Free advanced Korean class, Saturdays in Oakland.

An advanced Korean class will be held every Saturday this summer from 3:00 to 5:00 pm at the Carnegie Library in Oakland (map).

This class will focus on conversational Korean, utilizing the scripts of popular Korean television shows. Each class lasts two hours and will meet every Saturday in the Large Print Room on the First Floor.

Registration is required and can be done so on the class page.

As with all levels of these free library classes, advanced is an estimate and really belongs in quotation marks. Regardless of your level, though, you'll probably find a Korean class that fits among the three offered through the library. Korean for Beginners is basically instruction in hangeul (the Korean script), while Korean II is just a little beyond that.

New group for pungmul, samul nori in Pittsburgh.

A televised Pungmul performance from KBS.

Interested in practicing Korean drumming (풍물, 사물놀이) in Pittsburgh? There's a group for that.

Buddha under the bridge.

Taiwanese "I Tea Cafe" opens in Shadyside.

On June 4, the Taiwanese café "I Tea Café (萌茶)" opened on 709 Bellefonte St. in Shadyside (map). The menu, pictured below, features 12 types of the increasingly-popular and increasingly-common-in-Pittsburgh Bubble Tea as well as other teas, smoothies, and coffees, and food like hot pot and noodle soups.



It'll deliver, too, if the order is over $15.

Taiwanese film Yi Yi at Maridon Museum, June 13.

The Taiwanese film Yi Yi (A One and a Two) will play at Butler's Maridon Museum (map) on June 13 as a continuation of this spring's Taiwanese Film Series.

A lengthy 2011 Alt Screen post quotes from numerous contemporary and retrospective reviews the 2000 film. From a hyperbolic 2009 Salon review of what "might be the greatest [film] ever":

For me, Edward Yang’s “Yi Yi: A One and a Two …” may be the greatest film ever, let alone the best of the decade. What does that mean? For starters, it means that Yang’s final film lies somewhere between formalist hard-assery and middlebrow accessibility, between slow-burning Ozu and — in the abruptly climaxing story lines of the last hour — understated soap opera. In telling the story of a Taiwanese family in crisis, Yang has three hours to zero in on what makes one family’s members tick while positioning them exactly in the center of late-20th-century global economics: micro- and macro-, both specifically Taiwanese in its business scenes and universal in its familial dynamics.

The movie starts at 6:00 pm, is presented by Slippery Rock's Dr. Ken Harris, and runs nearly three hours.

"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.