Meet the Parents

The Parents finally came to Beijing. It is the most opposite from their world you can get. they stayed for a week in a traditional courtyard hotel. My dad's knee is really bad and he's had surgery on it like over 10 times but like dad's do he kept saying its ok. I'm sure it is killing him now.

I made a crappy computer print of my parents faces for their arrivals gate sign because i am a jerk.

Jet lag

yuyuetan park to see the cherry blossoms.

Japanese "sakura"

and more Japanese "sakura"

baby chickens

see all that white stuff? it was in the air and rolling around on the ground everywhere this week. seeds from some tree. very bad for allergies and even just walking because it gets in your eyes. awesome.

my buddy Eric "Fu" Concepcion worked on this Coke project. he is a 3D and motion graphics guy. he told me they had to rent out an additional building to have room for all the people they had to hire to finish this short movie.

one of those birds you always here around here tethered

great wall. the Mutianyu section. it is easier and more reconstructed than the section i went to this summer. it is funny to see my mom holding on to the side of the wall at all times.

for some reason I like seeing my parents here, with the vast lands of China in the background

there is this chute car thing at the end to get down the mountain. shouldn't have let mom go first she went slow and held everyone else up.

when life imitates art. my bruce lee icecream t-shirt comes to life in one horrible milisecond at the forbidden city.

some new kind of pepsi product ho's in sanlitun!

this was at beihai park. he is holding a baby with a lion or dragon head i think

the 1st of 9 sons of the dragon, Bixi again. this is the biggest i've seen, its at lama temple.

went to the Lao She teahouse where they have short performances of a bunch of traditional old Beijing stuff like, music, comedy acts, dancing, peking opera, kung fu, kungfu tea pouring.

i liked the peking opera part. now i have to go see a full opera. the costumes are pretty insane and pretty wild. stuff you could never dream up yourself.

we didnt understand anything that was going on in the comedy act.

this guy had this mask that was able to instantly flip down a new version of the mask. there must have been at least 10 different masks in that thing. he would shake his head and a new mask weould pop down over the old one. how cool would it be to have one of those as a kid?

So i can't believe that the parents actually came to china and tried everything, even tripe. hopefully i can get them to come to japan next year. they were very accepting of everything so i have a good chance.

Spring make Jason no want Die.

It's amazing what a change in the weather can do. Spring is here in Beijing and suddenly everything is ok. Let me list the ways. I have basically been trapped in my apartment all winter because it is so g darn cold outside. it is also freezing in my poor apartment. i live in fear of dying everyday. Now that its warm i can actually ride my bike around without losing fingers or my weiner! i can actually go down the street to eat everyday instead of nibbling on bread and ramen. I can open the window and see the sun shine(and let pollution and dust, lots of dust in). I can practice kung fu outside. I can explore. ride through the hutongs. Somehow it has lifted my spirits as it always does. Spring, my main man. I am enjoying it while i can because in a month it will be ballz hot and you will see a post full of complaints about that.

So I finally got more of these Bruce Lee shirts made, with my friend Angel's company in Beijing. Now's your chance! You can have some of Jason.......'s art rubbing all over your body all day long! there are only like 36 out of 50 left! they are supposed to be about the same sizes as american apparel if that helps. you can buy them on etsy and the shipping is like $8 from Beijing.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=22995526

The brand is called "UGK" http://www.loveugk.com/

my shirts in the front of the store in Sanlitun across from bar blu, cheers, le petite gourmond, etc...


my roomate getting her bike fixed. there are tons of these guys everywhere, cuz there are tons of bikes. so cheap. replacing a tube is like 2 dollars.

grossness.


I finally played badmitton for the first time since highschool, probably junior or senior year when my gym class partner Dave Hooper and I won our gym class badmitton tournament. It was a momentous moment for us to hoot and holler and jump around because we were both non team sports playing jerks and we beat out all the jocks too. ok now you can make fun of us. too bad it wasn't a manly sport like shuffle board that we won. I still got some fire in me, although I played mostly girls. anyway it's pretty crazy how its so popular here. look at those ingenious side mounted hanging light fixtures!


the equipment was for real! look at this shuttlecock. it has like real fake feathers! and the rackets were feather light. all the better for slamming on girls, which i did in high school. i am a jerk


that is a lot of kimchi. bad kimchi. i haven't had good korean food in china yet, and i dont want to go to those super expensive places either. Korean food here is super salty, super watered down, and a p!ss poor attempt at what might be my fave food in the universe.

we finally got an "Aiyi" or maid to come to our house and clean it. Actually my roomate did because she is so f'ing lazy. she has never cleaned our aptment, I always have. but I don't think i will anymore when it cost $4 for her to clean the whole place in 2 hrs. Still I was raised as a hard worker, and the thought of someone cleaning my house for me makes me kind of ashamed. thats why all you get is her hand in this shot. I was terrified and ashamed for 2 hrs when she came. our place was reaaaal dirty.

another thing to be ashamed of is after that we had mcdonald's deliver our dinner. they came in 10 minutes. at least it was because i had a wicked deadline and am not fat and lazy. It is a 24 hr mcdees too. I know we will be having more of this show up at our door. the delivery fee is $1


I had to pay $650 to change my visa from L to F, meaning tourist to business. it really stings. the alternative was leave the country and probably get handed a 1 month visa. at least i got a 6 month visa and didnt have to leave. the visa agencies here "work their magic" and in a week you have a new visa.


where did this guy get straight up logs?

you can't really see in this pic that well but see those white blobs? there are lots more of them that were moving too fast for the camera to capture. they are huge floating seeds of some sort. it looked like it was snowing. I have developed allergies in the last 3 years and days like this are awesome for my nose.


speaking of allergies, my pal Jerry Liu has wicked debilhitating allergies. Now that he has joined this Chinese shred/thrash/futuristic dragonslayer rock band he has enough money to get those allergy shots.


jason like shiny


think these are all dead?

this guy is no match for me I will defy his rainbow colored athuority and cross as I please. he is not concerned about my safety. I am hurt. On the inside.

Before the Parents come to Beijing

My Parents are coming to Beijing in a week so there will be plenty of new pics then. for now here is what i got. I have been working a ton so haven't left the house a lot.


Zizzo showed me this place down the street from my house. It is inbtwn my house and his house. The xiao long bao are way better than the place next to my house. The open and 3 am which is around the time we went. Here they are making tons of xiaolongbao in preparation for the breakfast wave. These are prefect. the ones by my house are too watery. Maybe I will take my parents here.


and this breakfast tofu thing is amazing. its called doufu nao (tofu brain). It cost 1 rmb (15 cents!)


just so you don't think that im having nothing but fun here. taxes are raping me. i could go into detail about the logistics of how they are raping me, which i have with a few friends but i won't get into that on this blog. Last year I had to pay $11,000. I will find out next week what i owe this year.


this is the burned out Mandarin Oriental hotel behind the CCTV tower that someone with fireworks set ablaze on the last day of chinese new year this year.

the owner of the taiwanese restaurant had a few of these laying around so he gave it to me. you play it kind of like pogs. I have now noticed kids playing this around town when before i didn't. I like how they threw in bootleg scooby doo, popeye, and probably a few other characters that i dont recognize that they dont have the rights to.