Friday Mambo Fest with Gé Lán/Grace Chang

Get yer ya ya's out with some Mandarin Mambo from 1950s China featuring Gé Lán otherwise known as Grace Chang or 葛蘭.

The Shanghai Show

I've been trying to learn mandarin for about 18 months now and I guess you could say I'm making some progress. I'm still lost when listening to Chinese radio stations on the web, but can catch words here and there as well as the phone numbers and addresses during commercials. My learning methods have been two fold - a weekly session with a tutor here in Madison and a subscription to the Shanghai based online school, Chinesepod.com which is based around a series of podcast lessons backed up by serious resources such as interactive grammar guides, dictionaries and a community of fellow learners with whom to share advice. One of the best parts about Chinesepod is the personalities of the podcasters. After a few months of listening, they became like old friends and gave real personality to the lessons as opposed to the dry repetition that I remember from the dreaded french lab tapes I had to listen to in college.

Until recently my week of Chinese studies always took a quasi-break on the weekend with what Chinesepod called The Saturday Show. This was a 1/2 hour podcast (and occasionally video) show that was the baby of Aric Queen, one of the first Chinesepod employees and from what I can gather he was the man who handled podcast production, intros/outros, promos etc... His co-host for the show was Shanghai native & the voice of chinesepod lessons, Jenny Zhu. the Saturday Show was basically about life in Shanghai in the present tense. Driven by a mix of expat and native experience and touching on everything from the underground music scene in China to food, dating, cultural faux pas etc... It was breezy, it was fun and it made myself and others excited about what was happening in Shanghai and at the Chinesepod studios.

A few months ago Chinesepod released a new version of their website which for whatever reason took the Saturday Show off of the main feed (to Itunes and the rest) and even hard to find on the website. A massive surprise to the 1,000s of listeners as it was a real bummer to see that Chinesepod was apparently trying to squelch their most popular podcast. After about a month, Aric decided to gracefully say his goodbyes to Chinesepod and to the Saturday Show. At the time he said to keep an eye out for him in the future and that he'd be putting out a new independent show at some point. It appears that the wait has ended. Below is the first episode of The Shanghai Show. Whoo hoo! Check it out (in 2 parts.)

The Shanghai Show

UPDATE *** Frank Fradella's latest podcast has an interview with Aric. Here's the link

goodbye fangzi hello Dèng Lìjūn

Watch this...

Then calm down with this video

Is it wrong to love this song?

big up to sinosplice for the house vid

It's A CP Food Wrap Up

It’s been a while since I’ve had a food news wrap up –

1) Whole Foods reported earnings yesterday (beat the street, had higher store comps, but lower net margins due to new store openings.) Interesting that they finally admitted that Trader Joe’s is their toughest competitor. You can see that in full effect here in Madison. After Trader Joe’s opened last fall I started seeing more and more price drops on basics at WFs (and items that are well placed at Trader Joe’s.) Heck our shopping habits have totally changed and now we only hit Whole Foods when we need key items that either Trader Joe’s doesn’t carry or do well. Produce & fresh meat come to mind immediately. Of course it doesn't hurt that TJ's is 3 blocks from our house.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has an excellent article on the subject

2) In the Eat More Wisconsin Ginger file, the state of California has issued a warning to not eat Chinese Ginger. Big surprise there, huh? Maybe this will give a good shot in the arm to the Wisconsin ginger industry which has been devasted by knockoff Chinese ginger that is advertised by distributors and Asian grocery stores as Wisconsin ginger.

The Link

3) Good news for drunks who don’t want to waste time by drinking low alcohol beer. The Treasury Dept is considering a ruling that beer have the alcoholic content listed on the bottles. Now you can drink that imperial stout with the knowledge of it being 7%. Now if we could just have country of origin listed on our meat we'd get somewhere.

The Link

4) In fake flavor news, Burger King is introducing chips in Ketchup & Fries and Flame-Broiled burger flavors. Ok if you really want ketchup & fries AND you’re at burger king, perhaps you might just want to order the fries. No that couldn’t make sense.

Yum yum link

5) Last but not least, "China's space food set to land in supermarkets." This article is so good that I just had to post the whole thing. This kind of wacky stuff is why I love traveling to China.

"Ordinary Chinese may soon be able to have a taste of the astronaut life when food designed for China's taikonauts lands in supermarkers.

The Scientific Research and Training Center for Chinese Astronauts and a Shanghai food company had developed chocolate and desserts for taikonauts and the products would be on the shelves by the end of the year, said Chen Bin, head of the center's food and nutrition branch.

"The two items will also been added to the space menu for the next manned space flight Shenzhou VII, the third in China's manned space program in 2008," said Chen, who calls himself "the space chef".

Chen's center has developed more than 60 space dishes, including staple foods, meat and vegetable dishes, fruit and desserts and it began cooperation with food companies on mass production in 2006.

"Following our technology and quality standards, the companies produce food at their workshops with their equipment. The production was supervised by our nutritionists," said Chen.

Chen was confident of the market prospects of the space food, which boast high standards on quality and nutrition, and are convenient to carry.

The food eaten daily by China's first three astronauts during missions in 2003 and 2005 weighed around 1.75 kilograms with packaging, less than two thirds of an average adult's daily food consumption, but enough to provide 2,400 calories of energy required by an astronaut.

"They are especially suitable for outdoor activities, such as polar region expeditions, mountain climbing and traveling," said Chen.

He said the center had adopted a series of "strict" criteria in ingredient selection and processing to ensure food safety, which would be another attraction for consumers after a spate of recent food scandals."

The Link

photo of Chinese ginger taken by CP in Shanghai, 2006

Always Dancing, Never Getting Tired

While I still get excited about new bands and the magnetic pull that a solid single* can have, I find much more fulfillment from the steady output of musicians in for the long haul. This morning the focus is on Mike Scott and his band The Waterboys. Over the course of 20+ years I really cannot think of another contemporary band that has produced such a satisfying back catalog. The clunkers are a song here or a song there, but never an entire album which is a quite impressive accomplishment when looked in the context of the music industry in the 80s & early 90s (hell Lou Reed can't even say that.) Mike never jumped on a bandwagon or tweaked his sound to match the radio friendly needs of the moment. This is not what corporate rock sounds like, but nor is it an atonally challenging. Mike Scott embraces the strength of the powerchord and the rumble of a marshall stack as much as the quiet, whispered breath of a single voice and an acoustic guitar. In his lyrics we're constantly reminded of his Scottish gaelic roots and the power of place as well as the power of love, compassion, the willingness to change and the desire to learn.

The Waterboys are currently on tour supporting the new album, Book Of Lightning and have just performed at the always excellent Cambridge Folk Festival. BBC has a wonderful video from the festival of The Waterboys performing the Raggle Taggle Gypsy. Check it out here.
The BBC also has some audio tracks from the same concert here.

The Waterboys performing You In The Sky off the new album in Tilburg, Holland. March 2007

What an endearing version of Whole Of The Moon. Performed for a group of Irish schoolchildren in 1987

The Waterboys

*recent singles that shake my bones include Arctic Monkeys, "When the sun goes down", Voxtrot "Ghost", The National "Fake Empire" and countless dancehall & one drop reggae tracks.

John Edwards - Hair

The Edwards campaign does a great job of reminding the media that there are actually more important stories to cover than haircuts.