At the end of 2015, a strange pop hybrid was born in the form of a collaboration that came seemingly out of nowhere – A.G. Cook, head of the ultra-hip London label and collective PC Music, wrote and produced Chinese pop star Chris Lee’s double A-side single Real Love / Only You. It was the first time PC Music had collaborated with a pop star, let alone one from Asia. And although Chris Lee had a penchant for experimentation, working previously with the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Shanghai’s Yuz Museum, PC Music was unlike anything she’d done before.
In recent years, PC Music has become a sensation in the underground electronic scene. With their saccharine plastic-wrapped pop melodies and beats from the corporate future, they’re something between pop music and parody. And Chris Lee? Best known for her androgyny, Lee rocketed to fame in 2005 as the unlikely tomboy winner of Super Girl, an immensely popular televised singing contest. She has since gone on to become a heavy-hitter in the Chinese music scene, releasing dozens of chart-topping singles and selling millions of album copies. She is a bona fide pop star. So what did it mean when these two crossed paths? Was PC Music evolving into actual pop, or was Chris Lee becoming subversive?
I’m not really sure. But we do get a moody electronic track to show for it, “Only You” — or 《混蛋，我想你》 (“Bastard, I miss you”) — a rarity in ballad-filled mainstream Chinese music. For Chris Lee fans, it’s the musical successor to her 2014 single “A Magical Encounter 1987.” And for PC Music fans, it’s the same squeaky-clean PC Music aesthetic, so clean you can hear a pin clatter on the floor. But it’s also been tamped down and stretched out into rippling synthesizer force fields, over which Lee’s voice repeats “I miss you” like a hypnotizing mantra.
Those behind the Great Firewall can watch the music video to Only You here.
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: [email protected].
If you’ve spent any time in China, you’re probably familiar with the efforts of China’s propaganda ministry, currently known as the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China. Their handiwork can be seen all over China’s cities and countryside, to say nothing of the Internet, such as this infamous animated music video introducing the Communist Party’s 13th Five Year Plan. (“The Shi San Wu!”)
More iconic than these modern methods of “opinion guidance,” however, are the stark, provocative propaganda posters dating from 1949 to 1978. Most of these posters feature strong, handsome young peasants and workers posing in front of the purported achievements of New China, or in some cases, scenes of “enemies of the people” getting their just desserts. Subtlety was not the guiding principle of the era, unlike idealism, which was widespread.
Probably the best place to see these in person is the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center, an enchanting museum run by retired hospitality industry veteran Yang Peiming. Originally just one room in the basement of an apartment building in 2002, the museum has expanded to three rooms occupying more than 400 square meters, with a collection encompassing more than 6,000 posters from the Republican era on down to today.
Probably the most fascinating aspect of posters like the ones on show at the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center is the way they allow you to trace the evolution of modern Chinese history, with its tumultuous twists and turns, from the initial optimism of the post-war period to the grimness of the Great Leap Forward and later the fanatical revolutionary impulses that dominated the Cultural Revolution. Posters in those years were actually one of the Party’s primary means of communication with the public, especially a semi-literate one, and the museum’s collection is a look at the sometimes rapidly shifting official viewpoints throughout the years on a wide variety of topics, from agriculture and industrial development to foreign relations and family values.
Politics aside, Yang’s museum also has dazibao, or “Big Character Posters,” and a series of “Worker Artists’” Woodblock Prints from the 1970s, as well as a large collection of what he terms “Shanghai Lady Posters,” reproductions of which you’ve probably seen in tourist markets and shops. These are excellent examples of early consumer advertising for the brands of the day, which typically feature a pretty young woman in a qipao, whose appearance and surroundings are meant to exemplify the modern, cosmopolitan lifestyles of bourgeois Chinese during the heady years between the fall of the Qing in 1911 and the advent of Communism in 1949.
Whether commercial or political, these posters are a fascinating look at the changes China underwent during the 20th century, and a tour of Yang’s collection can provide an entertaining, useful counterpoint to the attitudes and ideas about China’s history and identity we see reflected in the media, both here and abroad.
In an unusual display of Chinese-South Korean pop culture harmony, Chengdu-based trap phenomenon Higher Brothers has linked up with Keith Ape of It G Ma fame for a new song, simply called WeChat.
WeChat is the ubiquitous Chinese messaging/social media app that defines the majority of the country’s mobile social power: you can call a taxi, order food, pay for coffee, browse feeds and connect with businesses all without leaving the app. In many ways, WeChat is the network that keeps the country running and prospering, so maybe it’s not so surprising that Higher Brothers decided to honor their favorite app with a smartphone-friendly vertical music video shot entirely inside the WeChat user interface. The video starts with an explanation:
There’s no Skype, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, we use WeChat!
