Photo of the Day: A Thousand Flowers in Yiwu

Concluding this week’s photo theme — Things in Yiwu — here’s an amazing still from the short documentary Second Tier City. This image of a vendor of fake flowers in Yiwu also doubles as the documentary’s title card.

Filmmakers Han Xia and Matthew Moroz tell Radii:

Han Xia: Yiwu is probably the most international city I’ve been to in China. There is so much diversity… Unlike most of the first-tier cities in China, it doesn’t matter which school you went to. Starting a business is almost like a must-do for young people in Yiwu, just like getting married and having babies.

Matt Moroz: What I found strange about Yiwu is how well designed the market is. I’ve been to markets around the world and Yiwu is the most unique one I’ve seen. It’s so well designed that many of the stores look like contemporary art installations you would see in New York. There’s also so much variety it really feels as if you are walking around a physical eBay.

See the film and our full interview with the directors here.

China Nights: Back-Alley Batman

China Nights is a Radii series featuring stories of crazy, funny, weird and wild after-hours experiences in this crazy, funny, weird, wild place. Hit us up if you have your own story to share.

Let’s cut to the chase about why I’m in China. Not for the love of drinking and getting ripped off by cabbies, nor Chinese girls, nor the culture, nor Communism. All of that’s in New York if you look hard enough. I came for one reason and one reason only: to meet a superhero. And I did.

My search started how any search starts: I walked up and down the street, drink in-hand, boys in-tow. Our mission was straightforward and simple. Find the Batman. We began by looking up, as anyone else would.

When you take in Shanghai’s massive buildings jutting into the smog, you begin to wonder what was underneath it all before. Row houses, richly textured with grey bricks, hardwood and hundreds of years of nightly family-style dinners. Most of them gone now. Replaced by the 30-some-odd story apartment buildings like the one I inhabit.

The process shaping Shanghai’s forest-o-buildings evolution is nothing short of brutal. Those old houses? Bulldozed in the night. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning (prime Batman hunting hours). Only skeletons remain of what look like bombed-out structures, with plastic toys, kitchen appliances and other household refuse loosely scattered among the rubble.

Our search took us to one of these boneyards around 4am. We ducked in cautiously, like horror movie heroes that don’t make it. The twists and turns of the alleyways canopied in bamboo scaffolding completely obfuscated the little light there was, and we relied on short-range flashlights from our cellphones. As we advanced a few feet at a time, we illuminated the next few feet of near-collapsing stone walls, carved doorway arches, three-legged chairs and headless baby dolls. Then we heard it.

We could make out heart-beat-faint harpsichord music playing from just a few stories above. It was the original animated, Adam West-era, Batman intro music. Crunching over the broken glass lining the floor, we ran into what looked like a railroad-style apartment. The first room was filled with plastic statues of the Virgin Mary. Two dozen metal hooks hung on rusted chains from the ceiling of the second room, and there were drains in the floor. The third and final room was completely bare except for a solitary blue-plastic chair wedged into the corner beneath a shoulder-width hole in the ceiling.

We legged it up the chair and pulled ourselves onto the second floor. It was even more ruined than the first, and mostly bereft of a ceiling. Though there was more light, the source of the harpsichord Batman theme wasn’t clearly visible. It seemed to be coming from all sides. We tried to follow it the best we could.

Deftly maneuvering around a crumbling, load-bearing wall on the outer face of the building, we shimmied on a ledge a few inches long to reach the apartment window adjacent to the one we’d come up. Climbing through the window, we could see the entire half of this floor was open.

And there he was. On the opposite corner of apartment building, perched on a ledge similar to the one we had just crossed — Batman stood watch over the people of Shanghai.

He was naked except for a pair of boxers, which clung to the sides of his sweaty, thin legs. He had two empty bottles of baijiu next to him, and one more in hand. On his face he wore the legendary, black, pointed-ear mask. I said, “Hello,” but he didn’t speak English and told us to “go the fuck away,” or so I assume.

