在北京

Someone once told me if you live in China for a week you can write a book about it; if you live there for a month, a magazine article; and after a year you struggle to form a sentence. So I better get on it before I'm at a loss for words.

I've been here for a week that's felt like a month. I landed at 5 am last Tuesday and in the proceeding 12 hours I passed swine flu inspection (twice), got a physical, attended job orientation, opened a bank account, and applied for a work visa. In the days since I've taken care of such trivialities as finding a place to live. I also have a bicycle.

This past Saturday I attempted to build my social network in a single day:





First I went to an opening at Three Shadows, a photography gallery in Caochangdi. The building is angular and Ai Weiwei constructed. I was actually really impressed by the curation, they make a conscious effort to do interesting things with the medium, like stack old filmstrip-looking things in corners against walls. I really liked these lightboxes containing photographs of miniature stage sets (above). Since my soon-to-be roommate Rosa Tu will be working at Three Shadows this summer I'll probably make it out there a few times.



Next I jumped a cab to Beijing's incumbent artistic hotbed, 798. I went to an opening for Kafkanistan, a Kafkaesque interpretation of tourism in Afghanistan. The exhibit came complete with mockup passports, photo opportunities with fake uzis and Afghani dress, and an inescapable Vice Guide to Travel vibe (read: Edgy Hipsters Do the Third World). Definitely a heavy American Apparel aesthetic that I was not feeling, much better was this exhibit of abstract acrylic paintings by Chinese artist Hu Shengping in the adjacent gallery. The highlight of Kafkanistan was a typewriter and of the 798 jaunt in general was these dinos and some cool graffiti, which I heard was made to order immediately before the Olympics:









Next was the ironic Texas barbecue, which was even more ironically (actually not) held on the roof of an Irish bar. Met the ex-pat network there then unfortunately rolled solo to see Mobb Deep. Bizarre on all counts.



Mobb Deep was of course short the incarcerated (but no less prodigious) Prodigy, but Havoc and well named fill-in Big Noyd played a few classics. By a few I mean two. Then a not so subtle segue to 21st century Deep. I left after the 50th g-unit shoutout.

So, that more or less catches me up. Of course there's an infinite surplus of tiny things that have happened I could write about. The last week has been dizzying and I've barely had time to decompress. More to the point, I'm in kind of an identity crisis with this blog. Sporadically traveling has been my MO for so long that I don't know how to write about staying still. I may need to repurpose this space. One idea I've had is to collaborate with other certified American friends in major world capitals. The result of that idea is a new blog called Megalopoli. In the mean time I'm going to get some food and learn how to use Grass GIS.

josh