Happy Chinese New Year everyone! January 28 was the big night, and it is now the year of the snake!
For Chinese New Year, there is a tv show called 春晚 [chūn wǎn] (which I like to call "Chinese New Year's Rockin' Eve"). Here are the performances I liked from this year's 春晚:
Magic tricks from Lu Chen (刘谦). The first one, about swapping around the cups and chopsticks and whatever, is boring and not even really a magic trick. The second trick is really clever if you can read Chinese- I loved it! (And there's a joke at the beginning where one of the hosts (小尼) says "please give me another chance"- this is because at last year's 春晚, that same guy was one of the hosts, and Lu Chen was doing a magic trick about instructing all the audience members to move cards around in a certain way, and this guy must have messed up a step and his turned out wrong- all the other hosts got the right result at the end, except him, and this was on live tv and he just kind of pretended it was fine, but we all noticed. Anyway this year he didn't mess up, so all is good.)
Anyway, highly recommend this video if you can understand Chinese! Actually, back when I was first studying Chinese, I watched a lot of Lu Chen videos- magic tricks are a good tool for language learning, I would say, because the magician is always talking about what they are physically doing, or describing the objects they are using.
And if you want to watch something in English, here's One Republic performing "Counting Stars". This is really cool! 春晚 has had international performers before, but I don't think any of them have been, like, big famous pop stars I've actually heard of.
These dancing robots:
This song, featuring athletes from China's Olympic team:
Also, Sixth Tone has a photo roundup of public snake structures for the new year: Collage: The Year of the Snake
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Okay now on to the blogaround links!
Here, I sorted the links. Here are the links not related to that felon:
1. New York becomes the first state to close schools for Lunar New Year (January 29)
2. AlphaMove (January 31)
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And I sorted all the links about the latest fascist nonsense down to here. If you are too burned out, you don't have to read them. Donate to a group that supports immigrants and then do something to make yourself happy.
1. Amazon removes 'equity for Black people' and 'LGBTQ+ rights' from company policies (January 13, via) So... big companies only care about diversity and equality when it's the politically popular thing to do.
2. The Chilling Line Trump Just Crossed On Transgender People (January 29) "The attacks on transgender people are no longer cloaked in the faux respectability of “evidence,” “science,” or “protecting kids.” They never truly were, but now even the pretense has been abandoned."
3. Quakers sue to keep US immigration agents out of houses of worship (January 28) "The lawsuit by five Quaker groups said the policy was infringing their right to practice their religion by sowing fear among congregations and leading to the cancellation of services."
4. Fearing encounters with ICE, tribal leaders offer guidance to their members (January 29)