After the daily news showers we got on protests and violence in Iran thanks to its disputed election, here comes a movie tip for the one who wants to get a closer look at Iran and a whole other president campaign that once traveled the country.
After the daily news showers we got on protests and violence in Iran thanks to its disputed election, here comes a movie tip for the one who wants to get a closer look at Iran and a whole other president campaign that once traveled the country.
Thanks to the couple hundred people who attended our Election Hangover get-together last night at Sasha's, co-hosted by American Craft Beer Partners. It was a great end to a wonderful day (unless, of course, you wanted the other guy to win).
Looks like many (most?) of us will have reason to celebrate tonight at Election Hangover. We'll be on the third floor of Sasha's (11 Dongping Lu, near Hengshan Lu, 东平路11号, 近衡山路) from 7 pm onwards. Drinks are half price including these fine beers from American Craft Beer Partners: Kona Longboard (from Obama's Hawaii), Brooklyn Lager, Brooklyn IPA, and Rogue American Amber Ale. (If you drink enough, perhaps Pennsylvania will begin to take its proper shape on this map.)
It's almost over! By Wednesday evening — assuming there are no hanging chads — we should know who the next leader of the free world will be. And, either way, there will be reason to drink. Some will want to celebrate ... others will want to drown their sorrows ... and many will just be relieved the damn U.S. election is finally done and dusted. And all of them — be they Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialists, Communists, Whigs, Tories or just thirsty — are welcome to attend Election Hangover on the 3rd floor at Sasha's (11 Dongping Lu, near Hengshan Lu, 东平路11号, 近衡山路), an extended happy hour presented by Shanghaiist.com and American Craft Beer Partners on Wednesday, Nov. 5 from 7 to 11 pm. Drinks, including ACB's fine American microbrews, are half price ... political discourse is free.
Things are getting heated in the build-up to U.S. Presidential elections this coming fall, and China is a subject that both candidates keep coming back to, and that American voters are eager to hear about. The faltering Olympic organization and burgeoning economy of the PRC have been getting most of the attention, but in the past few days it has been other issues that have turned the attention of the Presidential hopefuls and their supporters across the Pacific.
Hong Kongers snub Beijing Sydney Morning Herald: Hong Kong voters snub Beijing, strike blow for democracy TIME: One for the Democrats in Hong Kong Reuters: Pro-democracy Chan wins symbolic Hong Kong election Fake moon pictures? Fox: China: Our Moon Photo Is No Fake The Canadian Press: China rejects questions over allegedly generic lunar surface photo The Telegraph: China defends lunar probe pictures China business WSJ: China Railway Shares Surge On Shanghai Trading Debut WSJ:...
Despite the fact that Kevin Rudd - the fluent Mandarin speaking leader of the Australian Labor Party - is widely predicted to romp it in at the Australian Federal election this coming Saturday, it seems he's not taking any chances. The latest salvo in Rudd's "earnestness offensive" according to the Sydney Morning Herald, takes form in a seven-metre billboard of The Great Rudd (see right) that has been suspended above Cameron Road in Hong...
A prominent former Thai senator accused of sex crimes against four underage girls was sentenced to 36 years in prison on Tuesday, when an appeals court stiffened the sentence of a lower court.
The video includes two images of Kevin Rudd cleverly photoshopped into old communist propaganda posters (yes, the type that you'd find in the Dongtai Lu antique market), and classic lines among the subtitles (which are supposed to the translation for the rubbish Chinese voiceovers) include "Rudd impress and frighten Australian person with his earnestness offensive," and "He unnerve decrepit Howard by deploying clever principle of 'similar difference'. Leader Rudd declares swift and violent Education Revolution." Ingenious. And as the Sydney Morning Herald notes, political parties with their multi-million dollar advertising budgets have a thing or two to learn from guerilla tactics such as these.
Locals cynically call him "papa," or praise him as their "king." Some expats, meanwhile, call him "big head." Whatever the moniker applied to him these days, Tajik President Imomali Rahmon is showing himself to be a man full of surprises.
A record number of more than 10,500 Chinese Muslims are expected to fulfill their pilgrimages to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, according to the Islamic Association of China (IAC) Sunday.
As ice is melting between North Korea and the United States, more and more Chinese businessmen have been rushing to the border with the secretive communist country, looking to cash in on its trade and investment potential.
