in the mood

what fresh hell is this

[sinetheta]

They were lonely and sad people, all three of them, and they would not make one another less sad, but they could, with great care, make a world that would accommodate their loneliness.

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li (李翊雲). 2010.

Consisting of 8 short stories (Kindness, A Man Like Him, Prison, The Proprietress, House Fire, Number 3 Garden Road, Sweeping Past, Souvenir, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl), this 80-page novella by Yiyun Li paints a vibrant landscape of life in China and reveals mesmerizing worlds in traditional and modern culture. Gold Boy, Emerald Girl is an exquisite collection that ultimately illustrates the striking, undying loneliness in the human condition. With stunningly honest prose, Li’s heartfelt narratives touch upon various topics of beauty, politics, history, suspense and folklore present in China.

Yiyun Li is a critically praised, award-winning Chinese-American author, editor and professor.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture

(via sinethetamagazine)

[sinetheta]

Her immigrant parents had wanted the best for her, so imagine coming home to them with a lip ring. First, her parents would have made her take the ring out, then they would have slapped her, then they would have reminded her that a lip ring made her look like a hoodlum and in this country not everyone would give someone with an Asian face the benefit of the doubt. If she looked like a hoodlum, then she would have trouble getting into college. If she couldn’t get into college, then she couldn’t get a job. If she couldn’t get a job, then she couldn’t enter society. If she couldn’t enter society, then she might as well go to jail. Ultimately, a lip ring could only land her in jail—what other purpose did it serve? She was not joining the circus. She was not part of an indigenous African tribe. She was not Marilyn Manson. (Her father, for some strange reason, knew who Marilyn Manson was and listened to him and liked him.) Then, in jail, she could make friends with other people wearing lip rings and form a gang. Is that what you want as a career? her parents would have asked. To form a lip-ring gang in jail? And she would have answered no.

Omakase by Weike Wang. The New Yorker. 2018.

Weike Wang is a Chinese-American author. She was born in Nanjing, China, and moved away when she was 5 years old, living in Australia, Canada, and finally the United States, where she studied at universities in Boston. Originally a Chemistry major, Wang wrote the novel Chemistry (2017), about a female graduate student navigating academia and her love life and won the PEN/Hemingway Award. In her story for The New Yorker, Wang lets the story of a mixed-race couple unfold over the course of a single omakase meal. An engaging read, the piece sheds light on the way in which people of color are made to be constantly aware of their race and in which white men, made oblivious by their own confidence and self-assurance, dismiss such concerns. 

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

(via sinethetamagazine)

[sinetheta]

📣📣📣 O N E   D A Y    L E F T  📣📣📣

To all Sino creatives out there: there is only ONE day left to seize the opportunity to get your work PUBLISHED in our upcoming issue! Submissions to Issue #8 “GOLD 金” are due on JULY 1 to [email protected]. For more information and prompts to consider, visit sinetheta.net/8 and sinetheta.net/guidelines!

Check out our Pinterest board for this issue to inspie dazzling prose, poetry, photography, visual art, and installations!

Poster designed by Sine Theta Magazine Assistant Designer, Jessica Peng.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

[sinetheta]

Love Education (相愛相親). dir. Sylvia Chang (張艾嘉). 2017.

Love Education is a 2017 Chinese-Taiwanese family drama film, directed by Taiwanese actress and director Sylvia Chang. The heart of the film lies in three generations of women and their oftentimes contrasting views on womanhood and love. 

The women are brought together when middle-aged teacher Huiying (played by Chang herself) decides to transport her father’s grave from the rural village he was born, into the city where he can rest next to Huiying’s recently deceased mother. However, her father’s first wife, Nana (played by Wu Yanshu), who has been loyally looking after her husband’s grave for decades, stages a protest and refuses to allow it to be moved away. All the while, Huiying’s daughter forms an unlikely bond with Nana, while attempting to navigate love in the form of her own relationship with an aspiring musician that she is afraid to lose.

Love Education is a nuanced, tender portrayal of the ways in which generation gaps can both pull apart and bring together a family. Critics praised the compelling and natural performances from Chang and Wu, as well as its beautiful cinematography and realistic dialogue. The film won Best Screenplay at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

[sinetheta]

Song of the Years Gone By (歲月如歌) by Eason Chan (陳奕迅). 2003.

Song of Years Gone By is the theme song of the 2003 TVB Hong Kong drama, Triumph in the Skies (衝上雲霄). Starring Francis Ng, Flora Chan and Joe Ma, the drama tells the lives of pilots working for a fictional airway company largely based on Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific. Sung by Eason Chan, the song is one of TVB’s most iconic theme songs, and contributed to the drama’s great success. Although released in the early 2000s, its nostalgic melody and lyrics of melancholic love remains deep in the hearts of drama fans. When TVB released the sequel, Triumph in the Skies II in 2013, many fans were astonished and disappointed that the theme song was replaced by Triumph in the Skies (衝上雲霄) by George Lam (林子祥). Many expressed in frustration that both the drama and the original theme song are irreplaceable and co-existential.

