Bao Phi

Tonight DJ V-Nutz spins at a different club, a posh scenester bar with tasteful Orientalia on the walls and that fashionably dim red-orange lighting that makes the whole place look like it could double for an opium den. Here V-Nutz spins a mix of new and classic funk to a mostly Caucasian expatriate crowd, and […]

This is the land that colonized your ancestors, I said to myself early this morning as I walked through the streets of Paris, the least you can do is find yourself a bowl of Pho. I wait at the St. Paul stop for the 1 train, which I take one stop down to Bastille where […]

The last two days have been all about the mass transit system in Paris. We’ve been jumping in and out of trains, peering at maps, checking out cool subway stops (one of the subway stops is designed to look like the inside of a brass submarine) and getting lost. My profound thought a few years […]

The suburbs of Paris are different than the idea of suburbs in the U.S.: the wealthiest Parisians usually live in the inner city, and the suburbs are comprised of segregated pockets of poor, immigrant, and wealthy communities. Many poor youth of color whom can’t afford luxurious vacations can take a 40 minute train ride out […]

Walking up a steep set of stairs in Montmartre, I saw two kids at the top of the hill. One had his back turned and was calling out loudly, “un, deux, trios…” From my two years of French during Junior High in the wonderful public education system of Minneapolis, I knew he was counting out […]

To relieve some of the emotional suckiness involved with leaving Shanghai, we lucked out and had defective televisions on the flight over to Paris, so we were moved into first class. Damn, have any of you ever flown first class on British Airways? They are like the ultimate lounge chair, with so much space and […]

Yesterday we went out to Tong Li, a small village by the river about one hour from Shanghai. On the way there we passed more construction, huge billboard signs, and a lake so large and so grey that it erased the horizon line on our right side. Tong Li is a popular tourist spot (mostly […]

The apartment complex that Kelly and her parents live in has a name, which translates into something along the lines of Good Horse Gardens. Directly across the street is a humongous lot filled with stacks upon stacks of shipping containers, large rectangular metal shoeboxes colored pumpkin orange, red and dull blue. These boxes form a […]

Funny what you notice when you’re a foreigner. For example, my utterly random mental rolodex filed away this keeper: of all the American songs you have heard in Juarez and Shanghai, the only American musical artist you’ve heard in both cities has been Lil’ John. In Juarez, blaring from a Hummer that blurred past your […]

Shanghai seems to be a neon echo of many other major cosmopolitan Asian cities: Foreign investors stake their claim on the skyline with towering, eclectically designed skyscrapers; city life is a mix of old school Asian culture and Westernized ‘modernism’; Sex and the City wanna-be’s rub elbows on the sidewalks with beggars; and Caucasian men […]