DNAinfo

China focus?

Sunday, January 10th, 2010 | posts | No Comments

Someone asked me about what direction the blog will take in the coming year. You may have noticed the change of the banner, from a bubbling Sichuan hot pot to a beautiful night panorama of the Manhattan skyline taken from a Brooklyn pier.

You also may have noticed my last two posts have been about my job at DNAinfo, an exciting local Manhattan news service. Since September last year I’ve been immersed in the local neighborhood news of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. I must admit, I was opposed at first to covering the Chinatown beat. It made total sense, since I am a Chinese speaker and the only Chinese speaker on staff at DNAinfo. But having reported there during my year at Columbia, I felt like I needed to branch out and have a change of scenery.

Alas I was assigned the beat and off I went.

For the past 5 months, the reporting in Chinatown has surprised me. I am making contacts in the community and what’s interesting is how deeply rooted and passionate people are about their neighborhood. After all, it’s where they live. It is home.

People really care about a local Charter school expanding, about that new luxury hotel opening up around the corner on the Lower East Side, and about the speeding trucks racing off the Manhattan bridge that have crashed into other cars and pedestrians on narrow, busy Chinatown streets.

I have come to care about these issues too.

So I changed my banner, seeing as I’ve been in New York City for a year and a half now. This is my home, for now. This is the place I’m writing about every day.

My Tweets follow big Manhattan stories we cover, but I’m keeping my finger on China, too. I’ll tweet a good selection of news from China and about the Chinese diaspora in America.

Over wonton noodle soup last night in Chinatown, a friend and I contemplated life in the world’s big cities. She has spent considerable time in Paris. We have both lived in Beijing. We now call New York City home. We both agreed life in the big city is stressful; the rhythm of the city is exhilarating yet draining, the people here are passionate yet at times that passion is transformed into aggression and attiTUDE. Still, the stresses of our city lives are in many ways self-fabricated. We work hard (it’s that Chinese work ethic) and we’re competitive (it’s that type-A personality).

But we worry all the while, mulling over decisions and fretting about the future. Maybe it’s because we have too many options in this day and age.

We choose to live in New York City. Where will we be next year?

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Moose or Caribou?

Thursday, January 7th, 2010 | posts | 4 Comments

Two days ago, I started getting hate mail from taxidermists, hunters and self-described animal experts. One e-mail came from as far away as Australia.

When a large animal bust reportedly fell off the wall of a Lower East Side restaurant and struck a woman on the head, many press reports identified it as that of a moose because, well, it had antlers.

The emails were pretty harsh. They attacked me, insulting my intelligence, reporting skills, and one even said I should be ashamed of being Canadian. Well, that did it.

I took to the streets with a camera and began canvassing New Yorkers. I showed them a photo of the animal head in question and asked: “Tell me what this animal is?” Check out the responses below and also surf over to DNAinfo.com and look at our cool interactive.

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