One morning, Deming’s mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon and never comes home. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. Eventually adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors, Deming is moved from the Bronx to a small town upstate and renamed Daniel Wilkinson. Far from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his adoptive parents’ desire that he assimilate with his memories of his mother and the community he left behind.The group meets from 12:00 to 1:00 pm, and the library is located at 612 Smithfield St. (map).
[T]he sound is wonderfully hybridized. At times its merger of prog, pop, fusionism and complexity make me think of a collision between the Glenn Phillips Band and Todd Rundgren's Utopia with Terje Rypdal sittin' in. I know I'm making it sound like a crazy quilt, and I suppose if sort of is, but only in the sense that it avoids the monochromaticism of so much contemporary music. Shutaro does not grab a single schtick and just shake it until his arm is tired. He mixes up of ballads and thunder (sometimes in a single song) in a way that strikes me as somehow very Japanese. But mostly it just strikes me about the head. In the most pleasant of ways. Take off your helmet and give it a try. You'll never know what hit you.Howlers is located at 4509 Liberty Ave. in Bloomfield (map).
When Zheng Kaisi (Li Yifeng, a TV actor who won awards for his role in the film Mr. Six) is introduced as a disheartened floor entertainer in a clown suit at a gaming arcade, he seems to be suffering from a full-on superhero complex. Rapidly cross-cutting between the regular-guy Kaisi and his evil-looking clown persona, Han puts the audience on a puzzling trail. Is the protagonist human or superhuman?The movie, also starring Michael Douglas, was the sixth-highest grossing film in China during its opening week. It will play at AMC Loews Waterfront, with tickets and showtime information now available online via Fandango. 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.
In the first of several big action scenes, Kaisi morphs into a leering killer clown along the lines of the Joker, with two comically colored swords carried on his back. The people around him on a subway car transform into gooey animal-like monsters that spurt syrupy blood when hit by the clown’s martial arts attacks.
These are soon revealed as the violent fantasies of an impotent teenager, taking place in Kaisi’s head as he sits in a hospital ward visiting his mother, who has been in a coma for years. (Explanation comes later.) He has become acquainted with young nurse Qing (Zhou Dongu of SoulMate) but hasn’t the money to pursue her. In fact, it’s she who loans him the cash to pay for his mom’s care.
Producer Genki Kawamura follows up his mega-hit Your Name with another tale of star-crossed teenage lovers with a sci-fi fantasy twist. Two junior high school pals, the shy Norimichi and fast-talking Yusuke, are goo-goo-eyed over the same elusive classmate, Nazuna. But Nazuna, unhappy over her mother’s decision to remarry and leave their countryside town, plans to run away and has silently chosen Norimichi to accompany her. When things don’t go as planned, Norimichi discovers that a glowing multi-color ball Nazuna found in the sea has the power to reset the clock and give them a second chance to be together. But each reset adds new complications and takes them father away from the real world – until they risk losing sight of reality altogether. Fireworks tells a simple story of adolescent longing that taps deep wells of emotion. It is tale of vulnerability and youthful wistfulness, of missed opportunities and long-ago dreams, the urgency of young lovers, and the desire to create a separate universe, a magic place outside of time, where they can be together.The movie will play locally at Cinemark Theaters in Monroeville (map), Morgantown (map), and Pittsburgh Mills (map). Ticket and showtime information for all screenings is available online:
“The best thing to do is to offer your own style — real, authentic to where you’re from,” Chen, the three-time president of the 20-year-old Pittsburgh Chinese Restaurant Association, says.
Restaurant owners are doing just that. Taiwanese Bistro Cafe 33 opened around the corner in 2016; Ting’s in McCandless Township now has a growing Taiwanese menu. How Lee, a Sichuan restaurant, is across the street, with Sichuan Gourmet and Chengdu Gourmet both a short distance away. Down the block, another establishment, Northeastern Kitchen, this one specializing in northeastern Chinese cuisine, opened in May. “Everybody is different, and so we all survive. We even help to bring people in,” he says.
That’s not to say that Chen and his colleagues don’t have work to do to get more Americans to take a seat at the table. “Some food still won’t sell to the majority of Americans. And Pittsburgh is behind cities like New York and Philadelphia. ‘Can I eat that?!’ they say,” Chen says.
Two South Korean college students will set out on a trans-American bicycle ride this week, seeking to boost global awareness of Korean women forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II.
The students — 25-year-old Baek Hyun-jae and 22-year-old Lee Ho-jun — recently arrived in Los Angeles with their bicycles ahead of their ambitious bid to cross the United States on bike in 80 days.
The University of Pittsburgh is seeking an Undergraduate Research Assistant. The prospective student will assist in the development of content for a web-based teaching and learning resource about the Japanese work Tale of the Heike. Specific duties will include: generating text based on existing materials; searching for images to use on the site; proofreading text on the site, cross-checking references, and identifying problems with links on the resource.
Successful applicant will be familiar with Japanese literature; have good research and writing skills; be able to perform general research in Japanese.
