SmartBeijing published some 9 million articles in 2014, all of them utterly fantastic and wonderfully edifying pieces of lifestyle journalism. Whether it was interviews, features, commentary articles, shitburgers, travel stuff, something to do with art or something, or whatever else, you could always count on us being there, camera in hand, locked and loaded with our spellcheck humming away at around 60% efficiency. In case you missed any of these, here's the best stuff we published in 2014. Thanks very much for your readership. Thanks for you clicks. See you again in 2015, which is the year we dedicate to discovering the correct placement of the comma. We;ll get their one, day everybody! ***
[Eat It]: All the Boston Lobsters
"It's a strange and wonderful thing, when one's destiny becomes revealed. You know, you live your life, day after day, searching for some meaning, some purpose, or some design to it all -- Who am I? Why am I here? What's the point of all this? -- and inspiration can come from the most unlikely sources. For me, I know now what I'm meant to do. I know now why I'm here. I know my purpose. For me, one day, the sky cracked open and a chorus of angels sung me to epiphany. The angels, they sung unto me one beatific phrase: free-flow Boston lobster." ***
The Big List of Valentine's Dinners For One Using Items from the 7-11
"Although Paris, the "city of love", might be over 8000 kilometers due west, there's no reason you can't have a romantic Parisian meal right in the comfort of your own criplingly depressing apartment, steeped in your own bleak wretchedness, drowning in your own misery, wracked with a shattering sense of futility so powerful that you can't even move, engulfed in a profound, throbbing anguish that is almost like an eternal, full-body dry heave, howling to the heavens, tears streaming down your face, that you will never -- no, not ever -- never, ever, ever -- NEVER -- find true love." ***
Interview: Lance Crayon, Filmmaker
"Yeah, one more thing, FUCK SXSW! I'm from Texas, I made a good film, and they couldn't have been bothered with it. Submitting my film to them was a waste of money and I'm embarrassed that I did. In my opinion SXSW is the biggest starfucker event in North America. It has nothing to do with spirit and discovering new talent, certainly with its film programming. It's obvious to me that the folks who program their films love hanging with celebrities more than film itself, and it certainly shows in the films they play." ***
The Chili Report: Great Leap's Chili Cook-Off in Photos and Pithy Captions
"SmartBeijing was imbedded at last Saturday's Third Annual Chili Festival down at Great Leap Brewery, reporting live from the scene (not live), doing some wicked sick photojournalism, and sampling the sundry chilies the Beijing community had to offer. Here's the SCENE. Shit was packed. White people: just try to stop us!" ***
First Look: Meridian Space, 77 C&C Park
"Peek at the new Dongcheng government-funded "Culture and Creative Park" at 77 Meishuguan Hou Jie and its centerpiece venue, Meridian..." ***
Game of Cones: The Goddamn 2014 Ice Cream Round-Up Thing
"If you've never taken a candle making class, basically what happens is you start with a simple string and you dip it in liquid wax, pull it out for a bit, air-dry it, and then re-dip it again. It's actually quite neat. You keep dipping and re-dipping this string in and layering the wax in this almost hypnotic process and, eventually, if you're careful and patient, you have this beautiful candle -- the culmination of this serene and methodical process of layering hot wax. That's what this ice cream tastes like but instead of starting with a string, they started with a Saint Bernard's dick." ***
[Eat It (Or... Not)]: Heaven's Tequila Marinated Beef Tenderloin
"And here she is in the menu. The Tequila Marinated Beef Tenderloin. Look at this picture. It's like a mugshot of the thing. It's a fucking scandal. Don't know whether to order it or throw a coat over it's head and get it into the back seat of a sedan." ***
We All Need Mini Cars RIGHT NOW
"Breaking news in THINGS THAT ARE TOTALLY AWESOME." ***
Tiny Seat Dining: Tower of Roasted Lamb Scorpion
"I imagine this is what GWAR would put up in a celebrity Top Chef episode. (Ed's Note: R.I.P. Oderus!) When this medieval torture device arrives at the table, it is a sight to behold. It towers over you; Its spikes and adornments seem to unfurl like some sort of barbarian butterfly. It's a gruesome sight. It serves as a warning to all other sheep to stay far away. " ***
[The Vagitarian]: Kungpao Masochism
