失物 020-021：家作坊“小点”以外受孕的两只小花猫咪（差不多3周大）
发现时间：2012年5月25日晚上
地点：家作坊（交道口北二条8号）楼梯下角落里

Lost & Found Object No. 020-021: two unexpected mini-arrivals from HomeShop big-papa cat Pointy (approximately 3 weeks old)
Discovered: 25 May 2012, evening
Location: underneath the staircase of HomeShop (Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8)

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恳请有爱心的朋友和我们联系并前来领养！ Please contact HomeShop if you or someone you know is able to help find these kittens a home!

失物 019：超级厉害的灰白色公猫（差不多一个月大）
发现时间：2012年4月20日晚上11点左右
地点：上海市徐汇区襄阳公园西侧（襄阳北路靠近淮海中路）

Lost & Found Object No. 019: extremely loveable slate-grey and white male kitten, approximately one month old
Discovered: 20 April 2012, approximately 11 p.m.
Location: west side of Xiangyang Park on Xiangyang North Road near Huaihai Middle Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai

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“小公园”已经被爱他的人取走了，但是如果您有关于失物招领处其它物品的信息，请跟我们联系。“Little Park” is no longer available for claiming, but if you have any information regarding claims for previous lost & found items please contact HomeShop.

For the next meeting of Happy Friends Reading Club we will shift to an alternative procedure, discussing a number of papers collected at the CONFERENCE ON MODES OF ACTIVISM AND ENGAGEMENT IN THE CHINESE PUBLIC SPHERE (26-27 APRIL 2012 at the National University of Singapore). 

Although the 5 texts chosen from the 5 panels at the conference will be made available to those interested, we will ask several among the Happy Friends to read carefully with a view to presenting the basic points of the papers at the meeting. This method is chosen to get a cross-section of the discussions at the conference, and perhaps of some sort of “current state” of activist practices in China. 

There will also be a brief discussion reviewing the art and activist positions at East Asia Multitudes Meeting held at Occupy Central in Hong Kong, where two members of HomeShop had been present.

The meeting is scheduled for 6pm on May 27th, 2012 at HomeShop. 

实战语言演练场 COMBAT LANGUAGE

活动时间 date__  2012年5月17日，星期四晚上七点 | Thursday, 17 May 2012, 19.00
地点 location__ 家作坊 HomeShop［地图 / map］

外语学习的最高境界有两个：1，用所学语言谈恋爱   2， 用所学语言吵架 第一种相当私人的，亲密的，心有灵犀的，语言不可或缺，但并不十分重要，我们无需练习，第二种是相当公开的，针锋相对的，你死我活的，语言十分重要，演练 必不可少，哪里可以演练？实战语言演练场系列为我们开辟了最佳演练场地！通过语言实战进入文化背景，通过语言实战熟练掌握关键词，通过语言实战进提高逻辑思辨…

There are supposedly two areas in which you can know you’ve mastered a foreign language: 1) being able to speak in the language of love and 2), being able to verbally put up a fight. The first is private and intimate, a heart to heart where language is necessary but perhaps not the most important, nor possible to practice in a group setting. The latter is a public, sharply dialectical, either you or me head-to-head where language is very important. So why not come together at HomeShop for our COMBAT LANGUAGE playground? Learn more about culture, hot topics in China and your real fighting spirit through COMBAT LANGUAGE. Improve your vocabulary and put your logic on its toes!

第二场 Debate Two

论题 topic__  “可更新能源挑战化石燃料  Fossil Fuels or Renewable Energy?”

随着人们对气候变化问题的日 益关心，确信者和怀疑者各持己见，我们面临的问题是：工业燃料所用的能源资源对环境和经济都有影响，有时我们会顾此失彼。中国大量依靠煤 炭燃料，消费量超过世界总消费量的一半。在另一方面中国在世界上也已经成为了风能和太阳能利用的先行者，无论哪种方式，能源生产都是一个获利颇丰的行业。煤炭燃料与可更新能源相互冲突，以长远的目光看，谁将入主中原？答案尽在我们的语言实战演练场！

With people getting caught up in the politics of climate change, believers versus skeptics, the reality is that the source of energy that fuels industry affects both the environment and the economy. China is heavily dependent on coal burning more than half of the world’s annual consumption. China has also become to world leader in wind power capacity and solar panel manufacturing. Any way you cut it, producing energy is a highly profitable business. Burning fossil fuels is in conflict with renewable energy, so which one has the long term future in China? Get yourself ready for combat language debate!

