Dive into the archives.
- Feedback: Shi Jian (史建)
I met today with Shi Jian (史建), writer and critic, and knowledgeable person all around. Of course, I showed him UNIT to hear his thoughts.
Basically he was positive. But he said it takes from 2 to 3 years to make a deep impression in China, so patience and stamina are critical.
But more important, he provided a lot of precious info on publishing a magazine in China. For anyone who’s thinking about doing a project like this, it’s good to keep this in mind:
The government stopped releasing new magazine publication licenses several years ago. There’s no hope in trying to get a new one for UNIT.
That leaves three possible strategies for releasing a new mag:
1. Find a small, struggling magazine and buy them out
You can then change the name, but continue to use their publication number. This is what most big publishers do when they want to start a new venture. He mentioned <<时尚>>/Trendsmag as one that uses this strategy.
The problems: First you have to find the magazine yourself - there’s no waiting list or anything like that. Second, there’s a money required to buy the mag out. Third, it is customary to pay an annual fee of about 100,000 RMB to the purchased company as a kind of maintenance.2. Register in Hong Kong
It’s free to register a magazine in Hong Kong. But you can’t sell it on the mainland. You can only offer subscriptions to “members” - then ship them to China. You can sell the mag at newsstands in Hong Kong. Apparently, this is the strategy that DOMUS-China is now using - offering subscriptions at discount rates to establish itself in mainland China.3. Register as a book
It’s easier to get a publishing license for a book. This is the strategy A+U uses in China. The main drawbacks are that you generally can’t sell books at newsstands and book distributors tend to focus on bookstores - and not alternative locations like cafes, clubs, etc. The other major difficulty is getting advertising. In order to include ads in a book, you need to get approval from the Bureau of Industry and Commerce (工商局). Shi Jian wasn’t completely sure how difficult the approval process is. One final drawback of the book number is that you can’t offer subscriptions.For more info, check out this post on Danwei, a great resource on media in China.
Popularity: 6% [?]
- Blog Bonito VI: Requiem for the dark horse
After watching Italy barely defeat Australia on CCTV, and hearing commentator Huang Jianxiang’s euphoric pro-Italian, anti-Australian rant at the end of the game, I was reminded of something peculiar about the Chinese perspective on the World Cup.
Throughout my time here, I’ve been surprised by the apparent lack of support for dark horse (黒马) teams. Everywhere you go it’s Brazil, England, Italy, etc. I counted 15 France shirts the other day, none of which being worn by a French person. There seems to be an unshakable faith in the justness of the World Cup’s strictly limited group of past winners, and very little desire to see that community expanded. What accounts for this (to me at least) noticeable lack of interest in seeing the underrated teams prevail? It seems so much less fun.
Friends I spoke with said that it’s because Chinese football remains undeveloped and aspirational. There’s a hunger for heroes and instruction. To see a giant felled by a midget like Australia is less exciting than seeing a clearly superior team dominant its weaker opponent, or so the theory goes. One might argue that seeing a upstart team like the Socceroos advance could provide inspiration for a country struggling to make a dent in international football, but it doesn’t seem to be working like that. I guess this remains an open question…
UPDATE: Huang Jianxiang busted but unrepentant: “I don’t like Australians indeed.” Get this man an invite to the Player Haters Ball!!
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Blog Bonito V: Japan vs Brazil
I have decided to record my experiences watching Japan’s World Cup 06 campaign in haiku. Most if not all the games will be watched along with my friend Hiromasa Shirai. It is to him that I dedicate this literary endeavor.
Haiku 09 - 02:34
Hope remains alive
The odds are stacked against us
Who am I kidding?Haiku 10 - 03:34
GOAL! GOAL! GOAL! GOAL! GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLL!!!!