Eason Chan (陳奕迅) is a Cantopop singer and actor from Hong Kong. Highly praised as the leading male singer of his generation, he has won numerous prestigious music awards and has been one of Hong Kong’s top selling artists since 2000. He is known for his expressive and innovative stage performances that are a breath of fresh air in the Hong Kong music scene. Chan was also named the next God of Songs (歌神) after Jacky Cheung (張學友) by Chinese music critics.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

[sinetheta]

Treat these last THREE DAYS as if they were pure GOLD.

In the final moments leading up to our 8th issue deadline, we hope Sino creators can treasure and savor this precious time to cut and polish their works. Submissions to Issue #8 “GOLD 金” are due on JULY 1 to [email protected]. For more information and prompts to consider, visit sinetheta.net/8 and sinetheta.net/guidelines!

Check out our Pinterest board for this issue to inspie dazzling prose, poetry, photography, visual art, and installations!

Poster designed by Sine Theta Magazine Assistant Designer, Jessica Peng.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

[sinetheta]

Untitled (Working Class) by Joel Yuen. 2013.

Joel Yuen is a Singaporean contemporary artist best known for his experimental short films. As both performer and director, Yuen himself considers Untitled (Working Class) a hybrid of performance and film. In the video, Yuen is shown in multiple public places blowing up a single white balloon to the point of bursting. The camera setup captures both Yuen’s actions and the responses of the people around him - ranging from discomfort, mild shock and bemusement, to active interest.

By performing and recording the unremarkable, Yuen constructs a vantage point to observe the reactions of Singapore’s working class to a state of temporary public disorder. He maintains a contrast between his own fictitious, performative character and the authenticity of public reaction, underscoring the sensitivity of citizens to even the smallest of changes in their environment. Through his performance, Yuen expresses personal hopes for a future in which Singapore develops political awareness and accountability towards every sector of society.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

[sinetheta]

Soul Mate (七月与安生). dir. Derek Tsang (曾国祥). 2016.

Soul Mate is a 2016 Mainland Chinese romantic drama film, based on a web novel by Anni Baobei. The film begins when Ansheng (played by Zhou Dongyu) discovers a popular web novel written by her former best friend, Qiyue (played by Sandra Ma) that chronicles their fifteen-year long friendship. Through a series of flashbacks, the film uncovers the unlikely, yet fateful bond between the two girls, which remains unbreakable despite the radically different paths in life they end up taking, and the secrets they’ve kept that could end their friendship.

Featuring intricate storytelling and narrative surprises, Soul Mate was widely acclaimed for the compelling performances by its two main actresses. Zhou Dongyu and Sandra Ma won a joint Best Actress award, the first of its kind, at the Golden Horse Awards.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

[sinetheta]

From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the boy at the bend in the road where we turned toward   signs painted Peaches. From laden boughs, from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins, comes nectar at the roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty skin and all, comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

“From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee (李立揚). Rose. 1986.

Chinese-Indonesian American poet Li-Young Lee is among the most influential Sino diasporic voices of international literary circles. After political turmoil surrounding his father’s position as the former personal physician of Mao Zedong, Lee’s family fled through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, settling in the United States in 1964. Lee launched his writing career as a graduate student and has been acclaimed for his critical use of sound, silence, and intimacy in penning lyric narratives. Though it is compellingly Introspective and mystical in tone, his poetry retains the simple directness of the stories he explicitly chooses to tell.

Lee’s 1986 debut collection, Rose, in which “From Blossoms” was originally published, won New York University’s prestigious Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. Since then, he has received numerous accolades, including fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

(via sinethetamagazine)

[sinetheta]

Yong, if I tell you the whole truth, if I expressed my undying love for you with all my being, could you handle it? Would you accept me? Or would you laugh or get angry, or turn your back and sink into silence? If I no longer try to conceal anything from you, shed away my pretense, would you find this blasphemous?

Last Words from Montmartre. Qiu Miaojin (邱妙津). Translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich. New York Review Books, 2014. 

Qiu Miaojin (邱妙津) was a lesbian Taiwanese novelist. Following her suicide, Qiu received the 1995 China Times Honorary Prize for Literature for her novel Notes of a Crocodile, which elevated her to household name and cult figure status.She continues to be credited by some with the seeding of the Taiwanese LGBT movement - even honoured by some as a “martyr”, according to activist Chi Ta-wei.

Her posthumously published, semi-autobiographical, epistolary novel, Last Words from Montmartre, has become a cult classic, particularly in the Taiwanese queer community. In the words of Taiwanese novelist Luo Yijun, the book is “a Bible for lesbians." 

(via sinethetamagazine)

[sinetheta]

“读书须用意，一字值千金。“ (“When reading, do not let a single word escape your attention; one word may be worth a thousand pieces of gold.”)

Send us your fine-combed, attentive works—show us how you spin captivating wholes from the most disparate details. Submissions to Issue #8 “GOLD 金” are due on JULY 1 to [email protected]. For more information and prompts to consider, visit sinetheta.net/8 and sinetheta.net/guidelines!

Check out our Pinterest board for this issue—we hope the visual inspiration will help you create resplendent prose, poetry, photography, visual art, and installations! 

