Category Archives for China

Chinese Jamaicans in reggae and Chinese “food porn”

Always Together: Chinese-Jamaicans in Reggae Music

From pioneer soundsystem operator Tom “The Great Sebastian” Wong in the 1940s to contemporary dancehall masters Black Chiney, Chinese-Jamaicans have played an integral part in the music scene on the island since even before Jamaica cut its first domestic record in the 1950s. The stories of Leslie Kong, the first producer to record Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, and Desmond Dekker; Byron Lee, the bandleader that became Jamaica’s ambassador to the world; and Patricia Chin, co-founder of VP Records are important but often overlooked pieces of reggae history.

Through extensive original interviews and archival footage, Always Together: Chinese-Jamaicans in Reggae Music weaves together the history of the Chinese immigrants with the little-known stories of these unsung giants.

Via 8Asians.

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Beijingers in New York

Image by John Clang.

From the New York Times:

Clang cooked up a bit of low-tech wizardry when he made “Beijing New York,” a fine-art project about the Chinese-immigrant experience in New York City that will appear in “I See China,” a group exhibit that opens April 21 at Beijing’s Pekin Fine Arts gallery. He started the project on the streets of Beijing, where he photographed a variety of passers-by. “I purposely selected subjects who look like people you might see in Chinatown,” says Clang, who grew up in Singapore and moved to New York in 1999. Once he shot his cast of characters, he cut out paper dolls from the prints. Back in New York, he placed the paper dolls in various spots around the city — taped to a traffic light, a metal barricade, a concrete curb — and then photographed them.

“Chinese immigrants in New York spend most of their time in Chinatown, or Brooklyn Chinatown, or Flushing,” he says. “So I purposely put them in other places, outside of Chinatown, such Herald Square and Washington Square Park.” The results remind us of how immigrant populations are an integral — yet often unseen — part of the New York fabric.

Asian people buying things

Lining up in front of Louis Vuitton in Hong Kong. Photo by Anne Roberts (click on image for original).

Lately, the US media seems to be obsessed with Asian people spending money:

Chinese and Vietnamese are not the only newly conspicuous spenders in the US; Brazilians have been buying up comparatively cheap properties in New York and Miami.