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Top Obscura
The 38th Reich: Korean Nazi CosplayA couple of days ago, I posted my favorite pictures of cute Korean cosplay girls -- but that's the light-hearted side of 
India’s Incredibly Cool Hand-Drawn Movie PostersVisit the Bollywood poster store now
Ramachandraiah prints movie posters for a living. He's done it ever since 1 
Outrageously Cute Korean Cosplay: The 21 FavoritesWhile sex workers were planning to set themselves on fire across town (thanks, Comrade Joe), M and I were deep in Comic 
The Creepiest Amusement Park of All Time?Singapore is bland. It's a high-priced row of shopping malls and fine eateries, with a few hawker markets thrown in. " 
Classic Chinese Torture Methods (and their cute names)From the strange reign of Empress Wu Zetian (690-705):
"Inviting the Gentleman into the Jug" - Place the victim in a 
Beijing’s incredible (and completely fake) DisneylandI was always sad Beijing didn't have a Disneyland for weekend fun, but it turns out we do. Well, a fake one. Not far f 
Castration Classes at the Beijing Eunuch Culture Exhibition HallThe first time I ever met The Professor, he told me about the eunuch museum. He didn't say much. Just that there was o 
The Cockiest Shrine in BangkokAt Bangkok's Goddess Tuptim Shrine, there's something prickly going down.
At this veritable penis park, there a 
Prosthetic Noses, Red Wigs, and Whiteface… American Characters in Chinese FilmsHollywood's never been too subtle when it comes to Asia.
Mickey Rooney, yellow-skinned, buck-toothed and slanty-eyed 
Philadelphia CheeseSteak Ice Cream"That's possibly the worst idea I've ever heard."
Michelle didn't use these words lightly. She didn't say this when 
China’s all-time favorite (and all-time darkest?) comic book: SanmaoNot many foreigners know about Sanmao. Here in China, though, he’s bigger than Disney.
He's as prone to mischief 
Nazi Fashion in ChinaThat's twice I've seen guys on my street wearing the Nazi iron cross.
The first was an office worker on lunch break. 
Hello Kitty & Cuppuccino!Shoved in a back alley of Seoul's hip Hongdae neighborhood, sandwiched somewhere between "Luxury Ho" Bar and the "F**kFa 
Another Abandoned Beijing Amusement ParkWhat is it with these half-built, then abandoned, Beijing amusement parks? We're old fans of The Romance Park of the He 
Beyond the Valley of the Dwarfs: The Strangest Theme Park Ever?"Before coming here, I was tending cattle, and feeding pigs," Xiao Cao told me. "I never even knew how to dance."
"A 
One Ghostly Cambodian Ruin
It used to be a retreat. 90 years ago, the French spent 9 months building Bokor Hill Station up as the ultimate get 
What the Fortune Teller Told Me (Hong Kong)Temple Street night market is amazing. Past the hawkers of clothes, bootleg DVDs, sex toys and octopus porn, there lies 
Porn, Rats, and Antique Projectors at Sri Lanka’s Classic CinemasWe heard there were rats in The Liberty. That it smelled like urine. That the sound was awful. But it's the most famo 
Beijing’s Dongyue Temple and Their 19 Incredible Taoist GodsSo the rapture left you behind, eh? Feeling cheated? Looking for a new deity?
Try Taoism. These gods will kick 
Disgusting, Deranged, and Totally BrilliantI’m not a great filmmaker. Or a famous one. If I was, I wouldn’t have ended up drenched in a 3AM rainstorm of the roof o 
The Sick Collector and His 1000 Pairs of ShoesYang Shaorong lives in a small Shanghai apartment. He collects women's shoes. Tiny shoes. Shoes for bound feet.
" 
Mr. Chiizu: Great New Photobooth AppI stumbled into an old karaoke pal on twitter this weekend. He's now developing iPhone apps. His latest? A stickerbooth 
Only Looking (ミテルだけ) 33> 
Medicinal Sea Horse SoupI adore TCM. But I don't know what to say about this bowl of "Pigeon Soup with Chinese Medicine" we ordered last night 
Chisney & Koreansney: Local Disney KnockoffsWe already have a Beijing ChineDisneyland, and the abandoned WonderDisneyLand. But what about these Disney knockoffs... 
