Joe Wong Mainland Chinese Comic In America

"President Obama was offered the Nobel Peace Prize while he was waging two wars. And he accepted it. You can't get more badass than that. Unless you give the prize money to the military."

LOFROR

New Chinese immigrant to the US, Joe Wong, addresses the annual Radio & Television Correspondents' Dinner, to an audience including Joe Biden.

Thanks to Denis

Chopsticks At Dawn: BBC R4 Tuesday 8th June for 7 days

Photo of Anna, Jane Ng and Ben Chan at BBC Broadcasting House (Thanks Ben Chan)

Chopsticks At Dawn: orientalism in Western music
13:30 Tuesday 8th June 2010
BBC Radio 4
Presented by Anna Chen
Written by Anna Chen with Dr Jonathan Walker
Produced by Chris Eldon-Lee and Culture Wise
More here

LISTEN NOW ON BBC IPLAYER FOR SEVEN DAYS

"The cuddly face of dehumanisation. A bit like golliwogs."

I always wondered how it was that those cartoon strains of cod Chinese music used to have me running for cover when I was growing up. Siouxsie And The Banshees' Hong Kong Garden, David Bowie's China Girl, Carl Douglas's Kung Fu Fighting, they're only a few examples of the sort of orientalism in music that was the bane of my young life. Who needed crude verbal epithets when a few bars of plonkery could do the job?

I asked my friend Dr Jonathan Walker, a musicologist and damned fine pianist, how certain configurations of a few notes could be so potent in their effect. What he told me led to a fascinating journey through the development of a musical trope that was loaded with meaning, much of it not very positive.

From its basic building blocks of pentatonics (the black notes) and parallel fourths all the way to Debussy and Ketelby, Jonathan reveals how, had Western music begun to represent other cultures at an earlier stage in history when Chinoiserie was greatly admired, we might have ended up with a musical equivalent of the willow pattern crockery, or the Brighton Pavilion. As it is, it coincided with the Opium Wars and Yellow Peril fever, so the results were hardly complimentary.

You can see how this all pulls together in the arena of propaganda in the opening title sequence of the movie Inn Of The Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman as missionary Gladys Aylward, and Curt Jurgens as the Chinese General (!). Made in 1958 during the Cold War, various motifs in Malcolm Arnold's score merge with the visuals to create a subtext, climaxing in the dramatic appearance of the film's title in vivid scarlet text reminiscent of American takeaway menus, and accompanied by billowing clouds of steam that could be opium smoke or dragon's breath. Listen out for the "cruelty" chords as associated with ancient Rome and the mysterious Orient. It's brilliant and quite funny.

I was joined by academics Derek Scott of Leeds and Rachel Harris of SOAS who help to find out exactly what was going on with the representation of Asian Pacific people — and Chinese in particular — in the culture. Chi2 funsters Liz and Sarah Liew add their childhood reactions to the mix. And musicians Ben Chan (Big Yellow Band) and Jane Ng, who wrote Pagoda Of Dreams, show us how they merge East and West in their compositions.


BBC preview and Listen Again for seven days here (Pic of Anna at BBC page by Sukey Parnell)

Pick Of The Day: RadioTimes, Observer, Sunday Telegraph, Time Out, Mail On Sunday. Also daily choice in the Times, Telegraph and Independent, Tuesday 8th. Daily Telegraph

Anna Chen reflects, through gritted teeth, on representations of Chinese music, the ingy pingy clichés as used by everyone from George Formby to David Bowie, demeaning a culture which, in other fields, we respect. This isn’t a dreary sermon, though. It’s a lively, rueful journey through aural conditioning. Why do some sounds suggest the Orient to us? She listens to Ravel and has the pentatonic scale (as played on a piano’s black keys) explained to her as a short cut to something that to Westerners signals “east”. But there’s more to it than that.

Recording with bronchitis

Canine protesters join Greek demos: dogging the barricades

Pic by Nikolas Giakoumidis, AP


From "No Dogs Or Chinese" to dogs who are warmly welcomed by their human comrades. Just when you wanted a story combining pets and politics, here's one from Paw Print Post about the street dogs in Greece who fight side by side with the anarchists.

They are popular with the public and one, Kanellos, even has his own Facebook page with 1,900 fans and a song dedicated to him. The Internationale unites the human race. And furry friends.

Also at the same site: cat saves woman during a pit bull attack.

Canine protesters join Greek demos: dogging the barricades

Pic by Nikolas Giakoumidis, AP


From "No Dogs Or Chinese" to dogs who are warmly welcomed by their human comrades. Just when you wanted a story combining pets and politics, here's one from Paw Print Post about the street dogs in Greece who fight side by side with the anarchists.

They are popular with the public and one, Kanellos, even has his own Facebook page with 1,900 fans and a song dedicated to him. The Internationale unites the human race. And furry friends.

Also at the same site: cat saves woman during a pit bull attack.

No Dogs Or Chinese: it's a sign

To the charming visitor to this blog who is demanding that we Chinese should refrain from discussing aspects of our own history (comment here) because he, "As a Jew who is well aware of REAL victimization" says "get over it." And I say "Phooey!" In fact I say, "Hong Kong Phooey with brass nobs on." (Yes, I am well aware of my spelling but nobs is what I mean in this instance.) Thank goodness that my very good Jewish friends do not share your competitiveness in the suffering stakes.

Our "real victim" friend angrily denies there was any such thing as a sign saying, "No Dogs Or Chinese/Chinamen", relegating it to a Bruce Lee movie invention. He might be interested to know that Huangpu Park in Shanghai was closed to Chinese until 1928. The sign as oft quoted is a poetic compression of the actual sign which stipulated it was for the Foreign Community only, and that dogs were forbidden. You see? Essentially, "No dogs or Chinese." Shorthand foregrounding the salient bits. Easy to understand. Hope that helps.

No Dogs Or Chinese: it's a sign

To the charming visitor to this blog who is demanding that we Chinese should refrain from discussing aspects of our own history (comment here) because he, "As a Jew who is well aware of REAL victimization" says "get over it." And I say "Phooey!" In fact I say, "Hong Kong Phooey with brass nobs on." (Yes, I am well aware of my spelling but nobs is what I mean in this instance.) Thank goodness that my very good Jewish friends do not share your competitiveness in the suffering stakes.

Our "real victim" friend angrily denies there was any such thing as a sign saying, "No Dogs Or Chinese/Chinamen", relegating it to a Bruce Lee movie invention. He might be interested to know that Huangpu Park in Shanghai was closed to Chinese until 1928. The sign as oft quoted is a poetic compression of the actual sign which stipulated it was for the Foreign Community only, and that dogs were forbidden. You see? Essentially, "No dogs or Chinese." Shorthand foregrounding the salient bits. Easy to understand. Hope that helps.