young Tibetans. Sometimes they shared their views about the Chinese government. They were never positive, and in a later post I will say more about what they said and what they wrote. But now I want to recommend the article "Good Lord: In China, Christian Fundamentalists Target Tibetans" in Time by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore. She reports on Christian Fundamentalists attempts to convert Tibetans in Qinghai:

Much of the informal English instruction in Xining is run by missionaries as are the majority of the foreign cafés. They translate the Bible into Tibetan, distribute flash drives containing their beliefs and rework Tibetan folk songs with Christian lyrics. Some help run orphanages. Targeting the young is key. When a South Korean missionary asked Tenzin which Tibetans needed help, he suggested the elderly. According to Tenzin, the Korean replied: “Not old people — [we want] children.”

Aggressive tactics persist, however. In a quiet Tibetan town three hours drive from Xining, one local describes seeing a missionary throw coins into the air. “This comes from Jesus,” he declared to the astonished crowd. The same Tibetan remembers with an incredulous laugh being told that Christianity brings cash. “All Buddhist countries are poor,” the missionary said. “If you believe in Jesus, you will be rich.”

Based on my own social networking feeds, it appears the article can stir up a variety of people outside of China, including both those who consider themselves religious and those who do not. In some cases, people seem pulled between between being happy to see more signs of religious freedom in China and being disturbed by the tactics used by the missionaries. For example:

As much as I respect freedom of religion, I can't help but draw parallels between the fundamentalists' conversion tactics and corporations' marketing strategies. "Targeting the young is key" <<--- the last time I saw that sentence was in a description of McDonald's strategy to get kids hooked on Big Macs. Just saying.

and " “All Buddhist countries are poor,” the missionary said. “If you believe in Jesus, you will be rich.” " Are they SERIOUS?! Offensiveness aside, have they forgotten their own teachings, like: "Hebrews 13:5 Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have" ? It sounds to me like they've completely lost sight of Jesus' original intent, and are deploying whatever appalling tactics they can to get people to convert.

Whatever you think about the tactics, it may seem odd that the Chinese government, which officially considers missionary work to be illegal, has not interfered with the efforts. Sebag-Montefiore shares the thoughts of Robert Barnett, a Tibet scholar at Columbia University, as to why this may be the case:

Barnett believes the reason for the government’s tolerant attitude is twofold. First, American missionaries, often funded by their churches, provide a valuable service teaching English for scant pay. Second, by targeting Tibetan Buddhism, missionaries might just help the government erode this integral part of Tibetan identity. Keeping a lid on restive Tibet, which China invaded in 1949–50, is paramount. Under Chinese rule, self-immolations by Tibetans protesting religious and political subjugation have become common in recent years. Tibetan-language schools have been closed down, nomads resettled in towns and cities, and monasteries subject to close police surveillance. Images of the exiled Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, are banned.

“There is a certain underlying commonality of purpose between the evangelizers and the new modernizing Chinese state. It’s just convenient for them to use each other,” explains Barnett. “[Today missionaries] have greater opportunities coming in on the coattails of the Communist Party.”

It is yet another example of the sometimes pragmatic approach taken by the Chinese government to achieve its goals.

Again, I recommend reading the full article. It presents a side of China that doesn't receive as much attention as others, but it touches on a variety of important issues, including how some Tibetans feel their identity is being threatened by multiple groups.

Scenes of China: People in Xining, Qinghai province

In a previous post, I shared photos of taller buildings in Xining, Qinghai province. I have already mentioned a few of the people I met in Xining in my post about several personal experiences of Chinese people being friendly towards me. Now I would like to share some more photos of Xining's people.

The following scenes are meaningful to me not just because they capture everyday Chinese life far away from China's better-known cities, but also because the photos highlight some of Xining's ethnic diversity, such as its Tibetan, Muslim Hui, and of course Han people. As I expressed when I shared some photos of youth in Chengdu, Sichuan province, looking at these photos of ordinary scenes can inspire questions and ideas that are not at all ordinary.

What do you see?

Chatting at a street market

Taking a break

Drinking tea outside

Fortune telling near a temple

More "Fake" Apple Stores In China: Does Apple Care?

[UPDATE at end]

According to recent reports, new genuine Apple Stores will open in the Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Chengdu. These will be the first Apple Stores outside of Beijing and Shanghai in mainland China. Shenzhen is an intriguing location for a new store since its border has been a significant entry point for Apple products smuggled into mainland China from Hong Kong due to differences in prices and availability.

