Tea ceremony, or Chado (The Way of Tea), is a traditional Japanese art involving ritualistic preparation of tea. Influenced by Zen Buddhism philosophy, the core teaching of chado is to attain a spiritual state of selflessness and peacefulness through making and sharing one bowl of tea.The library is located at 612 Smithfield St. (map). The event runs from 2:30 to 4:30 pm, and is free and open to the public.
Learn the history and philosophy of the Japanese tea ceremony while tasting Japanese tea and sweets.
Chen Guangcheng, known to many as “the barefoot lawyer,” was born in 1971 in the village of Dongshigu, China. Blind since infancy, illiterate until his late teens, he nonetheless taught himself law and became a fiery advocate for tens of thousands of Chinese who had no voice. His escape from inhuman house arrest in China made international headlines, as did his flight to the American embassy in Beijing. In 2012 he became a student at New York University Law School; since 2013 he has been a senior research fellow at Catholic University, the Witherspoon Institute, and the Lantos Foundation. He now lives with his wife and two children in the Washington, D.C., area.The event runs from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm and is free and open to the public. RSVP is required and can be done online. The City of Asylum is located at 330 Sampsonia Way on Pittsburgh's Northside (map).
Set in contemporary Hong Kong, "The Killer" tells the story of Jeff Chow, a hired gun with a heart of gold who falls in love with a nightclub singer named Jennie, whom he has accidentally blinded during a shoot out. Determined to make enough money to give up his violent ways and pay for the cornea transplants that could restore Jennie's sight, Jeff accepts one final deadly assignment. Having completed the assassination, he speeds off from the scene of a crime in a spectacular motorboat chase with the police.And a 1998 Roger Ebert review says of the 1995 Wong Kar-Wai film Fallen Angels:
The chase is the first move in an extended game of cat and mouse with his pursuer, Inspector Lee, who eventually becomes his ally when the two of them face down the entire Hong Kong underworld in an apocalyptic shootout.
To describe the plot is to miss the point. "Fallen Angels" takes the materials of the plot--the characters and what they do--and assembles them like a photo montage. At the end, you have impressions, not conclusions. His influences aren't other filmmakers, but still photographers and video artists--the kinds of artists who do to images what rap artists are doing to music when they move the vinyl back and forth under the needle.
The people in his films are not characters but ingredients, or subjects. They include a hit man and his female "manager," who share separate dayparts in a hotel room that seems only precariously separate from the train tracks outside. (She scrubs the place down before her shift, kneeling on the floor in her leather minidress and mesh stockings.) There is also a man who stopped speaking after eating a can of outdated pineapple slices (pineapple sell-by dates were also a theme in "Chungking Express"). He makes a living by "reopening" stores that are closed for the night, and has an uncertain relationship with a young woman who acts out her emotions theatrically. There is another woman wandering about in a blond wig, for no better purpose, I suspect, than that "Chungking Express" also contained such a character.
Playing pop from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, Euro and 'Merica:As the group's Facebook page says,
DJ DivaCup
DJ QueenBee (welcome her back from Taiwan!)
DJ Niubi
...and special guest Tommy Yoo!
As always, DRESS UP if that's your thing! Take us to kawaii outer space ㅇㅅㅇ
BUBBLEPOP is a dance party for K-Pop, J-Pop, Mando-pop and everything else fun and cuteCattivo is located at 116 44th Street in Lawrenceville (map). The event starts at 10:00 pm and is free.
Enigmatic and often mesmerizing, super-saturated with color, drawn like a still plain ripped by brief, unexpected gusts of wind—The Assassin is one of the most flat-out beautiful movies of the last decade, and also one of the most puzzling. Returning to features after a prolonged absence, Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien has made a martial-arts period piece like none other, keeping to the classic principles and conventions of wuxia—the storied Chinese genre of wandering warriors and codes of honor—while casting them in a mysterious light. Bold takes on popular genres generally set out to de-mystify, but Hou has accomplished the opposite. Washing away centuries of film and fiction, he envisions a tale from the Tang dynasty—about a deadly martial artist who must kill the man to whom she was once betrothed—as a window into the haunted otherworld of the mythic past.Showtimes are now available online, with Friday's showings set for 5:45 pm and 8:00 pm. The Harris Theater is located at 809 Liberty Ave. in the downtown Pittsburgh Cultural District (map).
Perhaps the most confounding thing about The Assassin is how much of a straightforward wuxia movie it is, at least in retrospect. Raised since girlhood to be a remorseless killer of corrupt lords and court officials, Nie Yinniang (Hou regular Shu Qi) spares a target on account of his young son, and is punished with an assignment that’s meant to wipe away whatever speck of compassion she has left: to kill Tian Ji’an (Chang Chen), the cousin to whom she was promised in marriage as a child, and who is now the governor of Weibo. It’s a given that Yinniang—largely silent and nearly invisible, despite her stomping gait—can strike at any moment; the question that shadows every scene is why she doesn’t. She is there behind every curtain in Tian’s palace and on every rafter, listening, hanging like smoke, materializing only to disappear again—the passive hero as threat.
When the adult Truly Lin (Joe Chen Chiau-en) feels increasingly disheartened with her unrewarding office job, memories of her high-school years – during which her teenage self had fallen into the latter of what she terms the “popular” and “not pretty” camps before a belated makeover – flood her mind.Tickets and showtimes are available at the AMC Loews Waterfront website. The theater is located at 300 West Waterfront Dr. in the Waterfront shopping complex in Homestead (map), across the Monongahela River from Greenfield, Squirrel Hill, and the rest of Pittsburgh.
Back in the 1990s, the young Truly (Vivian Sung Yu-hua, star of the film adaptation of another Ko novel, Café. Waiting. Love) is initially smitten with handsome schoolmate Ouyang (Dino Lee Yu-hsi), but a zany run-in with the campus hoodlum Hsu Taiyu (Darren Wang Da-lu) dramatically changes the equation.
In the excessively saccharine will-they-won’t-they affair that ensues, Taiyu and Truly go out regularly on the pretext that they’re helping each other court their respective crushes. Plot twists: Taiyu used to be a wonderful student before a traumatic incident; Truly turns out to be a hottie.
Enigmatic and often mesmerizing, super-saturated with color, drawn like a still plain ripped by brief, unexpected gusts of wind—The Assassin is one of the most flat-out beautiful movies of the last decade, and also one of the most puzzling. Returning to features after a prolonged absence, Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien has made a martial-arts period piece like none other, keeping to the classic principles and conventions of wuxia—the storied Chinese genre of wandering warriors and codes of honor—while casting them in a mysterious light. Bold takes on popular genres generally set out to de-mystify, but Hou has accomplished the opposite. Washing away centuries of film and fiction, he envisions a tale from the Tang dynasty—about a deadly martial artist who must kill the man to whom she was once betrothed—as a window into the haunted otherworld of the mythic past.Showtimes have not yet been released. The Harris Theater is located at 809 Liberty Ave. in the downtown Pittsburgh Cultural District (map).
Perhaps the most confounding thing about The Assassin is how much of a straightforward wuxia movie it is, at least in retrospect. Raised since girlhood to be a remorseless killer of corrupt lords and court officials, Nie Yinniang (Hou regular Shu Qi) spares a target on account of his young son, and is punished with an assignment that’s meant to wipe away whatever speck of compassion she has left: to kill Tian Ji’an (Chang Chen), the cousin to whom she was promised in marriage as a child, and who is now the governor of Weibo. It’s a given that Yinniang—largely silent and nearly invisible, despite her stomping gait—can strike at any moment; the question that shadows every scene is why she doesn’t. She is there behind every curtain in Tian’s palace and on every rafter, listening, hanging like smoke, materializing only to disappear again—the passive hero as threat.
The organizers of the Northwest Chinese Popup Restaurant events will host a food-tasting event on Friday, November 13, at Leaf and Plate in Shadyside. Organizer Shanning Wan passes along information and a menu:For $10, customers can choose a baked bun, a sandwich and a salad(from the following list). Also appetizers and entreess are a la carte. It's a BYOB event.Leaf and Plate recently opened at 5884 Ellsworth Ave. in Shadyside (map). The event runs from 6:30 to 9:30 pm.
BUNS/BAOZI
Baked Lamb Bun 羊肉烤包子 $4
lamb, onions, ginger, cumin with spicy sauce
Baked Beef Bun 薄皮包子 $3.5
cumin, carrots, onion, beef with spicy sauce
Steamed Vegan Bun 素烤包子 $3
bell pepper, zucchini, potato with spicy sauce
SANDWICH
(baked or steamed bread)
Cumin Lamb Sandwich 孜然羊肉夹馍 $4.5
lamb, cumin, green pepper, onion
Peanut Beef Sandwich 花生牛肉夹馍 $4
beef, green bean, carrot, tofu, peanut
Soy Sauce Pork Sandwich 红烧肉夹馍 $3.75
pork, soy sauce, green onion, traditional Chinese spice
Vegan Sandwich 素夹馍 $3.5
potato, red pepper, spinach, tofu strings
SALAD
(with homemade dressing)
Pi La Hong Salad 皮拉红 $5
green pepper, celery, tomato, onion, chickpea
Smashed Cucumber Salad 拍黄瓜 $4.5
cucumber, crushed peanut, spicy garlic dressing
Buckwheat Salad 甘肃凉菜 $5.5
buckwheat noodle, carrot, celery, red and green pepper
Mu Er Salad 黑木耳凉菜 $6
black wood ear mushroom, carrot, yuba(layered dried tofu)
The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will present We Jung Yi and her talk "The Pleasure of Mourning: Korean War Blockbusters in Post-Cold War South Korea" as the next installment of its Asia on Screen series on November 19.WE JUNG YI is Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. Her book manuscript, entitled Remembering the Unfinished War: Literature, Film, and the Politics of Mourning in South Korea, engages with the cultural turn in Korean literary studies by tracing historical and aesthetic connections among diverse forms of Korean War memories. She is the author of “Between Longing and Belonging: Diasporic Return in Contemporary South Korean Cinema,” collected in Cinematic Homecomings: Exile and Return in Transnational Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2014).And a description from the Pitt International Week website:
We Jung Yi's talk traces the ways in which the Korean War blockbuster has emerged as a form of remembering the unfinished war on the Korean peninsula, in tandem with neoliberal globalization in South Korea. She will review three Korean War blockbusters as works of mourning in transition and translation: Joint Security Area, Taegukgi, and Welcome to Dongmakgol. Her analysis focuses on how their spectacle-charged forms affectively move their audiences to engage with the traumatic legacy of their nation.The talk begins at 3:00 in 4130 Posvar Hall (map), and is free and open to the public.
In this talk, Dr. Akiko Hashimoto explores the stakes of war memory in Japan after its catastrophic defeat in World War II, showing how and why defeat has become an indelible part of national collective life, especially in recent decades. Divisive war memories lie at the root of the contentious politics surrounding Japan's pacifist constitution and remilitarization, and fuel the escalating frictions in East Asia known collectively as Japan's 'history problem.' Admission is free and open to the public with particular interest for Japan Studies, History, and Sociology majors. Pizza will be served.The talk begins at 12:00 pm in 4130 Posvar Hall (map).
Celebrate our city's diverse culture as we explore new words through songs, action rhymes and stories in both English and Japanese. For children ages 2-5 and their parents or caregivers.It runs from 11:00 to 11:30 am. The library is located at 130 S. Whitfield St. (map).
Set in a futuristic Japan after the end of a brutal world war, science has advanced by leaps and bounds giving humanity the choice to prolong life and reduce suffering with the use of sophisticated cybernetics. With all of humanity linked into one system of minds and personalities known as ghosts, the biggest threat to civilization is the cyber terrorists capable of hijacking people’s bodies and memories.Tickets can be purchased online via links from the official website.
