TADIOTO

From Ha Noi, you leave at 8am and arrive in Beijing at 4pm. In time to check in at the Bamboo Gardens, take a bath and have a pedicure. Have your Gabardine suit pressed, while you head over to Mr. Cho’s Café Sambal across the street for some Satay Chicken or Ikan Belis. Then you hop over to his Bed Bar for a few drinks (cool people like you have your own table there at any time, or you don’t show til 2am). Then you take a nap in one of the rooms in the back, snoring rather freely. You get up, go back to hotel to put on your suit and you head out for THE CONTRACTORS’ one and only show for the season: this rad group will have a *RARE* *LIVE* appearance at the Borderline Moving Images Festival in Beijing June 29, 2007 at 10:30pm- 2 kolegas bar. Don’t miss it, one of the few performances of this group. There will be HOT ACTION!

From the Borderline website:
“Don’t be fooled by the pointy shoes and man bags – these girls can rock! Formed by three building contractors with a passion for music and construction, the trio met bidding on a project and have been partners ever since. Up until now their smoky electric sound has been heard at building sites and smaller venues around town, but now they’re bringing their “rock with urban characteristics” to a larger audience.

http://www.thecontractors.cn

Just when the humidity in Ha Noi makes you hate yourself for being alive, the de Young Museum, in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, gives you more reasons to fly across the ocean: there’s a current show with works by Shi Guorui, out of Beijing. He “uses early photographic technologies to create large-scale pinhole photographs and photograms.”
And then there’s the exhibition of Hiroshi Sugimoto, beginning July 7^th. The de Young Museum website describes him as “one of Japan’s most important contemporary artists,” but some would say he’s among the best in the world. A couple of years back there was at a smaller exhibit at the Asia Society in New York: The images of Buddha and others of objects in his collections aren’t as exciting, but with 100 photos on display, the de Young exhibition should be stunning. His seascapes are calming, but also abstract and haunting - just as his other photographs are often disturbing.  

Sell your house, sell your spouse, rob a bank.  You too can, and should, get up in the morning and get lost inside one of his prints.
http://www.thinker.org/deyoung/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?exhibitionkey=658

I was beginning to miss Hong Kong just before I left, especially as I was reading this peculiar passage from Austrian writer and filmmaker Roland Hangenberg from a book called “Words and Visuals”, published by Sin Sin Fine Art Gallery in Hong Kong: “In German, we have a word that does not exist in English: Fernweh - which is the opposite of homesick. In that sense, you could say distantsick - the painful longing for far away places you have sometimes never been to (fern meaning far and weh meaning pain). A feeling attaches itself to an island, a city, a secret valley in your mind where it does not want to let go and so it creates sad pleasures. A book can trigger it and a photo can capture it…”

Sad pleasures indeed. I have known those feelings: the smell of plumeria triggers it for me, or Kristin Scott Thomas’ facial and vocal expressions in a movie, or Gong Li’s face on the screen. A dream, a poem. But usually, I’m stuck with a more normal sense of nostalgia. I carry with me deep longings of places I have been to, homesick for the past, for places I may never see again. (It’s the difference, perhaps, between those who’ve left a place voluntarily, and those who were forced to leave a home, a place of birth.) Over the years, that particular longing has lessened for me with frequent trips to Viet Nam, and then with a move back to live in Ha Noi. These days, I long for cities I have lived in, or visited, I long for a moment in the past. A rare sunlit London afternoon, between Covent Garden and Soho, when I was in my 20s. An evening at a fish restaurant, one summer in New York, with Wayne Wang, who was contemplating a movie about Viet Nam. A Christmas snowfall in Paris, and of course, the morning fog of Essaouira, Morocco, and the ravens at Meiji Park in Tokyo. 

Hong Kong was like that. I liked being there tremendously, and found such great joy in re-discovering it after fifteen years. At the same time, I walked around the Central and Western areas, missing Shanghai and New York, and London and Tokyo, and a little of San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Back in Ha Noi, the 100-degree heat has confined me to my study, under the air conditioner, or the shower. Le Hong Thai, one of Ha Noi’s more quiet painters, persuaded me to go out: we had dinner on the balcony at Lady Bird’s restaurant on Hang Buom, or Sail, Street. A mannequin across the street was tempting us, but we said no, and ended up at Bao Khanh, looking for Indian movies. We ran into the owner of Chim Sao, a popular restaurant in town, and together, ended up at café by the main church. The cops came soon enough, so we gave up the table on the sidewalk, and moved two feet back. The coffee shop owner moved our motorcycles, the 12 cops walked up and down yelling into their megaphones. Such a lot of people involved, for two feet of sidewalk space. 