Learn How to Speak North KoreanOn our recent trip to Pyongyang, we picked up this incredible guide to speaking Korean -- clearly with a northern bent. 
AsiaObscura is Moving to IndiaIn a bit of a fit of madness, Michelle and I have decided to move to India. Instead of doing things in a long, planned o 
Incredible Chinese Stamp Museum (first of two)I'm not a stamp geek. My dad is, my nephew is... but to be perfectly honest, I had some low expectations for the Beijin 
18 Terrible Moments from a Taoist HellA few weeks ago, I posted about the Incredible Taoist Gods -- cool court officers tasked with enforcing rules of life an 
Sweet gruesome statue asking for donations(Also known as "The most bad-ass 'donations please' advertisement ever conceived" - io9)
Halfway between the hippie-m 
A Postcard from ErenhotTwo small dogs are attacking a homeless man, while I'm nursing my lingering fever with sidewalk kebabs and a bottle of Y - North Korean StampsTwo different directions.
(I think these were sent to me by the awesome David & Michelle F, who we met in a t
The Chinese Taxidermy Diaries: The First Day"Was he killed?" asked Xiao Li, as he was carefully slicing around the ear, trying to get at the tendon inside.
"No," s 
Strange TCM #3: Eating a deer’s penis… some people swear by it!Every time I pass by one of those classic Chinese pharmacies, I can't help but stop and wonder... why on earth would som 
Plants vs Zombies, The Chinese Knockoff ToysZombies -- along with time-travel -- are banned in China. (So don't watch my Beijing zombie music video, Zombie Girl.
Uncategorized
Rotting Mongolian Ankle Bones
To be used as dice or fortune tellers. Your pick. But they were white when I bought them.
But shouldn’t they come in a set of five? (I’m worried Chop may have gotten to one.)
Uncategorized
North Korean Stamps
Two different directions.
(I think these were sent to me by the awesome David & Michelle F, who we met in a tepid Pyongyang BBQ joint.)
Strange Tourism
AsiaObscura is Moving to India
In a bit of a fit of madness, Michelle and I have decided to move to India. Instead of doing things in a long, planned out way, we’ve decided to jump boat asap. We decided on June 8th. For the last few days, I’ve been calmly insisting we have five weeks. Yesterday she grabbed me.
“Why do you keep saying five weeks?”
“Well, it’s five weeks away.”
“No! It’s three weeks away.”
I’m now a bit of a mess. As we move everything into storage, I’ll be posting bits and pieces of sweet things I find in boxes and drawers that I’d forgotten about.
Like these two Indian transvestite photos I found in a crate in Bombay. I do love the hats…
Sweet Movies and Wild Books
A Brief Aside on Dr Rajkumar, the James Bond of Southern India
Alone in the hotel, drinking Kingfisher and watching old Karanataka films. In 1981′s Keralida Simha, an honest cop has to break up a party of riotous and drugged out delinquents. And it’s something akin to poetry.
I don’t know much about Kannada cinema — it’s called Sandalwood — but the cop with the sweet mustache and stern slap is Dr Rajkumar. He’s a legend. He’s George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Michael Jackson, rolled up with James Bond and Jesus in a burrito of southern India awesomeness. When he died in ’06, shop windows were smashed, cars were torched, and all of Bangalore was locked down.
“Put these in your car window,” managers urged to employees, as they handed out stacks of photos of Rajkumar. “If anyone stops your car, point to it. And go home, NOW!”
My brother and his wife fled the state.
“It isn’t as if it was a surprise that he died,” my sister-in-law gasped years later. “He was 78 years old!”
But still, there were riots in Bangalore for days.