With the dust now settled on last week's APEC summit in Australia, we came on a juicy tidbit of news that either didn't get much mileage in the Chinese press or escaped the news that we read. Shanghaiist reader Fergus Ryan filled us in:
Sri Lanka is fighting against the threatened beheading of a teen maid in Saudi Arabia over the death of an infant. Saving her from beheading has become one of the most urgent issues in a country where nearly everyone has worked abroad or had a relative employed overseas.
Although June is the designated month of Gay Pride events all over the world, Shanghai will show its Pride this week by holding several events at Shanghai's own, one-of-a-kind gay dance club/bar/motel multiplex, PinkHome. All of the events are the result of much hard work by Shanghai's own, (and also) one-of-a-kind organization, Shanghai's LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) group. As for the events, there won't be a parade or hopefully any tear gas, curses, or...
Well, ok, it's his disembodied voice on a conference call, but we still think having the U.S. senator and Democratic presidential hopeful drop the PRC a line is pretty cool.
Singapore - Singapore will host a round of the 2008 FIA Formula One World Championship, making it the home of Asia's first street circuit (the only other street circuits are in Monaco and Valencia). More exciting is the fact that this will be the first night-time event in Formula One history!
Our weekly round-up of some of the highlights from China's English-language blogosphere:
Image of mass games in Pyongyang from wkenney.
So a writer from The Gazette, a popular Montreal newspaper, was in China recently. And he was awed by the same things that most writers who haven't been to China recently are awed by: the shiny skyscrapers, the intoxicating energy, the pirated DVDs. But the writer's trip to China also coincided with the "most exciting Quebec election in decades," and he desperately wanted to follow the news from back home. And thanks to this thing called "the internet" he was able to ... in Beijing. In Shanghai, he claims, it was a different story. Here is a snippet from the story, entitled "Don't try reading The Gazette online in fashionable, ultra-modern Shanghai":
With the sun out, the temperatures high, one can only think of one thing-- what's going on in the World of the -ist's?
is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour.
-Bostonist discussed two big state issues-- what sort of math constitutes a marriage and what kind of alcohol can be sold in most grocery stores. And the politically minded Curt Schilling went on "Jeopardy!".
think. It just made us wonder: if it were up to the -ist-a-verse, what would we be voting for?
We'd heard a lot of hype about Hong Kong director Johnnie To's (杜棋峰) new film Exiled (放逐), not least of all because it was one of three Chinese language films that competed at the Venice Film Festival (against new works by Jia Zhangke and Tsai Ming-liang).
Shanghaiist has a retraction to make -- what we previously dubbed the "Chinese Oscars" in this post was absolutely wrong, because, naturally, the 6th Chinese Language Movie Awards (第6届华语电影传媒大奖)deserve this title. This awards ceremony had previously been held in the mainland, but this time (April 17), they moved it to Hong Kong. And guess who won? Tony Leung Ka-fei (Liang Jiahui) won best actor for the 80th eighth time for his role in Election (Hei Shehui). The only "surprise" came in the success of Peacock (孔雀), the debut film from cinematographer turned director Gu Changwei, which took home awards for best director, best original screenplay, and best actress for Zhang Jingchu. Election won best film awards, again. We don't get it -- if all these film awards are pretty much the same, and there are so many of them, then isn't each one worth correspondingly less? Does this really award good cinema, or is it just a kind of collective Chinese movie industry circle-jerk in installments? You be the judge.
The Hong Kong film awards ceremony was held last night, and unsurprisingly, there were no suprises, no upsets, nothing except the same banal shit. You can read about it here. A note about that article: It says that the HK Film Awards are the Chinese Oscars, even though Shanghaiist thought that the Golden Horse awards over in Taiwan were the Chinese Oscars. Which one is it? Or should the Golden Rooster awards be considered as well?
While the CNOOC/Unocal mess is still fresh in our minds (by “mess” we mean a resounding victory for those that have American interests at heart), another Chinese company, it seems, has found itself in the crosshairs of US law makers. Lenovo, a Chinese PC manufacturer, has raised a few eyebrows among congressional leaders with its impending sale of 16,000 desktop PCs to the State Department.
There's a whole wide world out there, and here's the proof: