My comments on other blogs, blogged.

(ie, the poor man's trackback)

http://no-sword.jp/blog/2005/03/how-to-cook-for-forty-revolutionaries.html

Here's another image with the same handwriting:

http://msittig.freeshell.org/imgs/sohu/weirenminbi.gif

...only it's an MMS image I downloaded from sohu.com a while ago that says 为人民*币*服务:

为 = "for"
人民币 = "the people's currency"
服务 = "serve"

A cynical take on the new Chinese socialism.

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/40709

I picked up some He-Man comics last summer from a street-vendor in Dali, Yunnan, China.

希曼,宇宙的巨人: Cover 1, Cover 2, and a blurry sample page.

http://china.qoolio.org/index.php?/archives/90-Live-at-Last.html

Oh my, http://www.chaile.org/ is a great site! (ahh, I should have known; I see it's by Adam of therobots.org fame)

We down here in Shanghai ( http://my.calendars.net/micah ) area are always jealous of the music that is going on in Beijing. Shanghai apparently has a bigger DJ/dance culture, but it's mostly for the expats and nouveau riche, ugh. My friends always get excited when a Beijing band comes on tour (and disappointed when they bypass us to play in another city with better support for rock/punk/metal *sad*).

Make sure to check out a show or two at the Nameless Highland ( http://www.music1234567.com/xc/ ). It's a pretty legendary venue; I check up on rock sites for cities around China, and they often post events listings for Namelesss Highland, even though it's hundreds of miles away in Beijing. And if I were you I would hit up at least one metal show; even if it's not your thing, in my opinion it's the music that the Chinese do best, so it's worth getting a taste of.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/cdrk/5188.html?view=17476

This is Micah in Shanghai. Haha, how come I only discover this on the evening of the 26th, the night you are set to play here? And how come I have you down for next Wednesday the 30th on my calendar[1]?

[1] http://my.calendars.net/micah

http://www.smartshanghai.com/en/community/forumthread.php?board_id=1547

Guidebook author and China travel specialist Peter Neville-Hadley wrote an interesting rant on The Economist's coverage of Shanghai, and also on Xintiandi, recently on his Oriental-List mailing list. I made a copy of it available here:

http://wiki.wubi.org/PeterNHsXintiandiRant

Note that his perspective is that of a travel writer, so he's particularly interested in the preservation of artifacts and culture. From my perspective, Xintiandi has one of Shanghai's greatest live music venues for rock music (the Ark). Other than for that, I have no reason to go there.

http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=ani_sittig&uid=229425308

You might (or might not, when you think about it) be surprised to find that, when you distill it down to basic principles, life "in the boonies" still means confronting some of the same personal spiritual challenges that you probably struggle with in the developed world. Or maybe not. But that's my experience, although I'm not exactly in the boonies.

Remember when you were considering going to a Bible school somewhere? Capenwray (sp?)? That's not such a bad idea, and would probably push you further in the direction you seem to want than simply challenging yourself on a physical level... or maybe, like me, you might want to just work your heart out for a year at a couple of jobs and save up some money for an exploratory period. I'm still using my Borders/BOHS-sub money as a cushion to float me while I figure out how/where/when to settle down.

http://www.matrixmasters.com/blog/josh/2005/03/this-blog-is-not-dead.html

Hey, this is Micah. I was studying at Michigan last year and somehow stumbled across your weblog at that time (maybe a link from the The Goodspeed Update?). Funny how we both ended up in Shanghai.

Where are you studying at specifically?