Taking the net by a storm are videos of the Chinese Red Army lipsynced to popular modern, and many of them western, songs. Scenes taken from the Long March Song Cycle movie (长征组歌) from back in 1976 are edited to create terrific parodies that give new meanings to the songs. Of all [...]
It took me a while to get how my Chinese mates watch TV and movies online. Usually around noon time, you could see the mainland Chinese bringing in take-away lunch from the cafeteria and watch movies or TV (mostly Taiwanese or American, I should point out). Even movies that haven’t yet made it to the [...]
My friend Lin, a Chinese teacher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who runs the Chinese Garden, has been translating Chinese songs for her students for years. I have very fond memories of sitting in on her classes where all the students were KTVing together to some old Chinese folk songs. Lin’s quite good at [...]
Based in China’s Sichuan province and originally performed as part of Chinese Opera is the beautiful performing art of face-mask changing – Bian Lian (变脸, 變臉, Biàn Liǎn). Watch this next routine I recorded in a Sichuan cuisine restaurant called Sichuan Folk in a Shenzhen Overseas Chinese District (posh) shopping mall. Although I’ve previously heard [...]
Tin Hau – Goddess of the sea, better know in Taiwan as Matzu (媽祖 Māzǔ), is one of the most popular Gods in the Taiwan, southern China and Hong Kong area. Discover Hong Kong alerted me to the celebrations of Tin Hau festival taking place not too far away from the campus in Sai Kung’s [...]
Till HK, my encounters with Chinese opera amounted to a short opera class in China Town Singapore … To sum up my Chinese experience at Singapore I went on my final night for some classic Chinese dinner and opera with the Chinese Theater Circle (http://ctcopera.com.sg) and was surprised to be part of an exclusive 8 [...]
The Battle of Red Cliff (part 1 and part 2) is absolutely brilliant. Perfect. To me – it’s as good as it gets. There aren’t many films that I leave with an incredible "WOW" effect, but this one did it … twice. John Woo did a superb job. It’s been over 2 months since I’ve [...]
Thanks to Ran, the best Israeli blog in China, I heard of this odd news piece. Israeli YNet recently reported that one of my all-time least liked songs "Heat of Tel-Aviv" received a Chinese version. Compare the Israeli version… To the Chinese one… Which one do you like more? Did you like the Shabbat/Hannuka candle [...]
