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  1. Five years of dramas

    Bean Pole Boys Before Flowers ad
    (Seoul Metro) There’s only one good reason to watch this drama, and it’s their preppy outfits. Well, okay, there are two, and the second one is not in the ad.

    My grandmother took care of me for most of my childhood. She wasn’t aware of any Mozart Effect and let me watch hours and hours of daytime television with her, which back in the early 90s was mostly trashy soap operas on the state-operated Chinese-language channel. (Oddly, my Mandarin never improved very much) Due to the heavy regulations and high economies of scale in the industry, the state channels never faced any competition (outside of TVB imports), and as such they made some truly horrific pablum (they still do). In retrospect, this may have been why trashy soap operas are permanently seared into my psyche now.

    Continued…

    Posted in Bildungsroman, TV Dramas.

    3 comments

    By qui tacet – March 31, 2009

  2. Pyongyang Diaries: The Tourists

    Dandong station ads
    (Dandong station) The path to the Dandong train tracks was full of advertising (e.g. GOG sneakers). However, the equivalent in Pyongyang station had none.

    I heard them chattering away even while getting through security screening at the Dandong station entrance. Thirty to forty (2 busloads worth) of middle-aged mainland Chinese people old enough to be my parents were clustered on hard plastic seats around the tour operator’s flag. I was the only ‘foreigner’, but thankfully I don’t look too different. Just younger. Hopefully if I kept my mouth shut, my crummy Mandarin and accent wouldn’t betray me.

    Continued…

    Posted in Business, Korea - Pyongyang Diaries, Politics.

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    By qui tacet – March 26, 2009

  3. Development with eyes open

    Beijing street peddler
    (Beijing) She was there early every morning outside the subway stop.

    Since I was staying with a friend who goes to the Foreign Affairs University, I had quite a walk every morning to take the subway to the Wokai office, and on the way there was a BOC branch office, and right outside was a covered area where homeless people congregated to play chess and chat. The one I noticed the most was this old man, who was always there reading a newspaper. He had a dog (everyone in Beijing has dogs, even homeless people!) and when I was walking back late at night from the subway, I would see them cuddled there asleep.

    Continued…

    Posted in China Trip, Development.

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    By qui tacet – March 3, 2009