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Photo of the Day: Qingming (Tomb Sweeping) Festival is this Week

This week’s photo theme is, well, it’s death. Not because we’re trying to be overly morbid, but because Thursday 5 April is Qingming Festival in China, a day where families traditionally tend to the graves of their ancestors and an occasion often referred to as “Tomb Sweeping Day”.

So let’s talk a little about Qingming — its origins and what happens these days.

Qingming is the traditional Chinese festival for honoring the dead, when people would tend to the gravesite of their deceased relatives — hence “Tomb Sweeping Festival”, even though the Chinese name translates literally as “Pure and Bright” Festival.

The festival was largely suppressed during the Cultural Revolution, but has been officially rehabilitated in recent years and was made a public holiday in 2008. The ritual of visiting burial grounds for Qingming is therefore still honored today, with people heading out to graveyards (on the edge of most cities) or to large family tombs (often on hillsides in rural areas). In some big cities, such as Shanghai, the sheer amount of traffic heading to the suburban graveyards can cause huge tailbacks.

Once there, “Tomb Sweepers” will usually make various offerings, and burn joss sticks or other paper items. That’s what the guy in the photo above is selling — or would be if he was awake — along with a whole host of paper offerings that are usually burnt during the funeral process in the hopes they’ll help ease loved ones’ passage into the afterlife. Traditionally this was (fake) paper money, but these days you can mark the passing of your beloved baller with things such as paper whisky and wine:

Beauty products, cigarettes, phones, and snazzy pyjamas:

Or home entertainment systems, mahjong sets, seafood selections, and jewelry:

You can also see a “BMW” and a house in that picture up top.

Traditionally on Qingming, people will hang willow branches over their doors to ward away evil spirits and, as with most Chinese festivals, there’s also a food and drink element: “Tomb Sweeping Day” sees people snack on green glutinous rice balls known as qingtuan and it’s also a crucial period for tea production in China.

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Hong Kong’s Melon Festival: Emphasizing the Science in Science Fiction

Editor’s note: This article by Jason Li was originally published on 88 Bar, and has been re-posted here with permission.

The second Melon festival about “science fiction, innovation and the future” took place in Hong Kong on March 17 and was markedly more packed, slick and diverse than its predecessor. Festival organizers added a third set of speakers – scientists – to their roster this year on top of the previously-featured science fiction authors and media industry veterans.

So in addition to entrepreneurs discussing industry trends and writers talking about writing, there were now also scientists sharing details about their life’s work – whether it is to find signs of extraterrestrial life or bio-engineer more durable, space-worthy human beings. All in all, these scientists brought more variety and life to the event, and their presence was a welcome addition.

Many of my favorite speakers from last year made a second appearance this year. Jo Lusby once again dispensed sagely advice about the publishing process, Paul Aiello told vivid stories about the rapidly-changing media landscape, and a core group of prominent Chinese sci-fi writers (joined a few newcomers) continued to represent their community by sharing their insights about the market and reflections on their own creative processes.

But my favorite parts of the day were all hosted by new speakers: Hilke Schlicting’s presentation of her team’s work on uncovering new, possibly-inhabitable planets, Yoon Ha Lee’s anecdote about how his transgender identity sneaked into his work, and of course, Tang Fei’s impassioned speech about “Why [She] Hates Blade Runner 2049.”

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In terms of geographic coverage, festival organizers continued to focus primarily on Mainland China and the West (mostly the US and UK). Though there were signs that they may branch out to include Southeast Asia in the near future: they featured their first ever Southeast Asian author (Zen Cho, who is Malaysian) and invited dozens of new writers from the region, such as Nebula nominee Vina Jie-Min Prasad (who I had to pleasure of meeting at the conference).

Despite the improved organization and thoroughly-enjoyable programming, my one gripe with Melon’s second event was that the festival lacked a coherent theme or story (“science fiction, innovation and the future” is a pretty all-encompassing umbrella). One minute, an author would be talking about Asian literary festivals, the next, an entrepreneur was warning us about the non-zero probability of an extinction-level gamma ray burst.

Last year’s Melon, in contrast, felt more focused and centered around the sussing out the burgeoning science fiction industry in China and Hong Kong.

Last but not least, credit should be given to the festival’s organizers for featuring a healthy balance of women and men amongst its speakers, in fields that have been traditionally (and irrationally) dominated by men.

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For a blow-by-blow summary of the conference, check out my sketchnotes of the event.

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Cover image: Melon-x.com

“Baizuo” – China’s Term for “Social Justice Warrior” – is Now in Urban Dictionary

It’s an interesting age we’re in, where unique cultural phenomena (read: memes) can be produced, packaged, exported, reborn, and revised all in the blink of an eye. New Yorker Staff Writer and widely-heralded China watcher Evan Osnos took to Twitter to point out one instance which he calls “a sign of the times” — the appearance of baizuo on Urban Dictionary.

