[Sun, Nov 1st] Poems and Stories from the Chinese Wild West
The People You'll Meet on the New Silk Road:
A STORYTELLING + POETRY EVENT with Mads Vesterager Nielsen and Anthony Tao
Date: Sunday, November 1st
Time: 16:00-17:00
Cost: 50 RMB, 40 RMB for members (including a drink)
Mads Vesterager Nielsen has just returned to Beijing after a four-month motorbike trip across 17 Chinese provinces - from the Yellow Sea to Shaanxi to Qinghai, then south through Sichuan along the Yangtze River before following the Long March route back to Beijing - and he has stories. Lots of them.
For two weeks, he was joined by local poet Anthony Tao, and together they traveled the historic Hexi Corridor from Xi’an to Dunhuang, along the way meeting a panoply of people whose stories, taken together, tell us something different about this country we know as China.
In this unique collaboration, Mads will recount highlights from his trip while Anthony shares poems written from the road. You’ll hear about abandoned communes, churches in the wild, a town named Treasured Chicken, run-ins with cops and COVID, a scooter accident, Lanzhou nightclubs, the Mother River, Buddhist grottoes, and all the ways one can die on a Chinese highway.
About the Speakers:
Mads Vesterager Nielsen is a Beijing-based writer, speaker, and modern-day adventurer who has traveled 30,000 kilometers across different parts of China on motorbike. He previously worked for the Danish Chamber of Commerce and Embassy, and is currently working with a China-based consultancy. He has several forthcoming projects related to his experiences on China’s roads, including articles, videos, and talks in Beijing and Denmark.
Anthony Tao is a writer and editor in Beijing, and host of the monthly Spittoon Poetry Night. His poetry has appeared in journals and outlets such as Rattle, The Cortland Review, Prairie Schooner, NPR, Frontier, Borderlands, Michigan Quarterly Review, etc. He has released two albums as part of Poetry x Music, which can be found at poetryxmusic.bandcamp.com.
Check out more events on our calendar:
Click "Read More" to make a reservation!