December 2011
7 posts
3 tags
Curious About...Shanzhai Pets.
The Chinese have an um, complicated relationship with their canine friends. While in some provinces dog is still an acceptable food group, at the other end of the spectrum we have high-end dogs treated as the ultimate fashion accessory with thousands of dollars lavished on dyeing, grooming and transforming them into fantasy hybrid animals. For the record, all of the dogs in these pictures are...
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Curious About...Synchronized Swimming.
We lived in Singapore in the sixties and seventies - my father was in the Royal Air Force and we lived in RAF Changi, enjoying an idyllic life in the tropical sun. To occupy her days my mother was part of a local troupe called “The Aquastunt Girls,” an all-girl expat group who spent their days in the camp pool, sporting violently colored rubber caps and matching swimsuits,...
November 2011
9 posts
Curious About...Learning.
The following piece is the first of a special series of Curiosities for Metropolis Magazine.
I just finished reading Lucy Kellaway’s acerbic-but-true piece (free registration required) in the FT about management consultants and all their related jargon landing in China. And it immediately brought to mind an evening I spent in Shanghai a few months ago, where we invited a group of young...
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Curious About...Firecrackers.
We hear them going off all the time in the neighborhood where we live, at seemingly random times of the day or night - the distinctive sound of firecrackers, the rippling, crackling, insanely loud firework that is uniquely Chinese.
A firecracker is a small explosive device primarily designed to produce a large amount of noise, especially in the form of a loud bang; any visual effect is...
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Curious About...Chinese Cricket Matches.
(Huge thank you to my colleague Greg Perez for suggesting this topic.)
I haven’t been to Shanghai’s legendary Insect Market yet, but am planning on plucking up the courage to do so. I am a huge entemophobe so the challenge is vast, but I am curious to see the fighting cricket matches that everyone here talks about. (Worth pointing out upfront that unlike many blood sports such...
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Curious About...Ping Pong.
Most of our offices have some form of lightly competitive communal sport going on - in many cases there is a central foosball table where folks break in the mid-afternoon; fueled by cookies and Red Bull, they gather round and raucously egg one another on. In our Shanghai office, naturally, it’s ping pong.
Ping Pong (乒乓) is the official name for the sport of table tennis in China. The...
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Curious About...Chopstick Etiquette.
Last week in Japan was about studying the subtle details of everything, from handing over a business card (text pointed towards the user, ponder theirs for a second, do not carelessly place it in a pile on the table) to the depth of a bow (not too shallow which is dismissive, not too deep which is too formal and reverent) and to struggling to not make a fool of myself with chopsticks, which...
October 2011
11 posts
4 tags
3 tags
Curious about...Tatami.
A tatami (畳) is a type of mat used as a flooring material in traditional Japanese-style rooms. Traditionally made of rice straw to form the core (though nowadays sometimes the core is composed of compressed wood chipboards or polystyrene foam), with a covering of woven soft rush (igusa) straw, tatami are made in standard sizes, with the length exactly twice the width. Usually, on the long sides,...
3 tags
Curious about...Butoh.
I’m in Japan giving a talk in Sendai, the region tragically devastated by this years 3.11 earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear reactor meltdown, and in doing research for it have started to look at both traditional and untraditional ways that the Japanese express anger, complex social and emotional issues and generally how they externalise and politicize their feelings. One form of...
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Curious about..."Rock N' Roll" Hospitality.
As many of my friends and colleagues can now attest (having had to put up with my ranting) I am staying at a Hard Rock Hotel on Sentosa Island, just off Singapore, for a conference that I am speaking at. For the record, I am in the Sting And The Police Room on Floor 5, a floor signified by a slightly bedraggled and duty bustier once worn apparently by Mariah Carey. I despair, but frankly seem...
