Stealing umbrellas just for laughs in Chengdu

– Youtube celebrity and prankster Andrew Hales, who makes awkwardly funny videos for his channel Losing All Hope Was Freedom (LAHWF), is currently in Chengdu, Sichuan, and messing with the locals. In his first video from the city, he randomly approaches people and takes their umbrella. Reactions range from confusion to tight-fisted objection to laughter. Watch … Read More »

Beijing Cream in your ear with The Creamcast

– Popular Beijing-based blog Beijing Cream has just released the inaugural episode of The Creamcast, a weekly podcast hosted by John Artman and The Good Doctor. The podcast’s first guest is long-time China expat Frank Yu, founder of Chinese start-up Kwestr. The format is very much unstructured and conversational, and will remind most of a typical … Read More »

Video: China 1972 — Nicholas Platt’s Home Movies

– I caught a link to this video in Bill Bishop’s excellent Sinocism newsletter today. The video was published back in 2010 by the Asia Society, and shows Nicholas Platt giving a voice over description of several minutes of home movies he shot in 1972 Beijing, just after the US and China resumed diplomatic relations. Read More »

Video: The å…š Dynasty’s ‘We livin in Xi’an’

– Credit to Beijing Cream for introducing me to the The å…š Dynasty, westside China’s latest laowai talent. Made up of friends Bro西来 (Matt Allen) and 他马特老外 (Matt Sheehan), the duo produced the following “We livin in Xi’an” video, which is as ridiculous as it is fun. Straight off the streets of Xi’an, bilingual rap duo … Read More »

Help preserve China’s disappearing dialects

– Kellen Parker, who has both been featured on and contributed to Lost Laowai over the years, is spearheading a new project called Phonemica, which aims to “record spoken stories in every one of the thousands of varieties of Chinese in order to preserve both stories and language for future generations.” Read More »

Foreigner loses it on a Chengdu bus driver

– The bad laowai category on Lost Laowai has grown a bit dusty over the past year or so, as I questioned whether it was a good idea to lend attention to a very small section of the foreigner crowd who were behaving badly in public (and becoming Youku stars for their efforts). It appeared for … Read More »

Things Done Well: Sinica Podcast

– From Manchus to Mo Yan, week after week Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn gather together some of the most well-informed journalists, writers and academics to talk about everything ‘China’. To kick off our new section highlighting Things Done Well, Lost Laowai talks to the hosts of our favourite China podcast, Sinica. Read More »

Documentary: Seeking Asian Female

A look at yellow fever documentary ‘Seeking Asian Female’

– I was pretty eager to sit down and watch “Seeking Asian Female“, Debbie Lam’s new documentary exploring ‘Yellow Fever’. I’ve always been a bit skeptical about the whole Asian fetish thing, and, admittedly, a bit defensive about it — my wife is Asian and I’m Caucasian. I suppose the thing that gets my back up … Read More »

Do you know what to do when emergencies happen?

– Richard Brubaker recently wrote a poignant piece at All Roads Lead to China called “When the Ambulance Doesn’t Come“, in which he talks about the recent heart-breaking story of a 3-year-old British boy in Shanghai who died from injuries sustained when a partition at a restaurant fell on him. Though the mother and restaurant owner … Read More »

Potcast: first-hand account on doing time in a Chinese jail

– I’m not sure if it’s fitting or unseemly that I should be posting this today, April 20th, but here we are. A couple years back I remember reading about a foreigner who spent seven months in a Chinese jail. Other than a passing, “man that sucks,” I didn’t think much more about it. I certainly … Read More »

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