Heaven in a half-fried dough shell from Josh Chin on Vimeo.

In the same way Americans swirl madly around food fads (Atkins, South Beach, etc.), Chinese tend to go crazy over specific food items—and often over a specific food item as prepared by a specific food provider. It has to be said, “The People” do not always know what they’re talking about. There’s a yogurt stand in an alley not far from my home in Beijing that every weekend attracts lines to rival the TSA back-up at JFK Airport on Christmas Eve. Why, I have no idea. I have tasted that yogurt and it’s not as good as the yogurt at a perpetually empty stand twenty feet to the south.

But sometimes they do know what they’re talking about. The restaurant that appears in this video, Xiaoyang Shengjian (小杨生煎), is a case in point.

Xiaoyang is widely regarded as Shanghai’s best producer of shengjian baozi (生煎包子)—a half-fried, half-steamed pork bun that arguably ranks third behind only bacon and prosciutto as an expression of the beauty of pork. Having missed on out them the last time I was in Shanghai, I was eager this time not only to gorge on the buns, but to gorge on the best iteration available. An Internet search revealed Xiaoyang to be the consensus destination. But with the yogurt shop in mind, my inclination was to look elsewhere. I wanted a transcendent bun, not a bun any sucker on the street might eat.

In the end, Xiaoyang prevailed on convenience, being just around the corner from the hotel. The branch I visited (there are several Shengjians spread throughout the city) did not look promising: Jammed in next to an anonymous noodle shop at the back of a mall food court on the heavily touristed Nanjing East Road pedestrian street. None of the remote, hole-in-the-wall charm one usually associates with world-class Chinese snack shops. No charm at all, in fact.

But line was long, which is always a good sign. And the the baozi at the end of it: my God. Perfectly crispy and golden on the bottom, tender on top, cradling a gorgeous nugget of just-firm-enough ground pork in a bath of salty, scalding-hot broth. They were, to borrow a phrase from a foodie friend in San Francisco, like crack. And nearly as cheap: If memory serves, it was a whopping $3 for a quadruple order (16).

Are they the best available? Not being resident in Shanghai, I’m be hesitant to say. But of the six or seven versions I’ve tried over the years, no others come close. Hence the video.

Sometimes, it pays to study the masses.

[Gear Geek Alert: This post concerns the logistics of multimedia news production and has only marginally to do with China or any other topic of interest to normal people.]

When the video editors at the Wall Street Journal called last month asking for a video to go with a print story on the dangers of electronic bicycles (a.k.a. e-bikes), it gave me a chance to do something that I’ve been aching to try for quite some time: Mount thousands of dollars’ worth of somebody else’s camera equipment to a moving vehicle.

Lest anyone accuse me of recklessness upon reading further, it’s important to note at the beginning that this was not the original idea. The original idea had been to profile someone who’d had a serious run-in with one of the bikes (China recorded more than 2000 e-bike-related deaths, and thousands more injuries, in 2008). Then the editors decided to take the print story in a more tongue-in-cheek direction and suddenly I was tasked with doing something “funnier.” And so the decision was made—I had no choice, you see—to slap some cameras on one of the bikes and force the print reporter to ride it around in Beijing’s sub-freezing weather while providing play-by-play (or, rather, street-by-street) commentary.

Like a lot of first video experiences, this was a tremendous amount of fun, and highly instructional.

The first issue was what camera to use. Much as I would have loved to put the bureau’s 3-chip CCD camera into play, it soon became clear that e-bikes were indeed accident prone, and in the end, I decided it might be less-than-wise to risk losing a $4000 piece of gear for the purposes of a 3-minute video. Luckily, the bureau had an older Sony Handycam lying around, the loss of which, although unfortunate, would not be tragic.

But because we wanted two shots—one of the reporter riding the bike, and one showing what the reporter was seeing—we needed another camera. Enter the Zi-8, a pocket-sized HD gadget Kodak rolled out last year to compete with the likes of the Flip. WSJ is testing the Zi-8 as a tool for its print reporters to capture simple interviews with news makers (CEOs, government officials, etc), but its size and affordability made it an attractive option for this as well.

The second issue: How to attach the cameras to the bike?

The Internet is full of ideas on how to do this, some of them beautifully simple and some (like this steadycam mount) seemingly beyond the pale. None were an option in this case 1) because the bike in question was shaped like a scooter, with limited bar space on which to screw a genuine mount; and 2) because we were working on a tight schedule.

So I was forced to use what I had on hand: a Joby Gorrillapod, some packing tape and a cheap bungee-like cord bought for a buck at the convenience store down the street.

Here was the final product:

Handycam and wireless mic receiver, mounted to handlebars with Gorillapod. and bungee cord.