They’ve been pretty direct with their feelings on censorship before (they told Pigeons and Planes last year they feel they have fewer resources due to the Chinese firewall, and that their reach to the outside world is limited), but the rest of the song is your standard everyday flexing — the hook translates to, “I don’t open WeChat to listen to your bullshit.”
It’s a lyrically dense, melodic new-school trap bump, the likes of which would make Lil Yachty proud.
Yachty also appears in the video, one of several major artists featured as WeChat messages — the likes of Migos, Famous Dex, G Herbo, Smokepurpp, Kyle, and Bohan Phoenix. A message from Bohan Phoenix reads vid dropping soon fam, and one from Kyle says he wants to set up a collab pronto. Foreshadowing?
For those behind the Great Firewall, watch the video here; best viewed on a phone.
At a bend in the Yangtze River, a single fishing boat rocks back and forth across the water for hours on end. On it is Li Wei, holding a worn-out bamboo scooper. But he’s not looking for fish – Li Wei spends ten hours a day searching for trash and removing it by hand. He calls himself the River Guardian, and dreams of a river his grandchildren can swim in and drink from.
Li Wei could be a folk hero, but he doesn’t look out of place in this scene. Out of place is Mina Guli – tall and sundried, her blond hair tied up and tucked into the back of a white cap, wearing Asics trainers and an anti-smog facemask. She’d stopped by to talk to Li, and to catch her breath.
But it’s getting dark, and she’s only on kilometer 830 of 1,688. She tightens her mask and keeps running.
Guli is a different kind of hero. More super than folk, the Australian athlete is the face and muscle behind the Six Rivers Run, part of the #run4water social media campaign for United Nations Global Goal 6: clean water for all. She’s running six of the world’s largest rivers – a distance equal to 40 marathons – in 40 days. Having completed the Amazon, Colorado and Murray Darling rivers, we find her in Shanghai, at the Huangpu sub-river of the Yangtze.
Guli, seated across the table, doesn’t look tired. She’s run a marathon every day for the past month but is somehow spilling over with energy. She orders three Mediterranean pesto salads for the table, soon to be followed by three more, along with several pizzas and dessert. This is a feast, she tells us. Guli’s arrival in Shanghai marks her first night back in a developed, international city, having spent the larger leg of her China journey trekking through wet countryside. “It’s nice to eat a meal with silverware,” she admits. Her eyes widen at the sight of fresh Italian food arriving on white plates. She’s animated when she tastes pesto, or asks a question, but especially when she talks about water.
Guli is the CEO of Thirst, a China-based nonprofit that educates people on worldwide water scarcity, conservation and sustainability. It might be a result of growing up in Australia, on a dry stretch of land supported by a few huge tanks of water. She remembers her mom telling her to bring a bucket with her into the shower each morning to collect the excess water as she got ready for school. It’s not hard to see how she grew into the global defender of water she is today. And when she tells us about the 42 kilometers she ran today, or the 42 kilometers the day before, she does it as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I need to fix these bandages, though,” she says, alluding to her blistered feet, now completely encased in canvas wraps.
Guli laughs that she actually always despised sports growing up, but that her life was changed forever in university when she was pushed into a swimming pool, damaging the plates in her back so badly that her doctors told her she’d never run again.
Instead, a superhero was born. Guli started to practice sports: first swimming, then biking, and finally running. One small victory led to the next – a successful lap in the pool became two laps, and a laborious 500-meter run became 1,000. It’s difficult to imagine anyone other than the taut, muscular athlete sitting before us now.
“I fell into climate change by accident,” she says. Despite having grown up in water-scarce Melbourne, saving the world’s water resources was never a long-term plan. Actually, it was more by chance that she took on the role. It wasn’t until she learned about the impact of invisible water that she felt compelled to do something.
When we think of conserving water, we think of turning the tap off while brushing your teeth or choosing an eco-friendly showerhead. In reality, less than 5% of the world’s water consumption occurs at home. Massive amounts of water are used every day across all industries to create any product or service.
“The bulk of our water consumption is from the water that goes into the making of consumer products we use every day – coffee, chocolate, clothing, paper, the fruit we eat, the chair we sit on,” Guli explained in an interview with Eco-Business last year. “This is what’s called invisible water.”
Guli adds salad to her plate and sets her fork down. She leans across the table and tells us a statistic she keeps at the forefront of her brain: it takes 2,700 liters of water to make a single t-shirt. It takes nearly 2,500 liters to raise, process, distribute and prepare the beef for a single 1/3-pound hamburger.
“Sometimes we feel small and incapable of accomplishing big change,” she says. “But I guess I’m an example that you don’t have to be anyone to be someone. Every single one of us is capable of changing the world.”