Poster designed by Sine Theta Magazine Assistant Designer, Jessica Peng.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

[sinetheta]

Nine Frontier Towns by Xiaoxiao Xu. Ongoing photography series.

Xiaoxiao Xu is a Chinese-Dutch photographer known for her sober and nonintrusive photography style. She attempts to remain as invisible as possible while shooting, situating herself as an insider of the story she aims to depict rather than a mere medium, allowing her to craft rich and complex photography series, including Nine Frontier Towns, a depiction of modern life along the ancient Great Wall of China.

During this project, Xu traversed the Great Wall on a yearlong 25,000km road trip across northern China. Along the way, Xu conversed with locals, learning about their customs, challenges, and evolving experiences living in nine different towns near the wall, including Beijing, Hebei, and Shaanxi. Xu utilized the extensive findings and research of local devotees to the wall’s history to bolster her own cultural understanding of its distinct regional significances. 

Ultimately, the series, available in part as an interactive photographic exhibit on Xu’s website, features images of local scenery, residents, rural traditions, maps, and writings. Xu documented the visual transformation of rapid urbanization’s impact on the Great Wall’s standing as a historical site and life on the Chinese frontier.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

[userboxer]

[hillanguages]

Anxiety level: forgotten duolingo

[sinetheta]

St Arbre - Feu Blanc by Yang Jiechang. Ink and mineral colors on silk mounted on canvas. 2009-2010.

Born in Foshan, China and currently based in Paris, France and Heidelberg, Germany, Yang Jiechang is a Chinese contemporary artist and photographer. Yang grew up around the time of the Cultural Revolution and briefly joined the red guards before attending the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (1978–1982), where he was trained in calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting. Yang’s style meshes Eastern with Western styles to create an aesthetic he calls “Eurasian”: “Eurasia is the land I experience everyday in my life: I am from Canton, China, my wife is from Germany, our children are Eurasian. We feel this land; this disposition and lifestyle bear a lot of possibilities and power.”

St Arbre - Feu Blanc translates into “St. Tree - White Fire” from French. Yang’s “Eurasion” is visible in this piece’s combination of German romanticism and Daoism. The subject, a tree, alludes to 朴 (“Pu” meaning unworked wood), the metaphor representative of the Daoist doctrine 自然 (“Ziran” meaning naturalness). The “blasted tree” is also a romantic symbol of the cycle of life and death. Yang’s purifying white flames draw upon romantic notions of mystical forces of nature and destruction. The piece was featured in Yang’s two-part exhibition “Tale of the 11th day” which presents a paradise based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, a 14th century frame story of novellas. The exhibition’s title is meant to extend the 10th day in the book. Themes of purification and spiritual liberation are conveyed in Yang’s imagined paradise.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

[sinetheta]

The Second Condition by Geng Jianyi (耿建翌). Oil on Canvas. 1986-1989.

Geng Jianyi’s oil painting, The Second Condition is also widely known as The Second State or The Second Situation. The piece was featured in the Beijing National Art Museum of China’s 1989 group show “China/Avant-Garde.” Geng Jianyi originally produced a total of seven face paintings featuring slightly variant facial expressions in the years 1986 and 1987, and smaller versions of one of those original face paintings were produced in 1989. There is a sense of ambivalence carried in Geng’s portrayal of extreme expression, as the maniacal laughter indicates a clear sense of neither anger nor joy. The seemingly disingenuous nature of the faces’ laughter also captures a sense of cynicism that is an early example of Cynical Realism in late 20th-century China.

Geng Jianyi was a multimedia conceptual artist hailing from the Henan province of China. An influential member of China’s avant-garde ‘85 New Wave movement, Geng investigated the nature of the of individualism in a matrix of the collective. Geng has also collaborated with fellow Chinese artist Zhang Peili, with whom he co-founded 池社 (meaning “Pool Society” or “Pond Society”). Themes of perception and identity can be seen across many mediums of his work.

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture.

[sinetheta]

White Vengeance (鴻門宴). dir. Daniel Lee (李仁港). 2011.

White Vengeance, also known as Hong Men Yan is a Chinese historical film directed by Daniel Lee. It stars Leon Lai as Liu Bang, Feng Shaofeng as Xiang Yu, Liu Yifei as Consort Yu, Zhang Hanyu as Zhang Liang, Anthony Wong as Fan Zeng, Jordan Chan as Fan Kuai, Xiu Qing as Xiao He and Andy On as Han Xin. 

Taking place in Xianyang, the plot is loosely based on the Chu-Han Contention (206-202 BC), between the fall of the Qin dynasty and the rise of the Han dynasty. Two major contending powers struggling for supremacy emerged. Western Chu, led by Xiang Yu, and Western Han led by Liu Bang. The film’s Chinese title, Hong Men Yan (鴻門宴) refers to the Feast at Hong Gate, one of the most highlighted events of the Chu-Han Contention. The game of Go (圍棋) plays an important role in the battle of wits and is a critical motif in the film.  

Follow sinθ magazine for more daily posts about Sino arts and culture