F.E. Beyer's Blog, page 7

China Sketches: BBQ

One of those old guys, hands clasped behind back, pausing every second step to see if there was something to stick his […]

The post China Sketches: BBQ first appeared on FE Beyer.

China Sketch: BBQ

Streetside BBQ in Shanghai in the early hours of the morning New Year’s day 2008. Ubiquitous VW taxi in the background.

One of those old guys, hands clasped behind back, pausing every second step to see if there was something to stick his nose into. The way he dressed, grey slacks, polyester polo shirt with sleeveless pullover on top, didn’t indicate money, time abroad, or working in a big company. He had an educated air though. Perhaps he was a retired professor. I was eating lamb skewers at...

The Sultan and the Governor

Introductory note: In Oct 2016 I travelled to North Maluku in Indonesia. Two islands there, Ternate and Tidore, are the most fascinating places I’ve been to in Indonesia. Not exactly tourist hubs, I had some trouble getting around with my basic Indonesian. The main aim was to climb the summits of these two volcanic islands. I managed one but not the other. Out of the material I gathered on the trip and subsequent reading, I wrote and sold a travel article, and published a short story. There ...

A Review of Buenos Aires Triad

A review from Carlos Hughes, author of White Monkey:

What’s an honest man to do for a living when they live in a country where inflation rises up by 20% overnight and the price of bread becomes an expensive commodity? This is the dilemma of the main protagonist ‘Lucas’ in the wonderfully written crime noir novel ‘Buenos Aires Triad’ by debutant author F. E. Beyer.

Beyer certainly knows Buenos Aires and ‘Porteno’ culture and that is evident throughout the book, Lucas is a man with a...

Teacher, We Girls!

In the animated film “The Swallows of Kabul” the Taliban force a man to pray in a mosque and his wife must wait outside in the hot sun wearing a suffocating cover-all burqa. We see the world as she does: through the grill of a veil. And we hear her laboured breathing as she nearly faints from the heat. In “Teacher, We Girls”, author Katherine Dolan relates a similar experience waiting outside a restaurant. Her husband is inside ordering takeaway, but as a woman, she’s not allowed in the door...

The Xiezhi Triad in Argentina

Photo: 佳源 Jia Yuan Good Source Supermarket, San Telmo, Buenos Aires.

A few years ago, the police in Buenos Aires busted a Chinese mafia group known as the Pixiu Triad. I wrote about this group and its activities in my article published in the LA Review of Books, China Channel. Inspired by those real events, I chose the xiezhi to be the symbol of the Chinese triad gang that plays a central role in my forthcoming crime novel ‘Buenos Aires Triad’.

Pixiu? Xiezhi? What the hell are those?

...

A Certain Kind of Power

‘A Certain Kind of Power’ is an entertaining dissection of corruption, in which Australian author Ryan Butta recreates an Argentina of scandals and cloak and dagger moves. Our guide in the county’s capital, Buenos Aires, is Mike Costello, a jaded American corporate spy. An aging one-time army man, Mike has been in Argentina too long for his own good and has a love/hate relationship with Buenos Aires.

“Regardless of her slow decay, Buenos Aires radiated a beauty and an arrogance in the fac...

Harvest Season

This novel successfully captures the backpacker scene in China’s Yunnan Province in the 2000s. However, the main characters are not backpackers per se but travellers who never want to go home. The fictional setting, Shuangshan, is – I think – based on Dali, a town by the beautiful Erhai Lake. Yunnan is home to many ethnic minorities, and in Dali, it is the Bai people. Taylor changes this to the Wu, who still keep their own language and religious practices alive. The Han Chinese, who make up ...

Too much New York

Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg: Five stars for the characters and detailed, but never boring, descriptions of New York in 1959. Harry Angel is a private detective living in the Chelsea Hotel. On the job, he drives and subways around town with soup stains on his tie. Harlem, Times Square, Coney Island, the apartment buildings, the restaurants and the old theatres — all of these are brought to life on Angel’s travels. I really get tired of books and movies about New York as I say in a re...

Rebellion in the Backlands

In Canudos, a backlands town in the Northeastern State of Bahia, Antônio Conselheiro (Anthony the Counselor) preached against the republic. His followers, leather-clad ruffians or ‘jagungos’, terrorised the countryside. In the 1890s the Republic of Brazil was in its infancy and insecure, rumours of monarchist plots abounded, troublemakers like the Counselor needed to be dealt with. He had gathered a large following, apparently for his indifference to suffering rather than his skill as a prea...