THOMAS PODVIN’S FREELANCE WORK
Freelance writer - translator - Editor

Although Cantonese is spoken by 66 million people from southern China (Hong-Kong, Macau, Guangdong), south-east Asia and, indeed, in cities all around the world, very few reference books on this knotty language have ever been published. Subtitled The Language of Hong Kong Movies, Street Gangs and City Life, Hutton and Bolton have compiled a 500-page dictionary of everyday Cantonese including colloquialisms and slang from sources as diverse as comics, street gangs, teenagers, magazines and movies. Many of the entries have never been listed in common dictionaries before. The dictionary is aimed at foreign students and Chinese alike. The foreword, signed by a former police officer, states that the book is a valuable and useful tool, containing authentic word usage from the Hong-Kong underworld. Triad-trash talk aside, this is a practical guide to the vulgar and the vernacular that will help the reader to get around the oral Cantonese trickiness.
Singapore University Press/available at www.nus.edu.sg/npu

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
January 2006 issue

Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
January 2006 issue

In his introduction to this book Jonathan Spence writes that "It is a basic belief of most historians, including myself, that the more time elapses after an event has taken place, the easier it is going to be to interpret that particular event..." During the height of the "great proletarian cultural revolution" (1966-70) Li Zhensheng worked as a photojournalist for Harbin's Heilongjiang Daily, shooting film for the newspaper and, as it turns out, for himself. While some of his photographs were published at the time, Li hid the bulk of his work in the hope that it would provide documentation of the period for others in the future. Forty years later that time has come. This book provides an amazing visual record (400 photos) and includes a preface, introduction, text by the photographer, a chronology, maps, and extensive photo captions. The photographs were selected from a collection numbering in the tens of thousands and many have never been seen before. Li's inventive techniques and powerful images make him one of the premier Chinese photographers alive today. This book, which takes its name from the literal translation of Li's accreditation as a photographer, is part of the key to understanding one of the most turbulent eras of modern Chinese history.
Phaidon

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
January 2006 issue

Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
January 2006 issue