Invisible water is another reason why Thirst is based in Beijing, and why Guli has been tied to China for more than ten years now. The manufacturing center of the world has a unique responsibility to ensure that the amount of water it consumes doesn’t throw off the balance of clean water worldwide. If it takes 2,700 liters of water to make a t-shirt, knowing that China manufactures more than half of the entire world’s clothing might offer some degree of scale on the issue. And given the country’s negative international reputation in environmental policy, that statistic could be alarming.
Actually, China is playing smarter than we might think. The government has built 52 water quality monitoring stations along the Yangtze, and has implemented an environmental protection plan that forbids chemical industrial zones in regions near the river. The Three Gorges Dam, a controversial undertaking, is now a modern hydroelectric marvel that provides energy to millions of people who would otherwise be without.
The massive nature of China’s resources, functioning behind a central authority, gives the country a shockingly direct ability to rally behind a cause (that is, once it’s considered a priority). In the past this has resulted in heavy-handed legislature like the One-Child Policy, but today it’s more likely to be manifested in the shape of sweeping, full-scale reforms that range from international quotas promoting grassroots individual action like Li Wei’s.
As consumers who determine the output demands of China’s manufacturing industry, Guli says we also have a responsibility to care about how those demands are supplied. When it comes to water, she’s actually optimistic. She tells us that the Yangtze sturgeon, which had completely stopped breeding in its waters for years, was just shown to have resumed its migration pattern into the river to lay its eggs – a huge victory for the species, and evidence that we’re moving in the right direction. She’s seen China’s government take steps toward a sustainable future for its water resources, and her conversations with locals along the river have instilled her with a sense of hope.
Two days after our dinner, with a total of 1,082 kilometers under her belt, Guli flew to Egypt to run the Nile, and then to the English Cotswolds to run the Thames, the last two rivers on her list. On April 30, forty days and 1,688 kilometers from the start of her race, she completed her run.
“I was exhausted but inspired,” Guli says. “Running around the world, I met incredible people doing amazing things, and saw firsthand the ability of every single one of us to create change.
“For me, it’s about water and creating a future where there’s enough of it for everyone forever, but for others it’s about a better life for their kids. Regardless of what drives us, we’re united in wanting a better future and a better planet. And getting there is like my run – every step counts.”
Chinese food is beloved in every corner of the world. But if you ask someone outside the Asian continent what constitutes “authentic” Chinese, they might not be able to answer (correctly, at least). An American might say crispy sweet and sour pork, while someone from the West Indies may mention jerk chicken lo mein.
Of course, defining “authentic” food in any context is tricky. Sure, the dishes below may not be part of an age-old Chinese culinary canon, but they are authentic products of the Chinese immigrant experience — and we, the rest of the world, are grateful for them.
As Chinese immigrants dispersed and formed communities throughout the world, they yielded diverse takes on Chinese cuisine using the ingredients at hand, and tweaked for local palettes. Here are six Chinese dishes to try on six different continents.
1. United States: General Tso’s Chicken
General Tso’s chicken (source: Depositphotos)
General Tso’s is a new-age classic of pseudo-Chinese cuisine. Sweet, tangy and deep-fried crispy chicken chunks cater to a distinctly American palette – but the dish is nowhere to be found in any shape or form in China. Where does it come from? Who is General Tso?
The original recipe is commonly attributed to Peng Chang-kuei, a banquet chef of the Nationalist government who fled to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War, and later opened a restaurant in New York City where he reportedly created the dish. The name is a reference to the Qing dynasty military leader Zuo Zongtang, but the reasons why are unclear. General Tso’s Chicken — and its brothers, orange and sesame chicken — form the golden trifecta of American Chinese fast food.
Lomo Saltado is a classic Peruvian dish that’s become a staple of the nation’s diet, but its origins are in chifa cuisine. (The word is a transliteration from the Cantonese for “cook/eat food.”) The chifa culinary tradition arose when immigrants from southern China arrived in Peru in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, modifying their favorite recipes to accommodate the local ingredients and creating one of the first true fusion cuisines in the process.
Lomo Saltado is a stir-fry that varies from place to place, but generally includes strips of sirloin, tomatoes, onions and French fries over rice. A haphazard, but drool-worthy mix that should be on your must-eat list if you visit Peru.
3. Australia: Chiko Roll
A still from the Chiko Roll commercial (source: YouTube)
Australian sporting snack history was changed forever when food vendor Frank McEnroe saw a Chinese cart outside a cricket stadium selling eggrolls. What if, he dared to dream, there were a stronger, sturdier alternative that could withstand the drunken terror of an Australian sports event?
Thus the Chiko Roll was born. Originally marketed as the Chicken Roll, the meat-based – though decidedly chicken-less – snack was first introduced at the 1951 Wagga Wagga Agricultural Show, and lives on today as a crowd favorite.
