yiduiqie

i will still be posting to dw/lj, but you can also find me specifically blogging about adventures in china at song of the travelling penguin. you should be able to syndicate it to your rss reader if you don't like reading tumblr.

i'm so nervous and my tummy is all butterflies. three hours until the plane.

again, free to a good home.

serge lukyanenko - the night watch, the day watch, the twilight watch, the last watch
ekaterina sedia, the secret history of moscow
stephen hunt, the court of the air, the kingdom beyond the waves, the rise of the iron moon, secrets of the fire sea
nick earls, zigzag street, perfect skin
chimamanda ngozi adichie, half of a yellow sun
ryan bishop + lillian s robinson, night market: sexual cultures and the thai economic miracle
harry potter and the philosopher's stone in mandarin
a collection of mao ze dong's poems
sara douglass, all of the axis books
that star wars bounty hunter's short story antho from 20 years ago, you know the one i mean
cecilia dart thornton - the bitterbynde trilogy
matthew jarpe, radio freefall
awang goneng, growing up in trengannu
what looks like all of the mallorean, belgariad, elenium and tamuli
a whole lot of terry goodkind

dictionaries: 2 malay, 1 german, 1 japanese

i'm getting rid of some books! all books are free to a good home. or a bad home, though vegan goodies are always gratefully accepted in exchange. if you're in melbourne we can arrange book drop, if you're in australia but not in melbourne you can pay for postage.

a pile of books (part one)
in no particular order but the order on my floor
there are other books but they're in the car

martin booth, the dragon syndicates ("the global phenomenon of the triads")
keri smith, how to be an explorer of the world
robert sprin + lynn abbey, catwoman
jan pienkowski, snow white
sean williams, the changeling
holly black, white cat
octavia butler, wild seed
hsu ming teo, love and vertigo
the further adventures of batman
charlaine harris, dead until dark
daniel fox, dragon in chains
a ten volume graphic novel collection of romance of the three kingdoms

So, the TOC for Steampowered II: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft, has been announced, and not only is it full of interesting and exciting lady steampunk but also it has one of my stories in it! EXCITING.

Introduction: Kevin Steil (of Airship Ambassador)

Journey's End: Elizabeth Porter Birdsall
Amphitrite: S.L. Knapp
In the Heart of Yellow Mountain: Jaymee Goh
Playing Chess in New Persepolis: Sean Holland
A Thousand Mill Lofts Gray: Jeannelle Ferreira
Dark Horse: A.M. Tuomala
The Return of Cherie: Nisi Shawl
One Last Interruption Before We Begin: Stephanie Lai
Selin That Has Grown in the Desert: Alex Dally MacFarlane
Granada's Library: Rebecca Fraimow
The Canary of Candletown: C.S.E. Cooney
Fruit Jar Drinkin', Cheatin' Heart Blues: Patty Templeton
Deal: Nichole Kornher-Stace
Not the Moon but the Stars: Shveta Thakrar
The Terracotta Bride: Zen Cho

Article/Afterward: Winding Down the House: Taking the Steam out of Steampunk: Amal El-Mohtar

I am so incredibly excited to be included in this awesome anthology, along with writers I really love. I am looking forward to reading them all! My story, 'One Last Interruption Before We Begin,' is a bit of a secret love letter to a certain building in Penang, as well as a continuation of my steampunky-Malaysia universe. Also there are ladies.

I am also excited about the fact that there are three (3!) Chinese-Malaysian writers included in this anthology. How cool is that? I think I might be the only Australian though (which is cool, too).

Anyway, I am looking forward to it, and I hope you are, too!

Well internets, here I am in Shanghai! It is humid and the air is thick, and yesterday Ms Mandysbitch found a line of grime around her neck from presumably the pollution. It is actually not too bad, pollution-wise!



My Australian-accented Beijing-style Mandarin is going just fine so far! Yesterday we caught a taxi back to our hotel, and whilst I was busy arguing with the taxi driver in Mandarin, she was watching our taxi drive down the middle of the road towards an oncoming bus. I didn't even notice! I had no idea what street we were on! But I did some shouting in Mandarin, so it's all good. Today I also had several conversations in Mandarin! GO TEAM STEPHANIE PENGUIN.

Today we went to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre. You know who is an urban planning nerd? This penguin! So that was awesome. There was a giant model of the entire city in there. It takes up a whole floor!

I have discovered an awesome show, 'Love of Seven Fairy Maidens.' I am completely obsessed with their ridiculous costumes and hair pieces and acting, and I hope to find a copy of it to take home. Or to dl.

I can't access blogger, which is incredibly frustrating. I set up a whole bunch of posts to post to my vegan blog whilst I'm away, but now I can't log in to moderate comments! So people are going to think I'm ignoring them or censoring them! I'M NOT I PROMISE.

More later I guess! I am occasionally uploading photos at my flickr, so you can check there for things! No twitter or fb for me, alas, so no updates there for a while.

I'm going to Shanghai tomorrow! So that's very exciting. I am going to attempt to speak lots and lots of Mandarin whilst I'm away. Will I be able to understand Shanghainese? Will my Australian-accented Beijing-style Mandarin be comprehensible? I hope so!

After a week and a bit in Shanghai I'm going to stop in Hong Kong for a couple of days on the way home. It is at this point that my travelling companion the incomparable C will continue on to Perth, and I will remain behind all on my own, for the first time in my life! I'm incredibly nervous, I guess it's a good thing then that I speak Cantonese.

I'm thinking about going on this tour whilst I'm away, recommended by Ms Pieces of Alice, has anyone ever done it or have any thoughts or just want to share their two cents about things I should do in HK and 上海?

I've got Feed and Deadline for the plane (thanks Emilly and Emilly's sister) and now I guess I just have to finish packing and stuff.

My word I'm excited. EXCITED. I'm going to be so AZN for the next two weeks, you have no idea. EXCITED.

And it's going to be warm!

I wasn't sure I was going to post this review, because this was not a good book. But world, you deserve to know exactly what I thought about this book.


WARNING: MENTION OF RAPE
also mild spoilers (but I will keep it to a minimum, and they will mostly be general, and also you won't read this book so that's okay)

I had no plans to read The Windup Girl. I am not even going to pretend towards any sense of bipartisanship or willingness to go in to it with an open mind. From the outset, I was confident that I would be really annoyed by The Windup Girl, and I only read it because I found out it was the Swancon Bookclub book and was so astounded that I needed to make sure I was correct.

Wow was I correct!

Usually when I read a book, I take notes so I can remember things later, so nobody can take offense at my reading and tell me I'm wrong. I had so many issues with this book I didn't even need to take notes, I can open it to any page and point to a problem I have with it. Okay, any double page.

( more details! )

Steampunk Style and Substance

I had so many issues with this panel, I wrote like three pages of notes. And there are so many frowny faces in my notes, which is not a good sign.

I wasn't totally sure what this panel was going to be about in advance, the write up wasn't super clear to me. In the end it was kind of a definition of steampunk, though less a definition and more the sketching out of a vague shape, which was cool.

Someone on the panel clearly had issues with computer technology. I have lots of quotes in my notes that steampunk is all about the "beauty of machinery that looks like machinery" and that the point of steampunk is that it lets you play with machinery that never existed, which I would totally dispute (eta: err, that that is the point, not that it can let you play with it). It was also described as 'stuff you can control' (in contrast to computers), which, again, I totally disagree.

There was an attempt at era definition of other things, diesel punk at 30s-40s and atompunk at 50s.

The discussion was mostly very white, very Victorian England. It was suggested that steampunk captures a deeper sense of Victorian England's society, capturing the imagination (though somehow not the real culture). Someone described it as "goth with colour" which makes me hmmmm. And also again obviously very Euro-centric. Apparently a lot of steampunk machinery is impossible (which I would also dispute), and apparently airships are the dragons of steampunk.

Descriptions of what counts as steampunk really bothered me, and this is why I think Towards a Steampunk without Steam by Amal el-Mohtar should be essential reading for anyone who is vaguely in to the whole steampunk thing. "Steampunkish" is often more steampunky than steampunk aesthetically, apparently, and when giving examples City of Ember was cited, as "it isn't an alternate Victorian England but it still counts." Such a description is, in its way, why we move towards a steampunk without steam. An alternate Victorian England shouldn't be the measure by which we count all steampunk things, we shouldn't be able to say something like that! Steampunk is not just stuff that comes out of Victorian England alternative universes, though people in the comments of el-Mohtar's post do try to suggest that.