Cover illustration by Marjorie Wang

Video: “Second Tier City” Yiwu Documentary

We’re proud to virtually screen Second Tier City, a film co-directed by Han Xia and Matthew Moroz that won the prize for Best Documentary at this year’s Vancouver Lift-Off Film Festival. Tying in with our photo theme this week — Things in Yiwu — Second Tier City is a story…

about the city Yiwu in China and the people who live there. Yiwu has the largest small item market in the world which has over 50,000 stores. Young people in the surrounding area have been moving there to start a business.

Its called Second Tier City because cities in China are ranked by the government based on the money they generate, among other things, and Yiwu is considered second behind cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou which are First Tier. Yiwu for it’s size is ranked rather high because of the massive market where you can buy every type of small item manufactured in China in one place and the massive amount of money and trade that generates.

This film primarily follows the lives of two young women who are chasing their dreams in Yiwu.

Watch the film below, and scroll past that for an interview with the filmmakers:

 

Radii: What were the weirdest things you saw in Yiwu?

Han Xia: Yiwu is probably the most international city I’ve been to in China. There is so much diversity. For example, you will see a Muslim restaurant right above a McDonald’s, or a West African mom pushing a baby carriage on the street. They even have money exchange booths in every mall. Unlike most of the first-tier cities in China, it doesn’t matter which school you went to. Starting a business is almost like a must-do for young people in Yiwu, just like getting married and having babies. They are eager to talk about owning a business, and there is no shame about not being well educated.

Matt Moroz: What I found strange about Yiwu is how well designed the market is. I’ve been to markets around the world and Yiwu is the most unique one I’ve seen. It’s so well designed that many of the stores look like contemporary art installations you would see in New York. There’s also so much variety it really feels as if you are walking around a physical eBay.

“Starting a business is almost like a must-do for young people in Yiwu, just like getting married and having babies” – Han Xia, filmmaker

How did you get the idea to shoot this mini doc?

Han Xia: Matt showed me a bunch of photographs published by the New York Times in the very beginning of 2014, which immediately caught our attention. As someone who is very familiar with Chinese mall culture, I was shocked how massive the markets are there, and how amazing it looks when thousands of different items are displayed in a particular way. Matt originally had the idea of going there to film, and I luckily managed to find some local contacts who were willing to help us through Weibo.

Matt Moroz: We saw a photo essay by Eric Michael Johnson in the New York Times and that inspired us to go take a look. We ended up staying three weeks. It’s such an interesting place, we could’ve continued shooting different subjects. The history is also fascinating, but we wanted to focus on a small, personal story.

How has Second Tier City been received internationally?

Han Xia: I was surprised that a lot of people really liked it, including audiences who have never been to China before, since it is an extremely low-budget film made by two people. They feel connected to many aspects. I haven’t showed it to many Chinese audiences, but I’m very interested to hear their comments. They could be very different.

Matt Moroz: So far the response has been really great. We’ve shown the film at a few festivals, and it won Best Documentary at the Vancouver Lift-Off Film Festival. Overall we’re really happy, because this was a small, self-funded project. We didn’t think many were people going to watch it.

Cover photo and still courtesy Matt Moroz

Yin: Dedicated Black Metal from Zuriaake

Yin (音, “music”) is a weekly Radii feature that looks at Chinese songs spanning classical to folk to modern experimental, and everything in between. Drop us a line if you have a suggestion.

Wrapping up the work week with some pagan riffs from Zuriaake (葬尸湖), a black metal band from Jinan that’s been keeping it evil since 2001. Though China’s metal scene got started in the late ’80s, with bands like Black Panther and Tang Dynasty adapting Western influences and pentatonic tunes into distorted, arena-pleasing anthems, it wasn’t until later that the genre’s fringes fully seeped into the Chinese subcultural stratum, and bands like Zuriaake and Nanchang’s Be Persecuted, which formed in 2005, embraced the full regalia of Black Metal.

