Dr. Greg Kulacki and "The Risk of Nuclear War between US & China" at Chatham University, October 4.

Chatham University will host Dr. Gregory Kulacki and his talk "The Risk of Nuclear War between US & China" on October 4. The event begins at 7:00 pm in Sanger Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.

Dr. Erika Lee at Pitt, October 8.

The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Student Alliance will host Dr. Erika Lee on October 8.

The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ), 5 Centimeters Per Second (秒速5センチメートル) at Pitt Japanese Film Night, October 7.

The University of Pittsburgh's Japanese Culture Association will show two movies as part of its October 7 Japanese Film Night: the 2013 Hayao Miyazaki animated movie The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ) and the 2007 Makoto Shinkai animated film 5 Centimeters Per Second (秒速5センチメートル).

Chinese movie Soulmate (七月与安生) in Pittsburgh, from September 28.

The 2016 Chinese movie Soulmate (七月与安生) will play at the Waterfront AMC Loews Theater from September 28. A Fort Worth Star-Telegraph review calls it a fascinating look at contemporary China:

"Soulmate" is a gorgeously shot, tear-stained love letter to female friendship that also provides a fascinating look into contemporary, urban China.

Ansheng (Zhou Dongyu, "Under the Hawthorn Tree") and Lin Qiyue aka July (Ma Sichun) have been friends since childhood but they find the currents of life pushing them in different directions. Ansheng is a rootless free spirit while July is a studious careerist. Their relationship becomes complicated by the presence of Su Jia-ming (Toby Lee), a man emotionally torn between the two of them.

It all culminates in a rather surprising ending while along the way director Derek Tsang offers glimpses of the back streets of Shanghai and Beijing, away from the gleaming skyscrapers and sprawling factories that are often the image of China these days.

Two other new Chinese films, the stop-motion CGI film L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties (爵迹) and the romance I Belonged To You (从你的全世界路过), will play at the Waterfront from September 30. Tickets and showtime information for all movies is available on the theater's 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.

2016 Korean zombie movie Train to Busan (부산행) in Pittsburgh, September 30 to October 6.

The 2016 Korean hit zombie movie Train to Busan (부산행) will play at the Parkway Theater in McKees Rocks from September 30 to October 6. A July 21 New York Times review summarizes:

The setup is lean and clean. A flattened deer, mowed down in a quarantine zone in Seoul where some kind of chemical spill has occurred (echoes of Bong Joon-ho’s 2007 enviro-horror film, “The Host”), springs back to life. Then, in just a few swiftly efficient scenes, we meet a harried hedge-fund manager and his small, sad daughter (Gong Yoo and an amazing Kim Su-ahn), see them settled on the titular locomotive and watch in dismay as a vividly unwell last-minute passenger lurches onboard. And we’re off!

Sprinting right out of the gate, the director, Yeon Sang-ho, dives gleefully into a sandbox of spilled brains and smug entitlement. (“In the old days, they’d be re-educated,” one biddy remarks upon spying an undesirable fellow traveler.) As zombies chomp and multiply, an assortment of regular folks face them down while furthering an extended critique of corporate callousness. The politics are sweet, but it’s the creatures that divert. Eyes like Ping-Pong balls and spines like rubber — I’d wager more than a few chiropractors were required on the set — they attack in seizures of spastic energy. They’re like break-dancing corpses.

Showtimes aren't posted on the theater's website, but they do appear on a Facebook post:

9/30 - 9:45pm
10/1 - 4:00pm
10/2 - 3:00pm & 5:00pm
10/3 - 7:15pm
10/4 - 7:15pm
10/6 - 7:15pm

The theater is located at 644 Broadway Ave. in McKees Rocks (map), a few miles west of the North Side.

Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language Workshop, September 30 at Pitt.

The University of Pittsburgh's School of Education will present the first Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language Workshop of the Fall 2016 term on September 30. The topic is Public High School Chinese Teaching, presented by Wei-Chen Chou, a Chinese tutor and a 2015 graduate of Pitt's M.Ed. in Foreign Language Education program.

The September 30 talk will be held in 5130 Posvar Hall (map). Presentations are held primarily in Mandarin Chinese, and are free and open to the public.

"The Labor Market Effect of Health Improvement: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Rural China", October 3 at Pitt.

The University of Pittsburgh's Department of Economics will host Ph.D. candidate Lulu Liu and her seminar "The Labor Market Effect of Health Improvement: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Rural China" on October 3.

Asian clothing boutique Ehua Fashion now in Squirrel Hill.

Over the past year an Asian hair salon, an Asian KTV/karaoke/noraebang, and an Asian express mail shop have opened in Squirrel Hill, so an Asian clothing boutique sounds about right. Located at 5865 Forbes Ave. (map) in what was most recently a real estate office, Ehua Fashion opened two weeks ago and offers "Fresh, airy, on-trend styles." The Chinese owner says while only about 20% of the clothes are from Korea---with the others predominantly Chinese---the styles in general are Korean. The snapshots on its Instagram give an idea of its offerings, though they are generic images from Asian fashion sites.

Two-day workshop, "The Everyday Politics of Digital Life in China", October 7 and 8 at Pitt.

The University of Pittsburgh will host a two-day workshop, "The Everyday Politics of Digital Life in China", on October 7 and 8.

Digital media, and the Internet in particular, have fundamentally and irreversibly changed daily life in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, current approaches to the politics of digital culture, which are often firmly based on examples from the West, largely fail to comprehensively address the multifaceted situations in digital-age China, whose unique and contradictory position between post-Socialism and neoliberal Globalism has remarkably complicated the contested relations between control and freedom, between the technological and the socio-political. To engage with these problems, this workshop brings together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, including political science, law, film studies, communications, anthropology, and sociology, to broaden the theoretical and methodological scopes that may adequately address existing and emergent political questions regarding China’s burgeoning digital culture. The workshop examines how relatively ordinary occurrences, the everyday censorship of political or non-political content, the decision to circumvent the great firewall, posting a legal question online, or reading pollution-monitoring microblogs, creates China’s digital political culture in diverse and distributive manners. Engaging with both the macro-social and the microindividual, the papers in this workshop draw on a variety of methods including big data, interviews, surveys, archival research, close readings, and critical theory to interrogate digital political life in China, which is simultaneously rich and restricted, diverse and particular, connected and isolated.

Presenters hail from nine different universities, including the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, and the Friday and Saturday events will be held in the University Club at 123 University Pl. in Oakland (map).

New Chinese movies L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties (爵迹), I Belonged To You (从你的全世界路过) in Pittsburgh from September 30.

Two 2016 Chinese movies will play at the AMC Loews Waterfront theater from September 30: the stop-motion CGI film L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties (爵迹) and the romance I Belonged To You (从你的全世界路过).