4. Holland: Tjap Tjoy
A dish of chop suey, which became tjap tjoi in Holland (source: Depositphotos)
Holland’s colonial history has yielded Dutch-Chinese food that is inextricably entwined with Indonesian influences. Soy sauce meets satay sauce in this inter-Asian culinary free-for-all — even the Dutch probably couldn’t tell you where one ends and the other begins.
Thousands of years of elegant culinary norms are tossed out the window to make room for maximalist, surf-meets-turf dishes that satisfy the hearty cravings of Dutch customers. When Chinese food landed in the United States, it became chop suey.
When it landed in Holland, it became tjap tjoy — an even heartier, vegetable-heavy version born from the tradition of Dutch stews. This dish brings together the ungodly forces of Chinese noodles, vegetables, chicken, and sometimes even shrimp — which gives us the dish tjap ha — all drenched in satay sauce. Eat enough of it, and you too might grow to reach the size of the average Dutch person.
5. Trinidad: “Chinese-Style Chicken”
In the 19th century, after the British abolished African slavery in Trinidad, Chinese indentured servants began arriving to fill the labor void. They brought their cooking with them, and the result was an eclectic mix of spices, sauces and flavors that can still be seen in one of Trinidad’s most popular dishes, which locals refer to simply as “Chinese-Style Chicken.”
The chicken is marinated overnight in dark soy sauce and five-spice, then deep-fried to a warm, crispy, chestnut color. Tartness from ginger and lime is a must, and the bi-national flavors of Chinese oyster sauce and scotch bonnet pepper sauce complete the dish.
6. India: Paneer Schezwan
Paneer sczechwan (source: Depositphotos)
Indian-Chinese cooking has existed for a long time, originated in the Hakka Chinese communities of Kolkata. The style adapts select Chinese cooking and seasoning techniques to Indian tastes, yielding dishes the likes of which mainland China has never seen.
Paneer Schezwan, a dish using Indian cuisine’s famous soft cheese, is no typo — most Indian kitchens use this spelling rather than the contemporary pinyin, “Sichuan.” Indian dishes with names like Schezwan and Manchurian correspond only loosely with their original counterparts, but the idea is there. Indian Schezwan dishes often use a sauce containing Indian red chilies and garlic, and sometimes even Sichuan peppercorns.
As dairy is uncommon in most Chinese regional cuisines, Paneer Schezwan is a perfect example of the liberating new ideas that can be born from this kind of cross-cultural intermingling.
If you’ve spent time in Beijing within the last year, you’ve probably noticed the proliferation of colorful bicycles parked around the city. Sometimes appearing in hordes of hundreds, these bikes, which are available for hourly rentals at low cost through mobile phone apps, are part of a brand war waged on urban street corners throughout China.
The two biggest players are Ofo (yellow bikes that began appearing on Beijing campuses in late 2014) and Mobike (more upscale, with built-in GPS, popularized in Shanghai in late 2015). Considering production costs and the fact that bikes are routinely recalled for repair – not to mention vandalized or stolen – it’s a wonder that these companies think they can break even selling rides priced at 0.5 to 1 yuan (about 15 cents).
To many, the business model of bike-sharing companies simply doesn’t make sense. Yet Ofo is valued at $1 billion, and Mobike has raised more than $300 million this year alone. What do investors see?
In a word: potential. Specifically, the potential to dominate the market – it’s a big one, you might have heard – by gobbling up all the small fry (the more than 40 shared bike start-ups in this country, all trying to capitalize on the dockless bicycle frenzy). With enormous space remaining for expansion into global markets – Ofo and Mobike are planning to take their proprietary technology to places like Singapore and England this year – investors may be anticipating a huge sale or IPO. Even now, investors can still be sold on the impression that they are “getting in early.”
The number of customers who trust these two companies is also immense. According to a Mobike white paper released last month, “during peak periods, over 200 people are allocating bikes every second.” According to Ofo, the company handles more than 2 million transactions every day – and was the ninth Chinese company to exceed one million daily translations, joining the likes of Taobao and JD.com. With peers like these, a profitable future seems inevitable.
Like startups the world over, the key to making money is impressing investors. Ofo and Mobike make money by raising money, competing for capital in a mad dash for scale and market dominance. The Mobike white paper also claims that users have traveled more than 2.5 billion kilometers, which equates to taking 170,000 cars off the road and reducing carbon emissions by 540,000 tons. Now, aside from obvious assumption fallacies from that statistic, what this indicates is that bike sharing will only get greater government support in the future. None other than premier Li Keqiang, who’s serious about his environmental goals, has said: “The business model of Mobike looks like a revolution.”
And that, of all things, just might make these private bike-sharing companies the safest of all bets.
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