Extraordinary talents, these two.
One, last I heard, was racing planes in Reno.
The other just launched a totally awesome iPhone app. It features a panda in a bib. And makes it possible for anyone, regardless of language skills, to navigate Chinese menus and restaurant interactions like a pro. Here's a song one of them recorded a few months ago. Anyone want to guess which one?
Note the shots in which he's trying to keep it consistent, but he can't quite hold the smile back.
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I once posed as a professional fisherman in a government-sponsored tournament in south central China.
Mr. Fu and I shared a raft for many hours. He was both a patient tutor and a fierce competitor.I revealed to him that I was an impostor just moments before one of our hardhat-wearing, sugarcane-chewing river navigators took this picture.
Note: I post this in honor of Michael Dundas, who called me two nights before aforementioned (but not yet anything close to aforedescribed) adventure, told me he had an offer I couldn't refuse, and described a fishing tournament entirely unlike what we experienced. He's on the New Jersey Turnpike right now, on his way here. I haven't seen him in way too long.
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I was sitting at a table on a porch last night, talking about China, remembering, laughing, telling stories, and I realized far more clearly than ever before that there's one lesson from my four years in Beijing that towers over all the rest...
If you get a chance to do something weird, do it.
As long as it doesn't put anyone in excessive physical or emotional danger, of course.
But, even then, see if you can figure some way for it not to put anyone in danger, and then do it.
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Ben Sollee was playing cello with The Sparrow Quartet when I first heard him play. Both the band and the audience spent the show seated quietly under unexpectedly bright and disorganized lighting in a university auditorium in Beijing.
Ben brought the Americans in the house to our feet when he ditched his bow and strummed us Bury Me With My Car.
He rocks a mean Sam Cooke too.
A Change Is Gonna Come is track 9 on Learning to Bend.
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Read this on a bottle of supplement pills today...
At least 1,500 years ago, Tibetan herders observed that yaks would eat
Cordyceps and then frolic with great energy and "passion." This
encouraged the herders to experience the power of Cordyceps, which has
led to its use by hundreds of millions of people over the ages. In
1993, the Chinese National Track and Field Team attributed their
success in breaking the World Records in part to their use of
Cordyceps.
First of all, hundreds of millions of people is a bold statement.
Second, what happened to the Chinese National Track and Field Team after 1993? Less Cordyceps in their diet? More in the diets of non-Chinese track and field athletes?
And, finally, I really hope I get to see a yak frolic with great energy and "passion" someday. Those quotation marks are positively tantalizing.
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If I had a go-to song, it was probably Lola. Basket Case with scrap paper and an electric guitarist instead of a teleprompter and an audio track was big and memorable. And my very most glorious Beijing Karaoke moment was a Two Princes duet with Wiley.
Not much World Party in late night China, however.
My imagination tells me this song would go beautifully with sweetened popcorn and Chivas Regal.
Sunshine is track 10 on Bang!
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According to Greg, China is planning on building the world's biggest lake. They're damming a medium-low altitude Himalayan valley and letting the mountains fill up. And, apparently, when they finish construction and the waters rise and spread, the lake will be so big it'll affect "the balance of the poles," the earth's "skin" will adjust for balance, and all bets are off. Volcanoes. Earthquakes. High speed continental drift. In other words: a party.
When he finished his rave, Greg paused for a few seconds, thinking, and then told me he'd call his hydrogeologist friend to check some facts. He hasn't talked to him in years, but he figures the man's probably a strategic consultant on the project.
Hmmm.
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Please click this link.
It's an article about two pounds of very old marijuana. Two pounds of very old marijuana found in a tomb in the desert in China. My favorite quote is from the caption next to a picture of a rubber-gloved scientist tweezing a bit of the weed into a container for him to bring home and "test" over the weekend:Scientists are unsure if the marijuana was grown for more spiritual or medical purposes, but it's evident that the man was buried with a lot of it.I only smoked the greens in China a couple of times. It was not locally sourced. It was American. A friend smuggled it back from a medical marijuana farm in Mendocino County, CA. And there is a very serious story behind it. One that involves a lawyer, outsourcing the manufacture of clipping and gardening tools to a factory in Shenzhen, political dilemmas, cash in buried mason jars, socially responsible investors, and a SWAT team.It's probably best told when everyone listening is stoned.
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My friends at Wokai need votes.
They are microfinance people using the internets to connect the Chinese microfinance community to the rest of the world. They want to make it possible for me, from Delaware or Singapore or Easter Island or Reykjavik, to drop USD 50 into their system, choose a Chinese microentrepreneur to support, loan her that money, watch her use it to grow her little shepherding business, collect it, and then loan it out again. They are about a month away from launching an early version of that long distance loan-making tool. And they've got developers and interns to feed. So they're hustling.So far, they've hustled well at changemakers.net. They're in the finals of a little nonprofit business plan competition over there, and they think they can win it. To make that happen, however, they need support. Votes. From us. -If you think responsible economic development in China is a cause worth supporting...-If you think we ought to harness the technologies that make it ridiculously convenient to communicate in kitten dialect and use them to pass information and capital to the poorest places on earth... -Or if you just simply like the idea of supporting entrepreneurs that are committed to their project to the point that they drink competitively with rural Communist Party officials, throw up everywhere, get carried back to their hotel, and show up at 7:30 the next morning ready to meet loan officers and microentrepreneurs and decode their heavily accented Chinese... Then vote for Wokai.It'll take a few minutes, for hopefully you'll read through a bunch of descriptions of finalists and vote for two other high potential startup nonprofits in addition to Wokai. But it's good to give big love and respect to the future of the international philanthropy, so make it happen. Today or tomorrow. Then tune back in Wednesday to see if they win. The pic below is from about 18 months ago in Beijing. Wokai was just a baby, and I had recently taken the founders out to the desert in search of inspiration, partner microfinance institutions, and the grain alcohol we all have to wager if we want to make friends and do business in rural China. Someday, when Courtney and Casey are famous, and I need people to vote for my competing business plan, I'll post the picture again, and hopefully everyone will think I'm awesome by association.
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