价格 cost__  30元（包括饮料 includes beverages）

参与者 participants__  中高级英语学生以及任何对本话题感兴趣的朋友
Intermediate to Advanced students of English, or any English speakers interested in the topic

报名请联系 registration required__  qu@homeshopbeijing.org, 138 1180 9604
报名后你将通过邮件收到一份相关阅读材料。
After signing up for this workshop you will receive all the necessary materials/vocabulary list by e-mail to prepare for the debate.

组织者 organised by__  曲一箴 Twist QU and Michael SABELLI

糖葫芦的后现代生活
The Life of Postmodern Tanghulu

时间 date/time__2012 年5月12日，周六下午2点起
                        Saturday, May 12, from 14.00
地点 location__家作坊 HomeShop，东城区交道口北二条8号 [地图]
                    Dongcheng District, Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8 [map]

5月12号的WaoBao！献宝兑宝活动中，你还可以跟交道口北二条糖葫芦世家学习如何制作糖葫芦然后用你的处女作和别人交换。
用你的现代意识加上传统的制作工艺，一起打造北京传统甜点零食－糖葫芦的后现代生活。
实验范围从传统食材山楂到大胆的狮子头，囊括所有球形食材，最后我们会让它们都成为糖葫芦！（如果你想让自己的初体验作品更加特别一些，你也可以带一些你认为好玩的球形食物和我们交换）

As part of Saturday’s WaoBao! Spring Cleaning swap meet on the 12th, we’ve invited the oldest family on our block to teach us how to update a Cultural Revolution old recipe for making candied fruits on sticks, the old Beijing sweet of choice. Experiment with various ball-shaped edibles, from the classic 山楂 hawthorn to the risky 狮子头 lion’s head minced meatball. Bring your leftovers from the fridge to tanghulu-ify, or trade for our finished pieces! All will be available for trade and bargaining along with all the other goodies on site.

传说_The legend of tanghulu
南宋绍熙年间，宋光宗最喜爱的皇贵妃病了，她面黄肌瘦，不思饮食。御医用了许多名贵药品，医治无果。宋光宗只好张榜招医。有一位江湖郎中揭榜进宫。为其诊脉 后，开出山楂和红糖。一起煮即食。每次3－5粒。半月黄贵妃病愈。后此法传入民间。酸、脆、香甜的沾山楂法流传至今。
During the splendid reign of the Southern Song dynasty, the favourite concubine of emperor SONG Guangzong fell ill and could not eat, making her emaciated and haggard. Imperial doctors tried all sorts of expensive cures to no avail, so SONG put forth an open call seeking medical help. One traveling doctor managed to enter the court to see the concubine, and after taking her pulse, he prescribed her a cure of hawthorn and brown sugar to be cooked together and eaten. Half a month later the concubine was healed, and ever since then, the recipe became a favourite of the people. Sour and crisp yet fragrantly sweet, this miracle method of preparing hawthorn has lasted until today.

宋氏家族介绍_About the SONG family
位于交道口北二条一号在解放前由宋氏人家小手工经营几年。公私合营后停业。80年代改革开放开始后，恢复经营。品种有大小山楂、山药、橘子、黑枣、香蕉等数多种。每日万余串送往故宫、王府井、东单、西单、前门等地。深受老北京市民欢迎喜爱。
Before the founding of the People’s Republic, the SONG family of Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 1 was already involved in a small homemade tanghulu workshop for several years. With private businesses suspended during the Cultural Revolution, they stopped until finally during the reform and opening-up of the 80s, the family business was able to be picked up again. During its peak, the SONG’s tanghulu (including hawthorn, Chinese yam, tangerine, smoked jujube, banana and many other varieties) satisfied the cravings of many old Beijingers and were delivered all over the city to locations such as the imperial palace, Wangfujing, Dongdan and Qianmen.

