May 01
Sexy Beijing
Vancouver DJ Louis Yu turned me on to the video series Sexy Beijing a few weeks ago. In it, a nice Jewish girl from the USA named Su Fei (her actual name is Anna Sophie Loewenberg) does a “Sex in the City” routine as she scours Beijing looking for hot Chinese guys and commenting on life there. Normally I’m not much of a fan when it comes to foreigners babbling about their grasp of Chinese culture as they spend most of their time with other expats and only have a cursory understanding of the local culture, but this lady is quite good at asking pertinent questions and getting direct answers from the locals, and certainly does not fall into that category. The production is quite good and I found myself enjoying them.
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So… what do you think?
The first clip is called Bling Bling in Beijing~
Here’s another, entitled Lost in Translation.
and here she searches for local love….
You can follow the YouTube associated links to the rest of the shows. This series has been around for awhile so there are many to choose from.
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May 1st, 2010 at 11:02 pm
this is awesome Steve… DJ Mordy is so cute! Glad to see Hip pop is flourishing other parts of world. I find myself likeing Bejing Hip pop better then MC Hot Dog in Taiwan….
May 1st, 2010 at 11:54 pm
This is really old.
May 1st, 2010 at 11:59 pm
@ Nimrod: Yeah, I realize these have been around for awhile but I suspected not many of our bloggers had seen them and might be interested in doing so. What I enjoy most about these are the interviews with normal Chinese folks, to see their laughter and facial expressions and their common sense comments, especially with the older folks.
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:31 am
She has a little of that Ugly Betty thing going too. But it works.
I guess the nerdiness appeals to the nerd in me.
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:55 am
This is a good one where she and her father visit Shanghai’s old Jewish settlement areas, where her father lived as a child.
May 2nd, 2010 at 11:45 pm
North American Chinese and Jews have such similar historical context. The Chinese came around the 1850’s and the Jews around 1910’s.
Both faced overt discrimination. Both had various experiences with foreign domination. The Jews since the Bible days and the Jews of Asia since the Mongol days.
The Jews with the decree of the British founded Israel in 1948. And the Chinese with ideas from Karl Marx founded the new China in 1949.
Both Jews have such interwining common sufferings and shared miseries. Could it be possible that now there is a Loewenberg turned SuFei and maybe will be a SuFei turned Loewnberg who will spark sufficient interest and awake the two Jews to the fact that working together for the common good will be mutually beneficial than against each other in which could result in history repeating itself.
May 7th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
The one about Chinese using English names among themselves is sharp. Good one.
May 9th, 2010 at 5:51 am
Haha I noticed the banner behind the stage says 愚公移山, which is the title of this blog…Interesting!
May 10th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
#6
Jew and Chinese have some something common in their tradition, but it will be a total disaster to try mixing up from history and other perspectives.
In fact, there is a segment of Jews who are hardcore members of those against China — these Jews have various backgrounds of Israel, US, former East-euro countries, and Russia.
May 13th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
I love the fact that she has a little Shandong province accent when she speaks Chinese. I wonder where she picked that up from.
Although, I have been told that I have a New Jersey accent when I speak English, even though I have never been to Jersey. Still trying to figure out where I pick that up from.
May 14th, 2010 at 12:39 am
r v: I think some foreigners seem to have Shandong accent because they don’t get their tones right. Or maybe Shandong pronunciation is closer to English. 😉
May 14th, 2010 at 1:11 am
Well, I have heard Westerners mispronounce the Chinese tones wrong, but usually, they just can’t pronounce the 3rd tone, or pronounce only 1 of the tones.
It’s pretty unusual for a Westerner to pick up Shandong accent, because it does have a very unique tone rhythm in a sentence.
May 21st, 2010 at 1:59 am
r v , WKL,
There has been a lot of articles, blogs and whatnot making fun of speakers of English e.g Chinglish, Singlish, Hindi english etc. One of my favorite 1970s TV series from the UK on crosscultural banters was “Mind your language.”
Barry Evans plays a put upon language teacher (Mr. Brown) who teaches immigrants English. With Indian, Pakistani, French, Japanese, Chinese and many other pupils of different ethnicities, his lessons do not always go as planned.
I have always advocated that English, being an International language, should be treated as a practical classless global language, not to be stiffled by attaching too much importance to the passe aristocratic and colonial value system. The concept of the Queen’s English and other claimed standard forms of the language – mainly as a business marketing ploy to perpetuate an expiring myth – should have become obsolete long ago. The fact of the matter is, just as it is very rare to find adult Chinese language learners succeeding in articulating Mandarin or Cantonese flawlessly, the same has always been true with learners in general of the present world language.
May 21st, 2010 at 2:02 am
Mind your Language.
Enjoy 🙂
http://tv.blinkx.com/show/mind-your-language/M577wjhhTXqsXCtF