Handycam-rig secured with packing tape.

[More images, plus verdict, after the jump:]

Kodak Zi-8 w/ mini-tripod, mounted using tape.

Finished e-bike rig, reporter's-eye view

Precarious-looking, I admit. But it held up relatively well. The Gorillapod was surprisingly robust, and the tape and bungee cord held fast. There was a frightening moment when the quick-release mounting plate under the Handycam loosened, which sent the camera rotating sideways, but there was never any danger of the whole thing coming loose. Next time, I’ll just make sure to tighten that plate all the way.

The real problem came from the cameras themselves, particularly the Zi-8. Almost all of the footage from that camera (and some from the Handycam) suffered from the rolling shutter effect—a defect of the CMOS sensors used in smaller digital video cameras that can cause the picture to skew and wobble when the camera is vibrating or moving quickly. The effect on the brain of the person watching such images is decidedly unpleasant. In the case of the Zi-8 on this shoot, it was positively nauseating.

Luckily, increasing the playback speed–something I’d planned to do anyway–mitigates the puke-factor a little, as does watching on a little Web-sized screen (which you can do below). For anything bigger or slower, though, I’m not sure this is the way to go.

Second, a vox pop video I did for GlobalPost on Obama’s visit to China managed to get picked up by the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer–the first flowering of what GlobalPost hopes is a long partnership with NewsHour. While I never imagined I’d win an Emmy, I admit I have fantasized amount making it onto the NewsHour, so this is even cooler in a way.

Proof this actually ran on PBS is here.

China watchers have been abuzz all day with news of a forthcoming book, “Prisoner of the State,” based on tapes secretly recorded by Zhao Ziyang, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party who was stripped of power and placed under house arrest after opposing the military crackdown in Tian’anmen Square in 1989.

Media large and small have greeted the book with blanket converage, including a fulsome review by Paul Mooney in the Far Eastern Economic Review and an impressive presentation of the tape recordings (with transcripts in Chinese and English) on the Washington Post website. While some in China will surely try to label the book a hoax, the tapes appear to be authentic.

[For those dismayed at the attention the book has received, suffice it to say that Zhao is considered a mensch by many who followed his career (no small feat for a Chinese government official) and there was considerable worry after he died that he had taken his insights to the grave.]

There’s no point in re-hashing all that’s been written about the book already. But I feel compelled to note it here because we are fast approaching the 20th anniversary of the Tian’anmen Square crackdown (June 4) and Zhao—or rather, Zhao’s death—is what first started me thinking seriously about how the event is remembered, and not remembered, inside China itself.

Zhao died in January of 2005, apparently after suffering multiple strokes while under house arrest. I recall it vividly because the day after he died I found myself sitting in a classroom with several Chinese journalists on the UC Berkeley campus, listening to a lecture on media in China. One of the journalists was slightly older and visbly shaken by the news. It emerged he had been on the square, a college student protesting for democracy, in 1989. When the professor asked him to offer his thoughts on Zhao, he made to talk, then covered his face and offered a muffled apology.

The instructor next turned to the younger journalists and asked them for their thoughts. Silence.

Finally, one of them spoke up, saying, “I’m not really sure why people here think it is such a big deal.”

These were not your average Chinese journalists. They were some of the top reporters from some of the country’s most daring publications—reporters who, had they been old enough in 1989, very likely would have been marching with the students under banners calling for press freedom. But they were not old enough in 1989. And while they knew as much or more about the episode as any American their age, they didn’t accord it the same significance.

An old official, maybe a good old offical, had died. That was it.

In subsequent conversations with young people in China, I’ve found the same thing: A tendency to view the protests and crackdown with a kind of clinical ambivalence. It was a  turning point, to be sure, but nothing to get emotionally worked up about. This is not wholly the result of ignorance or propaganda: Any Chinese teenager with a reasonable grasp of Internet filter workarounds (which is to say, nearly all of them) can access Western news reports and documentaries on the subject. A fair number have. And yet, many still refuse to buy the notion that the protests were a good thing, or even a momentous thing. (Others have noted the same phenomenon.)

Coincidentally, I was talking with a Beijing friend last night about the legacy of 1989 for Chinese people and what, if anything, the older generations are telling their children about it. When the news about Zhao Ziyang’s book came out this morning, my friend, who’s 30, sent an email about one night nineteen years ago when she was lighting off fireworkers with her father. The firework casings were made of old newspapers:

There was enough scrap for me to tell they were all about how anti-revolutionary Zhao was and how Chinese people despised him. So i asked my dad if he was a bad man. My dad said “he’s not a bad man and don’t read this newspaper!”

