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It was 1989

The Tank Man in Beijing’s Military History Museum – by David Moser

 

I was in Beijing, and it was 1989. This fact did not seem at all remarkable to me at the time, of course. It was January, I was on the campus of Peking University, and there were no telltale signs that the coming spring would be such a momentous one, though in retrospect numerology provided an omen with the confluence of all those auspicious nines – 1919 for the May Fourth movement, 1949 for Liberation, even 1789 for the French Revolution.

There was, to be sure, something in the air – a feeling of seismic shift. Deng Xiaoping’s decade had unleashed a torrent of creative chaos, and students felt a growing sense of impatience and empowerment.

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Instructions for a Dissident

A poem for that time of year, by Rob Schackne

 

First, do not (whatever you do)

organise yourselves into perfect cells

it’s a dead giveaway, other people talk

plus, resist creating any magical crowds

 

Second, do not talk to the bigmouths

even if their conscience is a lighthouse

or if the one you want is really the funny wife

they’ll spill all the beans you don’t have

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Chinese Tuesdays: Laoban (老板)

 

The first time I learnt that the word for boss, 老板 (lǎobǎn), was made up of the characters for "old" (老) and "board" (板), I found it a little confusing. But lately, when studying traditional characters, I noticed that the 板 (bǎn) in 老板 does not mean board or plank, but is actually the simplified version of 闆, a character which can also be pronunced pàn and which means "To catch sight of in a doorway" (as you do with a laoban?).

I'm not sure why they decided to simplify 闆 to 板, but I suspect that as 闆 is an uncommon character that is rather fiddly to write (17 strokes versus 8), the powers that be decided to replace it with a more common one with the same pronunciation.

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What They Call Insomnia

Finding stillness in a restless capital – by R.S.


For three months during my first spring in Beijing, I couldn’t sleep longer than three hours a night.

It was mostly restlessness. Everything I was doing to relax was only heightening my senses, keeping me further and further from sleep. I tried a litany of rituals – meditation, breathing exercises, reading the dictionary, listening to crosstalk comic dialogues on the radio, soaking my hands in warm water. If by chance something finally allowed me to sleep, I would repeat it the next night. It never worked twice.

I guess you could call it insomnia, or what Murakami called “the same as what people refer to as insomnia.” But I never used the term; I just called it having trouble sleeping.

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Graffiti Capital

Check yourself before you WEK yourself – by Cutler Dozier

 

A skinny 21 year old Beijinger with shoulder length hair, wearing baggy jeans and a worn tshirt, stares through his paint-speckled glasses, transfixed by the stack of multi-coloured graffiti cans arranged in front of him. He goes by the name WEK, and is deciding what colours he will use to paint his name on various walls and shop fronts around the city. He is part of a booming graffiti scene in Beijing and is possibly the most prolific graffiti writer in mainland China today.

Graffiti writing was first introduced to China by Zhang Dali, the so-called “godfather” of Chinese graffiti. In the early 90s, he spray-painted outlines of giant heads on partially demolished buildings to mark a rapidly changing city landscape.

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