What makes something steampunk is apparently the fascination with the devices, which I do kind of agree with, but it's also apparently velvet and structured garments (which, no), and finding another era exciting. "The injustices were just that more unjust" is a description which was given which makes me want to draw frowny faces over everything, because I feel like it's this sort of attitude, this nostalgia for some sort of past period, which erases current issues. I would contend that this is also another type of othering.

Someone on the panel mentioned how it (steampunk I guess?) doesn't mention imperialism/colonialism/how it's western-oriented, and Jeremy (I know who said it because my notes say 'jeremy :(') suggests that it is a "lazy attack" to say that steampunk glorifies colonialism/imperialism, as "most stories explore that." I have SUCH ISSUES with this assertion; although our community of 'steampunkers who critique' is growing, I think that it is a tiny subset of the steampunking community. Most steampunk texts make very little effort at interrogating the glorification of colonialism and imperialism and the erasure of us non-Europeans, and perhaps now is a good time to mention Jha's brand new article at Age of Steam, on Steampunk Postcoloniality, wherein people in the comments are totally doing some excellent erasing but Jha is totally awesome.

There was a little discussion of multiculturalism in steampunk, but when a panel spends most of its time talking about the aesthetics of Victorian England, I'm not really feeling convinced that multiculturalism is a big part, you know?

I suppose this is where we should be asking (in our panels at Swancon, and maybe at other Australian cons), is defining steampunk a sign that we're falling behind? Should we be looking at futurism or even something else?

Because I'm concious that this is all crit, here are some links on multiculturalism (and other things) in steampunk (you'll note how few they are):

• Steampunks Around the World Unite: Multiculturalism in Steampunk by Ay-leen the Peacemaker
• also by Ay-leen, The Wild Wild East
• Jha again at Racialicious: The Intersection of Race and Steampunk: Colonialism’s After-Effects & Other Stories, from a Steampunk of Colour’s Perspective [Essay]
• Forthwritten with Steampunk: my issues, let me show you them on some problems with the Victorian England ideology.

and also my very favourite, Art by James Ng, which I would suggest you cannot deny that is Chinese Steampunk and it is amazing.

Swancon is over! And I had a good time!

I wasn't sure I was going to go, until Emilly talked me in to it; now I am so glad I went. I had such a great weekend, met lots of new people and caught up with beloved friends. I networked/checked out stuff on both a work and a writery level, and had great adventures!

I spent a huge chunk of time just talking to people. I attended a record four (four!) panels on Friday (four is usually the amount of panels I attend over an entire con), and I was even on a panel at one point! and I purchased a lot of books (and some other things). But most of the time I was sitting in the bar/lounge, chatting with people. It was super awesome. (I do wish, though, that people would feel less entitled to ask certain types of questions; and take the hint when I don't want to talk to them)(interestingly, when I genuinely like the person but it's just an inconvenient time I can outright say 'I'm sorry but I can't talk to you right now, let's talk later' but when I just want to avoid the person I can't bring myself to be so blunt. hmm)

A list of books I purchased:

• Nightsiders, Sue Isle
• Love and Romanpunk, Tansy Rayner Roberts
• Eona, Alison Goodman
• Cold Magic, Kate Elliot
• Sprawl, ed Alisa Krasnostein <--so excited!
• and a super old-school illustrated copy of The Dream of the Red Chamber

Also many people complimented me on my hair, which was nice, and I debuted my new jacket which got lots of compliments, which was also nice, except it's also very Chinese so I'm worried it got compliments for the wrong reasons.

I became addicted to Twitter. Maybe there's an actual post in this, but I began regularly checking out the #swancon and #natcon tags on twitter, and I think it was Hespa who said it's such a different experience attending a con whilst using a smart phone. There's so much more to pay attention to! And now I keep checking the hashtag to see if there's anything left that anyone has posted.