In addition to several Apple Stores in China, there are numerous authorized resellers of Apple products. But there are many more unauthorized resellers, examples of which I shared here and here. I also shared an example here of an unauthorized reseller with a website nearly identical to Apple's. All of those examples came from Southeast China, so I will now share examples of unauthorized stores in the northwestern city of Yinchuan in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (Ningxia is similar in stature to a Chinese province). In addition to serving as evidence that unauthorized resellers are not limited to a specific region of China, they provide an opportunity to discuss some of the concerns Apple may have about such stores.

Like before, I did not deliberately seek out any of these stores. I opportunistically took the photographs on several occasions while I walked around Yinchuan's central Xingqing District. Here are just a few of the stores I saw selling Apple products:

In all of the examples above an Apple logo is prominently displayed in the location above the main entrance where one could expect a store's name, even in China.

Apple's online list of authorized resellers as of today shows only one authorized reseller in all of Yinchuan or anywhere else in Ningxia (note: an employee at the Apple Store in Hong Kong insisted to me that this list is regularly refreshed and reliable). Based on the store's address it is not any of the stores displayed above or later in this post. However, these stores not being listed as authorized is in itself not a problem since it is reportedly not illegal to resell genuine Apple merchandise in China.

Regardless, in a country with so many fake products some consumers may be especially motivated to buy Apple products from stores reviewed and authorized by Apple. That is what makes these other unauthorized stores in Yinchuan even more intriguing:

Although Apple likely does not want stores stating they are authorized resellers when they are not, Apple is likely more concerned about protecting the Apple Store identity. The famous fake Apple Store store in Kunming received attention from Apple not because it was unauthorized, but because of the extreme measures it took to appear as a genuine Apple Store. In short, whether Apple pursues any action against a store in China is probably related to the likelihood a consumer will incorrectly believe they are shopping at a store operated by Apple. A quick estimation based on what I have seen suggests there are thousands of unauthorized Apple resellers in China, many of which may be misusing Apple's trademarks to a variety of degrees. If Apple wished to pursue every potential case it could have a huge challenge ahead of itself. But at the moment I see no indications that Apple will take any significant action unless a store goes to more extreme lengths to imitate a real Apple Store. In that case, Apple has taken a more pragmatic approach and the situation is far more manageable.

The famous store in Kunming crossed several significant lines which made it worthy of Apple's attention. For example, the staff believed they worked for Apple and wore shirts identical to those worn by Apple Store employees. The second factor is why these two stores in Yinchuan particularly caught my attention:

In both stores, employees were wearing shirts that appeared to be similar, if not identical, to the Apple Store shirts.

When I spoke with two of the employees in the second store, I asked them if the store was an "Apple Store". One quickly said it was. Then the second jumped in and said it was not. She explained that their products were genuine and from an official Apple Store in Beijing. She did not believe she worked for Apple. At no point did the employee appear to evade any of my questions, and I never had the impression she was concerned anything might be amiss.

So, are any of the above stores enough to get Apple's attention? All I can say is that in most ways they are not highly unusual in comparison to many other unauthorized stores I have seen. They also did not go to the same extremes as the store in Kunming. Nonetheless, I suspect those Apple Store shirts could cause some feathers to be ruffled at Apple.

I could now go on and on and share examples of stores in other cities in China that to varying degrees may be infringing on the identity of genuine Apple Stores.

Unauthorized store in Lanzhou, Gansu province

Unauthorized store in Xining, Qinghai province

But I shall refrain. I think I have already sufficiently made my point. Again, there are many unauthorized stores across China and it does not appear that Kunming or Southeast China is special in this regards. But based on my experiences, the famous store in Kunming remains a special example.

Finally, I want to give credit where credit is due in Yinchuan, namely this business:

Despite the English mispelling, this Apple Authorized Service Provider is indeed listed in Apple's online locator. Consistent with my observations of what was for sale in Yinchuan's unauthorized stores, it only offers services for iPads, iPhones, and iPods -- no service for Macs. So, Yichuanese can rest assured they have a convenient and authorized option for servicing some of the Apple products they may buy, whether at Yinchuan's single authorized reseller, Yichuan's unauthorized resellers, or elsewhere.


UPDATE: Now tired of seeing "fake" stores? Then maybe the Chinese mobile phone with an apple logo in this post will interest you: "Insights and Headaches for Apple: The iPncne in China".