Podcast No. 13 (20090605): 25-minutes on The Hong & The Wong’s trip to Dalian, Liaoning Province; and another 7-minutes of angst-y incoherence from The Wong regarding Miss Chang, The Adorable.
P.S. the square referenced in our podcast is actually Xinghai Square, not what we said. Also, The Hong is not the father.
Podcast No. 12 (20090523): In this episode of The Hong & Wong Show, The Wong gets all angst-y (and incoherent) over his super cute Chinese teacher, “Miss Chang,” and The Hong attempts to rally him with some of his patented “The Hong” romantic advice. According to The Hong, this might be the best podcast in the history of TH&WS.
If you have different thoughts/advice after listening to The Hong (and I pray to God that you do), push it across in a comment. Please.
And we’re back.
Sorry for the delay in posting podcasts. My class started a new, more difficult textbook, so I’ve been hitting the books pretty hard in order to keep up. Although The Hong and I have been recording podcasts, I’ve been banking them because I didn’t have an opportunity to edit and post them until now. I know you’ve been itching for them like a heroin addict jonesin’ for some methadone, so here you go…
Podcast No. 10 (20090504) : from Seoul, South Korea. Special Guest: commentator HWH. Content: slander directed at all things Korean.
Podcast No. 10a (20090504a): an abbreviated Seoul podcast, with entirely different content. Perhaps the best episode of The Hong & Wong Show ever.
Podcast No. 11 (20090515): recap of Road Trip VIII: Seoul; and The Hong gives his thoughts on The Wong’s cute teacher and crazy classmates (Annoying Japanese Guy; “Hot” Russian Chick; the Korean Hobbits, etc.).
I think it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: The Chinese love Yao Ming. A lot.
The other day, I was watching some playoff basketball on the national sports channel (CCTV5) and they were showing a package of top ten plays by various NBA superstars from this past season.
According to the Chinese, LeBron James’s SECOND best play of the season involved him blocking a Yao Ming layup. What?? C’mon… Really? (No. 1 was LJ hitting a last-second game-winner over…the Golden State Warriors???)
For Kobe Bryant, his best play of the season (again, according to the Chinese) was not a dunk, a twisting layup, or a miracle game-winner. Nope, it was a defensive play: that’s right, it involved Kobe flying out of nowhere and swatting from behind an attempted layup by—you guessed it!—Yao Ming.
Man, I can’t wait to see the Yao Ming package. It’ll probably consist of ten clips of him blocking Kobe, LeBron, and assorted other NBA superstars in the first quarter of various non-critical games from October. The number one play will probably involve Yao blocking himself.
Go, Lakers.
Sorry for the delay in posting the latest episode of The Hong & Wong Show. I’m sure all of you were waiting with baited breath. (What you were doing with bait on your breath is your own business. Sicko. Actually, I think it’s “bated”…) I had swine flu on the brain and two days of examinations this week, so couldn’t post the pod in the midst of my fevered, intensive preparations (which paid off handsomely as I academically crushed my Japanese arch-nemesis and language-geek classmate, the one who is already fluent in Chinese—it was like Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury, but without the martial arts).
The Hong and I recorded this podcast on Saturday, April 25, 2009. Despite running 10 minutes long, we didn’t quite get to everything I wanted to get to. Namely, Jackie Chan’s comments about the Chinese people needing to be “controlled” (or needing “regulation,” depending upon which translation you believe).
If you read Chan’s translated comments in context, a slightly different picture emerges, along with two conclusions. First, Jackie Chan may have been an amazing action star at one period of his life, but he’s also a babbling idiot. Second, he may be right…at least with regard to the limited context to which he was speaking.
So.
Actually, rather than Chinese people, what really needs to be controlled is Jackie Chan’s penchant for endorsing anything and everything. This is extremely evident here in China. People have said this before, but if you pay Jackie Chan enough money, he’ll endorse virtually anything: Chrysler cars; hair restoration and/or removal products; abortion pills; whatever. Here’s something that Jackie should try endorsing: marital fidelity and not having kids out of wedlock. I’m just saying…
Maybe just stick with beating people up with ladders and bicycles.
Another thing that I wanted to touch on is the low level of basketball one can observe here at my school and others. Basically, it’s like a horrible AND 1 Mixtape, where players don’t break other people’s ankles, but appear to be trying to break their own. Everybody’s an Iverson, constantly running isolation plays in which they attempt to dribble the ball through their legs in a stationary spot for a good 30 seconds, after which they drive to the basket and take a shot that shouldn’t even be attempted in HORSE. Quintuple clutches, contortions, hitches, spasms, seizures, it’s all there. Fortunately—or maybe unfortunately—all this offensive-minded play is abetted by the utter lack of defense.
