Ed O’Bannon, Academic Publishing and Bad China Days

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Anyone remember Ed O’Bannon? I do. Partially because he led the UCLA Bruins basketball team to a national championship in 1995, but more because of the video game College Hoops, where O’Bannon could throw down a thunderous left-handed tomahawk jam. You’d run him around a pick, dish him the ball, slash him into the lane, and O’Bannon would rise above and throw it down. I’d scream at my roommate: boo-ya! It worked almost every time in that clonky, cartridge-game kind of way.

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Wang Shuo and The Future of the Past

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My master’s thesis was about Wang Shuo and his “conversation” with Mainland China’s ’80s intellectual establishment. It was good enough to pass–despite Tian Xiaofei’s basic antagonism to my purpose and some admitted deficiencies. Nonetheless, I got a few things right, really, really right, which to this day no one has sufficiently appreciated. And on the eve of the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen, it’s worth revisiting.

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Dennis Rodman and Asian Diplomacy

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I was always partial to Dennis Rodman, ever since the “Bad Boys” Detroit Pistons days when he was known as The Worm and led the league in rebounding, technical fouls and weirdness. In his career, he won 5 NBA championships. He made it into the Hall of Fame. And then he dissolved into pop culture haze until last year when he surfaced in North Korea doing something that desperately needs to doing: de-regulating diplomacy.

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The Beijing Sickness

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Those who’ve read my previous blog posts (all four of you) know that I often write in praise of Beijing. I have many good memories of the city and life there. But it was an acquired taste. In fact, for the first several years I disliked it intensely. In fact, one of the worst periods of life I’ve ever endured took place in Beijing, a few months after arriving.

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Translation: Wang Anyi’s “’Shanghai Style’ and ‘Beijing Style’”

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What follows is a translation of Wang Anyi’s essay from the late 1990s called “’Shanghai Style’ and ‘Beijing Style’”. I found this essay in a collection called Searching for Shanghai and, because I am fascinated by the endless comparisons between these two cities, I translated it here. To my knowledge, it’s the first time it has ever been translated. In a separate post I’ll write more about what I actually think about the points she raises.

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Beijing Air Pollution

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I spent a week in Beijing which corresponded almost exactly with the most recent airpocalypse. PM2.5 levels held steady between 400-500 for seven straight days. This has been a regular occurrence for the last three winters. So it’s time to ask: how are we to understand Beijing’s poison fog? What insight can it bring?

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