A lot of the food I ate was in my room: Emilly and I had walked up to Fresh Provs and supplied ourselves with bread and this really delicious fruit spread and snacks and things, and I mostly ate sandwiches at lunch during the con. This proved a good advance preparation, as there was nothing but wedges and chips that I could eat at the hotel. Incidentally I really enjoyed staying in the con hotel, it's the first year that I did it and I really liked the flexibility it gave me in terms of attending things and veging and running up to my room for my tentacle pillow/my sketch book/to put my shoes on. The hotel itself was not great, there were mobility access issues and the hotel was woefully understaffed. And also single flush toilets everywhere!


Thursday: no actual Swancon things, though I did catch the train down to Murdoch and had dinner with Sheebapants (and gave her my con-bag copy of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms).

Friday: I made it to one session in the Edustream, 'What TV did to me', 'Imagining better presents from worse tomorrows: using SF in sustainability studies' and the panel for the SF Bookclub, wherein they talked about The Windup Girl, which as you all may or may not know I loathe a lot (more on that later). I also ended up on the panel 'Cylons, Bajorans and the 5th Column: Terrorism, Freedom Fighters and Resistance Movements in SF.' There were heaps more panels I had planned to make it to on Friday, but I'm pretty sure I got distracted by sitting around and chatting with people, which was nice anyway.

There was only one panel I wanted to attend on Saturday (Dolls of Desire: Man's unnatural selection of the perfect women' which apparently was really good), but instead of doing that I went on a hunt for a new french-cuffs shirt (success) in Perth's CBD op shops, and then I went ice skating with C. And then for once I actually attended the masquerade, AND I looked fierce, AND I went to a room party! But we don't talk about room parties.

On Sunday I attended one panel on purpose (Steampunk Style and Substance) (several blog posts to follow, I'm not kidding) and one I sort of fell in to (a vid panel), and had lunch with my parents (at Lotus) and trekked out to the wilds of the Armadale line to visit the ex-laws. And then spent a lot of time drinking cocktails and getting hugs in the lounge. Also I had the shakes. Combination not enough sleep/too much caffeine?

Monday I played a lot of blokus and drank some tea, and Vi came to visit so we played some more blokus and she beat me! I managed to miss every panel I'd planned to attend.

After the con finished, I finally made it to Utopia for crispy mushrooms and salty fried (vegan) chicken and for once in my life, I had no one to fight with for the final spicy hou tou mushroom cashews.

I spent Tuesday morning hanging with Emilly at the hotel before my mum came and picked us up and dropped her off at the airport. I progressed up to the parental house, where I started going through boxes of my things, as my parents had requested of me. I have found a massive pile of stuff that I think I could sell at the Swancon auction, and I wish I had realised this earlier. Now my parents are going to have to put up with this stuff for one week less than another twelve months.

A sampling of wares I found in my parents' house:

• a Star Wars Darth Vader Tie Fighter model kit
• a Dick Smith Electronic Kit
• a Buffy figurine with crossbow and bible (in package) (I would sell this for way less than this year's $15 average)
• hilarious kiddies battery operated 'Old Smokey' train set(AMAZING)

SOLID GOLD.

ANYWAY SWANCON: GOOD TIMES. Panel summaries / rants / word rambles tomorrow.

IS THIS RAIN I HEAR?


ETA: swancon #2: steampunk style and substance (a panel)

Do you remember Potluck #1? Of course you do, it was super exciting, and all about holidays. I am pleased to announce that I am hosting Potluck #2: Comfort Food over at my foodie blog. Submissions can cover anything you like, and you do not have to stick to the theme! but please remember that we are trying to talk about intersections. Potluck is, after all, intended to be a carnival for multicultural and intersectional discussions of food, including but not limited to food discussions intersecting with disability, gender, sexuality, fat, animal rights, and cultural and racial issues. How many times have you gone to eat your comfort food, only to be told it's gross and weird and disgusting? How many times has advertising told you that your comfort food is wrong and terrible?

Submissions are open until May 15th, giving you a comfortable six weeks to get something in - that is, six weeks from the original call, which was two weeks ago and I forgot to crosspost here. You can leave submissions in this post or on this post at the foodie blog. Please feel free to submit links to your own posts or to someone else's. You may submit multiple links. Links will be included at the discretion of the host.

Also we are looking for the next host, so if you are interested feel free to get in contact.