My coworkers from Bombay, or Chennai, or New Delhi, have never heard of the man. They didn’t recognize his photo. But here, six years after his death, he’s still everywhere. Poster printer Ramachandraiah still keeps a shrine to Dr Rajkumar in his shop, and a monthly Dr Rajkumar calendar above his desk. Earlier this week, the Bangalore paper ran a front-page article complaining that there still wasn’t a Dr Rajkumar replacement.
All told, though, that is a truly awesome ‘stache.
The Zombie Files
Disgusting, Deranged, and Totally Brilliant
I’m not a great filmmaker. Or a famous one. If I was, I wouldn’t have ended up drenched in a 3AM rainstorm of the roof of a dilapidated McDonalds, bailing out the small lake of water forming around my sneakers. I definitely wouldn’t have started my filmmaking career in the slums of Buffalo, or have been risking my life for trash cinema.
I felt the wet tar give under my foot.
“Watch out! That’s a weak spot!”
Weak spot. Right. Did I mention this roof was collapsing in slow motion?
Extraordinary Eats
Badminton Theme Restaurant
The Professor just cycled by this brand spanking new Wangjing eatery. “Shuttlecock shaped plates?” he offered. “Badminton-racket-strained spaghetti?”
As long as they allow hairpin net shots, I’m in!
Consumerism
Quick Aside on Smoking in China
China just looooooves its smokes.
Convenience stores sell them, grocery stores, supermarkets — and yet STILL you’ll still find dedicated tobacco stores on just about every corner.
Notice how Little Miss Flowers & Fruits squeezes into a tiny nook, while Mr Brand Name Cigarettes sprawls out double-wide. Yep, there’s money in smokes!
Need bridal makeup? Forget that crap! These guys offer SMOKING makeup!
Erenhot even has a Tobacco Hotel.
But every now and then, someone in China decides smoking is bad. And they put up something like this.
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The Zombie Files
“When You Need More Bloodspray….”
We needed squibs. I didn’t exactly know what they were, or how they worked, but they’re little charges that explode under an actor’s shirt, so it looks like they’ve just been shot. Just like in Die Hard or Bad Boys II. But in Poultrygeist, it wasn’t Hans Gruber who’d be shot—it was the horde of bloodthirsty chicken-zombies, exploding with green slime. (Everyone knows zombie blood is green.) Old Arbie shoots them, while wearing his short skirt and sash.
The only problem was that the cheapest guy we could find wanted ten thousand dollars for squibs. And we didn’t have ten thousand dollars.
So I called Tony.
I’d first met Tony Franco a few weeks earlier. He drove me around in his long Cadillac sedan, showing me Buffalo’s fast food restaurants. He intrigued me. He was short, prematurely balding, and walked with a cheap plastic orthopedic cane like my grandfather used. I don’t know where his limp came from, but it added to his mystery, along with his stylish suits and copious gold. He also ran an Italian restaurant. He seemed like a character from a cheesy mafia film. And yet he was just another one of Buffalo’s hundreds of volunteers for the film, who’d shown up at the church out of the blue, offering to help.
“What’s this for?” I’d asked him that first day, when I found a short, splintered baseball bat within easy reach of the driver’s seat.
“That? That belongs to the family,” he said with a menacing wink, pausing for a beat before adding, “I mean, it’s my kid’s. Can you grab the map for me? It’s in the glove compartment.” In the glove compartment, on top of the map, sat a heavy handgun. I don’t know guns, but it was big.
“Is this your kid’s, too?” I asked.
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Offbeat Museums
Castration Classes at the Beijing Eunuch Culture Exhibition Hall
The first time I ever met The Professor, he told me about the eunuch museum. He didn’t say much. Just that there was one. In West Beijing.
“You really should go,” he said. “It’s… well, it’s interesting.” He adjusted his glasses the way a professor should, but he wouldn’t say more.
A few weeks later, I found myself staring through smudged plexiglas at the only remaining inhabitant of the Beijing Eunuch Culture Exhibition Hall. He was, of course, dead.
Covered by an imperial yellow sheet, this junkless monk apparently died of lead poisoning. 400 years later, he was dug up and stuck in a case. His name wasn’t recorded, but I doubt it was Tian Yi.
