10tonfunk

Just after we returned from our Thailand Golden Week vacation (October 4th I think) to be met by a cool and drizzling Beijing we put plopped down our bags, petted the cat, and after I put on my comfy jeans and a raincoat we headed back out. The slivers of rain fell on and around us and puddles spread silently along the road under the trees. The air was cool and damp and felt good after hours in an airport and squeezed into an airplane. It felt real.

The Xinjiang restaurant, the same place I watched the end of the closing ceremony, is a small restaurant with a metal hood and grill built into the front side of the façade for making lamb kebabs. There’s a plastic cup turned spice shaker and a jacked up hairdryer to speed up cooking.

Inside are a few formica tables and a floor that has never been clean. A television hangs dreary and dated from a metal hanger screwed precariously into the wall. The main waiter and maybe proprietor is tall with long features, a hooked nose, and wide olive shaped black eyes. Last time I was there his eye left seemed unable to focus and the socket gleamed with vaseline. Often times these restaurants see fights.

That night Steph and I each ate noodles razored off a block of dough drowned in tomato sauce, diced onion, and twisting yellow, white, brown clumps of egg. We ordered Xinjiang salad – cucumber, ...read more

These photos actually marked the genesis of the current mo’blog series. Going through past 2+ years of photos and writing about them a bit heightened my interest in trying to explain – to myself as much as others – Beijing. There are many pictures out there showing monks holding McDonald’s bags and the like and these are great pictures that speak vividly to the paradigm shift taking place on the mainland. But there are many more changes taking place, less striking when viewed one at a time, but they pile upon themselves endlessly, are obscured, merged, and transformed.

下面的照片是我在这个博客上现在写的mo’blog系列的开端. 我在看我前两年照片和图式写出来我的感觉我的对表示我在北京的经历增加了. 写给别人看和让我自己更理解北京. 有很多照片有僧侣他们手中拿着麦当劳袋子. 这种照片很生动地标志中国的改变. 但是中国的变化更多, 比这样的照片更细微的. 假使你只看一两张比较细微的照片, 你不能理解北京的变化, 不能理解变化, 但是这个变化非常多, 一直堆在一起, 联合, 转变.

When I was young I saw Tibetan monks making a sand mandala in one of the dark cavernous wings of the Chicago Field Museum. They were most of the way through, using bags of colored sand like cake frosting to create an ...read more