10.28 | a dispatch from the ice rinks of wuhan
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
– Kurt Vonnegut
✉️ letter #12
Hey all! Coming at you this week from Wuhan, China.
We’re here filming a bunch of ice hockey enthusiasts who somehow managed to get set up here in the South, in a place where summertime temperatures can reach 40C.
Unlike ice hockey teams in other major cities (especially in the North, like Harbin and Beijing), these guys are almost all amateurs: people who found themselves working at some of the newly opened ice rinks in the city – there are about seven now across the whole of Wuhan.
They aren’t just trainers, though there are some in the team, they’re also receptionists and Zamboni operators and other people who just, for whatever reason, fell in love with the idea of ice hockey.
We were taken around by a 23-year-old Dongbei girl who was previously in the national women’s ice hockey team (based out of Shenzhen, another incredibly unlikely place for ice hockey), but came to Wuhan to be an instructor. She and her fellow ice hockey ex-professional have become the main coaches for this scrappy bunch. They’re the two main women on the team.
One of the nice things about working in China during this time at this job has been the chance to showcase unlikely stories like this. And I feel so satisfied every time I manage to make a project like this happen.
Things are going to be changing for me very soon (watch this space, can’t really talk about it yet!). So I’m glad here’s an extra opportunity to bask in the memories I’m forming here. For all my frustrations with my current situation, I’m grateful that I’ve managed to hang overwhelmingly with down-to-earth, sweet-as-tang people all over more off-the-beaten-track parts of this country.
Anyway, onwards:
🌱 the ethical ideas newsreel
- The kids are alright. Five young activists have been fasting outside the White House for over a week now, demanding that climate change get added back into Build Back Better.
- Half of the world's people now live in urban areas, but despite cyberpunk's love of gigantic skyscrapers, it seems that low-rise density is a better bet for carbon efficiency. Reminds me of how, as cool as aerial gardens look in concept art, they're actually pretty unrealistic and useless IRL.
- HAVE YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO COP26? The United Nations has put out a fun news quiz to make sure. Test yourself and report back.
- This is less ethical than it is good lord we're doomed:
"a new wave of emergency preparation companies has arisen: ones that cater to a more style-conscious clientele. Foremost among them are Preppi, a Goop-approved brand that sells disaster supplies in minimalist backpacks, and Judy, which has tapped celebrities like the Kardashians, Chrissy Teigen and TikTok sensation Addison Rae to promote its portable generators and waterproof supply packs."
🎵 song of my week
One of my favorite female rappers of the mid-2010s was Angel Haze, a queer black woman who wrote amazing lyrics and spit them out at amazing speeds. I was overjoyed to see her pop up on my feed again recently – apparently after a long hiatus, she’s releasing music again!
Never Seen - Angel Haze
I'd put the lyrics in, but it's more fun to listen and see if you can catch what she's saying.
✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun
I, like it seems everyone, watched Villaneuve’s DUNE this week and I liked it a lot.
Yes, the original source material – written in 1964 – has its very problematic parts, including the fact that all the rulers are men and all the witches pulling strings behind the scenes are women, and that’s because women only ever want to rule from behind the curtain or something (lol).
Yes, even though there was more of an attempt at actually depicting a diverse universe, this is still very much a White Guy movie/story. A colleague commented that it was weird the only Asian in the entire film was Dr. Yueh. I broke it to her that in David Lynch’s Dune, it was worse - even the Fremen were white.
Yes, because Timothy Chalamet and Zendaya are so specifically model-esque beautiful, all the sand-strewn slomo scenes (about a fifth of the movie, it felt like) gave me the distinct impression that I was watching a luxury perfume commercial.
Yes, the “Amazonian wail” to depict epic ritualism is kind of an overused trope at this point.
But I still enjoyed this two-and-a-half hour spectacle. The plot made sense considering the density of the source material, the acting rarely got theatrical enough to completely pull you out, and I can only describe the audio-visual feast (those little nitpicks aside) as sumptuous.
I highly recommend going to see it in IMAX. Something of this scale requires you to see a gigantic space ship that looks like it’s a gigantic space ship.
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