Travels with Ben and Charlie: Listen to a passionate Chinese blogger who writes love poetry to his distant lover.
– –love_like_tea_like_music– –
Ben Walker’s my producer. He’s been looking for a format with which to project my voice. He sets me up and lets me go. He likes the mix on mix and loves the bridge of cultures. Global Voices. Thank you Rebecca and Ethan. Our time in Beijing has been one of breaking ground before us in methods of connecting as we draw diagrams on white boards in Liang’s black pen. Bokee. 300 employees up from one last year filtering chinese blogs to a daily top ten, a sharing service to organize translation. yes there is a model here.
The process i went through was simple cut and paste with the feeling of playing with time as you tell a story. There is tempo in the music of the sounds, surprise in new way to sing.
Ben and I went to a club last night to see a film. Posters for the event read African Boots of Beijing underlined with chinese logograms. Met Jeremy Goldkorn from South Africa and Luke Mines who had made this film about Afrika United, a football team of Africans in Beijing, a charming film shot for US$100 cash outlay. The star to my mind is the coach from Etheopia with picture of Haille Selassie big in white against the black of his well filled T-shirt. His father worked for Haille Selassie. The film shows a photograph of him as a boy of maybe four peeking out from his father’s knee as his father and Haille Selassie speak. With slightly more fluid technology at hand i would show you a bit of it, at least the photo, but alas. The club is pretty cool, an ex-pat place that could have been in Brooklyn for all you could tell being inside. The showing of the film was to raise money for the club, which brings together in an inviting way all of Africa in a manner that invites their friendship for Beijing. The stories are of young men who came to Beijing and found connection. The story itself is one which could engage the imagination of Africans and Chinese people all over the world. Twenty airplane tickets and hospitality on the other side would take them on a tour to spread this word of Chinese friendship. Credibility, second only in importance to identity, of which it is a part. The music is African-Jamaican-Chinese, love like tea.
I never got to use the Willie Nelson -Countryman Album with the marijuana leaf prominent on its cover. Here’s the mix i made on it, smokin palm.
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At lunch today I had an opportunity to talk about Intellectual Property to a distinguished group including Guo Liang, Chinese host for Bill Dutton’s Oxford program which brings me here. Guoliang is a philospher who discovered internet early on and has led in China’s understanding of it. So drawn to internet he does not own a television set. And He Dequan, a smiling man who represents Confucius. He welcomed us in the morning when our meeting began and sat next to me at lunch. I spoke of the growing conflict between China and America on the issue of copyright protection and of exploring together a technological strategy for easing it. I offered the Library of All Born Digital as a promising path. The building we were in was magnificent, bottom to top, starting with an Emperor’s Chair in the entrance grand and gold flanked by a gleaming red Porche roadster. Judging by the paper quality of the materials passed out along with cards I was at the State Council Information Office, People’s Republic of China at the China International Culture Exchange Center at a Workshop for Information Society & IT Governance. The food was great. I’m getting better with the slippery sticks. :