"Two months after Marie Lee’s "Pleasure of Pain" BDSM party at Basement and I still get flashes of that guy sitting dejectedly at the bar, full leather body suit, gingerly sipping a cocktail through the zipper in his gimp mask, shaking his head to himself like, “Man, I just cannot believe I blew out the motor on my blender again. Why didn’t I thaw the damn bananas better? Zaijian, breakfast smoothies.” It was just so... relatable. " ***
That Future: An Interview with Kim Laughton
"It’s never occurred to me as weird — online feels natural. Not sure if there is still a need to separate web culture from human culture because virtually everyone (in the developed world) uses the net. Some people are strange and perhaps more open with that strangeness online than they would otherwise be. I think it will be exciting to see what people create as 3D software becomes easier. Looking at Second Life already gives a taste of that future." ***
[DIY Diary]: Tina Blakeney, Redscale Studios
"Currently I am working on developing moving image installations and performances when I have spare time. I've been creating hand-made 35mm slides, bleaching, painting, and burning prints and negatives. I have also been working with 16mm and 8mm film, both collecting discarded film and then bleaching and painting directly on to 16mm film — then working with multiple projectors for performances." ***
[Undercurrents]: The Cleaver Quarterly
"To bring it into perspective, one minute we're sending an email to this guy about his restaurant, and the next week we get an email back from him saying that there's been a bombing in a Lebanese restaurant around the corner from him, and everything is on lock-down. He's saying, "We all have to stay at home." That, for us, thinking we were doing a magazine about food, which is, you know, a leisurely topic everyone enjoys, getting an email like that gave us a bit of a pause for thought." ***
Inside Beijing Roller Derby
"I'm amazed by the people that have joined [the Beijing team]. In teams in the past, back in the UK, when it's readily available, there's a set venue, a set time, you know how much dues you're going to have to pay, you know when there's a bout and when you have to train for that. In China everything is a lot more up in the air, but we have people that make it regularly." ***
[The Vagitarian]: A Beijing Vasectomy Story
"First, the urologist at Xiehe International Department told him that if he tampered with his testicles, he'd never walk right again. And that his manly qi would dissipate into so many fairy farts." ***
[Outbound]: One Night in Seoul
"A perfectly executed Korean visa hop - the waster's guide to making the most of your obligatory 12-hour stint in Seoul. Basically: Taco Bell!" ***
Gonzo Worldwide: John Yingling
"Beijing was a clusterfuck of amazing stuff. I don't think the kids here realize how good their scene is. I really don't. To me, all I do is go to shows and I thought it was amazing." ***
Six White Guys Walk into a Bar: A Beijing Comedy Roundtable
"Beijing, it's the well that you keep going back to. But with new guys, it's dangerous and they come with like, "Heyyyy, Chinese girls don't have boobs, right?" Hacky material -- anything with women and dating is my number one. Anything to do with dating, Chinese girls, you're fucking done." ***
[Outbound]: Zhangjiajie
"So these mountain. Pretty damn neat. It's like visiting a really nice Windows screen saver." ***
[Culture Bureau]: Hot & Cold
"We played through one amp. I had this shitty Indian amp with built-in spring reverb, so you could just shake it and it would make crazy spring reverb sounds. So our idea was that we would have everything through the same amp so that we could control it more easily. Like turn it off quickly or make it loud quickly or whatever. So when we sound checked, whoever was doing sound at the time was just like, "What are you guys doing?" ***
[Offbeat]: Swimmin' in Houhai
"It's a bit nerve-racking, swimming in a lake that's in the center of a massive city. Especially if that massive city happens to be Beijing. Like what if my leg gets bitten off by a fucking radiated mutated rainbow shark with ten lazer eyes? Or worse yet, what about if I'm swimming and I see like a log of shit float right passed my face!" ***
Interview: Shackup & Howie Lee, B2B
"Apparently people who go out to party in Beijing are not really into music, most of them. I know a lot of art people, they're really into music, they listen to all the stuff I play, but they don't go out to parties. They think all the parties are shit, all the DJs are shit. They don't want to go out unless there's a big DJ coming. They don't trust local DJs or local producers." ***
The 2014 Shitburger Cup: Let's Meet The Contestants!
"What about the burgers that just slap the ever-loving shit out of YOUR SOUL they're so bad? What indeed?"
