Lunar Gala 2009: Can't Stop Won't Stop
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Roone Arledge Auditorium - Lerner Hall
6:00 PM-7:00 PM VIP Dinner
7:00 PM-10:00 PM Show
VIP Tickets - $15 (includes pre-show dinner in C555 included with pre-selected priority seating)
General Tickets - $10
Come join CSC in celebrating the Chinese New Year with CSC's most anticipated event of the year-Lunar Gala! In celebration of the year of the ox, CSC presents to you, LUNAR GALA 2009: CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP. This year's culture show features Radiance as well as breathtaking performances from Lion Dance, Chinese Yo Yo, LG Hip Hop, Kung Fu, and much more.
This year, a special guest performance by RHYTHMOLOGY, the THIRD PLACE WINNER OF PRELUDE EC 2008, the largest and most competitive hip hop face-off in the East Coast. Watch here.
As always, the Lunar Gala Fashion Show is unique and distinctive as it is stunning, showcasing the newest designs of the most prominent designers including Blanc de Chine, Rebecca Taylor, Jill Stuart, Yoana Baraschi, Nicole Miller, Cloak & Dagger & Cosabella!
Tickets come with awesome raffle prizes that will be raffled off throughout the show including:
- CBS Passes to go behind-the-scenes for News at Noon and meet the news anchors!
- Two pairs of New Jersey Nets Tickets
- Gold Pass for two ($500 value) to the Asian American Film Festival by AsianCinevision for this July!
For more information, check out CSC's website and promo video.
Co-Sponsored by CUArts, CAO, ESC, CCSC
This in from Feministing and The Christian Science Monitor:
China has the highest number of internet users in the world and many of them are "internet addicts"... China has the world's largest number of Internet users - 290 million and counting, with 70 percent under the age of 30. And a recent survey of Internet use by global market information group TNS found that Chinese spend the highest proportion of their leisure time online - 44 percent - out of users in 16 countries.SURPRISE. Actually, no, this isn't surprising, since China is the country with the greatest population in the world. I'm kind of skeptical of this statment, because what counts as leisure anyway? Isn't that something that is culturally determined and varying from place to place? Who gathers these facts? The missionaries with a history of cultural ignorance? Anyway. Maybe I should warn my grandparents - they're clearly at a great risk, with their dial-up and all. Don't read too many e-mails, grandpa!
Now that finals are over and the holidays are trickling down, David and I will be heading back to the great, scary mainland of our ancestors for New Year's and more. I'm forty minutes shy of departure, my bags are packed, and I'm fully equipped with two sleeping pills (fourteen hour trips are brutal), a copy of Beijing Time (an anthropological study of the city), a neck pillow (Mom threw one in the luggage), a Moleskine journal (which I started using in '05 and still haven't filled up), and a tape recorder (because you never know when you'll need evidence after some creep harasses you, or after you get stranded on an island with smoke monsters that make sounds like taxicabs printing receipts).The sad thing is that David and I are hitting the exact same cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Hainan), but our dads have created completely different itineraries for us. Guess that your twenties don't really mean full independence. Anyway, maybe we'll live blog you or something. Maybe. Maybe we'll just be posting about how much China sucks and we miss NYC, because that's where we're from, and believe it or not, people can tell that we are Westerners and will harass us for it.
I really should be writing an 8-10 pg paper on Posthumanism as I rot here in the computer lab; but sometimes, procrastination is joyful relief.
Both David and I saw Iron Man (David opening night; I last night) and we love it to pieces. If you haven't already done so, watch it, because you will definitely find something to love about it too. Critics have picked up on this fact; but one thing I noticed (and which critics will probably never point out) is that Yinsen, in the film as a Muslim doctor from Afghanistan, was originally Chinese!
When he first appeared in the Iron Man comics (created in the 1960s), Ho Yinsen was imagined as a pacifistic Chinese physicist, engineer, and professor from the fictional city of Timbetpal whose work was greatly admired by Tony Stark. Throughout the entire comic book series, Yinsen remained of East Asian descent, until the film re-imagined him as a native of Gulmira, a fictional village in Afghanistan. In the film, Yinsen is portrayed by Shaun Toub, an American actor of Persian Jewish descent.
When I think 1960s, I think post-Red Scare and spotlight on the Chinese.
When I think 2000s, I think War on Terror and fear of the Middle East.
Right, they're arming because they cheat and they want to take over the world. Disgusting.
I feel so bad for the adopted girl.
[UPDATE 11:15pm] The New York Times has followed up its previous article with this one. There's a nice little quote hidden in there from Dara O’Rourke, associate professor of labor and environmental policy at UC Berkeley.
"Mattel used China as a scapegoat for its own problems and that the toymaker is now paying the price for that."That quote says a lot about the Chinese exports scare, but forgets to note the racial issues involved. Namely, if Mattel were producing at the same price in any other country, would they have tried to use that country as a scapegoat just as they had with China? A related question would be, why did the country fall for it so easily?
Finding a scapegoat to avoid blame and dodge shareholder fallout is one issue, but there's clearly more to it. Maybe given national sentiments at the time toward Chinese exports for other regulatory violations (toothpaste, pet food) Mattel just thought they could get away with it? Or maybe they just shared the same sentiment?
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Earlier this morning, Mattel issued an apology to China (yes, to the entirety of China - thats a lot of apologies) for its excessive recall of toys from China.
"Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys''Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, also acknowledged that the ''vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers.'' A few other notable quotes from the New York Times...
Lead-tainted toys accounted for only a small percentage of all toys recalled, he said, adding that: ''We understand and appreciate deeply the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers."Mattel's apology reflects how the Chinese product scare has been blown out of proportion. Amid the series of recent China recalls, faults endemic to American design became attributed to Chinese manufacturing. Anyone who has paid attention to recent commentary on Chinese exports know that this is not the only consequence of "Yellow Paint Peril". The fact that Mattel issued the apology to China, as opposed to the specific manufacturers or even just Chinese manufacturers, reveals how this issue has not only affected the reputations of the manufacturers involved or even just Chinese industry, but rather China as a whole. I would extend that range to include Chinese outside of the P.R.C. as well.
... new research from two business professors shows that recalls due to problems with the U.S. maker's design accounted for the vast majority -- about 76 percent -- of the 550 U.S.toy recalls since 1988...
''if shifting manufacturing to China resulted in poorer quality goods, then the number of toys recalled due to manufacturing should be greater than the number recalled due to design,'' the report said. But that is not the case.
There are certainly many regulatory problems in China and having worked in China I have seen some of these issues first-hand. Nonetheless, its important to consider why the Chinese product scare exploded the way it did. Why was it so easy for Mattel to overlook the design faults in their toys as they recalled millions of toys on the basis of lead paint added by Chinese manufacturers against Mattel standards? Discuss.
In a new article about the Chinese toy boycott, the NYT so tactfully conjures up this image:
Doesn't a white Lego figurine carting off an Asian-featured Lego figurine strike you as ... what's the word... interesting, to say the least? (Xenophobic? No, it couldn't be!)
New York Times: Why Lead in Toy Paint? It’s Cheaper
Or maybe Chinese people intrinsically have a lower set of moral values? Raging red-capitalist opportunism? The dog is getting to their brains? (Sarcasm blunt enough?)
No, it's never been acceptable to allow lead contaminants in sight of anything touched by children; the stake of the issue is out of question. But if you don't feel a tinge of American xenophobia in this latest journalistic fad, take another look. Welcome to the new "yellow peril".