Offset: Spectacles are putting out a cassette tape on tuesday June 15 at D22. I found out they’re going to be releasing tapes for several Chinese bands and the bassist also makes a zine. So we made them this flyer.

From the elegantly revamped siheyuan space in an otherwise typically dark and dusty hutong to the restaurant’s prize dish (a sweetened black rice cake molded to look like a coal briquette atop a heavy oven-like platform that is neither particularly tasty (unless you’re wild about pure glutinous textures), nor particularly settling on a cultural level), the restaurant brings light to a kind of tension between “local” traditions and modern dining expectations.

Be Persecuted is from Jiangxi and they didn’t move around a lot but they did SHRED. I’ve never heard a bigger sound at a show in Beijing.

Xiao He did his thing, which last night involved some tried and true passages from his looped acoustic/incomprehensible high-pitched rambling playbook. Maybe it is comprehensible to someone with better Chinese, you be the judge.

Hometown, Taiyuan. Pictures taken by All Time Love Mini Diana through December 2009 and early January 2010.

Saw the Spex again at Mao.

Things looked different when I walked in. Ajinai usually dresses all in traditional Mongolian garb, but tonight they were wearing street clothes, metal shirts, and cargo shorts. It was nice to see them with their hair down and tattoos out.