Tian Yi (田以) was the most famous Chinese eunuch that ever lived. He served a series of three Emperors, and carried his genitals in a jug. His 1605 funeral was insane: the government shut for days, hundreds of eunuchs attended, and he was buried like a king. And just like any other Chinese royal, his grave was robbed.
“I’m too scared,” said a Chinese teenage girl. “Can you come with me?”
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Fashionista
Nazi Fashion in China
That’s twice I’ve seen guys on my street wearing the Nazi iron cross.
The first was an office worker on lunch break. He was dressed in a handsome suit, but in place of a tie wore a heavy Nazi cross. He saw me staring, and he smiled. I think he thought it looked dapper. The second passed in a blur, but his iron cross was mounted in his suit like a boutonnière. But what’s an iron cross? Just an accessory, a small fashionable touch. It’s nothing like the full Korean nazis we’d met in Seoul.
But it’s a start.
I thought I’d take a glance at China’s top shopping site Taobao, and see what else I could find for the budding Beijing Nazi. (Tomorrow is, after all, Hitler’s 123rd birthday.)
The most popular is the must-have $12 Nazi iPhone4 cover, in your choice of slick distressed styles…
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See more after the jump
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Extraordinary Eats, Sweet Movies and Wild Books
Philadelphia CheeseSteak Ice Cream
“That’s possibly the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
Michelle didn’t use these words lightly. She didn’t say this when I’d suggested we fly across the country to a park staffed by 108 dwarfs, or we hand-feed live animals to hungry tigers, or we train to become professional taxidermists.
But evidently Michelle has her limits, too.
She draws a line at Philadelphia Cheesesteak Ice Cream.
We were about to watch Rambocky X, the legendary double-feature pairing of Rocky VI and Rambo IV. (You know: “When a 60-something fighter comes out of retirement for one last bout, who knows how it’s going to end?!! Well tonight, It Ends Twice!!! That’s right: Rocky & Rambo each wage a sexagenarian battle that could be a fight to the DEATH!!!”)
To accompany this back-to-muscled-back 191 minutes of awesomeness, I’d made avocado ice cream, mango sorbet, and Thai rice ice cream. But those flavors only represented Rambo IV, Thailand and Burma. They left nothing for poor Rocky VI, Philadelphia’s favorite pug.
So I had to fix the situation. And the remedy seemed to be CheeseSteak Ice Cream.
“Why don’t you just make Rocky Road?” Michelle demanded.
“Because that’s not Philly. Philly is cheesesteaks! We need something Rocky would eat.”
I Googled, but Google insisted there was no such thing. There were no recipes, or precedents. This was uncharted territory. I was an explorer. I was a fighter. I felt like Rambocky himself!
{Cue training montage}
I sliced up blood-red chunks of tenderloin.
Sautee’d them in a splash of olive oil, then cooked them in a pool of Karo.
Shredded two-tone cheddar, and a few tablespoons of cream.
Minced candied & cooled tenderloin.
“This is going to be a disaster,” Michelle warned before she went to bed. Okay, she didn’t actually say those words, but I could feel them. Had she voiced her thought, she would have added, “A disaster of historic proportions.”
I nodded, furiously mixing and stirring. There was no way this was going wrong. It was too important.
And it went right. Oh how right it went.
Nuggets of sharp cheddar cheese mixed with crunches of sweet beef, all settled in a gorgeous Philly-style ice cream base. I took a bite, and gasped. “Spectacular,” I announced, even though Michelle had long since fallen asleep. I took another bite. “AMAZING!” She still didn’t wake up. Oh, well.
Granted, it was weird. But it was also something like the greatest weird taste sensation of all time. It was Americana. It was Sweet Jeez! It was glorious.
Except for a cheesesteak itself, I don’t think there could be anything better than this.
So here’s the recipe….
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Lost in Translation
Strange Warnings Posted Outside a Beijing Toilet
He was desperate to cover all his bases.
Or maybe this was just a really twisted shitter.