When a ghost-infecting virus known as Fire-Starter begins spreading through the system resulting in the assassination of the Japanese Prime Minister, Major Motoko Kusanagi and her elite team of special operatives are called in to track down its source. As they delve deeper and deeper into their investigation, they uncover traces of government corruption and a shadowy broker that bears an all-too-familiar face.
When your target can be anywhere and look like anyone, the only choice you have is to trust your ghost, and hope you aren’t infected too.
The film opens in torrential rain, and five shots move from long shot to closeup to reveal two men sitting in the shelter of Kyoto's Rashomon Gate. The rain will be a useful device, unmistakably setting apart the present from the past. The two men are a priest and a woodcutter, and when a commoner runs in out of the rain and engages them in conversation, he learns that a samurai has been murdered and his wife raped and a local bandit is suspected. In the course of telling the commoner what they know, the woodcutter and the priest will introduce flashbacks in which the bandit, the wife and the woodcutter say what they saw, or think they saw--and then a medium turns up to channel the ghost of the dead samurai. Although the stories are in radical disagreement, it is unlike any of the original participants are lying for their own advantage, since each claims to be the murderer.The movie starts at 7:00 pm in the JVH Auditorium in Lawrence Hall (map). For more information, visit the event's Facebook page.
The Chinese American Students Association brings the Golden Dragon Acrobats to Bellefield Auditorium for a night of performances. Admission is free for Pitt students (show your Pitt ID) and $10 for non-Pitt students. Students, faculty, and members of the Pittsburgh community alike can all watch amazing contortions, balance acts, and many other impressive feats from this acrobatic troupe from China!Bellefield Auditorium is located in Bellefield Hall, in turn located on S. Bellefield Ave. in Oakland (map).
Set in a futuristic Japan after the end of a brutal world war, science has advanced by leaps and bounds giving humanity the choice to prolong life and reduce suffering with the use of sophisticated cybernetics. With all of humanity linked into one system of minds and personalities known as ghosts, the biggest threat to civilization is the cyber terrorists capable of hijacking people’s bodies and memories.The Hollywood Theater is one of several theaters to show the film during its initial limited release in the US on November 10, 11, and 16. The movie was released in Japan on June 20. Showtimes and ticket information is available on the theater's website. The theater is located at 1449 Potomac Ave. in Dormont (map), and is accessible by Pittsburgh's subway/LRT at a block south of Potomac Station.
When a ghost-infecting virus known as Fire-Starter begins spreading through the system resulting in the assassination of the Japanese Prime Minister, Major Motoko Kusanagi and her elite team of special operatives are called in to track down its source. As they delve deeper and deeper into their investigation, they uncover traces of government corruption and a shadowy broker that bears an all-too-familiar face.
When your target can be anywhere and look like anyone, the only choice you have is to trust your ghost, and hope you aren’t infected too.
Soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic in a former school. The memory-filled space becomes a revelatory world for housewife and volunteer Jenjira, as she watches over Itt, a handsome soldier with no family visitors. Jen befriends young medium Keng who uses her psychic powers to help loved ones communicate with the comatose men. Doctors explore ways, including colored light therapy, to ease the men’s troubled dreams. Jen discovers Itt’s cryptic notebook of strange writings and blueprint sketches. There may be a connection between the soldiers’ enigmatic syndrome and the mythic ancient site that lies beneath the clinic. Magic, healing, romance, and dreams are all part of Jen’s tender path to a deeper awareness of herself and the world around her.And of 2015's Mountains May Depart, from a review in The Guardian:
[The] movie is split into three parts, taking place in 1999, in 2014 and in 2025. We begin with a bunch of people dancing to the Pet Shop Boys’ Go West, and as the new century and millennium dawns, the movie shows China more or less obsessed with doing that: going West, embracing capitalism while at the same retaining the monolithic state structures of the past, and beginning to worship consumer goods as status symbols: stereos, cars, and perhaps most importantly mobile phones — a technology which the film shows retaining its fetishistic power for the next quarter-century.Cemetery of Splendour (รักที่ขอนแก่น) will play at the Melwood Screening Room in Oakland on November 7 at 3:00 pm and November 10 at 8:00 pm. Mountains May Depart (山河故人) will play on November 7 at Waterworks Cinema at 9:00 pm and on November 11 at the Harris Theater at 8:30 pm.
