Culture

TINA HE | Bad Artisan

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I was in New York City for the sole purpose of visiting some indie second-hand bookstores so I could get some best deal in town to justify spending a hundred dollars traveling here from Ithaca. I got a tote that says “If you go home with somebody & they don’t have books, don’t f**k ‘em” and loaded it with as many books as it would fit. L let out a loud breath and asked if I wanted a photo of myself since I looked ridiculous with all these books and I probably would want this on my Instagram; hence I handed over my brand new camera and smiled hysterically at the ground to follow the rubrics of a candid photo—I also defended that I was currently on a spiritual journey of searching for inspirations. L proposed that inspirations would come through if we could go eat sashimi right now. The sashimi were aligned according to their color schemes and the mystical glow diffused by their texture had transformed them into iridescent exotic gems. L started explaining which ones are so highly regarded in Japan that they used to be served only to the royals, and which ones have to be prepared at a certain temperature to preserve texture—perfectly-pronounced Japanese words and gastronomic terms flowed from his lips.

Life

TINA HE | Castle of the Contagious

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“If you can bring this to the States…” He kept his voice low, trying not to make a fuss, but he could not dim the shine in his eyes. Four weeks ago, I probed into the underground art market in China, where insiders trade information with hungry artists trying to exhibit their pieces abroad. The market was lively: drunk art dealers from Europe were laughing hysterically and handing each other different flavors of vapor cig, girls wearing night-club mini skirts were ordering cocktails with incomprehensible names that sounded like the Chinese translation of random German words, and a kid was screaming an “F” word embroidered on a shirt and asked his mom what it means. It was loud and dreamy, and the air was infused with everything that was supposed and not supposed to be there. So when he kept his voice low, I could barely hear what he said.