 

Zuriaake is one of the oldest still-extant Chinese black metal bands, and still clear leaders of the pack. They’re a band shrouded in mystery (and actual shrouds), dedicated purists of the theatrical, operatic nature of pure black metal, never to be caught on stage without their monkish cowls and dyed-black conical hats.

The band has a special knack for flipping traditional Chinese imagery, in fact — the cover of their seminal 2007 album Afterimage of Autumn manages to turn a serene ink-wash landscape painting ominous:

There’s something about Zuriaake’s sound and image that feels natural, totally unforced while being obviously very carefully constructed. Maybe there really is something deeply and inherently metal about Chinese history, an idea Kaiser Kuo has hinted at before:

The metal look works for Chinese males. This shit sprouts out of our head quite naturally and it looks pretty good. And that echoes with the great warriors of ancient times. Long hair means martial prowess.

If you happen to be in Shanghai this weekend, you can check out Zuriaake at this year’s Concrete and Grass festival — they’re having a do-over as last year they were too intense for the weather gods, and had their set cancelled by a typhoon. If you go, bring protection.

If you can’t — check back on Radii next week, we’ll have some photos from their set. Here’s a pretty killer live video of them performing at the MIDI Festival in China last May, so you can keep up at home:

And you can dive much deeper into the world of Chinese black metal via the website of Zuriaake’s label, Pest Productions.

What Do China’s Moviegoers Look For at the Box Office?

China’s box office is like an enormous plate of food that we don’t notice because it’s sitting one table away. Hollywood films routinely rake in far heftier profits with their Chinese releases than they do in theaters at home. In the States, we go in circles asking, How could they possibly make a fifth shitty Transformers movie? How many people can really be coming back for more explosions and corny robot jokes? Meanwhile, China’s movie fans are coming out in droves, constituting a single international revenue stream more than double the number Paramount is making domestically.

The Chinese state holds a quota on the total number of American titles that can be released in the country each year (34, with 14 of them being IMAX or 3D releases). But it looks like that number is going to be climbing after this year’s renegotiations. Since the last negotiation of the quota five years prior, China’s box office revenue has more than tripled, making both countries more interdependent, and forcing them to reexamine the situation from the ground up.

China’s box office revenue has more than tripled over the last five years, making both countries more interdependent, and forcing them to reexamine the situation from the ground up

Meanwhile, Americans have a relatively poor understanding of what goes on in China’s movie theaters. What is it that puts asses in seats, so to speak?

Judging by trends and mainstream news, high budget, easily digestible action films are a solid guess. The Transformers franchise has long enjoyed a disgustingly overt reign (though thankfully it seems to be coming to an end), and the highest-grossing movie on record now in the Mainland is the patriotic action flick Wolf Warrior 2, in which China’s deadliest special forces operative overcomes a torrential series of explosions and gunfire to save innocent civilians from vicious mercenaries. In foreign films, regulators sometimes insist on the addition of extra scenes that portray China as important. Bet you haven’t seen this part of Iron-Man:

Dr. Hu, internationally acclaimed surgeon and personal friend to Iron Man, is aided in his procedure by Fan Bingbing, beautiful and beloved actress who locals might recognize from every billboard and every product ever.

There must be more to the story than that. We rounded up statements from a few local friends (and a couple of strangers in a random pho restaurant), in response to the question, What do you look for when going to the movies?
“The movie itself isn’t really the most important thing — sometimes, I care more about the social experience,” one woman in her thirties told us. “Just like when choosing a restaurant.”

Her younger friend Jing, in her twenties, felt differently.

“I like big movies. Like Dunkirk – something big and epic, or 3D — like Avatar. Something big and visually thrilling always gets me,” she said. “But sometimes I like romance, too!”

My friend Ma, also twenty-something, looks for something distinctly cerebral.