What? Is it? Can it really…
Is it possible?Haiku 11 - 03:46
Ronaldo Bigteeth…
Fat, not fat enough to miss
Where’s my goddamn beer?Haiku 12 - 04:29
In drawing first blood
We only angered the beast
Gokorosama….Popularity: 5% [?]
- Blog Bonito IV: Japan vs Croatia
I have decided to record my experiences watching Japan’s World Cup 06 campaign in haiku. Most if not all the games will be watched along with my friend Hiromasa Shirai. It is to him that I dedicate this literary endeavor.
Haiku 05 - 21:00
Match one was painful
Heroics followed by farce
Can we recover?Haiku 06 - 21:23
Y. Kawaguchi
The save that keeps us alive
(Temporarily)Haiku 07 - 22:17
Yanagisawa!!!!
Players have been killed for less
A proud nation weepsHaiku 08 - 22:08
Shirai san removes
his blue jersey in disgust
Fracture to my heartPopularity: 5% [?]
- Feedback: Wang Hui (王晖)
I met with the architect Wang Hui today to talk about UNIT. (Big up Wang Hui… He’s a nice and helpful guy.)
Overall, he was positive, but said it’ll be hard to find a large audience for it, and we should consider this in planning out exactly how/where we want to distribute it. This makes sense to me, but there seems a disturbing frequency with which people here try to convince me of the inability of ‘common’ Chinese people to understand/appreciate things. At a certain point I wonder if underestimation starts to become its own form of (self)censorship…
He also said “design” is a hot topic at the moment. Everyone is talking about it, but the understanding is very limited. Clients say things to him like, “You’re a designer: take something that costs 10 RMB and make it look like it costs 100 RMB.”
And, because of this combination of interest and ignorance, this is a good moment to introduce something that addresses design with intelligence and intention, so that China isn’t stuck with this limited notion of design.
He also mentioned he’s designing a car for Porsche, so that’s maybe a hot scoop or some kind.
Popularity: 18% [?]
- Back to life
So I realized that this blog is overrun by football posts, which is very strange since UNIT has absolutely nothing to do with football, and actually I’m not even that into football. But what can I say, the caught the spirit, and went a little over the top with it. But the is point what the hell is going on with UNIT.
I’ve been in Beijing for about two weeks now presenting the work we’ve done so far, hearing reactions, getting advice, and seeing if anyone up here can help us move forward.
Last week, media artist Yang Lei (杨磊) and I had a joint presentation at Salon, a venue for presenting and discussing new creative projects organized by my friend Andre Schmidt. Lei presented “b.tween 2 cultures” – a web-based visual dialog between China and the UK, done in collaboration with internationally renowned creative technologists Soda. (Check the site for a more detailed explanation of the concept and how it actually works.) He’d just come back from debuting the project at the b.TWEEN 06 interactive media festival in Bradford, UK, where it was shown on monitors around the site. He has plans for taking to a much grander scale though, and, like me, he was presenting a project in its very early stages.
I gave a short presentation of the just released UNIT 01 then showed UNIT 02, the first full-fledged issue we’ve made since coming to China. The story of UNIT 02 is a sad little parable on “strategic misunderstanding” - a powerful tool against which anyone attempting to do business in a place without speaking its language is vulnerable.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Blog Bonito III: Pause for the cause
Later today Ukraine plays Spain - two good teams, almost certain to advance, each representing the far reaches of Europe, both coached by on-the-record racists.
Reported in the Los Angeles Times:
Ukraine coach Oleg Blokhin, for example, recently complained that the influx of foreign players deprived his compatriots of role models: “Let them learn from [our players] and not some Zumba-Bumba whom they took off a tree, gave two bananas and now he plays in the Ukrainian league.”
Spain’s coach Luis Aragones was caught on tape in 2004 trying to motivate Jose Antonio Reyes by comparing him with his Arsenal team-mate Thierry Henry thus: “You are better than that black shit.”
