Ze Puppies Rocked the Worm!

Chengdu Bookworm April 24, 2009 ©IBM

ZePuppies blew away the crowd yesterday at the Chengdu Bookworm, even the old neighborhood ladies, passersbys, rickshaw drivers and parking attendants were packed in the doorway hoping to catch a glimpse of Chengdu's latest music phenomenon! Playing everything from The Ramones to AC/DC they totally bombarded the Du with their ultimate SWEETNESS! Those who want to see Harley Fagan, Charles Dupont, Romain Rabany and Burton Booz perform again will hopefully catch them next time at the Bookworm's May 12th earthquake commemorative benefit event organized by Sichuan Quake Relief. Huanying guanglin!

 

©Fagan

Walking slowly and eating doufu

Màn màn chī nǐ de dòu fu! 

Chen mapo doufu (Pock-marked Granny Chen's tofu), Chengdu, Sichuan ©IBM

There are many wonderful Chinese expressions that I enjoy hearing and using. A simple, very common one that you hear everyday is 慢慢走 mànmàn zǒu! Literally "go or walk slowly" but the actual meaning is Please stay! What could be nicer? Writer/artist Rabih Alameddine expressed delight in this expression at the Bookworm Literally Festival and his impish comment made me think how right he was, why rush through life when every little second is so interesting that if you don't walk slowly you might miss its many colors, shades and nuances?

There is another similar expression, used at the beginning of a meal, when a Chinese host asks you to start eating: 慢慢吃 màn màn chī = lit. "eat slowly". The thought here is not for you to be a good girl and chew every morsel carefully but to "enjoy your meal", in other words " bon appetit!"

When I'm on the subject of Chinese expressions it makes me think of another one that I learnt the other day. (An aside to fellow "Skåningar": Why do I hear HippHipp in my head -  "Expressions, uuuttryck"??) 

Let me explain:

Next week my family and I and a bunch of friends are going up to the mountains around Songpan in northern Sichuan to ride horses on a three day "horse trek". Over twenty years ago I did this once before, at a time when it was very new and there were few tourists in the area. The bus from Chengdu to Songpan took two days, stopping either in Maoxian or Wenchuan on the way up and the road was horrendous. I met another foreigner on the bus and we decided to do the trek together. We rented horses with a horse handler. (The horse handler is what I'm eventually leading up to.) The other day here in Chengdu a Chinese friend explained to me how you say "goose someone" (actually "tease or flirt with someone") in Chinese slang: Eat their tofu (吃豆腐chī dòu fu). Back to the horseman: every time I wanted to get back up into the saddle he was there as fast as an oiled weasel ready to "help me" by giving me a firm crotch hoist into the saddle, all the while with a wily Tibetan grin on his face. Upon hearing my telling of this memory (after recounting her own trials and tribs on her trip to Songpan) she burst out laughing: Tā zhēnde chī nǐ de dòu fu le! He really ate your tofu!! 他真的吃你的豆腐了!

Ze Puppies Bookworm Friday April 24

Charles Dupont 090419 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Ze Puppies (Burton Booz, Charles Dupont, Romain Rabany and new member bass player Harley Fagan Jr) will be playing this Friday (April 24) at the Bookworm, 8.30 pm. Please: friends, family and friendly strangers, come and listen and give them encouragement. They have a few new rocking songs in their repertoire and if all goes well they will play again on May 12th at the earthquake benefit. Better come early if you want to sit down, see you there!

The Bookworm Literary Festival and literary groupies

Natalie Handal and Tina Chang, editors (together with Ravi Shankar) of "Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond". ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

The Chengdu Bookworm Literary Festival has concluded and I'm in mourning because the fun is over but glad in a way too as my bank account can't afford any more event tickets and book purchases. C.P. and I had such a good time that we are already looking forward to the next one. This year we both got to moderate one of the events and also show some of the authors around Chengdu. We enjoy doing this immensely as it gives us an opportunity to spend time with interesting, creative people who are passionate about books, writing and life. The authors seem to find it pleasant too. You could say that we are "literary groupies". We've discussed this and have decided that next year we are going to open up our own "escort service" and offer our "services" showing the authors a "good time" while they are here in Chengdu.  Strictly in the "literary" sense of course ;-) 

Ian Buruma, author of The China Lover; Inventing Japan; The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West; Bad Elements: Chinese rebels from LA to Beijing and many more. ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Earthquake charity photo sale update

Once more I want to say thank-you to all who bought my photographs at the CIWC Christmas Bazaar - we sold a lot of prints! The money from the proceeds has been given to the two quake relief organizations: Ecologia and Sichuan Quake Relief. We do however still have prints for sale and I made up another batch of the most popular ones. These have been deposited at The Bookworm in Chengdu (# 2-7 Yujie East Street, just by Sunjoy Hotel and Renmin Nanlu) where anyone can now buy them. The money from the Bookworm sales will also go to the charities.

