SEXY BEIJING

The weekend before last I was at an AIDS benefit with some classmates and overheard "Did you see Sexy Beijing?" "No, is she here?". I hadn't a clue what they were talking about but was told that this "Sexy Beijing" thing was a video-blog whose creator and star was in our midst. Although from the sounds of it I feared some sort of chipper horror of a expat covering the local club scene, my vision was quickly amended as the young lady in question, a sweet, diminutive American girl with distinctive horn-rimmed glasses, stopped to talk to my friends on her way out. My curiosity was piqued, so much so that I remembered the encounter despite the fact that it occurred early in the evening, before we passed a massage parlor offering not only a seemingly unnecessary "massage of the kidney", but also a possibly useful but rather shady sounding "massage of the ovary", as well as a tantalizingly vague "part of the body massage". It also withstood much wandering around a sleepy hutong looking for a secret bar called "Candy Floss", and ending up in a packed bar where a Chinese band played a surprisingly kick-ass cover of a song I usually hate, Sting's "Englishman in New York". It must have been the bongos.

Anyhow, last weekend, while coming down from a midterm, I looked up Sexy Beijing on Youtube, which, happily, is hardly ever blocked these days, and I actually quite enjoyed it. Su Fei is a personable hostess, and does the best kind of pop anthropology, chatting with regular folks about all manner of topics with apparent ease. The production quality is great, and the gimmick not overdone.

This one, on the English names Chinese people choose for themselves, is quite short and funny:



This one, on finding love in Beijing, is more in keeping with the spirit of the original:



This one is mostly ridiculous, but kind of worth it just so you can hear "我有bitches，我可以大电话给她" (I have some bitches I can call) [at about 4:47 if you're impatient]。 There are also lots of pretty girls and some very silly Chinese rappers.



The production company behind Sexy Beijing, Danwei.org, has some other good stuff out there too, most of it far more on the intellectual side of the infotainment spectrum, which I recommend you browse at your leisure as time and interest permits.