I went home that night and read an article in the New York Times and found out the lack of tuna fish was driving sushi chefs to extremes. The next night, I repaired to Ha Noi’s Tokyo Sushi. It was a quiet affair, no cops came, and I had tuna. The New York Times article didn’t mention a shortage of sake, but I drank some, just in case.

President Nguyen Minh Triet of Viet Nam at Asia Society in New York last week:  

“When you come to Viet Nam, you will see Vietnamese people who are very hospitable, friendly, and especially the Vietnamese women… these are very charming when they wear the long dress, ao dai, and they are very gentle and very hospitable.”   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se5toEsmmuc&feature=dir   

Can somebody please tell the speechwriters…?
The sexism is troublesome enough, but it’s not even true: few women wear the dress except saleswomen in boutiques serving tourists. But that’s a minor issue.
I wish he’d talk about all the businesswomen, the women doing research, teaching, practicing law, raising families, traveling, writing, running companies and stores, the women cops, the farmers who toil under the hot sun, etc. Something not clichéd.
There are few women in the leadership, and there are many suffering from sexism in their relationships and marriages… But there are plenty of tough, tough, tough, Vietnamese women (who can also be gentle)… And come visit, I will take you meet the Vietnamese women in my neighborhood. You wouldn’t think of them as charming. Maybe the speechwriters and the President haven’t been to Ha Noi’s Women’s Museum lately, to remind themselves of those who were revolutionary fighters, spies, and war volunteers. 

Some Vietnamese Americans have protested the President’s visit, mostly regarding human rights. Wish they would question this kind of statement… it barely conceals the disrespect, and an attitude that will keep human rights for women, or women’s rights, in the dark.

Culinary choices in Hong Kong.  Menus thick as phone books.  My suggestions - go ahead, click on it, totally safe:

combo_5.exe

Tries to save money by sending me here:

I’d like an explanation for this:

Confession: I like throwing up a blog post, a way to stay in touch with you, and a distraction for myself from other must-do tasks. But I’m already mourning the fact that one day, there will no longer be journals, notebooks (which, of course, is now another word for a “laptop computer”), or sketch books. Nothing that holds our secrets. (Nothing for others to discover after we’re gone.)
I still have notebooks, and I have friends who still do. I was in a restaurant the other day here in Hong Kong, writing in my notebook, and a tall woman came in, sat down at a table nearby, and pulled out hers. I observed her for a quick moment, early fifties perhaps, a face not too attractive, but with charm, like an actor playing a minor role in a TV drama series whose name you can’t quite remember. She wore a simple white T-shirt, black trousers and white canvas sneakers. A shawl to ward off the cold air from the air conditioner. She ordered a salad, ate absent-mindedly, and was otherwise absorbed in her writing. 
I liked that: being private, even in public. A journal is like that. Private, small things, for the self. Reminders, notes, observations, images and imagining. 

Sketchbook pages from Audrey Kawasaki’s website  

Some guy said to a colleague once, My mission in life is to save the world, one woman at a time.

 Oh, nothing.  Just thought I’d repeat it to you. 

So Seoul is number 3 on the list. Ahead of Tokyo, at number 4!?
How can that be?! I’m still paying for the cup of coffee I had there two years ago.

Hong Kong claims the 5^th spot. Osaka is number 8, Singapore 14, Beijing’s way down at 20.
Shanghai’s even lower, at 26. Taipei is ranked 48. 
Paris is unlucky number 13, New York’s 15.
And London, which should be number 1, is number 2. I’m still paying for the air I breathed there last summer.
Moscow outdid them all by being at the very top. Number 1.
All this is from the latest Cost of Living Survey from Mercer Human Resource Consulting, issued 18^th of June, 2007. It includes the 50 cities that take the most out of you’s wallet.
Bringing up the rear is Algiers.  
San Francisco and Ha Noi, you don’t count.
Oh, all right. We’ll mention Los Angeles. Number 42, unless you live in Angelina’s house.