"Education Abroad", a mini K-drama filmed at CMU.

Season 1, Episode 1, from December 2012. Links to other episodes are found on Terry Song's YouTube channel.

An errant Google search recently turned up Terry Song's "Education Abroad", a mini Korean-language drama series filmed and set in Carnegie Mellon University over the past year. Song is a Pittsburgh native and built the cast for "the dramatic story of two fated lovers who meet in high school and are reunited in college" from local Korean students. There are ten episodes of the English-subtitled series across two seasons and running on YouTube. A series synopsis, from the February 2012 Kickstarter campaign page:

The show is about Danny Han and Heejung Kim. Two seniors who meet in high school and fall in love. Though Heejung is a new foreign exchange student from Korea, Danny is able to make a connection with her. However, when Heejung's father finds out that Danny is from a poor immigrant family with no high ranking name and can't even speak Korean, he quickly rejects their love and sends Heejung back to Korea. Although she cannot forget about Danny, she does as her father wishes, but returns to America for college at a prestigious international university. Danny, heart-broken, vows to never let something like this happen to him again, and goes to Korea himself as soon as he graduates. There he gets a tutoring job teaching English. He returns to America for college about a year later with a firm grasp of the language, culture, and even a Korean name. But what the two never expected was seeing each other again, as they both happen to attend the same prestigious international university!

Terry was kind enough to answer a few questions by email this week:

Hong Kong movie A Simple Life in North Hills, June 12.

Readers in the North Hills who have some free time Wednesday afternoon could visit Northland Public Library (map) for A Simple Life (桃姐), the 2012 Hong Kong movie that's June's installment of the library's Foreign Film Series. Dramacrazy provides a summary likely plagiarized from elsewhere:

A solemn yet humorous exploration of seniority, the film tells a bittersweet story revolving around the lives of elderly maid Sister Tao and her master, played respectively by veteran actress Deanie Ip and superstar Andy Lau, whose past screen collaborations serve to inspire enormous chemistry between their characters. Their impeccable performances have earned numerous prestigious prizes for the film, including Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, Best Director, Actor, and Actress at the Golden Horse Awards, and the rare feat of the Big Five (Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress) at the Hong Kong Film Awards. Sister Tao (Deanie Ip) has served five generations of the Leung family since she was thirteen. Today, at over seventy years old, she continues to take care of Roger (Andy Lau), the only member of the family left in Hong Kong. After suffering a stroke at home one day, Tao realizes it's about time she retired, so she asks Roger to find her a nursing home for rehabilitation. Tao struggles to adjust to the strange new environment as well as her eccentric fellow inmates, but Roger is there to care for this mother figure who has devoted her life to his.

The movie runs from 2 - 4 pm and is free. You can also watch the movie online with English subtitles on Dramacrazy.net, or can buy it from YesAsia for, like, $25.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry at Harris Theater, June 13 and 15.

As part of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers' "Art on Film" series, the 2012 documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry will play at the Harris Theater on June 13 and June 15. The official website writes of the film and the subject:

Ai Weiwei is China's most famous international artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention.

It's been in Pittsburgh a few times the past year, and the City Paper wrote last September:

Weiwei enjoys fawning attention in the West, particularly for his pointed critiques of his homeland's government, while in Beijing, his celebrity and influence is constantly checked by the authorities.

The Harris Theater is located downtown in the Cultural District (map). The movie plays at 7:30 pm on the 13th, and at 4:00 pm on Saturday the 15th. Admission is free.

"Floating Echo" coming to Pittsburgh, June 7 - 16.

"Floating Echo / Buddha" by Daniel Antal (Creative Commons).

The big news out of Pittsburgh today is the giant rubber duckie coming to its rivers this September. Before that, though, a large, transparent Buddha will float outside of Point State Park from June 7th through June 16th at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. "Floating Echo", by Korean-born New York artist Chang-jin Lee is, says her website,

a transparent inflatable statue of Buddha sitting in lotus on the water. The clear giant plastic sculpture floats like an invisible being. Through the statue one can see the nature, landscape, and architecture around the water. Its subtle presence embraces and reflects the surroundings, both natural and man-made. It is seeming present and absent at the same time.

Lee's floating installation is ten feet by ten feet by ten feet. It's making its first appearance in Pittsburgh, and Lee's "Comfort Women Wanted" will appear in the Wood Street Galleries later this year.

Futurama Fry meme + pho at Squirrel Hill's Tân Lạc Viên Vietnamese Bistro.

CMU's Matsuri raises $3027 for middle school damaged by 3/11 tsunami.

The Japanese Student Association at Carnegie Mellon University raised $3027.19 in its March 29, 2013 Matsuri for Ishinomaki city's Mintao Junior High School (石巻市立湊中学校), and last month some of its members met with the principal to deliver the check. All of the profits from the 2013 festival went to the school. Their website on the festival's fundraising, updated last year on its aims and 2012's contributions, reads in part:

Minato Middle school used to be located on the coast, one of the most vulnerable places for Earthquakes. It is currently using make-shift shelters on the playground of a near by elementary school. While a lot of recovery has already been in place and the school receives aid from the government, it is no where near the state where it was before the earthquake.

Last year we were able to help students get equipment for sports and also support their music classes through the profits made at Matsuri.

City of Asylum's Exiled Voices of China and Tibet, June 8.

City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, which "provide[s] sanctuary to endangered literary writers", is hosting the day-long "Exiled Voices of China and Tibet" on June 8. The website says it's a

series of free talks, readings and performances featuring Independent Chinese PEN Center President and Sampsonia Way columnist Tienchi Martin Liao, poet and musician Liao Yiwu and human rights activist and lawyer Chen Guangcheng. Hosts and moderators include New York Times Beijing correspondent Andrew Jacobs, Pittsburgh World Affairs Council President and CEO Steven E. Sokol, and WESA’s Paul Guggenheimer. At 8 PM, enjoy Rock & Rap for Freedom, a concert featuring JasiriX and Tibetan exiled rockers Melong Band, with a special appearance by City of Asylum poet Huang Xiang.

It runs from 1 pm to 10 pm at the Tent on Monterey Street on the North Side (map). It's free, but reservations are necessary. The event's webpage has a schedule and more information.

TED Talk: "How Rock Music Shaped the New Mongolia".

Today Lauren Knapp uploaded her 16-minute talk at Greater Johnstown High School titled "Live from UB: How Rock Music Shaped the New Mongolia". Knapp has been in the local news the past year for her documentary Live from UB, and wrote at length in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in September on the country and its rock scene.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes about Victoria Lee, a Korean-American student who was named "an outstanding Asian-American student by the Asian-American Heritage Committee of the Pittsburgh Federal Executive Board". The article also mentions her parents, whom you might know as the owners of a large sports clothing store in the Strip District.

Pittsburgh is swell, but an "expat hotspot"?

The CNNMoney headline "Pittsburgh becomes expat hot spot" jumped out at readers on May 30, leading us to wonder why author opted for the present tense over something more representative of a developing situation. Those who choose to read the entire report---all seven paragraphs of it---might not get too worked up. Pittsburgh is a fine mid-sized city with rotten public transportation but is very insecure and boasts of any ranking or mention in the mainstream media, regardless of how vapid the source or cursory the glance.