They didn’t talk much about Zhao or Tian’anmen after that.

As of this writing, the Zhao tape excerpts on the Washington Post website and another set of excerpts on the New York Times site are both still accessible in China. It might be China’s Internet authorities haven’t gotten around to blocking them. Or it might mean they’re not all that worried.

This one’s been a long time in coming. Abby is one of that rare but thankfully growing species of artist bridging the Pacific from West to East. She’s probably most famous in the US for her collaboration with Bela Fleck (who appears in the video), but she’s better known over here as the girl who actually, against all odds, made Mandarin bluegrass work. I originally filmed this in August for the Wall Street Journal, but it got lost in the post-Olympics, pre-Election shift away from China coverage. Luckily the GlobalPost took to the story and decided to put it up.

Abby makes a powerful argument both for and against “world music” (a genre I have to say I’ve never much liked): “It’s such an interesting phrase…because it really represents fusion music. It’s about taking this aspect of Arabic culture and this aspect of Eastern European culture [and throwing them together], whereas I think the future of global music is in having human beings spread across two cultures, or several cultures, and combining the music internally before it even comes out.”

I certainly hope so.

Enjoy.

Her website is here. And the website for Casey Driessen, the mind-blowing fiddle player who also appears in the video, is here.

I’d originally meant to post this photo on my “Reporter’s Notebook” (read: blog) over at GlobalPost, but then the post morphed into a story and the editors decided to go with more dramatic art. It’s true, I arrived a tad too late to see the real explosions. It was tremendously entertaining nonetheless (Note: I can say this without being an asshole because no one died, or at least, we think no one died, and anyway these days there’s a seems to be a sort of karmic justice in a building intended solely for the filthy rich going up in flames).

For those who want the full photographic story, fellow resident alien Caroline Killmer, who lives near the now crispy Rem Koolhaas creation, has a fine set of pics on her photoblog. She also posted a brief (but vivid) video to CNN’s iReport.

More of my photos here.

As a multimedia reporter, I admit I am occasionally given to bouts of smugness. I may get no respect from the grizzled guardians of old journalism, I tell myself in these moments, but I am the vanguard, the future—-the intrepid journalistic do-it-all wading into the torrent of 21st century technology to bring the world a new form of storytelling.

Or not, as it turns out.

This past Saturday was the last official day of China’s Spring Festival vacation. To mark the occasion, I went to Ditan Park in the northeast corner of old Beijing to catch the last day of the Spring Festival Temple Fair. I went with the vague hope of catching a Beijing Opera performance, which my neighbor told me was available this year. Instead, after twenty minutes jostling my way through the crowds, hands held boxer-like in front of my face to protect myself from the inflatable animals people were wielding like spears, I ran into the man pictured above, whose name (according the placard in the picture) is Chen Qihuan and whom I now humbly respect as a professional forebear.

Chen is among the last performers of something called layangpian (拉洋片，or “pulled movies”), one of the “Eight Great Curiosities of Tianqiao”—a genre of traditional entertainment I’d never heard of before but which apparently was quite popular a hundred years ago. The centerpiece of layangpian is a large box with peepholes cut into the front, through which the audience watches a series of slide-mounted paintings manipulated by an invisible pulley system in back. The entire thing is operated by one person, who stands on a stool to the side of the box using one hand to manipulate the pulleys and the other hand to play the cymbals, all while narrating the story in a delightfully crude mixture of song and poetry. In other words, a turn-of-the-century audio slideshow.

My Mandarin wasn’t good enough to catch the particulars of the story–something evergreen about the Boxer Rebellion and the effort to cleanse China of foreign devils–but his pitch to the crowd was clear enough: “It can’t compare to a modern movie. It’s not that entertaining. But it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.”

Indeed.

More photos from the temple fair available here.

Managed to get this little slide show up on the GlobalPost site just in time for Chinese New Year and the inevitable train scandal mayhem. Significantly, the photos come from a trip I took to Chengdu in December, on a train filled with people who’d decided to head home a month earlier than usual. There turned out to be two major reasons: 1) to avoid getting caught up in the aforementioned mayhem; and/or 2) to avoid getting swept out to sea in the financial crisis.

The fact that the global economy’s recent faceplant has forced hordes Chinese people to head home early isn’t news, but I think (or hope, at least) the photos shed some additional light on the story. As always, I invite your feedback. (Check out the full-sized version here and higher resolution versions of the photos here)

My first report for them is a video on how people in Beijing see the United States in light of Barack Obama’s election victory, part of a series called “For Which It Stands” outlining the international challenges Obama will face once he takes the oath. Have a gander and let me know what you think: