Results tagged “memoirs”

Nien Cheng (鄭念), author, has passed away in Washington D.C., according to the Washington Post. The 94-year-old former KMT diplomat is best known for her bestselling autobiography Life and Death in Shanghai, which chronicled the six-and-a-half years she spent as a prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. In one of the most harrowing tales from the book, she finds out that her daughter, a prominent Shanghai film actress, was killed by the Red Guard for refusing to denounce her mother. For summaries and reviews of her seminal memoir, check out the original New York Times book review and this article from Time Magazine.

With 2005's film version of Memoirs of a Geisha, Chinese people across the world had more reason to hate Zhang Ziyi and foamed at the mouth yet again saying, We’re not Japanese. You would have thought that by now the West would have cottoned onto the message.

Celebrated American writer and critic Gore Vidal was interviewed by former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr on Sunday at Glamour Bar before a full audience as the opening speaker for the 2007 Shanghai International Literary Festival. Over his career which spans more than 60 years, Vidal has produced novels, plays, screenplays, and numerous essays and pamphlets, and most recently, he published his memoirs, Point-to-Point Navigation.

It may seem that we just can't get enough of blowjob jokes, but the Shanghai Daily's headlines are just too doggone funny.

For whatever reason, Hong Kong locals just don't like our Zhang. They claim that she speaks English with a funky Beijing accent, that the Armani dress she wore to the Oscars made her look flat-chested, and that she "squats on the floor like a vulgar Chinese farmer when she goes shopping".

Has life ever gotten so meaningless that you sometimes leave the office in the daytime to hang around on street corners, return to work hours later, and see if anyone has noticed or cared that you've been gone? Us too! On one of todays prolonged one-man-meetings, we saw Mr. Steven Spielberg near Shanghai Centre on Nanjing Xi Lu, with an eight person entourage. Walking no more than five feet past him, thinking "oh I am glad I forgot my camera today", the question arose whether it might be worth it to sing the Indiana Jones theme tune while leaping around, jumping onto benches and rolling on the ground, then smile at Stevie and wait for the film contract to present itself. The answer was no.

Shanghaiist recently caught wind of an article in the magazine Fast Company called "The Gucci-Killers", which we at first thought referred to some obscure antiglobalization terrorist group but was actually an article about the up-and-coming luxury fashion and lifestyle brand Shanghai Tang. We have to say that this article rubbed us the wrong way because of the damn near breathless way in which it describes Shanghai and China. For example, take this first paragraph:

Image from yeungstuff.com.

While the New York Times says Memoirs of a Geisha is still "awaiting approval" by China's censors and that "[g]overnment officials have denied considering a ban," at least one site -- Ireland On-line, of all places -- is reporting that a ban has indeed been put in place:

Shanghaiist hates to be the bearer of bad news, but that Valentine's Day plan day you had to watch Memoirs of a Geisha and then have kinky sex afterwards will now have to be canceled. Well, at least the movie part, because it looks like Mommy and Daddy aren't sure if Memoirs is suitable for you. According to this article (in Chinese), the movie got snagged up somewhere in the reviewing process because of potentially sensitive content. It was originally supposed to be screened during the Valentine's Day period, but it looks like you're going to have to get a DVD copy quick, and supposedly they're going like hotcakes. The Globe and Mail had this to say a couple of days ago:

• Shanghai company to start manufacturing hybrid cars. Wonder if the government will ban these, too.
• For those of you who have always wanted to lick a Super Voice Girl ... now is your chance.
• No one knows when Memoirs of a Geisha will hit Chinese movie theaters.

Well, she does in the movies at least. And that may be why we will have to wait a little while to see Miss Zhang and fellow Zhang-Yimou-triumph Gong Li play Japanese women in Memoirs of a Geisha here in Shanghai. The film, directed by Chicago's Rob Marshall, is set to be released as a PG-13 film in the United States in December, just in time for an Oscar push. But the movie's China release date could be pushed back from January 9 to February 10, so Chinese men with scissors have time to cut out a sex scene. One month! That must be one hell of a sex scene.

"Only in Shanghai" is what Shanghaiist has been muttering ever since happening upon this article in the Shanghai Daily -- an area of Hongkou district which housed tens of thousands of Jews that fled Nazi Germany and WWII Europe is going to be turned into "the city's second Xintiandi with Jewish culture and characteristics". There will be kosher restaurants, museums, but we don't know yet if there will be a kosher McDonald's cafe or kosher Starbucks, or if the movie theater will serve as a venue for cutting edge films from great Israeli directors like Amos Gitai or Joseph Cedar.