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“糖葫芦的后现代生活”工作坊又Carrot Design工作室与家作坊的何颖雅发起。WaoBao！献宝兑宝活动由Michael EDDY、何颖雅、Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA和曲一箴（家作坊）与林苏葳（ClearWorld Media）发起并组织.
The “Life of Postmodern Tanghulu” workshop is co-hosted by Been from Carrot Design and Elaine W. HO from HomeShop. WaoBao! Spring Cleaning is organised by Suvi RAUTIO (ClearWorld Media) with Michael EDDY, Elaine W. HO, Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA and Twist QU (HomeShop).

WaoBao！献宝兑宝活动

Spring Cleaning for International Give Your Stuff Away Day
国际“变废为宝”节

时间 date/time__2012 年5月12日，周六下午2点至6点
                        Saturday, May 12, 14.00-18.00
地点 location__家作坊 HomeShop，东城区交道口北二条8号 [地图]
                    Dongcheng District, Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8 [map]
豆瓣同城活动 Douban event__www.douban.com/event/16419765/

五月十二号（星期六）来家作坊就不仅仅是打酱油啦，前来参加“献宝兑宝活动”。夏日炎炎，让您的居 室，柜橱，里里外外更宽敞明亮一些吧，五月十二号这一天把你家淘汰下来的物 品，如手机、衣服、箱包，旧家具及其它生活用品带到家作坊来，与需要它的人交换，使你的 闲置物品变成别人的宝贝，别人长期不用的东西成为你的最爱！除了交换闲置物品以外你也 可以交换服务和技能，如，用帮别人看孩子来交换网站设计、用一顿自家做的便饭来交换非限行号车辆的一日使用权，同时我们也会教你怎样旧物“再设计”改造， 还会播放如何把垃圾变废为宝的短片，十分有趣！带着你的朋友来跟我们一起玩吧，说不定你还会“交换”到一个新朋友带回家哦。还有免费饮料和小 吃提供，在本街道居住时间最长的家庭之一宋家，将教授我们如何再设计“后现代有种糖葫芦”！

从五月五号起家作坊开始接收你不需要的 闲置物品。请你快把不要的物品拿到交道口北二条8号来，我们会先给你一张“兑宝券”。你需要的宝贝在 等待你“赎”它回去…你“冷宫”里的宝贝也让我们垂涎三尺。取长补短，互利互助，皆大欢喜，何乐不为?!（也可于12日当天带来你将交换的物品！）

On Saturday, May 12th, come and do more than get the soy sauce at HomeShop’s “WaoBao Spring Cleaning” event! The purpose of the day is for you to gather everything you’ve left covered in dust in your closet and swap these things with other people who can make new use of them! Traders should bring everything from unwanted mobile phones to clothing and bicycles on trading day, and get ready to drive hard bargains. Money is no currency on this day, just bring your stuff and prepare your sharp and sparkly bargaining tongue! In addition to swapping stuff, you can also swap your skills and services, like trading babysitting time for a day’s use of a valid license plate on the right driving day, or a home-cooked meal in exchange for website design services. As well as the trading, mini-upcycling and DIY project workshops will take place on site, and we’ll be showing a few short films about how our consumer habits have created a big trash society and the few individuals who are trying to give new life to it. Free drinks and snacks will be on offer, and one of the oldest families on the block, the SONG family, will also be on hand to teach us how to upcycle the classic tanghulu candied fruit skewer into postmodern balls on sticks, WAO!

Get off of the internet and WaoBao the clutter in your life instead! Starting May 5th, we’ll begin accepting donated must-haves to develop a stockpile of treasures, so for those of you with the bounty and not the space but the desire to see things loved a second time, please drop by HomeShop during opening hours to bring items and get tickets redeemable for trade on Spring Cleaning Day. (You can also bring your stuff directly on the 12th!)

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“糖葫芦的后现代生活”工作坊又Carrot Design工作室与家作坊的何颖雅发起。WaoBao！献宝兑宝活动由Michael EDDY、何颖雅、Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA和曲一箴（家作坊）与林苏葳（ClearWorld Media）发起并组织.
The “Life of Postmodern Tanghulu” workshop is co-hosted by Been from Carrot Design and Elaine W. HO from HomeShop. WaoBao! Spring Cleaning is organised by Suvi RAUTIO (ClearWorld Media) with Michael EDDY, Elaine W. HO, Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA and Twist QU (HomeShop).