I guess the basketball court is the only place where folks can express their individuality and/or distinguish themselves? Uh, have the authorities talked to the NBA about their product’s influence on the Chinese? It’s laying the groundwork for something bad. At least according to Jackie Chan…
By the way, since I’m at an engineering/technical school, the level of basketball is further diminished. MIT isn’t known for its basketball program, and it’s the same here. Bill Gates isn’t regarded for his hops, and I don’t see Steve Wozniak dunking.
Anyway, in this 40-minute podcast, The Hong and I introduce a very special opening theme at the request of one of our listeners, and cover the following topics:
Frankly, only the first two topics, i.e. the first 20 minutes of the podcast, are worth listening to…maybe.
Here ya go…
Here’s a good blog written by a fellow who studied Chinese at HIT with the CET program: Year in Harbin. It’s pretty insightful, thoughtful, and well-written-ful—everything my blog ain’t. Check it out if you want to get some sense of what HIT/Harbin/Northeast China was like for an American foreign student circa 2006-07.
Note/Warning/Disclaimer: The Hong thought this was the best episode so far. As usual, I totally disagree. You can decide for yourself…
In this episode, what was supposed to be a wrap-up of our Hangzhou trip segued into a discussion about The Wong’s Chinese class and the age of consent in China (14—it’s 13 in South Korea).
Then, The Hong and The Wong get all Oprah with each other and talk about their reasons for being in China. In other words, Crazy Talk.
Somehow, we end with some chit-chat about Chinese geriatrics, the potential market for nursing homes, and the prospects for a massive oral history of the Chinese and the Chinese diaspora in the 20th century.
Oh, and the words “penis” and “testicle” get mentioned, too. Naturally.
Tech Notes: still tweaking the setup. Sorry.
This week, we’re temporarily re-titling the podcast from The Hong & Wong Show: Hello, Harbin! to The Hong & Wong Show: Yo, Hangzhou!
That’s right: we took the podcast on the road, to what many Chinese consider “The Most Beautiful City in China” (a.k.a. Sauce City, P.R.C., or The Town That Beggar’s Chicken Built…).
Believe it.
200 klicks south of Shanghai, Hangzhou is leafy, green, and prosperous. It possesses a certain refinement ultimately lacking in many other major Chinese cities, including Harbin (in my opinion). Indeed, it makes Harbin look like a cross between post-apocalyptic Caprica and pre-apocalyptic Detroit.
You won’t find tourists tossing live chickens to Siberian tigers here. Nope, you get folks feeding popcorn to pods of chubby goldfish, swimming lazily around sculpted imperial ponds. Instead of ice festivals, semi-dilapidated former Russian Orthodox churches, and a Japanese germ warfare base that may or may not still have live munitions buried on its grounds, Hangzhou offers you The West Lake, lush longjing tea fields, and a twinkling neon/xenon-infused nighttime skyline that could have been carved by Swarovski.
The podcast…
…was recorded on Sunday, April 12, 2009, on top of Longjing Mountain, in the heart of Hangzhou tea country (yet not one boba tea stand in sight…). Our special guests for this podcast were Lady J and A.C., our traveling companions and friends of The Hong.
Topics this week include:
Enjoy.
Back from the Hangzhou trip with The Hong, Lady J, and A.C. It was a whirlwind trip filled with emotion and weirdness, but we still managed to record a podcast from atop Longjing Mountain, deep in the heart of tea-growing country. Look for that in the next couple of days.
Also, the Tough Traveler Tri-Fold was used, so it did come in handy for a weekend trip. I’m glad I brought it.
“Back to this craphole.” – The Hong upon returning to Harbin from Hangzhou, a.k.a. “The Most Beautiful City in China.”
Here’s Podcast No. 6 of The Hong & Wong Show…
In this 18-minute episode, we (1) discuss the Qingming Festival, a.k.a. Tomb-Sweeping Day, a national holiday here in China; and (2) attempt to hold a 2-minute conversation completely in Mandarin.
Note that this podcast has been edited. I chopped out a 12-minute-long discussion we had about the podcast, itself. It was all very meta and very boring, but still helpful (to us) for re-tooling things for future episodes.
We also recorded a supplemental/bonus 30 minutes of material (the “B-side” as The Hong termed it) that was far more entertaining and raucous than the episode linked above. But it also almost certainly violates the United Nations Convention Against Racial Discrimination, so it’s not gonna be posted anytime soon.
Heading off to Hangzhou tomorrow. More podcasting from there.
BTW, I’ve attempted to address a technical issue that commentator HWH brought up (“[podcast] sounds horrible”). Aside from boosting the bit rate, we’ve tweaked the physical podcasting setup a bit. Hopefully, things sound better now. I contemplated buying a microphone for recording purposes, but I think the built-in mic of our recorder (an Edirol R-09) is sufficient, and works well for a multi-person podcast. Plus, I want to keep the setup really light in case we have to flee a place quickly. Let me know if it sounds better.