Han Feng’s sex diary caused a lot of uproar in China.  He is an official from the Guangxi tobacco monopoly bureau, who allegedly wrote daily diary entries describing his sexual involvement with many of his colleages, along with acts of receiving bribes. Then these entries started spreading on the internet. The disciplinary officials and the investigators were getting first-hand accounts of his misbehavior from these entries. Despite a year long attempt at cleansing  by the censors in their urge to remove any pornographic data, these entries caused many stark reactions.

Here below are some of his journal entries from the year of 2007. I just wanted to give you a glimpse. Like Hanhan, I do not judge the tobacco chief for having sexual affairs. These kinds of private affairs should not be stolen or uploaded by third parties. At the same time these entries are an eye-opener indeed. Should they be banned or be squeezed back inside a pandora’s box? Let’s think positively. Let’s praise the tobacco chief  for offering a poetic alternative to vulgar pornography, as well as thinking earnestly about his health.  But if he is cutting one thing in his life, it should be alcohol rather than blow jobs.

(translated by Carrie Yang and further edited by KJ)
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It’s a lot of detailed advice at once, though it may only take ten minutes to put it into practice. And also, the SHE part usually comes before HE, except if you are with a men who ejaculates before you even touch him (They do exist).

(Translated by Carrie Yang and edited by Katrien Jacobs)

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The new Han Han magazine has arrived…. Although there’s not a single advertisment in the magazine, it is known as the most generous publication in China—paying  each of the authors 2000 RMB per 1000 words (as you can see from the picture above, that’s basically all of them).

The magazine is a nice mixture of short novels, essays, photographs, commics, etc. But it was quite an disapointment for me not seeing the orginal cool cover picture on the actual copies.

As I look through the magazine, I found the following excerpt very informative. It  is  It’s from Han Han’s own article   I WANT TO TALK TO THIS WORLD (我想和這個世界談談 wo xiang he zhe ge shi jie tan tan). Here is the rough translation (Thank you Katrien for editing it for me):

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Bonnie Nardi’s new book My Life as  Night Elf Priest about World of Warcraft is out by University of Michigan Press. You can look at the summary of her book and also download several of the chapters for free. The book gives a very detailed and positive account of what it means to be immersed in this game environment. The Night Elf is a character who heals people after they have died in battle. The book deconstructs persistent media stereotypes about game addiction and refers to play theory and aesthetics to explain the draw of WoW.  I wish their would be more experiential books with images and an honest writer’s voice–it provides a breath of fresh air for soul-less academic writing.

               WoW Druid Form, a character that shape-shifts

     into different animals.

All summer long I have been writing my new book People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet for Intellect Books. Excerpts and foreplay will follow on this blog until I finally reach academic fame or downfall. In either case, I have been very fortunate to work with Carrie Yang who has helped me researching and scrutinizing Chinese bloggers and sexually explicit media. The book will feature several generations of female and male bloggers who have written about pornography or who have made their own sexually explicit galleries: Muzimei, February Girl, Hooligan Swallow, Sola Aoi, Tiger Temple, Ai wei Wei etc,… 

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A few days ago I managed to meet with Miss Ma. She is a tailor who makes costumes for the costume players who live around Communication University of Beijing. We were hoarded into a dark alley by one of her young mates and customers, named Woody. The smell upon entering the cabinet was fantastic and I could only imagine what Miss Ma had been up to.  There was a huge tree growing through her tiny shop where she also housed her morobike and various machineries for sewing together immensely complex outfits.  We started a conversation and I noticed that she likes to talk. She told me that she was happy with her line of work but just wanted more business–as the cosplay fad has dimmed a little. We were all glued to her lips during our short visit, at the end of which Miss Ma pulled out her magical scroll.  Hundreds of drawings and photos of people’s favorite animation characters which she had tied together with a string.  People had brought her all these drawings and sketches, knowing that Miss Ma would turn them into a great outfit. We talked about our common friend Atom who likes to do male characters. She showed Atom’s golden brown kimono waiting to picked up. The visit to Miss Ma was short and sweet. I will surely remember it as an unusual afternoon–when time slows down and we feel teary stepping out of the grind.  

I continue   my search for people’s virtual characters and end up following cosplay photographer Francesca. We meet at the old communist factory-turned-art-district “798″ where they have also preserved one of the old Chinese coal trains. Francesca uses this setting to take photos of her good friend Phoenix.  Phoenix here is doing the  girl character of the virtual singers from the voice synthizer software Vocaloid.  People can submit their DIY songs to the Vocaloid site which are then interpreted and sung by a family of virtual singers.  Phoenix was inspired by a song about a cute girl who is a train conductor from the Japanese war era. To her the girl with green ponytails and green uniform represents an element of nostalgia and fantasy in times of darkness.

 Nee, Nonkel Jos–Nobody around here knows how to brew your coffee.  This strange faux antique ’Belgian New World Coffee’ machine keeps popping up in restaurants near Renmin  University. It is bogus and pricey and takes one hour to brew. It makes a small quantity of coffee but will give you a good laugh for sure (which is what Belgians are for after all).

I just arrived in Beijing at Renmin University where I will give a talk about animation fans and how they use alter egos and virtual siblings, or even entire imagined clans and families. I want to find out how and why they fantasize about alternative families and how they deal with pressures of the bio-family.

But what are the first impressions of Beijing coming from Hong Kong? Beijing is earthy and dirty. Hong Kong seems to have lost its sweat glands and body odors. Maybe it is just a cliche that in Beijing one smells wafts of urine everywhere (comparable to those in Paris and Brussels.) But certainly it is true and brings relief to see that people look more relaxed and “healthy”, grubby and chubby, moist and tanned.

Then I also brought with me my pale Hermina, who is is named after the sister of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.  She came with an electric guitar and I also got her a skate board. The doll brand is named Pullip and is made in South Korea as a competitor to the much bigger Japanese companyVolks or SD (Superdollfie) The CEO of Volks  (A Japanese man taking on German features) launched the fad of ball-jointed dolls as virtual siblings about a decade ago. When assembling and buying a “daughter” from Volks, one can go pick her up in Kyoto and she will be handed over to you in a Christian-like ritual of baptism. Yes, these strange fashions are the spiritual and chaste version of the sex doll. Actually, one can see that many of those daughters live  out the fetish dreams of their owners but the adult here is supposed to shut up and play.

So here she she is … my mean little Hermina. Yes, she does have an esoteric personality and those piercing blue eyes–that would a swift Korean business ideal.

http://www.siuding.com/2010/05/milk.html

Photo by Andrew Guthrie. More writing and processing to follow.