Torturing Nurse and North Korea

After work on Friday, I went to dinner with Maggie and Bonnie. Bonnie also works in the office as part of the Chinese sales team. She's a Shanghai native and I could tell! She speaks very quickly and gets excited and laughs easily. She moved back in with her parents because it is easier for them to cook/eat that way; she didn't like going home and cooking for herself when she lived alone. We took the bus (this is a big deal for me, it is impossible to take the bus somewhere if you only speak English) to a Chinese/Japanese restaurant and I had cold green tea noodles. ... which ended up being noodles in cold green tea. It was... ok. I'm not a fan of cold soup. After dinner, I left them and finally found Live Bar. It's actually a great venue, like a mix of Redrum and AS220 (for those in Providence) or if the Lager House had a 3-story ceiling and art behind the stage (for those in Detroit). I walked into the very small place first, just like last time, to see if I had been right and it was full of drunk middle aged Chinese singing karaoke. They really wanted me to stay and pulled on my arm but I begged off. "Ah, no.. no.. xiexie.. no.. xiexie.. zaijian." [no no thanks no thanks bye ... see how smart i sound?]

The band at Live Bar on Friday was from Japan, called Ghod. They were.. not that great. The band that opened for them was really terrible, like a Korn/Limp Bizkit ripoff singing in Mandarin. The crowd on Friday was like 85-15 women, I was shocked.

Saturday was fantastic. They host a series there called NoiShanghai once a month and it features all sorts of noise bands. Two were Chinese (Torturing Nurse and Lolita Vibrator Torture) and one from Italy (with a long Italian name I will never remember). Torturing Nurse was absolutely amazing; the best performance I've seen in a long time, probably since last October... I thought it was very inspiring.

Torturing Nurse


Took some video but it is hard to see what's going on:




Group from Italy


I met a Canadian documentaryist (?) who filled me in a bit on Shanghai. Whenever I travel and go to music shows, I meet a lot of Canadians. SXSW was the same way! Canada must secretly have excellent taste in music.



This is the door to a karaoke place. They really love Santa here. Nearly all doors to homes or Chinesey businesses have adornments on the outside that were put up during the New Year so as to bring wealth and luck and whatnot. I'm not sure if they know what Santa's all about or if they just think he looks happy and cool and lucky:


On Sunday, I went to a free screening of a documentary made by two UK filmmakers about an American named Dresnok who lives in North Korea. He defected from the US Army during the Korean War, walked to the other side, and has lived there ever since. I thought it was extremely interesting and well done. I want to go to North Korea now (it is open to tourists, which I didn't know until a few months ago) but it is rather expensive and there seems to be a slight danger of being kidnapped to breed non-Korean looking spies. There were four soldiers who defected in all. They were used extensively in propaganda films and posters by the North Koreans up through the 1980s. He said it was difficult for them upon first arriving because it was SO different from America; like nothing they had ever known. The Koreans were brought up to hate Americans thoroughly and addressed them as "American bastards." Initially, they broadcasted messages via loudspeaker over the DMZ (demilitarized zone in between the two) to the America soldiers: "Come to North Korea, join us. We are treated extremely well and have all the food, girls and cigarettes we want. Life is wonderful here." The film also speculates that the North Korean government kidnapped wives for them from Japan, Indonesia and Romania. The interviews with Dresnok were the most interesting parts aside from wide shots of North Korean fanaticism. He said that one can get used to living anywhere, it is just the adjustment period that varies. I think this is true.

The filmmakers were there and said it has been very difficult to get distribution in America because the film didn't portray the soldiers as traitors well enough. They also said that whenever they leave, the North Koreans view the footage they took and confiscate it if it's something they don't like. They have enough connections now that this doesn't happen very often. Learned: a treaty was never signed between North and South Korea. They just split off and ceased fighting. The DMZ remains "the scariest place in the world," to quote Bill Clinton. North Korean diplomats are only allowed to travel within a 25-mile radius from their embassy in the United States. I actually wish I had brought Maggie with me because it would have been interesting to hear what she thought of the film.. we don't really talk about serious subjects but it is obvious to me that our political upbringing is quite different. She's nearly fluent in English but didn't know the meaning of the word "mayor" nor really grasped my explanation.

Here are the filmmakers speaking about the process:


The longer I am here, the more I wish I spoke at least one Asiatic language. It's very limiting to only speak one language.