He later insisted that there was nothing racist about the remark: “Reyes is ethnically a gypsy,” Aragones to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. “I have got a lot of gypsy and black friends. All I did was to motivate the gypsy by telling him he was better than the black.”
The incident made international headlines, earned Aragones a puny fine, and inspired Henry to launch the STAND UP SPEAK UP anti-racism campaign.
Both coaches have refused to apologize for their remarks, both have kept their jobs.
Here’s to hoping both go home disappointed this year…STAND UP SPEAK UP
Football Against Racism in EuropePopularity: 4% [?]
- Blog Bonito II: Clash of Civilizations
Japan vs. Australia (kick off @ 21:00 Beijing Standard Time)
I have decided to record my experiences watching Japan’s World Cup 06 campaign in haiku. Most if not all the games will be watched along with my friend Hiromasa Shirai. It is to him that I dedicate this literary endeavor.
First, a testimonial:
My interest in World Cup football was born on the streets of Osaka in June 2002. After two decades in the wilderness, a new world revealed itself to me on a late afternoon in June amongst several thousand hysterical strangers.
Like a convert Christian, I was baptized - the sins of my youth absolved and admission to the global community of football followers signified by the application of toxic droplets from Osaka’s Dotonburi River. I stood reborn - arms raised, vocal chords stretched - on a crowded side walk, beneath a shower of displaced river water, as jubilant, drunken fan after jubilant, drunken fan dove into the Dotonburi’s murky depths, indifferent to the many wasteforms that awaited them.
Predictably, I still carry feelings of deep sentimentality for the site of my conversion. So, in 06, I’m riding the blue wave as far as it’ll take me.*
*Hopefully, the second round.
Haiku 01 - 20:47 (BST)
Nickname: “Socceroos”
Is this a champion’s name?
Absolutely not.Haiku 02 - 21:27
There’s no sound sweeter
than the silence surrounding
a saddened AussieHaiku 03 - 22:01
Blood curdling screeches
Vehement flag waving
Aussies equalizeHaiku 04 - 22:19
Dear God in Heaven
Japan’s most grievous collapse
since Kobe’s earthquakePopularity: 10% [?]
- Blog Bonito
I’m in Beijing now on various UNIT-related missions, but once I arrived I was knocked over by the enthusiasm for the World Cup here. China’s not in, of course, and maybe it’s considered a kind of warm-up for the Olympics, but damn this city is bang into some football right now. So, I’m gonna go with the flow… UNIT updates coming soon….
In honor of the 06 World Cup Finals, I offer my testament - Confessions of a Football Convert:
“Can I kick it?” - A Tribe Called QuestHaving been raised in the the US - the often-cited isolationist exception to football’s global conquest - I didn’t play or care much for the game growing up. I was a city kid and so played basketball. Soccer, as we call it, was a light-weight, slightly effeminate game played by spoiled, white suburbanites and immigrants (two groups that rarely break bread together - a crystal clear demonstration of football’s unifying qualities that went completely over my head…) During high school, every so often there’d be a few weeks of physical education dedicated to soccer, and we’d be brought outside to play. The teacher wouldn’t provide any advice on technique or even basic rules, we’d just be divided up and let loose. The result was always the same: a handful of kids from Central America or East Europe and maybe one or two from my hometown’s affluent East Side would dominate, carrying on as if they were in a pick-up match in an obstacle course. Those who generally didn’t enjoy sports would endure the 50-minute class with the same level of unobstructive disinterest that they brought to all other games. The rest, those who otherwise considered themselves athletes, would pre-empt their certain humiliation by aggressively underperforming until eventually the game deteriorated into a farcical exhibition of who could play the worst.
This is often the American way: if you aren’t good at something, belittle it. No doubt if Team USA disappoints this year, as I expect them to, you will see this reflexive disinterest acted out in pubs and on public squares across the world: over-loud discussions of more familiar USports interrupted occasionally by drunken croaks of “I don’t even really care about soccer anyway.” And I admit, I’ve been contributor to this ritual for most of my life.
