Today we're pleased to share a special live edition of Sinica recorded last Saturday at Capital-M in Beijing. Held to a standing-room only crowd, we talked all about our ongoing love-hate relationship with Beijing, and asked what on earth is happening to the city that so many of us have known since the 1980s and even earlier. As housing prices and rents soar, hutongs get ripped down and "crazy bad" air becomes the new normal, will Beijing maintain its heart as a cultural capital, or is the city losing itself and our affections?

Filled with stories of pig excrement, SARS babies, and enough Chinese cursing to satiate even the Beijing Profanity Alliance, this show was a pleasure to put on and we were really glad to see everyone who came out. Joining Kaiser Kuo on stage were two Sinica stalwarts: Chinese media export Jeremy Goldkorn and David Moser, jazz pianist and head of the CET Beijing program. We were also thrilled to be joined by Zha Jianying, author of China Pop and Tide Players, and a now-expat Beijinger from New York who admits to being torn between her two homes.

As always, if you'd like to have editions of Sinica stream to your computer automatically as they're released, be sure to subscribe to us using iTunes, following the instructions included with any other podcast. You can also download this podcast as a standalone mp3 file. And if you have any specific feedback or suggestions for future guests or topics you'd like to hear covered, you can send an email directly to Kaiser anytime at sinica@popupchinese.com.
 said on
December 8, 2011
In case anyone's interested, Evan Osnos of The New Yorker wrote a great article about Beijing called "City of Dreams":

http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/503653?all=yes
 said on
January 25, 2012
If you happened to have anyone film this, why don't you put it up on youtube so that those of us who aren't near Beijing can actually see you guys talk?
 said on
January 26, 2012
@susanjallen,

Hopefully we'll be able to do more of these in the future and get them filmed as well. Definitely something we're hoping for at least.

--david
 said on
June 3, 2013
A bit disappointed in this podcast, mostly because of so much wingeing about how terrible the city is, but compared to most other cities in China Beijing's lifestyle is much, much better. If they really want bad cities to live in go to Wuhan, Taiyuan, Lanzhou, Ningxia, etc.
 said on
July 26, 2013
Crackers complaining about another country, why am i not surprised. Go complain amongst yourselves again like when the British immigrated to Australia and looked down on their fellow white
 said on
July 26, 2013
Im mixed latino and I like the resources on this site but this colonial atittude/racism has got to stop in. When you talk in racist undertones you just make plp like my friends unsubscribe, don't talk sh*t that you cant get away with in America.
Mark Lesson Studied