Sichuan Quake Relief

Read an article today (posted Dec 28, 2008) with a sour-sweet slant from The New York Times (link here). It's titled Romance and Recovery in Quake Area, and tells of people who lost their spouses getting together and starting life anew. Even though a little happiness might have crept into some of their lives most of them still need our help to keep them going through the long, cold winter. 

Bookworm Literary Festival 2009

  
Just found out that the Bookworm's 2009 Literary Festival is on track for March. Last year was a ripping success and really livened up the cold winter here in Chengdu. We all felt that a little bit of the "World" came to Chengdu and it was all very exciting. At the same time the authors seemed to think that Chengdu was exotic and interesting too!

Don't know all the details yet but I do know that some of my  favorite authors are coming: cookbook author extraordinaire Fuschia Dunlop (Sichuan Cookery, Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook), Ian Buruma (The China Lover), Blake Morrison (When Did You Last See Your Father?, Things My Mother Never Told Me). The Bookworm is located in three Chinese cities: Beijing, Suzhou and of course Chengdu so if you are in any of these locales at the time you have the opportunity to partake in any number of exciting events. I'm already saving up money to buy Fuschia's latest book Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, a sweet-sour memoir of eating in China. She is not only one of the world's experts on Chinese cooking but also a great artist, look at her fantastic China journal drawings on her website.

Last year I mediated for Qiu Xiaolong, author of the award-winning Inspector Chen series of mystery novels. More about him in a later blog (his sixth book is already out in French, La Danseuse de Mao. It is coming out in English in March with the title The Mao Case, supposed to be his best book yet.)

Presidents, Princes, Divas and Murderers

When I was a teenager my family moved to Florida. The first week in our new hometown a young black man was taken into the swamps by the local Ku Klux Clan, chained to a tree and beaten to death. This was 1976. Today Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America. It made me cry. For the past eight years I have been so ashamed to call myself an American that I have cowardly hidden behind my Swedish passport. Today I feel extremely proud to be an American  and proud of the American people that voted for Obama. We are no longer the people of 1976. Let us hope that Mr Obama will keep us proud both of him and ourselves.

©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

The past few weeks have seen various personages pass through Chengdu. Yesterday Prince Andrew, Duke of York, turned up at The Bookworm. He was either very tired (or slightly tipsy from a working lunch) because he fell asleep in front of our very eyes. Luckily this didn't last for more than a few seconds and he went on to lend his support and suggestions to the ex-pat efforts in the local earthquake relief work. 

We opened our front door the other day to discover Yang Erche Namu on our doorstep. She was inspecting the vacant apartment across from ours, possibly thinking of renting it. (Our Korean missionary neighbors have shifted abode). Namu is well-known in Sweden and other European countries as the author (together with Christine Mathieu) of Leaving Mother Lake (Döttrarnas Rike, Bra Böcker Bokförlag), an account of her childhood on the shores of Lugu Lake on the border of Yunnan and Sichuan Province. She belongs to the Mosuo minority and at a young age left her small village to become a mega singing star in China. Her life was featured in National Geographic Magazine and she has since both written books, been a model and starred in movies. Let's hope she's not too hot to handle if she becomes our neighbor. Are Mosuos in the habit of borrowing sugar?

Temple door, Kongpo, Tibet ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

On the darker side of things an upsetting thing happened the other day on our street. On my way in a taxi to pick up my children I suddenly saw two Tibetans stabbing each other with long knives. The taxi driver jammed on his brakes and for a few horrifying seconds we say them lunge fiercely at each other in a grim dance of death, both wanting to get the best of the other. The driver quickly decided the best thing to do was to flee the scene and we sped off in a hurry, both of us shaken by what we had seen. "Did you see that?" I asked him. "I saw it." he answered. I wish I hadn't.