Baizuo — 白左 literally, “white left” — is an internet term that came into being in the mid-2010s. It’s a derogatory word for liberal elites, specifically those who are educated and whose “obsession with political correctness” serves only to “satisfy their own feelings of moral superiority,” according to an article by political scientist Zhang Chenchen, which brought the term to light in the English-speaking world. It’s effectively the equivalent of the term “Social Justice Warrior.”

The revelation of the phrase’s existence spread quickly in the US because it spoke to the sentiment of about half our population, during a time of peak political dissonance. But that still doesn’t really explain why the term would come to fruition in China in the first place.

Zooming out a bit though, it makes total sense why China would view the US social justice crowd with skepticism. As an individual, I’m a member of this crowd — the issues that I’m most passionate about tend to be social issues, specifically ones that focus on dismantling systemic inequality. But living in China, I can also see why people here would sneer at the “white left” — oftentimes, they’re the same ones who emptily berate China, its people, and policies based on headlines and Western centrism, rather than on context and informed understanding.

The Urban Dictionary entry in question

A baizuo could be someone who mindlessly shares a post about a small town’s dog meat festival, with a snarky caption that condescends toward China as a whole. Or it could be someone who asserts that China’s internet censorship is robbing its poor citizens of their freedom, without also acknowledging that most people here simply don’t care about YouTube and Facebook like you think they do.

China is a complicated topic to unpack, and just like the United States, some of what it does is completely backwards, and some of what it does is genius. The popularity of the term baizuo on the Mainland could be seen as a reaction to the flippancy with which people in the States sometimes put down China: in China they censor your internet, eat dogs, and kids shit on the ground — yeah, but in the US we have domestic terrorists and religious extremists, multiple drug epidemics, people being gunned down constantly in the streets, and a spray-tanned, talentless reality TV host as our president.

To dismiss the way China handles itself as uniformly backwards is simultaneously super Western savior-ist, and indicative of a lack of self/global awareness. Both are classic baizuo traits.

You Can Livestream the Last Moments of China’s Out of Control Space Station

Out of control Chinese space station Tiangong-1 is due to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere this weekend. The exact timing and location of its re-entry remains shrouded in doubt due to the unpredictable nature of its current orbit, and the chances of any of us being struck by debris from it are extremely low, but that’s not stopped plenty of speculation about what could happen as the space station breaks up.

Before it’s time to keep an eye out for falling metal however, the Virtual Telescope Project and Tenagra Observatoires are putting on a livestream of the space station’s “final passes across the stars.”

Update: The livestream is now finished, but you can watch it back below. It’s not exactly the 2001: A Space Odyssey-like footage we were hoping for, but you can see the bright speck of the space station appear – and enjoy some over-excited commentary as it does so – from around the 12 minute mark:

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Cover image: CMSE

Photos: RADII Inner Circle Happy Hour, March 2018

Over 100 people packed out UNIBROWN in Shanghai on Saturday 24 March for the RADII Inner Circle Happy Hour – thank you to everyone who came out!

Click through our gallery above for a few photos from the event, taken by Max Mai.

If you didn’t make it, don’t worry – we’ll be holding another Happy Hour event very soon, so keep an eye on radiichina.com and sign up to our newsletter to ensure you don’t miss out.

Finally, a big thank you to our event partners: UNIBROWN for providing a fantastic venue, Madness for their continued support, and Brazilian bar Barraco for slinging some superb caipirinhas.

 

Photo of the day: Xi’an Post-Punks FAZI at SXSW

This week’s photo theme is China at SXSW 2018: a visual recap of a few bands and artists that represented at the first official China showcase to be held at long-running Austin, TX music industry conference South by Southwest. I was at the event as my band SUBS was one of the featured artists, and this week I’ll share some snaps from the front row.

After a brief introduction from Li Hongjie, a Beijing music industry stalwart and founder of the relatively new MTA Festival, the first official China Night showcase at South by Southwest kicked off with a spirited performance by Xi’an post-punk quartet FAZI.

Working lads, the group took a few days off their day jobs to make it to the festival, and held court in front of a fairly packed house at downtown venue 3Ten Austin City Limits Live, playing material from their two most recent albums: Heart of Desire, their 2017 effort for Maybe Mars Records, and Dead Sea, a more experimental-leaning, instrumental album released on the label of PK14 frontman Yang Haisong, who’s long been a champion of the band.

Stream each below, and learn more about the Chinese artists that showed up to SXSW 2018 below the streams.

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