“茶” 
欧阳潇

“Tea”
by OUYANG XIAO

Last meeting in discussing the anthropological features of humans (bio-historical linguistic disoriented animal whose innovativeness is what endows it for acts of “evil”) we stumbled, again, on the possibility to assign human nature. One person claimed this is always a problem, as the definition can never be made outside of the time in which it is stated. Truism? 

But this does lead to speculations about what is possible to know.

Recently, some mention has been made of time here and there. Questions about objects (as they exist in time? as they exist beyond the grasp of our consciousness, precede and outlast us) shift the discussion to a place some of us are not really familiar with. Can this metaphysics be a detour to another time for us?

For next meeting, the text “On the Undermining of Objects: Grant, Bruno, and Radical Philosophy” by Graham Harman, is proposed. (p. 21–40 in the attached PDF “The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism,” 2010) 

The meeting is scheduled at HomeShop on May 13th at 6pm. 

The following is cross-posted from Petra JOHNSON’s original notes at 小卖部 Kiosk, first published on 9 April 2012. It is the beginning of a choreographic dialogue involving walking, gardening and “getting to know” along two parallel routes in Cologne and Beijing. You can view her route in Beijing here.

When you walk 600 strides from the North Exit of the central World Heritage Centre in both Cologne and Beijing you will find yourself at the locations shown below: The Cologne route leads diagonally over the forecourt of the main train station to the taxi rank, then it heads toward a ring road and there turns right into Marzellenstrasse. After 600 strides, you are just before a small enclave called Ursulaplatz on the opposite side of the road.

Ursulaplatz shelters one tree that hovers over a fast road and is hovered over by a railway line. The predominant sound is the droning of cars passing out of sight below, occasionally relieved by a passing train passing above.

In Beijing the route proceeds from the exit at the Northern End of the Imperial Palace just opposite Jinshang Park and turns right into the pathway along the moat. At the first junction it turns left into Jingshan West Street and runs through the small stretch of park outside the wall of Jingshan Park. Early in the morning, the predominant sound here is that of birds singing.

Elderly men have brought their pet birds contained in beautiful wooden cages for a bit if fresh air. The cages are hung on the trees and whilst the men chat amongst each other sitting on benches on the other side of the path, the birds sing in the privacy of trees, each sitting on a perch in their cage.

Last night (April, 10th) E and I compared notes. How many strides did it take to walk the respective routes? In Cologne, the route had been stretched just before I left in order to accommodate Mahira’s request to wind itself around the new mosque and the Jewish Community Centre, in Beijing the route has remained the same. I was concerned that the routes no longer matched in terms of length. Elaine had walked the Beijing route the previous night and counted 8093 strides, the Cologne route had taken me 8040 strides. There is a saying by the German writer Duerrenmatt: ‘The more careful you plan, the more opportunity you give to serendipity.” He clearly has a point. What rational explanation lies behind this surprising and pleasant discovery? I too had walked the route in Beijing and counted my strides. A quick mathematical calculation established that the ratio between our strides is 1:4.

So what seems long becomes short and the short becomes long yet everything is as it should be – as long as the planning is comprehensive and thorough. I had always thought that planning was there to prevent surprises, it turns out planning enables them.

摄影 photo courtesy of // 米店 Detour

i remember a very specifically grilling moment one night at 米店 Detour, when we brought new friends from the U.S. over for dinner, and although there existed a humour in the fact that they were sitting in the low sofa next to the window that makes guests look like shrimps across the table from us, sitting on the higher wooden bench, C asked very directly, “So what is HomeShop in a word? What’s your goal, your thing, your manifesto?” It seemed shocking at the time that one could still talk in the arousing tense of the manifesto, but it is difficult to squirm so easily from the high bench out of such forthrightness, so I tried a word:

“Sustainability.”

i think my answer and explanation sufficed at the time—a thinking in terms of different reaches of time: from the passing details of an everyday to the affective time of love, collaboration and friendship, to an environmental question that reaches somewhere beyond our own lifetimes. It was a spontaneous answer compiled from previous considerations not vocalised before, but since that evening the motions of passing detail, collaboration and trying to keep up with the compost build-up have pushed manifesto-like considerations to the wayside. This has been just as 自然而然 a passing of the year though, as I learned from 2007 at Xiaojingchang, so all of the openings, miscommunications and bump-stops that we’ve experienced so far at Beixinqiao cannot be considered regretful, but it is certainly now a moment to reconsider a certain form of temporality after settling into certain other kinds of situatedness, the stickiness of labels, unwanted routines, or the hearing of gossip come round.

