In No Particular Defiance

This poem is from

A series of poems from and about the Chinese restaurant beside my apartment, By Iain Marlow

In No Particular Defiance

This end of an urban tempest,
A respite, amid blighted towers
Where illegalities and culture thrive,
A young woman de-skins peas.

In the restaurant of her family,
The whole world: Encompassed,
In noodles, vegetables, pork, and beer.

The mother, cropped, short hair and
Smiling – beckons, half-frantically,
Table # 4 is low on rice,
And with thinning patience, to boot.

Father the cook, and son the –
Apprentice – swish eggs and
Fish and peanuts, and dart out
Into the alley outside, for

Ingredients: new amidst old, over and
Over, and still – she de-skins peas.
As homework sits, perhaps, un-started –
But who knows, but she’s not fast

Enough for her father, though the
Restaurant is nearly empty,
And gusts of humanity blow,
Past the door; some enter and

Some live onwards – in no particular defiance.

Now she sits, elbows on table
Staring: Blankly – into
An uncertain future, but more likely
Thinking of a boy, cute, with

Cropped hair – like her mother.

We're on a train bound for somewhere

It is useful, sometimes, to drink oneself beneath shallow ideals and political correctness and into depths where we lay opinions naked, ugly and shivering, as they most often should be; where we must speak unashamed and honestly, remembering to laugh and lament in equal measure, with no masturbatory, climactic conclusion. (No conversation must reach a conclusion; this is a puerile fallacy.)

Is this footage (of Tibetans being murdered) real?

Please judge this for yourself.

A friend of mine sent me the link. It was originally, as far as we can tell, posted to Lian Yue's Eighth Continent, the blog of a freelancer and contributer to Guangzhou's Southern Metropolis Daily.

It could quite clearly be a hoax and an attempt to embarrass Chinese authorities. I am unaware if this has been made available to human rights lawyers or relevant NGOs or the UN, though I assume it has not.

That is one reason I am skeptical: Why would some relatively unknown news organization try to scoop the world with this, instead of handing it over to the proper authorities?

They must realize that by itself, on that website, it carries little credibility. Especially since the figures in the video - of the Chinese soldiers, and the supposedely shot Tibetans - could be actors.

Who knows? I'm doing my part by posting it. And again, please judge for yourself.

Xinjiang Beckons

As we passed under the Drum Tower a small troop of cavalry came jingling towards us through the press of people. They were armed with carbines and executioners' swords, and their huge black fur hats gave them a demoniacal look. In their midst, hunched in his saddle, rode a prisoner, a burly European with a fair beard. As they passed us he raised his eyes; they were far from philosophical. 'Caput!' he said with a grimace, and went clattering out of our ken.

I wondered how soon we should have to echo him.

Peter Fleming, News From Tartary, 1936

Why TV news is dangerous: CBC on North Korea

Or, CBC reports on the North Korean nuclear test. This batch of reports was dangerously misleading.

First, the experts. A British-sounding intellectual in a library who could barely get his point across; merely working at an organization with "institute for" or "center of" or "strategic studies" in its name does not qualify one for a discussion of highly specific regional security issues.

And the Green Peace guy? He was worried some countries might consider military options. What? Pardon? Invade North Korea, eh? Thanks for your insight Mr. Peace, but the United States - last time I checked - invaded Iraq instead of North Korea because they already decided 10,000 burning embers with spines lighting up the Demilitarized Zone is bad for reelection. Oh, and for the people of Seoul - who would most certainly be (instantly) liquified or vaporized or gassed or melted.

No one is talking of a military response. No one sane, or in other words, no one who should be listened to or quoted in the national news.

Mr. Peace has pleaded for diplomatic negotiations. We should all thank him. For he had advocated the policy of the entire world, for time immemorial. We should also thank the CBC (icily, and with language dripping disdain) who gave him airtime.

We should also thank the CBC for including the Korean community in their report; this was almost as awkward as their constant attempts to appeal to younger viewers with good looking boys. They interviewed people for whom English is obviously a second language, and instead of providing voiceovers for obviously concerned individuals, they quoted them in English. South Koreans, when they want to hear South Koreans be intelligent, go to South Korean news websites in Korean. If they care about what South Korean-Canadians have to say, they would probably want to hear it in Korean. No one, especially South Koreans, want to hear or see Koreans struggling with a second language.

Also, and possibly finally: Everyone knows North Korea has nuclear weapons. This was a test of something - something we most certainly knew they already had. Let us get past the shock value of its "hard newsness" and get to the proper debate - a debate the mainstream media should already have been engaged in: What do we do? And please, can we not hear from Green Peace on this one?

Perhaps the CBC should join - or give voice to, perhaps - the individuals who have been having an informed discussion on North Korea for the past couple of decades. Robert D. Kaplan wrote a good cover story for October's The Atlantic Monthly on North Korea. Go to the SOAS at the University of London (CBC does have a London bureau). Interview Jasper Becker, a longtime China correspondent and author of a book on North Korea.

Instead, Canadians get inarticulate non-experts, un-voice'd over South Korean immigrants, and bad journalism from uninformed journalists, such as an inane monologue from Adrienne Arsenault, and an intensely bored Patrick Brown of CBC's Beijing bureau, who, of all the things he could say or be scripted to be asked to say, ends up telling us that North Korea is, quote, "isolated."

Thanks, CBC. I'm not joking with this next statement. I saw a better report on this from the A-channel.

A sunset!

She was more alive than anything around her, and her aliveness distorted the oil derricks behind her and the Sevo octopus and the dingy esplanade and the Turkish bumper cars, and that made it all real and lovely and true.

Gary Shteyngart, Absurdistan


I got drunk in good company last night. We listened to folk music from Okinawa and then went down to the beach. The day before, I went fishing with my father and walked the dog with my mother. This picture is at a mosque in Delhi.

Adventure and I

"All things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the world - those who stay at home and those who do not. The second are the more interesting."

Rudyard Kipling

I want and miss adventure with heart-bursting sincerity. Again, I want to laugh in another language

How to make a documentary about China: 10 steps

1. Reject all semblance of nuance.

2. Have ominous drum music rumbling in the background when talking about population.

3. Have ominous drum music rumbling in the background when talking about population control.

4. Find someone young, an only child, perhaps, who is training for the Olympics. Profile them as personified national ambition. Film the parents loving their child.

5. Find someone old, preferably an artisan, and talk about how terrible the cultural revolution was for them.

6. Film in a location in the middle of the mountains, and then film Shanghai, and use a voice-over going "...but not on this side of the country..."

7. Film affluent people, and then pan to another section of the city, "...where Xiao Wang is not as fortunate. He eats vegetables and rice, unable to afford the al fresco dining of his co-citizens..."

8. Film a monk for a bit, and talk about martial arts and tradition. And how he's worried that the next generation doesn't care.

9. Take all this, slather on generous helpings of "lack of context," and serve with the last item on this list:

10. The ridiculous and widely held assumption that people in China and China itself have nothing in common with the rest of the world.