First we will have a short talk about the history of Sumo in Japan. Then we will have a fun tournament to find CMU's best sumo wrestler. Bring your friends to find the best sumo wrestler in your group!The event starts at 4:30 pm in the Connan Room of University Center (campus map).
Join JSA at CMU as we present Culture Month. Each week we will throw at least one event to display the rich and colorful culture of Japan, whether it's through food, performances, or play! Join us as we listen to the powerful taiko, eat hot, delicious okonomiyaki, and watch the delicate Japanese traditional tea ceremony.
Events include performances, games, food, a maid cafe, and more! The festival is expected to last from 2-6 pm. All are welcome!Bunkasai, says Wikipedia,
is an annual event held by most schools in Japan, from Nursery schools to universities at which their students display their artistic achievements.The event will take place at the O'Hara Student Center (map) Ballroom from 2:00 pm. More information is available at the event's Facebook page.
Speakers at the ceremony will include University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Emeritus Mark A. Nordenberg as well as Ho Young Ahn, South Korea’s ambassador to the United States, and E. Maxine Bruhns, director of Pitt’s Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs. In addition, the Korean Heritage Classroom Committee—a group of local Korean-American citizens who oversaw the classroom’s funding efforts—will present a ceremonial key to Nordenberg. The presentation, lead by Sang C. Park, symbolizes the committee gifting the classroom to the University. Park is cochair of the Korean Heritage Classroom committee and a respected pediatric cardiologist. David Kim, an international business leader and committee cochair, will serve as the Master of Ceremonies.. . .
The festival will feature performances by local Korean-American talent as well as entertainers from abroad. Notable performers will include the Maryland-based Korean Performing Arts Academy of America, the Korean Pittsburgh Women’s Chorus, the Young Brothers Tae Kwon Do Academy, and the internationally acclaimed Korean Children’s Choir from Seoul, South Korea. Authentic Korean food and crafts will be available, and Pitt’s Quo Vadis Guides—Nationality Room student tour guides with extensive knowledge of each room—will lead tours of the Korean Heritage Classroom.
The Korean Heritage Classroom’s design was inspired by the “Myeongnyundang”—the Hall of Enlightenment that was the main lecture hall of South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University. Founded in 1398, Sungkyunkwan served as Korea’s “royal academy” and was the region’s foremost institution of higher education for nearly two centuries. The university still operates today (with modernized facilities), and the lecture hall continues to be used for special ceremonial events. It is recognized throughout Asia as a prominent historical monument.As the article says, the day's events begin with a dedication ceremony in Heinz Chapel at 2:30, followed by a Korean cultural festival in the Commons Room (first floor of the Cathedral of Learning) at 3:30 and accompanied by tours of the room all day on the 15th. The Cathedral of Learning is a 42-story building located at 4200 Fifth Ave. (map) in Oakland.
Like the Hall of Enlightenment, the Korean Heritage Classroom depicts three connected rooms. The center room is longer with a lofty ceiling. Sungkyunkwan officials used the center room for ceremonies, lectures, rituals, and other important public events. The two smaller adjoining rooms were used for faculty research and private meetings.
If you want to improve your Japanese language skills AND reading skills in the same area, you are most welcome to join us. This is a great chance to meet with Japanese residents of Pittsburgh and talk/read with your peers so that everyone can learn something new. Refreshments will be provided, as well as reading materials at every level will be providedThe event runs from 4:30 to 6:30 pm. Like the other Japanese Language Exchange meetings with the JASP, it will be held in Kenmawr Apartments, located at 401 Shady Ave. (map). It runs from 4:00 to 6:00 pm in the Community Room and is free and open to the public.