“I want me some indie, art-house, thought-provoking cinema. Not this trash they play. Shout out to Shanghai International Film Festival and Shanghai Art Film Federation,” he added. “They’re doing a good job.”

(It should be noted that Ma a a vocal critic of Wolf Warrior 2’s spectacular box office run, message of freedom, and badass explosions.)

Some artier fare that’s come out of the Chinese film scene in recent years — 2015’s Kaili Blues

Yin, 24, is more concerned with the viewing experience:

“Though the movie market is big here, I find most of the cinema facilities are disappointing — always too dark! Especially when it comes to 3D, IMAX, or high frame rate. So when I go to the cinema, I only choose [films] with quality equipment and real professional projection.”

She also expressed her wish for Chinese theaters to make more room for domestic indie movies, which right now are kind of limited to festival runs.

An older man in his forties says it comes down to the movie itself.

“For me, it’s more about the subject of the movie. Action, thriller, drama, superhero — these genres are all fine, but it’s the subject of the movie that will determine if I go out to see it.”

One thing a lot of the responses have in common is an emphasis on the physical movie experience. Today’s audiences, overseas and especially in China, are more likely to watch a movie on their laptop or tablet. Even the older, technologically-limited crowd would probably prefer to grab a bootleg Blu-Ray from the corner store, street vendor, or online shop — which explains peoples’ responses prioritizing things like visual effects, 3D, the social experience, or projection quality as reasons to go to a theater.

Chinese audiences today are more likely to watch a movie on their laptop or tablet

China’s movie audiences are quite varied, like the country’s citizens overall — differentiated by factors like location in first- vs. second-tier cities, language abilities, and exposure to overseas media. While high-budget action films seem to hit a pretty sizable common denominator, individual tastes are impossible to represent.

Maybe the next box office smash will be a black-and-white remake of Waiting for Godot starring Fan Bingbing and Kris Wu. More likely it will be Wolf Warrior 3. Only time will tell.

Sex Doll Sharing App Launches in Beijing, Prompts Instantaneous Hot Takes

Hmm. This exists:

In the sharing economy of the Wild East it seems anything is rentable. A newly-launched app in China is proving this with its offering of shared sex dolls.

Xiamen-based app developer Touch announced Wednesday that it has started a limited trial run in Beijing that allows users to choose a plastic partner for home delivery.

Rentals cover 24-hours at 298 yuan ($45.5) or up to a week for 1,298 yuan and include an 8,000 yuan deposit.

The app tries to address any health concerns by explaining its hygiene policy.

“The dolls’ lower parts are changed for every customer,” reads the app. “Please remove the lower parts before returning. After the lower parts are cleaned, the doll can be used repeatedly.”

Naturally, the Western media’s first impulse has been to recoil in revulsion and craft thinly-veiled punchdowns as clickbait headlines, a cottage industry in English-language reporting on China and its sex dolls.

“There’s no way on this sweet Earth you’ll persuade me to use a sex doll sharing service,” Tech in Asia says, reasonably enough.

Mei Fong, Pulitzer-winning author of a book on China’s recently rescinded one-child policy, points out that this is a side effect of the gender imbalance created by a preference for male children:

An ex-Yahoo engineer calls it Peak Sharing Economy:

https://twitter.com/r_c/status/908539129062756354

Most people just think it sounds gross.

But is there a more charitable way to look on this latest innovation in China’s expanding share-app economy?

Shenzhen-based Maker Naomi Wu has a more nuanced and ultimately illuminating take on the whole thing:

Something to think about. This certainly makes for a click-worthy headline, but the deeper story isn’t peak anything. It’s early days, really, if you connect the dots between companion robots and the exploding VR porn industry.

It’s also worth noting that social blowback from a surplus of sexually frustrated young men is not a phenomenon limited to China.

All this to say… maybe take a step back next time you wanna squeeze some cheap laughs out of sex doll sharing apps. Because they’re probably not going away.

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Cover photo via Global Times/Weibo