Popularity: 4% [?]
- Kick off
Welcome to VERY FEEL - a blog of text, image, and sound by me, Brendan McGetrick. I’m writer and editor based in Guangzhou, China. I’ve been here for about a month and thought this blog would be a good way to document the experience and avoid email.
Now then formal introductions out of the way…
“Let’s get it started” - MC HammerI guess it makes sense that the first contribution to the VERY FEEL blog comes on the 9th of June 2006, a.k.a. the first day of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. At 18:00 in Munich, the ball is dropped on the world’s most important sporting event. (Beijing we hear you, but the Olympics cannot compete - too fractured, too many boutique athletes who you never hear from again…) VERY FEEL might as well start here too, because, like the WC, this is an effort in the spirit of internationalism, apolitics, non-violence, and silly hats.
I’m no football expert, by any means; in fact, like most not-so-big football fans, I only ever pay attention to the game during the World Cup, when the air is thick with nationalism and ethnic stereotyping. When there’s an opportunity to talk and celebrate with all types and forget for a few weeks that most of life is played on a significantly less even pitch.
There is so much that can and has been said about why football is the world’s game and why the World Cup captivates. I won’t add my coarse, untrained voice to the chorus. But to cover a bit of that ground on this opening day, here’s a recent piece by Michael Elliott and Simon Robinson on “The Global Game”. And another on “How to Watch the World Cup” by Tony Karon.
UNIT 01: Now Life
“Let me put a little excitement up in yo lifestyle.” - Ludacris
All that football talk aside, the time is also right to kick off this blog, because the reason I’m in China finally materialized last week in the form of UNIT 01 - the first installment of UNIT Magazine. UNIT 01 was prepared as a special supplement, commissioned by 《新视线》/ The Outlook Magazine for its June issue. It features the thoughts of Theodore Zeldin and art of 蒋志 (Jiang Zhi). Like all future issues, it’s bilingual (Chinese & English).
The issue opens with a statement of UNIT’s interests and ambitions, and since none of that has been explained here yet, why not launch the blog in the same style. Below is an excerpt from UNIT 01’s editors’ letter:
Around the world cultures are evolving amid a whirlwind of colliding influences. Everywhere sources of enthusiasm, suffering, apathy and inspiration appear and disappear. UNIT embraces the madness. A product of a new meeting between East and West that employs shared ideas and passions, UNIT is cultural fusion. It is a platform for globally aware, interested and passionate people, who are concurrently naive, apprehensive, curious, and wise. Created in Guangzhou China by a unit of Chinese, European, and American collaborators, UNIT brings together people who are united in an ongoing effort to address the moment’s most compelling puzzle – what to make of 21st century life.To begin this process, UNIT seized one of the current moment’s richest and least developed concepts – “lifestyle”. In its current definition, the word is a vague amalgamation of clothes, holidays, personal hygiene, art, politics, and privacy. It is western-centric, commodity-driven, and wealth-dependent. But instead of being a tool for spreading sameness, “lifestyle” has the potential to become a codeword for the invention of new forms of difference - new slang, new relationships, new art forms, new religions. Outward-looking and unafraid of discomfort, this new definition requires imagination, not money.
In this mini-issue, celebrated British philosopher and historian Theodore Zeldin launches the UNIT project by describing a new, ultra-modern lifestyle, based on empathy, experience, and exchange. In the UNITs to follow, we will track this new lifestyle across the globe. Our coverage will be personal and immediate, rooted in China’s mutual fascination with the world outside.
UNIT has many faces. It will be at different times a magazine, an art event, a party, blog, an exhibition, or an animation. In all forms, it will provide a bridge between China’s emerging creative class and its peers around the world. We encourage you to collaborate on this project, in whatever way you prefer. There is much to do and much at stake. Please contact us.
Stay tuned…
BPopularity: 4% [?]