[The Vagitarian]: All That Glitters - A Beijing Vajazzling Story
"Yup. Bling on your thing, honey. Glitter on your splitter." ***
A Chinese Horror Story: 'The House That Never Dies'
"There is. A House. In Chaoyangmen. Beijing haunted house is the backdrop for Chinese thriller block buster. But is The House That Never Dies any good?" ***
Interview: Bob Blunt
"I hadn't any grand illusions, I just kept doing it, and kept doing it, and in the end I just thought, "Fuck it, I'll put it out." ***
[Offbeat]: Mr. X Mystery House
"You have exactly one hour. The ominous red digital clock on the wall is counting down. Click. Click. Click. Do everything right and the answers are revealed to you until you eventually find the key to unlock the door to freedom." ***
Interview: Hong Mei & Tom Carter
"Tom and I both tend not to “prepare” for our trips. We just go and see what happens. The first far-away place I had ever been was Tibet, with Tom, which was a really touching experience for me. As a Chinese, to see so much spirituality out in the open really made an impression on me. India was very similar to Tibet in that regard, so I think that prepared me, subconsciously, for what was to come." ***
Jonny Vs. The Volcano: Eating the 'World's Spiciest Noodles'
"I went for the beef first. The beef smothered in chilli seeds. Oddly, that was fine. It seemed that this was going to be OK despite knowing that what I was about to eat was essentially a plate of 200,000 Scoville units lightly topped with noodles. The beef was fine. The noodles, on the other hand, were very much not. "
Interview: Yi Zhou
"It is pretty dynamic, active, and chaotic in a metropolis like Beijing. I’m glad to see that there are always new things going on in the city. The other side, though, is that although it looks dynamic on the surface, the projects’ quality is not always of the highest caliber. Anyway, Rome wasn’t built in a day. It has to go through the whole process: from quantitative to qualitative changes, and that takes time." ***
[Outbound]: Hong Kong Underground
"The official company line is that Bibo is some mysterious, anonymous artist who wanted to create a "place where contemporary and street art converge from all corners of the world and where freedom of the senses is encouraged" — for Goldman Sachs types, I guess." ***
[Outbound]: Shanghai's Jackie Chan Museum
"Jackie Chan is a complex character." ***
[Marketplace]: Hongqiao Tianle Toy Market
"Did you ever wish you could go back to being ten years old again? Do you remember not having to worry about work, rent, money, relationships, sex, global warming, pollution, war, crime, poverty, the permanent soul-crushing sense of oppression and futility that is waking up every day in this modern life -- all that stuff? Wouldn’t it be so very sweet to go back to those simple times?" ***
Time Served: An Interview with Li Yueyang
"There were people from the village next to us that were in the gang, and eventually I attacked them with a knife. Later on they came after me, dozens of them, so I got a gun."
Dinner in the Big House: Tianjin's Prison-Themed Restaurant
"The main room has lots of iron bars including one around the drum kit/DJ area to give it the vibe of the photos of George Clooney playing a lip-syncing transvestite in The Harvest but with enough neon and chandeliers to suggest that there was a special offer at the neon and chandelier store. Also, the wallpaper depicts outer space." ***
The Great [Vagitarian] Edible Underwear Challenge
"The hardest thing about this column has always been finding a graceless way to segue between the part about boning and the part about chili recipes." ***
[Culture Bureau]: Christiaan Virant, FM3
"When you came to China in the '80s, there was just nothing. I had to re-grow up with Taiwanese pop music, because in the '80s in Fujian, that's all you had. Cassettes from Wang Jie, all these Taiwanese pop stars, that then became my new youthful disillusion of music. So my first romances and my first memories of ecstasy and breakup were all soundtracked by bad Taiwanese pop music. [Laughs.] Which I still have a soft spot in my heart for." ***
[Chef's Table]: The Beijing Craft Beer Blast Part I
"Yeah, it's got a really nice taste. From the non-beer drinker. Doesn't have any of that rotten apple flavor. It's a little flowery. Not too big. Nice balance. It's centered. Actually, I don't hate it. It's easy-going. Pleasantly impressed by this one… " ***
Interview: Helen Feng, Nova Heart
"We were also highly influenced by what was happening in our lives. Being in our 30s, we had our mid-life crises. Like, "What am I doing with my life? I'm no longer a child, I'm no longer a teenager, I'm becoming an adult but what the hell does that mean?" The album was like a sponge of everything that was happening in our lives, all the thoughts that were going through our heads." ***
The Great Gulou Bullshit Christmas Wishlist 2014
"Just be careful though! Don't think I have to remind you the last time someone bought one of these in a little Chinese curio shop! Happy holidays, y'all..." ***