Why sustainability and time in a discourse that has previously been dominated by considerations of place, city and the local context? They are not unrelated, of course, but I wonder how these two could have been so independently stressed among certain historical trends of socio-cultural study, from Heidegger to Sloterdijk. Today, three films put me in a sort of stylo-anachronistic quandary, but at the same time, as works or projects, they remind us of a certain specificity of place that cannot be isolated from any form of artistic production. The first two come from CCD Workstation’s Folk Memory Project, and the third was Michael MADSEN’s Into Eternity. In both place and time and somewhere in between, I cannot help but try to place the work of our own little HomeShop.

剪图 still image from // 章梦奇 ZHANG Mengqi’s 《自画像：47公里 Self Portrait: At 47 km》

The two films I saw from the Folk Memory Project were 邹雪平 ZOU Xueping’s 《吃饱的村子 Satiated Village》 and 章梦奇 ZHANG Mengqi’s 《自画像：47公里 Self Portrait: At 47 km》. Visually consistent with 吴文光 WU Wenguang’s insistence upon “100% Life, 0% Art”, the two documentaries were unprofessional, sophomore attempts to make film based upon the project call to return to one’s hometown village to document the personal experiences of senior citizens who had lived through the Great Chinese Famine between 1958-61. An explicitly historical documentation is complicated by the personal subjectivities of the filmmakers, mostly born in the 80s with no real connection to the depth of suffering undergone by their elders, who—despite being family or not—were very often unwilling to lay bare the humiliation experienced by the Chinese people. As the camera shakes or the sound is drowned out by wind in the microphone, we are moved to look past the films themselves to their significance as a project, and here we can either see 老吴 Old WU’s genius or his excellent distribution of labour (we could go further into this question in another conversation). Is this a form of looking into history to redress wrongs from the past, or is it a way to recontextualise the things gone astray in our present condition? Both are equally valid, and similar to the activist work of 艾未未 AI Weiwei, it is possible to analyse the mechanics of a microsystem that make such a consideration of time possible. Documentation is important insofar as there is  a longer conception of time, whether it be in 章梦奇 ZHANG Mengqi’s decision to edit more footage of a particular woman into her final piece because of a certain personal connection to her spirit （这个讲“气场”或者“fa’r”或者“气质”?）, or if we consider the importance of a generation of memories to be lost in the propaganda of a school history book.

剪图 still image from // 《Into Eternity》

After biking from 798 and coming back to the comfort of HomeShop, I passed through the ghetto set-up of black trash bags covering the windows into the completely calculated time-space of MADSEN’s documentary about the world’s first permanent nuclear waste repository located in Onkalo, Finland. The irony of design calculation to be considered in the extremely controlled camera shots, editing and beautiful composition (could only keep thinking, “how many times did they have to rehearse that shot so that his speech was perfectly timed with the lit fire of the match?”) are set in stark contrast to the gross horror of nuclear disaster and MADSEN’s questioning of the human capacity to consider life “never” or “forever” amidst the limitations of technology. Can we design for  “permanent” to preserve all future lifeforms, by a machine set into water or one deep underground, and what markers above ground could be able to communicate this? Can we trust communication or should we rather trust ourselves to the oblivion of forgetting?

摄影 photo courtesy of // 刘畅 LIU Chang & 高灵 GAO Ling

Where do we place ourselves amidst history and guesses and predictions into the future? Can time only be a point of view, and do our differences about these considerations make us unable to live together in the present? To talk about sustainability in this sense is an attempt to address different scales of time, but yes, we are limited, and there will always be something neglected despite all carefulness. HomeShop is not about “forever”, you’re right. But time is relative, and all we have to go on at this point is the concreteness of a three-year contract and the temporality implicit in any of the localities we may find ourselves at any given moment. This may be the hutong, the value and “success” of our work, or the waking up in a bad mood. How much do we let go when faced with the extremes of 大自然 and 设计生活, and is trust merely a question of time?